POPULAR
CULTURE REPRESENTATIONS OF CRIME'
The Gap Between Truth and Fiction Narrows By
Evan Kanarakis
From
the perspective of popular culture and the media, and
in particular with regard to cinematic representations
of crime, it is certainly fair to assert that crime can
operate as a source of horror or pleasure for the audience.
The cinema is, after all, at its most intrinsic level,
a form of entertainment. It is important, however, to
recognise the gap that often exists between accurate
portrayals of crime (whether or not they are reputed to
be 'true' crime accounts or not), and of fictional or
stereotypical depictions of crime and criminal behaviour
1. In this respect, then, just as the news
media may be held accountable for irresponsible reporting
or coverage of certain issues, so too could it be argued
that filmmakers have a degree of general responsibility
in their work, especially when film is capable of influencing
mainstream public conceptions and understandings of 'crime',
and not just of invoking reactions of 'horror' or 'pleasure'.2
The
cinema is a powerful medium, particularly when crime is
involved. As a story unfolds on the screen, as soon as
it captivates the interest of its audience, film has the
potential to directly affect one's emotions, and perhaps,
one's own set of beliefs or ideological stance. 3
That is, just as reports of true crime in the general
news media may shock or outrage us, so too may representations
of such crimes in the cinema. In the same turn, news of
a fugitive's capture or of a criminal conviction may satisfy
the public's faith in the criminal justice system and
provide a sense a pleasure' a reaction which may be evoked
from film as well.
In
the news media, the links between the content of crime
news and viewers' beliefs and attitudes about crime are
difficult to establish, and even more difficult to establish
in relation to their impact upon changing public policy
in the criminal justice system. 4 The same
can be said for crime films. Some individuals will be
more susceptible to media influences than others, based
upon such factors as education, gender, religion, class,
race, and their own personal experiences with crime. 5
Audiences are of course not devoid of any independent
forms of thought, nor necessarily influenced by every
film they see, however, it is nonetheless important to
recognise that images in popular culture certainly may
play a role (however difficult it is to determine exactly)
in forming what the public and the judiciary think about
crime and criminality in general. 6
Many
different specific examples exist of ways in which films
depicting crime or addressing issues of criminality
have been reputed to have impacted upon the behaviour
of the public or upon public policy. In the United States
in 1991, a riot broke out in a suburb of Chicago between
police and some sixty to seventy African'Americans outside
of a cinema that had been screening the movie Boyz
in the Hood, a film dealing with issues of gang
violence and police racism. Similarly, racial tensions
were aroused in Australia upon the release of Romper
Stomper, also in 1992; and Oliver Stone's Natural
Born Killers (1994) stirred considerable controversy
because its content was considered to be too horrific
for many audiences to bear. Less dramatic is the account
provided by Kathleen Daly of a young female criminology
student that explained to her: ...I want to be Jodie
Foster... (referring to Foster's 1991 role as an F.B.I
agent in Silence of the Lambs). 7
Whilst these are very specific examples, and therefore
perhaps remote, they create an interesting set of examples
which may be compared to the similar impact which the
news media is reputed to have upon the public and policy
considerations.
As
in films that are concerned with issues of crime, there
is no relationship between the frequency of crimes reported
to the police and the frequency of crime news stories.
8 This is often due to the nature of the
news media, where crime news is regularly used as filler,
and may also be sensationalised or exaggerated in order
to attract an audience's attention. 9 However,
whilst such news is arguably 'horrifying' or 'pleasing'
its receptive audience, it could also have the consequence
of giving the general public an impression that certain
crimes occur more often than in fact they may, purely
because they are receiving a specific amount of media
exposure.10 The obvious danger in such an
outcome is that an impressionable public may be ill'informed
of the true nature of crime in our society, and as such,
may place undue pressure upon policy makers for reform
or action in areas of our criminal justice system that
do not necessarily deserve our most immediate attention.
