ISU to host detective festival
From Sherlock Holmes to James Bond, the detective and spy genre captures interest across national boundaries like no other type of film or literature.
Idaho State University’s Department of English and Philosophy and Department of Languages and Literatures will be hosting events as part of the first Detective Festival from Sunday, March 17, through Thursday, March 21.
“This is an international genre and it’s one of the most popular genres in literature and film,” said Pamela Park, professor of French.
The festival will feature three films and several keynote speakers seeking to decipher a genre that Park said emphasizes the fine line between “patriotism and murder.”
“There is an attempt to figure out why the genre is so popular,” said Park.
The first event of the week is a showing of “Arbitrage” (R) in the Bengal Theater at 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday, March 17. Admission is $1 for students with a Bengal ID and $2 for the public.
On Monday, March 18, the English classic “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” will be shown in Rendezvous Room 118 at 7 p.m.
Professor of English at Southwestern College John Scaggs will speak on “Reading Crime and Restoring Order: The International Importance of Crime Fiction” at 7 p.m. in the Rendezvous Suites on Tuesday, March 19.
The Norwegian film “Headhunters” (R) will be shown Wednesday, March 20, in Rendezvous Room 118 at 7 p.m. The film is based on the novel by the same title written by Jo Nesbo, a popular Norwegian crime writer.
The final event of the series will be a Humanities Café at Portneuf Valley Brewing. Daniel Hunt, associate professor of English; Alan Johnson, professor of English and Thomas Sobchack, University of Utah professor emeritus of film and media arts, will present on the topic of “Ambiguities of Crime and Violence in the Detective/Spy Genre” at 6 p.m.
“The speakers are experts in their fields,” said Park.
Hunt is currently teaching a Latin American literature class focusing on Spanish detective fiction. He will speak on the influence of Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo. Sobchack will focus on violent acts carried out by both sexes in film noir. Johnson is speaking on spy behavior as a reflection of overall human behavior.
The Humanities Café is sponsored by the ISU Committee for the Study of Violence, Conflict, and War in Society. Other sponsors of the festival include the Idaho Humanities Council, the ISU Cinema Circle and the Cultural Events Committee of ISU.
Park said that the creation of the festival was motivated by the far-reaching appeal of the spy and detective genre.
“This is meant to appeal to the Pocatello community as well as the ISU community,” she said.
Park emphasized that part of the draw of the genre for casual readers and academics alike are the difficult moral issues involved with spying. In spite of the exploitation of others and even murder, she said, “We still feel somehow that [detectives and spies] are heroes.”
