Prison Movies

Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars traces the public fascination with incarceration from the silent era to the present. Often considered an offshoot of the gangster film, the prison film precedes the gangster film and is in many ways its opposite. Rather than focusing on tragic figures heading for a fall, the prison film focuses on fallen characters seeking redemption. The gangster's perverse pursuit of the American dream is irrelevant to the prisoner for whom that dream has already failed. At their core, prison films are about self-preservation at the hands of oppressive authority. Like history itself, prison films display long stretches of idleness punctuated by eruptions of violence, dangerous moments that signify liberation and the potential for change. The enclosed world of the prison is a highly effective microcosm, one that forces characters and audiences alike to confront vexing issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. These portrayals of men and women behind bars have thrived because they deal with such fundamental human themes as freedom, individuality, power, justice, and mercy. Films examined include The Big House (1930), I Want to Live! (1958), The Defiant Ones (1958), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Midnight Express (1978), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Starred Up (2013).

This book explores how an audience of men serving sentences in an English prison responded to viewing five contemporary British prison films. It examines how media representations of prison vary in style and content, how film can influence public attitudes, and how this affects people in prison. The book explains the ways in which film acts as a power resource, presenting an ideological vision of criminal justice. The audience used these films to map the social terrain of prison, including issues of power and resistance; race and racism; corruption and the illicit economy; and staff-prisoner relationships, themes which are explored in the films screened. The authors argue that media consumption is one of the ways in which people in prison construct and maintain an ideal of the prisoner culture and what it is to be a ‘prisoner’. The book also reveals the ways in which audience members’ media choices and readings are part of the ongoing process of constructing their self-identity. This book illuminates the complex ways in which media consumption is an integral part of social power, cultural formation and identity construction. Recognising and engaging with audiencehood offers one potential route for supporting more progressive penal practice. This book speaks to those interested in prisons, crime, media and culture, and film studies.

This book studies a number of well-known prison films from an analytical and historical perspective. Throughout the years, prison movies have appeared to be neglected within the canon of genres like westerns, screwball comedies, horror films and the like; they have been recognized merely an adjunct subgenre to the more prominent genres like gangster films. The prison movie is indeed its own separate genre, and the book proves this by utilizing existing genre criticism, especially from leading scholars like Thomas Schatz. Although there have been a number of cross-genre films (Blade Runner is a fusion of science fiction, film noir, and action/adventure; Star Wars is a science fiction western action film, etc.), the prison movie is perhaps the only pure-bred genre that yields so many other genres within its original framework: gangster prison films (The Big House), film noir prison films (Brute Force), western prison films (There Was a Crooked Man), sports prison films (The Longest Yard), science fiction prison films (Escape from New York), the POW film (Stalag 17), even musicals (Chicago). In addition to surveying the genre from 1930-2000, the book deconstructs twelve films in great detail through full annotated summaries based on the codes and conventions of the proposed genre – films like Stalag 17, Cool Hand Luke, Midnight Express, Escape from Alcatraz, and The Shawshank Redemption are among the films considered.

Prison has long fascinated film makers and audiences alike. The author explores the dark enclosed world of prisons on film from light-hearted comedies to the deeper implications of people imprisoned for their political and religious beliefs.

The Poetics of Crime provides an invitation to reconsider and reimagine how criminological knowledge may be creatively and poetically constructed, obtained, corroborated and applied. Departing from the conventional understanding of criminology as a discipline concerned with refined statistical analyses, survey methods and quantitative measurements, this book shows that criminology can - and indeed should - move beyond such confines to seek sources of insight, information and knowledge in the unexplored corners of poetically and creatively inspired approaches and methodologies. With chapters illustrating the ways in which criminologists and other researchers or practitioners working on crime-related questions can find inspiration in a variety of unconventional materials, writing styles and analytical strategies, The Poetics of Crime offers studies of police photography, classic and contemporary literature, silver screen movies, performative dance enactments and media images. As such, this volume opens up the field of criminological research to alternative and novel sources of knowledge about crime, its perpetrators and victims, authorities, motives and justice. It will therefore appeal not only to sociologists, social theorists and criminologists, but to scholars across disciplines with interests in crime, deviance and innovative approaches to social research.

Media representations of law and order are matters of keen public interest and have been the subject of intense debate amongst those with an interest in the media, crime and criminal justice. Despite being an increasingly high profile subject few publications address this subject head on. This book aims to meet this need by bringing together an important range of papers from leading researchers in the field, addressing issues of fictional, factual and hybrid representations in the media -the so called 'docu-dramas' and 'faction'.

An analysis of the impact of TV on the democratic processes that lead to criminal policy making - Everthing from 'The Shawshank Redemption' to the TV sit-com; how public perceptions of serious social issues are often based on superficial, misleading and sometimes comfortable accounts.

Revisit your favorite movie moments with more than 200 word search and crossword puzzles. Film aficionados will enjoy the more than 200 word search and crossword puzzles, featuring some of the most popular and iconic actors, movies, and moments in Hollywood history. From film noir and Academy Award winners to science-fiction heroes and animated villains, each puzzle provides a fun stroll down memory lane for movie buffs everywhere.