The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Films Boyce Benjamin
Our contemporary media landscape offers a never-ending supply of stories featuring crime, mayhem and punishment. Prison cinema is as popular as ever, allowing us to feel like we've experienced prison…
Specifikacia The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Films Boyce Benjamin
Our contemporary media landscape offers a never-ending supply of stories featuring crime, mayhem and punishment. Prison cinema is as popular as ever, allowing us to feel like we've experienced prison without the dangers of actually going there. When we regularly consume these narratives, we come to believe things about the criminal justice system that are not only untrue, but incredibly problematic.Prisons on television are terrifying spaces full of scary monsters housed alongside occasional good guys seeking redemption. The imbalance is hard to miss; for every outlaw seeking redemption there are a dozen bad guys looking to victimize him. As viewers, we can't help but walk away from such representations feeling as if prisons should be harsher and more restrictive. The Spectacle of Punishment maps this process, revealing why we come to believe what