By news values we mean the operational practices whi~ :ditors, working over a set of prints, to select, rank, classify 2 ate the photo in terms of his 'stock of knowledge' as to what collsu~u~cs 'news'.
I was never previously aware of the term News Values either. Does this also constitute what news literally values as well?
Thus the photo of a dem- onstrator kicking a policeman has news value because it witnesses to a recent event, which is dramatic, unusual, controversia
The interventions used seem to be talking about photos and how they relate or tell their own stories. This seems to work just fine for an intervention, but the method is still mostly discursive.
Codes of denotation are precise, literal, unambiguous: the photo-image of a sweater is (denotes) an object to be worn, recogniz- able as a sweater and not as a coat, a hat or a walking stick. Codes of connotation are more open-ended. In the connnotative domain of every- day speech sweater may also connote 'keeping warm', a 'warm garment'-and thus by further elaboration 'the coming of winter', a 'cold day', and so on
If I'm reading this correctly this is suggesting we have denotative and connotative meanings to words, phrases etc. So denotative meanings might be more dictionary definitions. Connotative meanings are the meanings we ascribe to something.
This has an ideological significance, since its function i it the expressive code in such a way as to inflect or displace the ay from its political point, towards some aspect of Maudling, tl he exposition seems to pose an implicit question- 'what do we most want to know about the Maudling affair at this s to explo story, awi ie man
There is a theme in much of the readings about narrative and framing. This fits into it as well by making sure that ideological framing is important as well.
Formal news values belong to the world and discour~e of the newspaper, to newsmen as a professional group, to the institutional ap- paratuses of news-making. Ideological news values belong to the realm of moral-political discourse in the society as such
I never really thought of news this way until now. This definitely allows for a new way to look at news.
The determinations of news photographs* STUART HALL I. The level of signification in photographs In the modern newspaper, the text is still an essential element, the photo- graph an optional one. Yet photographs, when they appear, add new dimensions of meaning to a text. As Roland Barthes has observed, 'pictures. . . . are more imperative than writing, they impose meaning at one stroke, without analysing or diluting it
I'm not fully sure if there is a research question in there but it seems like one could gleam a question. How do photographs add new layers to the text and improve the meaning of the text?
Why is the reaction to Phenomenon A dismissed or downgraded by being described as ‘another moral panic,’ while the putatively more signifi cant Phenomenon B is ignored, and not even made a candidate for moral signifi cation?
This is a good question, but I don't think it's the research question. Maybe an additional research question.
Some recent media panics are more self-refl ective – antici-pating having to defend themselves against the accusation of spreading a moral panic
The media defending itself for causing a moral outrage while also blaming other media for the moral outrage is really fascinating to me. So long, of course, as people are giving into the correct moral panic. So it becomes important to discredit another narrative rather than to actually say anything that might make an audience think critically.
5. Sex, Violence and Blaming the Media
This tends to be a pretty common theme as well among the public (and even media). There's the idea of finding media to blame as well. From videogames to reality television shows.
The warning was symbolically sharpened by Leah’s respect-able home background: father an ex-police offi cer, mother had worked as a drug counsellor. This meant, explained the Daily Express, that drugs were a ‘rotten core in the heart of middle England’. Leah was the girl next door
We can never seem to escape putting things into a narrative and framing it in a way to have a clear good person taken by something. So long as it lives up to the standard of the idea we've constructed. It has to be the "right" narrative.
Schools Still Safest Place For Children; Many More Dead at Home Than in Classroom.’
I remember hearing this but no one suddenly went on to think about their homes. Nor did anyone begin thinking about how this actually happened. And still unable to examine why it keeps happening.
The slide towards moral panic rhetoric depends less on the sheer volume of cases, than a cognitive shift from ‘how could it happen in a place like this?’ to ‘it could happen anyplace’. In the USA at least, the Columbine Massacre signalled this shift
In the United States the question is always asked "How could this have happened here?" when it happens in specific areas. A place where we've built this idea that they are supposed to be homely, safe places. It's crazy to think that a moral panic only happens to an individual incident rather than a series of incidents which constitute a pattern of some sort.
