The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture 303036058X, 9783030360580

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The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture Edited by Marcus Harmes · Meredith Harmes Barbara Harmes

The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture “This fascinating and wide-ranging collection provides new insights into representations of, and our understanding of, carcerality. The chapters here force us to address cultural beliefs about the purposes and morality of different modes of incarceration, as well as illuminating the ways in which fantasies of imprisonment fuel innumerable depictions in film and TV. Impressive in both its breadth and depth it is an important contribution to the scholarly debate in this field.” —Dr. Mark Readman, Principal Academic in Media Education, Bournemouth University

Marcus Harmes · Meredith Harmes · Barbara Harmes Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture

Editors Marcus Harmes Open Access College University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

Meredith Harmes Open Access College University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

Barbara Harmes Open Access College University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-36058-0 ISBN 978-3-030-36059-7  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Pentonville Prison, London. Photofusion Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword: Mediating

the

Prison Gaze

To see, clarify, and understand what is going on behind bars, we must interpret the carceral enterprise through a variety of lens. Short of personal experience and the testimonials of others, one of the most dominant current venues is the mass media (Mason 2005). This collection of communication vehicles ranges from the written word to the visual. These mechanisms and the information they produce should not to be interpreted at face value, but close observers must take into consideration the variety of emotions these means of information exchange cull up in their users, viewers and the general audience, and the biases that are inherent in their messages. To quote Marshall McLuhan (1964), “the medium is the message.” But what did he mean by using this phrase? I believe it refers to the fact that the media convey a general sense of authority and that consumers of the messages produced by these communication vehicles are subtly affected by them. Indeed, some media, pervasive in a modern society like our own, are better than others in their attempts to educate, inform, and influence their users and consumers. Also necessary is the possibility that our interpretation, based on exposure to the media, changes over time. For example, over the past three decades, since the invention of social media, the public has been presented with the reality that not all of the channels are as impactful as the other. This is when issues of authority and authenticity are deeply intertwined (see Harmes, Harmes, and Harmes, this volume). When considering the notion of the mediated view of prison, we must take into consideration the complementary notions of spectacle, both as a general concept and that applied to the carceral setting or environment (Brown 2009). We should also place this experience in terms of people and other audiences’ voyeuristic tendencies to experience jails, prisons, and other correctional institutions (Ross 2015). Whether we are talking about the review and analysis of a movie or television series (Ford, Schott, Wachter, this volume), or the analysis of comics v

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FOREWORD: MEDIATING THE PRISON GAZE

(Zeller-Jacques, this volume), each medium frames the content and context of the information presented in order to portray prisons, its inhabitants, and the people who work there in a unique way. Prisons and other carceral facilities are microcosms of the real world, and no two correctional facilities are the same. This statement also extends to the prison population, and people who work in these environments. In other words, there is a considerable amount of diversity and casual viewers must take note. Numerous constituencies are interested in correctional facilities, and the people who live and work there. As consumers of mediated images, the general public finds the prison a foreign place with its own unique set of norms, practices, rules, regulations, and laws which govern the people who are housed there. The notion of “before the grace of god goes I” often passes through our minds. We often think that we too could have our liberties temporarily deprived through a stint behind bars. As instructors, we are acutely aware that this information may be of interest and practical use to our students, some of whom currently work in correctional facilities, aspire to, and/or with individuals who may be sent to prison or recently released and have entered society. In fact, we are sometimes voyeuristic (Ross 2015) when it comes to the prison experience. Unless we are formerly incarcerated people, or have these individuals being part of our lives, we may find the images of tattoo laden and brawny men disquieting, but at the same time intriguing. This reminds me of the concept of Schadenfreude, a German term that refers to the process whereby we derive pleasure from witnessing someone else’s pain, and explains why in many instances like passing a car wreck on the highway, we can’t stop looking at what is going on. We are inconvenienced but we too do the rubbernecking like everyone else (Sontag 2003). The contributors to this book also venture into the realm of understanding the complexity of representation. Not all aspects of the carceral environment are interesting and the creators of these works need to be selective in which elements they wish to include and exclude. Because what counts is the audience. Not only its composition, but in general the bigger the better. In trying to understand carceral institutions, we bring to this phenomenon our biological limitations, our experiences, and our collective psychology. It is difficult to put aside our personal biases and let scholarly and empirical evidence speak for itself. In addition to my practitioner experience, I have published a considerable amount on the field of corrections. Some of this latter work has examined popular cultural representations of carceral settings, including the people who are incarcerated or work there. Although some of these representations may on the surface be entertaining, they also contain numerous myths and misconceptions (Ross 2012a) that frequently distort what occurs inside thereby minimizing our ability to pass important legislation derived from carefully conducted empirical research, and implement well-thought-out policies and practices.