11
The
prolonged media exposure in the United States of the
1995 Okalahoma Bombing and the sentencing trial of Timothy
McVeigh is a strong case in point. As coverage of his
trial commenced and the television movie of McVeigh's
story went into production, a considerable amount of
the news coverage presumed ahead of his sentencing that
he would be sentenced to death. Both 'real' reporting
and the movie depiction used the case as a strong endorsement
for the death penalty and tougher Federal laws for such
offences as McVeigh was charged. 12 In a
TIME'CNN poll from June 1, 1997, 78 per cent of the
respondents wanted McVeigh to receive the death penalty.
13
When
films and the media at large give an indication of a
supposed 'crime trend', provoke widespread anxiety about
crime, or engender policy developments merely because
a particular news story or film became a celebrated
case or a popular blockbuster, a need perhaps arises
to address issues such as media responsibility, and
whether or not a profession like criminology should
be playing a more direct role in these areas. This would
be particularly useful as a means of offering political
and socio'economic evidence in explanations of crime
since such conditional factors are often either left
out or dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner in news
reports and many crime films. 14 Unfortunately,
it is not an easy nor necessarily appropriate measure
to allow either criminologists or crime and justice
scholars to intervene in the journalism or filmmaking
process, by the very fact that their skills and level
of experience are not those that are required in the
particular industries. 15As Janet Chan has
offered:
...Criminological
research is especially attractive to media journalists
because anything related to crime, deviance and illegality
is automatically newsworthy. However, there is a limit
to which the media can translate the 'boring language'
of social research into a colourful, exciting piece
of news.... 16
In
addition, it is worth considering the notion that whilst
a comprehensive criminological perspective may therefore
never be able to comfortably fit into the framework
of the cinema and the news media, representations in
film and elsewhere in the media that are displaced from
reality may offer the criminologist an insight into
crime and criminal behaviour that could not have been
ascertained via scientific and academic approaches.
17
Film
essentially offers a means of escapism. That is, in
the confines of the theatre, an audience can forget
the problems of the real world and enjoy the broad scope
of a filmmaker's imagination. Where crime is the subject
matter which is involved, however, certain problems
may arise. Granted, from a criminological viewpoint,
crime fiction may offer a perspective that social science
and academic reporting of knowledge cannot provide 18,
yet it can also present untrue and exaggerated representations
of 'true' crime events, and sensationalist accounts
of fictional crime, which can give the wider public
an impression of the causes, nature and incidence of
crimes which is far from the truth. This may, in turn,
encourage undue anxiety in the community about crime,
and subsequent changes or reforms in specific aspects
of the criminal justice system at the expense of those
areas that are in more dire need of redress, but that
have not been deemed as newsworthy or potentially 'popular'
enough to receive the appropriate attention.
Footnotes:
1. See Jenni Millbank, ...From Butch to Butcher's Knife:
Film, Crime and Lesbian Sexuality..., Sydney Law Review,
18 (1) December 1996, 451'473.
2 See James Monaco, Chapter Six, ...Media..., in How
To Read A Film, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp.335'391.
3 Millbank, op.cit., p.452.
4 Janet B L. Chan, ...Systematically Distorted Communication?
Criminological Knowledge, Media Representation and Public
Policy..., Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology,
Special Supplementary Issue, 1995, 23'30, at p.23.
5 Kathleen Daly, ...Celebrated Crime Cases and the Public's
Imagination: From Bad Press to Bad Policy?..., Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Special Supplementary
Issue, 1995, 6'22, at pp.11'12.
6 Millbank, op.cit., p.452.
7 Daly, op.cit., p.8.
8 Ibid., p.9.
9 Explanations of crime and deviance may also be inadequately
explained in several cases. See Richard V Ericson, Patricia
M. Baranek, and Janet B.L Chan, Representing Order:
Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media, University
of Toronto Press, 1991, p.353.
10 As an example, the recent commercial successes of
Silence of the Lambs, Copycat, Seven and Scream (all
of which are films that deal with serial killers) obviously
cannot be taken to suggest that serial crimes are necessarily
on the increase.
