The (Western) American Dream: Myth, Adaptation, and Literature in Spike Lee's 25th Hour

Abstract: Spike Lee's 25th Hour (2002) adapts David Benioff's novel The 25th Hour (2000) in a manner that foregrounds the author's allusions to literary Westerns popularized by Bret Harte after the Civil War (1861–65). Lee references movie and television Westerns to spotlight their permanence and prevalence in the national consciousness and highlight their development in a postbellum culture committed to antebellum myths, such as the American dream, which in turn made a mythical West the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks reanimated. In 25th Hour , Lee adapts Benioff's book by reprising his approach to adapting Richard Price's Clockers (1992), a method that reveals the influence of nineteenth-century material culture and literary naturalism on Price's, Benioff's, and Lee's respective visions of the Tri-State Area. Ultimately, Lee's adaptation method exposes Benioff's book as one that models its characters and plot on both general Western fiction and Harte's local color.