This paper applies generative anthropology’s aesthetic theory to a comparison of the treatment of the celebrity, or centrality, of the Texan criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in contemporary news accounts, in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and in John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen (2019). In particular, it asks how resentment and love are activated by the two films, how violence and sexuality contribute to such effects, and how the films might be situated on a theoretical continuum between high and popular aesthetic experience. It concludes with a consideration of how the two films deploy historical information, how their narratives compare with biographical and other sources, and what role such deployments might play in aesthetic experience in our era.
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