FOREWORD: MEDIATING THE PRISON GAZE  

vii

Some of this scholarship has examined the role of our cultural industries (Ross 2003), including prison museums and tourism (Ross 2012b, 2017), while other research has examined how commercials have represented prisoners, correctional workers, and prisons in general (Ross and Sneed 2018). Recent work has analyzed memoirs written by correctional workers (Ross, Tewksbury, Samuelson, and Caneff, under review). In order to rectify these challenges, I have also conducted research on reporters who focus on the corrections beat (Ross 2011) and more I have also examined the more general practice of prison voyeurism (Ross 2015). More germane to The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, I met Marcus Harmes virtually, because he reached out to me and I was impressed by his vision and work and was excited to contribute to the framing of this important handbook. The chapters are thoughtful pieces that contextualize what the relationship between prisons and media is. Some of the chapters go beyond the traditional confines of the prison and venture into discussions of punishment. The contributors provide thoughtful analyses of case studies of selective aspects of the relationship between corrections and media. In sum, A. Numerous constituencies are interested in corrections; B. Each is interested in different aspects of the correctional field; C. Much of what we know about prisons is mediated by mass media; D. This information is often faulty, and the audience often cannot distinguish between fact and fiction; and E. What are the consequences? It means that we cannot develop good policies and practices and implement them in this policy field. The handbook is truly interdisciplinary in the approach that the editors took in selecting the contributors and again in how the chapter writers approached the questions they posed and answered in their individual pieces. They also use a variety of theoretical lens to analyze the material they deal with. The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture is as it should be comprehensive in scope. Almost every subcomponent that one could possibly imagine that falls under the topic of incarceration and popular media has been addressed. In sum, this handbook is a valuable addition to the literature on the social construction of prisons, the popular culture of carceral institutions, and the people who are housed and work in these types of facilities. It is worth reading, reflecting upon its contents, and teaching how this unique relationship is important in any understanding of the carceral enterprise. Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D. Criminologist University of Baltimore Baltimore, USA

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References Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment, Prison Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Mason, Paul, ed. 2005. Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2003. “(Mis) Representing Corrections: The Role of Our Cultural Industries.” In Convict Criminology, edited by J. I. Ross and S. C. Richards, 37–58. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2011. “Challenges of Reporting on Corrections: An Exploratory Study Derived from Interviews with American Reporters Who Cover Jails and Prisons.” Corrections Compendium 36, no. 1: 7–13. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2012a. “Debunking the Myths of American Corrections.” Critical Criminology 20, no. 4: 409–421. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2012b. “Touring Imprisonment: A Descriptive Statistical Analysis of Prison Museums.” Tourism Management Perspectives 4, no. 1: 113–118. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2015. “Varieties of Prison Voyeurism: An Analytic/Interpretive Framework.” The Prison Journal 95, no. 3: 397–417. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2017. “How and Why Prison Museums/Tourism Contribute to the Normalization of the Carceral State.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, edited by J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, and K. Walby, 947–968. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, Jeffrey Ian, and Vickie Sneed. 2018. “How American-Based Television Commercials Portray Convicts, Correctional Officials, Carceral Institutions, and the Prison Experience.” Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research 3, no. 2: 73–91. Ross, Jeffrey Ian, Richard Tewksbury, Lauren Samuelson, and Tiara Caneff. 2020. “War Stories: Analyzing Memoirs and Autobiographical Treatments of Correctional Professionals.” (Under Review). Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Jeffrey Ian Ross is Professor in the School of Criminal Justice, College of Public Affairs, and a Research Fellow of the Center for International and Comparative Law, and the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore, and he holds Ph.D. He is also a Visiting Professor, Kriminologie, Kriminalpolitik, Polizeiwissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. He has researched, written, and lectured primarily on corrections, policing, political crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful, violence, street culture, and crime and justice in American Indian communities for over two decades. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of several books including the Routledge Handbook on Graffiti and Street Art (Routledge, 2016). In 2003, he was awarded the University of Baltimore’s Distinguished Chair in Research Award. Ross is the co-founder of Convict Criminology, and former co-chair/chair of the Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice (2014– 2017), of the American Society of Criminology. In April 2018, Ross was given the Hans W. Mattick Award, “for an individual who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of Criminology & Criminal Justice practice,” from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Contents