In the end, the Lawrence case lacked three of the elements needed for the construction of a successful moral panic. First, a suitable enemy: a soft target, easily denounced, with little power and preferably without even access to the battlefi elds of cultural politics. Clearly not the British police. Second, a suitable victim: someone with whom you can identify, someone who could have been and one day could be anybody. Clearly not inner-city young black males. Third, a consensus that the beliefs or action being denounced were not insulated entities (‘it’s not only this’) but integral parts of the society or else could (and would) be unless ‘something was done’. Clearly if there was no institutionalized racism in the police, there could not be in the wider society.
In order for a moral panic to happen, the right kind of person has to be wronged for it to take place, apparently. And the right people have to perpetrate it.
The notion of ‘institutionalized racism’ was denounced as meaningless, exaggerated and too sweeping; the term could stir up resentments among ordinary people (stigma and deviancy amplifi cation theory); it besmirches the whole police force because of a few blameworthy individual
Ignoring institutions in favor of focusing on individuals ignores how said individuals could be motivated to such crimes. It seems no one wants to get into talking about race because of some people would feel uncomfortable. But is that not also some kind of moral panic?
At fi rst glance, all the ingredients for a moral panic were in place. The Report itself took a moral stand against the persistent racism it had identifi ed. For example: ‘Stephen Lawrence’s murder was simply and solely and unequivocally motivated by racism. It was the deepest tragedy for his family. It was an affront to society, and especially to the local black community in Greenwich’ (Para. 1.11); ‘Nobody has been convicted of this awful crime. This is also an affront both to the Lawrence family and the community at large’ (Para. 1.12). Professional incompe-tence and poor leadership were important reasons for the police failure, but the overarching problem was ‘pernicious and persistent institutional racism’, police failure to respond to the concerns of ethnic minorities and ‘discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stere-otyping’ (Para. 6.34)
There definitely seems to be a social panic going on here, but being that we're not talking about America, I wonder how this would be seen on British airwaves.
This labelling derives from a wilful refusal by liberals, radi-cals and leftists to take public anxieties seriously. Instead, they are furthering a politically correct agenda: to downgrade traditional values and moral concerns.
This seems to be getting at a research question. Is merely labeling something a moral panic simply done to further a liberal agenda and undermine values and moral concerns?
CARRY ON PANICKING
I do not think it a research question but it seems to give an idea of where we're headed, at least to an extent in this piece
1. Young, Working-class, Violent Males
Will there be various chapters on what to panic about?
These points about the socially constructed and interpreted nature of texts have implications for the effort by quantitative-content analysts to compare news texts with othel" textually mediated versions of reality such as official statistics or public opinion surveys
This seems to be quite critical of quantitative analysis. An intervention perhaps?
Since the media aim at least to influence, condition and reproduce the activity of audiences by reach-ing into the symbolic organization of thought, the student of mass media must pay attention to the symbolic content of media messages before the question of effects can even be sensibly posed
There is an admission here that the media is, in fact, for the sake of influence
Critics might also contend that the questions we have posed cannot be addressed adequately through a reading of news content, but instead must be grounded in an understanding of the process by which the news is produced
I might agree to some degree. It is not just important to listen to the message but also to look at the presentation and construction of that message. One may even need
READING THE NEWS 109 m.edia and markets. Do news organizations operating in different media and ·vary in the number of sourc~s they use, the types of sou~ces. they use, and ~e ofbtowledge provided by their sources? Do news orgamzations vary m their ol' JiOerent contexts for presenting sources? Do news organizations vary in the to which sources back up their statements with reference to evidence, and in tv 5 of e\·idence referred to in this regard? How do news organizations operating ii:c'.l't'llt media and markets vary in their use of visuals and sound in representing
This article is nice enough to actually write out all of its research questions under the aptly titled Research Question section. The research here seeks to examine the sources of news and how they're used or can be used and whether they're any good.
In addressing these questions, our goal is to pick apart what is usually taken for granted
There are a LOT of research questions, but I think this one begins to really look at what the main idea of the article could potentially be. What do we usually take for granted within our news?