11 Chan, op.cit., p.23.
12 See James Collins, ...Day of Reckoning..., TIME,
No.24, June 16, 1997, pp.30'33. See also Eric Pooley,
...Death or Life?... TIME, No.24, June 16, 1997, pp.35'40.
13 Ibid., p.35.
14 Daly, op.cit., p.15, also pp.16'17.
15 Particularly in respect of the unfamiliarity that
a criminologist would be quite likely to have with the
writing styles of news formats, and the general operation
of mass media institutions. Ibid., p.17.
16 Chan, op.cit., p.28.
17 Female detective fiction in particular has helped
to sharpen our sense of the current gender imbalance,
offering us a ...... heightened sense of the claustrophobic
nature of conventional female life.... Ngaire Naffine,
Feminism and Criminology, Allen and Unwin, 1997.
18 Daly, op.cit., p.17.
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The
cinema is a powerful medium, particularly when crime is
involved. As a story unfolds on the screen, as soon as
it captivates the interest of its audience, film has the
potential to directly affect one's emotions, and perhaps,
one's own set of beliefs or ideological stance. 3
That is, just as reports of true crime in the general
news media may shock or outrage us, so too may representations
of such crimes in the cinema. In the same turn, news of
a fugitive's capture or of a criminal conviction may satisfy
the public's faith in the criminal justice system and
provide a sense a pleasure' a reaction which may be evoked
from film as well.
Many
different specific examples exist of ways in which films
depicting crime or addressing issues of criminality
have been reputed to have impacted upon the behaviour
of the public or upon public policy. In the United States
in 1991, a riot broke out in a suburb of Chicago between
police and some sixty to seventy African'Americans outside
of a cinema that had been screening the movie Boyz
in the Hood, a film dealing with issues of gang
violence and police racism. Similarly, racial tensions
were aroused in Australia upon the release of Romper
Stomper, also in 1992; and Oliver Stone's Natural
Born Killers (1994) stirred considerable controversy
because its content was considered to be too horrific
for many audiences to bear. Less dramatic is the account
provided by Kathleen Daly of a young female criminology
student that explained to her: ...I want to be Jodie
Foster... (referring to Foster's 1991 role as an F.B.I
agent in Silence of the Lambs). 7
Whilst these are very specific examples, and therefore
perhaps remote, they create an interesting set of examples
which may be compared to the similar impact which the
news media is reputed to have upon the public and policy
considerations.
The
prolonged media exposure in the United States of the
1995 Okalahoma Bombing and the sentencing trial of Timothy
McVeigh is a strong case in point. As coverage of his
trial commenced and the television movie of McVeigh's
story went into production, a considerable amount of
the news coverage presumed ahead of his sentencing that
he would be sentenced to death. Both 'real' reporting
and the movie depiction used the case as a strong endorsement
for the death penalty and tougher Federal laws for such
offences as McVeigh was charged. 12 In a
TIME'CNN poll from June 1, 1997, 78 per cent of the
respondents wanted McVeigh to receive the death penalty.
13
Film
essentially offers a means of escapism. That is, in
the confines of the theatre, an audience can forget
the problems of the real world and enjoy the broad scope
of a filmmaker's imagination. Where crime is the subject
matter which is involved, however, certain problems
may arise. Granted, from a criminological viewpoint,
crime fiction may offer a perspective that social science
and academic reporting of knowledge cannot provide 18,
yet it can also present untrue and exaggerated representations
of 'true' crime events, and sensationalist accounts
of fictional crime, which can give the wider public
an impression of the causes, nature and incidence of
crimes which is far from the truth. This may, in turn,
encourage undue anxiety in the community about crime,
and subsequent changes or reforms in specific aspects
of the criminal justice system at the expense of those
areas that are in more dire need of redress, but that
have not been deemed as newsworthy or potentially 'popular'
enough to receive the appropriate attention.