Popular Visions of Incarceration Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes

1

17 Unlocking Prisons: Toward a Carceral Taxonomy James C. Oleson Voices from Within

Reading Bronson from Deep on the Inside: An Exploration of Prisoners Watching Prison Films 33 Victoria Knight and Jamie Bennett Ear Hustling: Lessons from a Prison Podcast 51 Dawn K. Cecil

“O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage”: The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Memoirs of Guantánamo Bay 67 Josephine Metcalf

Human Rights Documentary or Plot-Driven Prison Drama? Animation and Nonfiction “Storytelling” in Camp 14: Total Control Zone 89 David Scott Diffrient How Race and Criminality Are Embodied in Memoir and Film: An Investigation of Jamaa Fanaka and Austin Reed 101 Ravi Shankar ix

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CONTENTS

Taxonomy of Genre: Prison Memoirs by American Men of Color 117 Ravi Shankar Constructions of Prisons and Prisoners: Media and Fictions

“Within These Walls”: The History and Themes of PrisonThemed Television Series 139 Kenneth Dowler

165 Prison on Screen in 1970s Britain Marcus Harmes, Meredith Harmes and Barbara Harmes

The 1980s Behind Bars: The Punitive System in Prison (1987) and Lock Up (1989) 177 Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Juan Juvé “So Neglect Becomes Our Ally”: Strategy and Tactics in the Chateau D’If in Kevin Reynolds’ The Count of Monte Cristo Kwasu David Tembo

189

“You’re in Trouble Mate”: Prison and Screen Practice 207 Lewis Fitz-Gerald How Does the Design of the Prison in Paddington 2 (2017) Convey Character, Story and Visual Concept? 223 Jane Barnwell

How Do American Prisons Handle Disorder? An Examination of the Relevance of Disorder Theories and a Comparison with 243 Popular Media Portrayals Rodger C. Benefiel Empathy and Injustice Framed in the Media

Mediated Representations of Prisoner Experience and Public Empathy 265 Katrina Clifford and Rob White

Separating Popular Myth from Empirical Reality: The White289 Collar Prison Experience Matt Logan and Tayte Olma

CONTENTS  

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Club Fed? White-Collar Incarceration in the American Imagination 305 Colleen P. Eren

The Queen Without Kingdom: Vulnerability, Martyrization, Monolingualism and Injury Toward a Quechua-Speaking Woman Imprisoned in Argentina 319 Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco

“We Don’t Recognize Transsexuals … and We’re Not Going to Treat You”: Cruel and Unusual and the Lived Experiences of 331 Transgender Women in US Prisons Tania Phillips, Annette Brömdal, Amy Mullens, Jessica Gildersleeve and Jeff Gow Incarceration as a Dated Badge of Honor: The Sopranos and the Screen Gangster in a Time of Flux 361 Robert Hensley-King

Innocence Lost (and Then Found): The Depiction of Wrongful 375 Convictions in Prison Films Kenneth Dowler Learning from Prison: Ethics, Education, and Audiences