Do most ootlets cover the same events and issues in crime, law, and justice in similar ways
I would also be curious to know if they cover the same events and issues in a similar way? I think we've seen they do not, but it will be nice to see scholarly research.
In short, a cultural studies that is critical and multicultural provides comprehensive approaches to culture that can be applied to a wide variety of artifacts from pornography to Madonna, from MTV to TV news, or to specific events like the 2000 U.S. presidential election (Kellner 2001), or media representations of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the U.S. response. Its comprehensive perspectives encompass political economy, textual analysis, and audience research and provide critical and political perspectives that enable individuals to dissect the meanings, messages, and effects of dominant cultural forms. Cultural studies is thus part of a critical media pedagogy that enables individuals to resist media manipulation and to increase their freedom and individuality. It can empower people to gain sovereignty over their culture and to be able to struggle for alternative cultures and political change. Cultural studies is thus not just another academic fad, but can be part of a struggle for a better society and a better life
A nice way to conclude by summing up much of what it is cultural studies stands to benefit people and what it has the power to do.
Furthermore, I would warn against a tendency to romanticize the +active audience,+ by claiming that all audiences produce their own meanings and denying that media culture may have powerful manipulative effects
But of course, even if people do come with their own interpretations one still cannot deny that the culture influences other aspects of life. Even with individual interpretations there are still cultural implications.
Enthnographic cultural studies have indicated some of the various ways that audiences use and appropriate texts, often to empower themselves. Radway' s study of women's use of Harlequin novels ( 1983), for example, shows how these books provide escapism for women and could be understood as reproducing traditional women's roles, behavior, and attitudes. Yet, they can also empower women by promoting fantasies of a different life and may thus inspire revolt against male domination
It is always important to recognize that there is no single one way to critique anything and that it's possible that while something does reinforce cultural ideas, it may still be empowering to someone else.
The products of media culture require multidimensional close textual readings to analyze their various forms of discourses, ideological positions, narrative strategies, image construction, and effects. There have been a wide range of types of textual criticism of media culture, ranging from quantitative content analysis that dissects the number of, say, episodes of violence in a text, to qualitative study that examines images of women, blacks, or other groups, or that applies various critical theories to unpack the meanings of the texts or to explicate how texts function to produce meaning. Traditionally, the qualitative analysis of texts has been the task of formalist literary criticism, which explicates the central meanings, values, symbols, and ideologies in cultural artifacts by attending to the formal properties of imaginative literature texts ~-such as style, verbal imagery, characterization, narrative structure and point of view, and other formal elements of the artifact. From the 1960s on, however, literary-formalist textual analysis has been enhanced by methods derived from semiotics, a system for investigating the creation of meaning not only in written languages but also in other, nonverbal codes, such as the visual and auditory languages of film and TV
This definitely helps to understand how to do this.
Corporate conglomeratization has intensified further and today AOL and Time Warner, Disney, and other global media conglomerates control ever more domains of the production and distribution of culture (McChesney 2000)
I had seen somewhere that something like 5 huge corporations have the potential to run everything. There is a chart that is all about that.
This economic factor explains why there are cycles of certain genres and subgenres, sequelmania in the film industry, crossovers of popular films into television series, and a certain homogeneity in products constituted within systems of production marked by rigid generic codes, formulaic conventions, and well-defined ideological boundaries
This is intersting because it seems to be getting at critical theory. That power dictates what goes on television, radio etc. and that the dominating cultural structure is what we are more likely to see
cultural studies lends itself to a multiculturalist program that demonstrates how culture reproduces certain forms of racism, sexism, and biases against members of subordinate classes, social groups, or alternative life-styles
And this shows us what can happen should we not care much for cultural studies. How it can reinforce ideas. It is less about planting a seed, it seems than it is about reinforcing already pre-existing ideas without challenging them.
British cultural studies, for example, effects. analyzed culture historically in the context of its societal origins and It situated culture within a theory of social production and reproduction, specifying the ways that cultural forms served either to further social domination or to enable people to resist and struggle against domination
This could perhaps be showing us that cultural literacy and the analyzing of culture has, in fact, worked previously.
Cultural studies allows us to examine and critically scrutinize the whole range of culture without prior prejudices toward one or another sort of cultural text, institution, or practice. It also opens the way toward more differentiated political, rather than aesthetic, valuations of cultural artifacts in which one attempts to distinguish critical and oppositional from conformist and conservative moments in a cultural artifact
Another instance of showcasing why cultural studies matter by telling us what cultural studies does.
Cultural studies is valuable because it provides some tools that enable one to read and interpret one's culture critically. It also subverts distinctions between "high" and "low" culture by considering a wide continuum of cultural artifacts ranging from novels to television and by refusing to erect any specific cultural hierarchies or canons
Here is an intervention telling us why all this matters and why cultural studies is valuable
Cultural studies insists that culture must be studied within the social relations and system through which culture is produced and consumed, and that thus study of culture is intimately bound up with the study of society, politics, and economics
This is very defined as to what culture studies encompasses and helps to get those outside to understand what the use of the phrase, "Cultural studies," means to someone who is not versed
In this essay, I will discuss the potential contributions of a cultural studies perspective to media critique and literacy.
Definitely gets at a research question. What are the potential contributions of a cultural studies perspective to media critique and literacy.
Learning how to read, criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment
But maybe it could be an intervention as this does talk about why we need to learn. But at this time I do not have the research question that it's adddressing
Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment.
Not quite a research question or intervention, but one that does present the idea that readers ought to be more aware of what they consume.
Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them."
Media has a huge influence on who we are and how we perceive the world. Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?
In this chapter, I have examined how 'the stranger' is produced as a figure pre-cisely by being associated with a danger to the purified space of the community, the purified life of the good citizen, and the purified body of 'the child'
I do not think this is really an intervention but the author does mention they define a stranger as having to pose a danger to really be considered a stranger.
In other words, crime only exists when communities fail, when communities do not care. Marginalised or under-valued spaces where there is a high rate of crime against property are hence immediately understood in terms of a failure to care.
This makes e think of "Broken Window Theory." A window is broken. If no one does anything with it then more damage comes to the building
Neighbourhood Watch schemes are more common in middle-class areas
This is most certainly a comment on class in this regard. Middle class areas are also more likely to be protected by police.
How do neighbourhoods become imagined? In the work of Howard Hallman, neighbourhoods are understood as arising from the 'natural human trait' of being neighbourly, which combines a concern with others and a concern for self (1984: 11 ). According to Hallman, the neighbourhood is an organic community that grows, 'naturally wherever people live close to one another' (1984: 11). It is both a limited territory-a physical space with clear boundaries-and a social community where 'residents do things together' (1984: 13).The simple fact of living nearby gives neigh-bours a common social bond.
The social bond seems to be far more definitive of what makes a neighborhood. However I can't really agree, I feel like that could still make someone a stranger. At least when you consider most people no longer want to get to know their neighbor.
I will argue that there are techniques that allow us to differentiate between those who are strangers and those who belong in a given space (such as neighbours or fellow inhabitants)
This seems to be a more definitive research question. How do we tell who is a stranger and who isn't? But here it is done in a way that points out that we're looking at the difference between neighbors and inhabitants and those who may actually be strangers.
Third, these two new demands are both bound up with the transformation of the mechanism of power through which the control of the social body has been attempted in industrial societies since the eighteenth century. But in spite of their common origin, the reasons for the intervention of medicine in the criminal field and the reasons for the recourse of penal justice to psychiatry are essentially different
And here we see that control really is a big part of it.
In short, only a specialist can spot monomania. The contradiction is more apparent than real when the alienists eventually define monomania as an illness which manifests itself only in crime while at the same time they reserve the right to know how to determine its premonitory signs, its predisposing conditions
This seems to suggest that the intervention of doctors and psychiatrist was more about giving themselves power. If they have the authority to do that and no one else does, who gets to decide what constitutes insanity?
why then did it want to meddle in an area where so far it had intervened very discretely
Or perhaps the research question, why did they psychiatrist want to intervene in the legal system?
I simply want to underline this strange fact, that psychiatrists have tried very stubbornly to take their place in the legal machinery
There's almost a research question here, but it seems more his thesis statement than anything. I'm not sure how to form a question other than, "How do psychiatrists tried to take their place in the legal system?"
they are crimes against nature, against those laws which are perceived to be inscribed directly on the human heart and which link families and generations
It seems that paternity and natural relations to another separate these events from society. This may be another reason why this would be considered some kind of insanity. We STILL seem to think of people who do terrible things to family as somehow being ill or insane.
Out of all the crimes committed, why did these particular ones seem important; why were they at issue in the discussions between doctors and jurists? First, of all, it must be noted that they present a picture very different from what had hitherto constituted the jurisprudence of criminal insanity. In general terms, until the end of the eighteenth century, the question of insanity was raised under penal law only in cases where it was also raised in the civil code or in canon law, that is when it appeared either in the form of dementia and of imbecility, or in the form of Juror. In both cases, whether it was a matter of a permanent state or a passing outburst, insanity manifested itself through numerous signs which were easy enough to recognize, to the extent that it was debated whether a doctor was really necessary to authenticate it
It's particularly interesting to see him ask a question and immediately answer. Though it makes it difficult to spot the research question, it is interesting that he utilize an incredible critical method and deduction to get to the heart of his answer. There are other preconceived notions revealed here as well, such the thought that we can just insatnly recognize insanity because why wouldn't these behaviors be "insane?"
Legal justice today has at least as much to do with criminals as with crimes. Or more precisely, while, for a long time, the criminal had been no more than the person to whom a crime could be attributed and who could therefore be punished, today, the crime tends to be no more than the event which signals the existence of a dangerous element -that is, more or less dangerous -in the social body
The crime is dangerous in the social body but not necessarily to the individual? Or is he suggesting that the fact that we focus on the event and not the individual is what really makes danger?
"Can one condemn to death a person one does not know?"
There's an argument for individualism if there ever was one...
The following argument used recently by a French lawyer in the case of the kidnapping and murder of a child clearly indicates that the judicial stage cannot do without this added element, that no judgment, no condemnation is possible without it being provided, in one way or another
It's remarkable how true this can be. For one to speak up really does open to judgment. If one is silent is slightly harder to judge. But it seems that silence can also render a judgement.
Here we have a judicial system designed to establish misdemeanors to determine who committed them, and to sanction these acts by imposing the penalties prescribed by the law
Here there is a clear indication about how the law works. It is to establish misdemeanors and determine who committed them, although in this case it seems the assumption of the "Who" is very clear.
A handful of critical scholars argue that queer theory can better understandsexuality by accounting for the problematic ways that sexual violence is oftenignored in its most common everyday contexts and instead located in pathologizedand essentialized identities (Fischel, 2010; Meiners, 2011; Puar and Rai, 2002;Spade, 2012; Stanley, 2011
Perhaps also part of the intervention by pointing out how queer theory can help us understand sexuality.
Blaming the victim
Perhaps one of the more common narratives. In fact, when I originally read about this story this was one of the most common I heard personally (the second being the Arab Threat).
‘I don’t think these young people realize what can happenwhen they go into some of these Middle Eastern countries...In some areas,women are treated as slaves
In this narrative the women is in danger simply for wanting to travel to another country where the reference is mostly arab stereotypes rather than any examination of the individual. Her whiteness also makes her "innocent" by default
Ali] said his love for Jennifer is pure. Had she made it to Jericho, he said, she wouldhave shared his sister’s bedroom...The couple would have walked together throughthe tree-lined streets of Jericho, he said...‘When I realized she wasn’t coming, I feltmy whole world collapse,’ he said in the interview Sunday at his family’s home. ‘Mytears didn’t stop and I couldn’t sleep for three days.’
This still fits perfectly with a narrative. In particular that if it is about love and marriage then HE must be portrayed as being more innocent and pure. In this particular setup he becomes like a victim.
She’s a straight-A student, National Honor Societymember. She gets along with Mom. She gets along with Da
This very clearly fits the preconceived narrative in all kinds of ways. When portraying him as a predator it only really works if she comes across as the innocent victim. Every narrative about a predator needs a victim that has been wronged.
he accuracy of thenumber is less significant than its discursive power.
I can only imagine the power a label like this would carry should someone find themselves under it. The moment people hear it, the person it is applied to becomes irredeemable.
I examine the media repre-sentations of Ali first as an online predator, then as a part of a romantic pair, thenas a ‘dangerous Arab terrorist,’ and finally, as a bad boyfriend (see Table 1 for atimeline of events)
Shows how the analysis will be done. I'm going to presume it's a discursive method.
This construction of the predator is especially trou-bling because it puts young people at risk by directing attention and resources tothe wrong issues, hindering offenders’ rehabilitation, and foreclosing a morenuanced discussion about consent and harm
Could be an intervention. It certainly identifies the problem and why
The common figure of the monstrous and inhuman sexual predator (Filler, 2001;Garfinkle, 2003; Jenkins, 1998; Lynch, 2002; Pratt, 1998) collapses distinctionsamong sex offenders—some are even criminalized for consensual conduct.
Perceptions can be pretty strong. Particularly if we view all sexual predators through a moral lens
A key problem with registries is that they rely on and reproduce the stranger-danger model of child sexual assault.
This is also very telling of how we have approached the idea of sexual assault in the online space as well.
Anti-rape feminist movements in the 1970sworked to dismantle the stranger-danger mythology of rape and advocate forlesser criminal penalties, since severe punishments discourage victims from report-ing and deter law enforcement from pursuing sex crime cases against perpetratorswho do not fit the model of the violent stranger rapist
Building up a profile of assumptions about what a rapist should be has led many to believe that a woman has not been a victim if the person is a "good" guy or if there are no markings showing a violent struggle
These explanations include the initial fearsthat Ali was an online predator, stories of the pair as star-crossed lovers, construc-tions of Ali as a dangerous young Arab male, and the conclusion that Ali wassimply a bad boyfriend.
There are quite a few interpretations of this particular event. How did we end up getting so many?
In this article, Iexamine the media representations of one atypical case that illustrates the continu-ing need to challenge the common assumption that sexual danger is located inracialized pathologically deviant figures such as the online predator
The research question is here. How does the media demonstrate the continuing need to be challenged in their assumptions of sexual danger.
The meanings of violent cinema are shaped as well by the anticipated audience (most obviously in the if case of slashers) and even unanticipated audiences (the filmmakers could not have guessed, for example, that a generation of youthful rebels would adopt Bonnie and Clyde as role models).
This definitely seems to be the case. Media reinforces media and as such one could easily say that media is merely playing to the expectations of the audience. But this means that most media is not challenging the nature of a psychopath, serial killer or slasher in any regard.
By distinguishing among slashers, serial killer films, and psycho movies, then, we gain understanding of the meanings and reception of cinematic violence, and a sense of how violent films vary iI1 their sub-texts about criminal nature.
Very interesting opening to the conclusion.
The point of these intrusions is not just that the psychopath kills people and sows disorder. The psychopath is disorder, the destroyer of predictability
This is very telling to how we view psychos and serial killers in film. But I'm particualrly amused at the use of the word disorder. The psychopath IS disorder is far more telling than anything
the need for law;
Cops and the system of law as the good guys against murderous psychopaths
Most psycho movies include a predictable secondary character or set of characters. Often these are what we might call good bad-guys, sec-ondary characters whose lesser moral flaws throw the psychopath's monstroSity into higher relief.
Another interesting observation, I think. Psychos or serial killers seem to have a sidekick or, at the very least, someone who "understands" them
Patrick himself ob-serves, "There is no real me. I simply am not there."
Another intervention, perhaps? That criminals must either be crazy have a Jekyll/Hyde complex
The leading researcher in this area, psychologist Robert Hare, and the leading professional body, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), define psychopathy as a state characterized primarily by a lack of conscience: Psychopaths are incapable of remorse, an incapacity that frees them to offend repeatedly-not necessarily to kill but to prey on others without ex-periencing g~ilt. 13 Hare and the APA speak of psychopathy as a con-stellation of symptoms, including deceitfulness and manipulation, egocentricity, grandiosity, emotional shallowness, impulsivity, short-ness of temper, craving for excitement, and irresponsibility.
Could this be one of many interventions so far? It seems to get at some of why we're fascinated with serial killers or at least why media is fascinated with portraying them. But more importantly, this begins to tell us what media thinks (or chooses to ignore) about them.
Notorious cases such as those of Jeffrey Dahlmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy further heightened the serial killer's profile, especially when they became the basis for movies.
So who are we more interested in? The victims or the villains?
In Dirty Harry, in contrast, the sex murderer, Scorpio, is a drugged-out hip-pie monster who cackles manically and elicits nothing but contempt ("punk," "madman," "creep") from the detective who pursues him.
The morally righteous man at the end who is subduing the punk. Sure he's not nice or anything about it but he's getting results and that's what matters, right? After all he's the "good guy."
This chapter pries open the ideological frameworks of violent films to explore what they say about criminal nature. 1
Perhaps this is actually the research question after all. What do violent films say about our criminal nature?
The slasher film, then, is a subgenre of horror that is closely re-lated to fairy tales and folklore and has a comic edge.
Maybe THIS is the thesis of the piece
Moreover, unlike most crime films, slashers leaven their plots with elements of camp. Scary but ludicrous, satirical and sometimes wry, they ask-1:o be taken se-riously and lightly at the same time. Although they punish teenagers for violating the parental No Sex rule, slashers do so gleefully, in-ducing their own type of orgiastic excitement
The rules of the slasher, but why are they the way that they are? We can certainly laugh at them, but we're certainly more likely to root for those doing what we deem morally righteous
In sum, slashers are fairy tales or fables for adolescents
I'm not fully sure, but seems to be driving at a research question or a thesis, suggesting that slasher films are fables or fairy tales for adolescents that punish "morally wrong" transgressions while rewarding "morally right ones."
They created multifaceted characters, not unidimensional killing-machines, giving Cody, Clyde, and Bonnie admirable as well as negative traits and thus enabling viewers to identify with them.
It's interesting to me that many characters in media that are killers are often portrayed as sympathetic, charming etc. The kind of characters we would love to hate.
The alternatives toward which I have gestured thus farand this is only a small selection of examples, which can also include job and living wage programs, alternatives to the disestablished welfare program, commUnity-based recreation, and many more-are associated both directly and indirectly with the existing system of criminal justice.
This entire chapter is just full of interventions, and this passage does a good job of laying out a few of them. Since so much is already highlighted, I thought I'd point out because she also list a few things here. All of these are interventions--solutions and suggestions she offers
Are prisons racist institutions?
I don't think this is a research question, but it is clear this is definitely a sub-argument. But it is definitely there to help provide an argument as she does come to a conclusion that prisons are racist institutions.
t is virtually impossible to avoid consuming images of prison.
I find this fascinating that it is impossible to get away from images of prison. And even if we were to try and avoid images, there would still be someone ELSE to present us with a mental picture of what prison must be like.
In the meantime, corporations associated with the punishment industry reap profits from the system that manages prisoners and acquire a clear stake in the continued growth of prison populations. Put simply, this is the era of the prison industrial complex. The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social
If I had to guess at a method, it might start here (or a little before). There seems to be a more critical method applied to the research. As of this moment there is a lot of criticism that comes more from examining and critiquing the prison system.
On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them. At the same time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them.
There's a strange appeal to tradition here. It seems like most of us simply accept prisons because "It's always been that way..." and to change it now would somehow be bad. It's an argument that gets used to not change something quite often.
Why do prisons tend to make people think that their own rights and liberties are more secure than they would be if prisons did not exist?
There's a part of me that thinks this serves as a much better research question. While the title, "Are Prisons Obsolete?" is definitely a question, this one actually ask why we still rely on them. I think the author states fairly clearly that she believes Prison's are obsolete, but this question gets at answering why we have not gotten ride of them and why we need to.