The Lord of the Flies in Palo Alto 397 James C. Oleson

Bad Teens, Smug Hacks and Good TV: The Success and Legacy of Scared Straight! 411 Catherine Harrington 425 Reality TV: Instilling Fear to Avoid Prison Erin DiCesare

Women Behind Bars: Dissecting Social Constructs Mediated by News and Reality TV 437 Jennifer C. Thomas

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CONTENTS

The Prison as Dystopia

Speculative Punishment, Incarceration, and Control in Black Mirror 455 David Pierson

Carceral Imaginaries in Science Fiction: Toward a Palimpsestic 473 Understanding of Penality Kaitlyn Quinn, Erika Canossini and Vanessa Evans

It’s More Like an Eternal Waking Nightmare from Which There Is No Escape. Media and Technologies as (Digital) Prisons in Black Mirror 487 Julie Escurignan and François Allard-Huver Dark Fantasies: The Prisoner and the Futures of Imprisonment Marcus Harmes, Meredith Harmes and Barbara Harmes

499

Minority Report, Abjection and Surveillance: Futuristic Control in the Scientific Imaginary 511 Fran Pheasant-Kelly Moral Ambivalence and the Executioner’s Hood: Averting the Retributive Gaze in Dystopian Fiction 527 Francine Rochford Creative and Commercial Transformations: Dark Tourism in Dark Places 541 Dark Tours: Prison Museums and Hotels James C. Oleson

“Pack of Thieves?”: The Visual Representation of Prisoners and Convicts in Dark Tourist Sites 555 Jenny Wise and Lesley McLean

The Legend of Madman’s Hill: Incarceration, Madness 575 and Dark Tourism on the Goldfields David Waldron Three Related Danish Narratives: The Film R, the Penal Museum at Horsens and the Replacement Prison of East Jutland 589 Jack Dyce

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Women on the Screen

Can Prison Be a Feminist Space?: Interrogating Television Representations of Women’s Prisons 613 Jessica Ford

Women in the “Prison Movie” Genre and Carceral 627 Masculinities Gwenola Ricordeau

Is Yellow the New Orange? The Transnational Phenomenon of Female Prison Dramas 641 Julia Echeverría-Domingo

Wentworth and the Politics and Aesthetics of Representing 655 Female Embodiment in Prison Cornelia Wächter

From the Stony Ground Up: The Unique Affordances of the Gaol as “Hub” for Transgressive Female Representations in Women-in-Prison Dramas 671 Stayci Taylor, Tessa Dwyer, Radha O’Meara and Craig Batty

The Pleasure Politics of Prison Erotica 685 Nicoletta Policek

Let’s Have Redemption! Women, Religion and Sexploitation 699 on Screen Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes Politicized Prisons

‘Are You Woman Enough to Survive?’: Bitch Planet’s Collaborative Critique of the Neo-Liberal Prison-Industrial Complex 717 Martin Zeller-Jacques

Prison on Screen in Italy: From “Shame Therapy” Propaganda 731 to Citizenship Programmes Nicoletta Policek

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CONTENTS

Ulucanlar from Prison to Museum: Contestation on Memory and the Future in Turkey 745 Mine Gencel Bek In the Name of the Father: (Re)Framing the Guildford Four Fran Pheasant-Kelly

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779 Conclusion Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes

Index 783

Notes

on

Contributors

Dr. François Allard-Huver  is an Associate Professor of Strategic and Digital Communication at University of Lorraine, Nancy, France, and a Researcher at CREM. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the Sorbonne University. He researches questions of transparency policies, communication strategies, and fake news. He also questions the issue of “parrhesia” (Foucault) in the public sphere and the digital media strategies of civil society actors. Jane Barnwell is Senior Lecturer in Moving Image at the University of Westminster. Graduating from Leeds University and the Northern School of Film & Television, she began her career at the BBC, before working as a freelance production designer. Her films have received commissions from The Unicorn Theatre, The Women’s Library, The Place, Battersea Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, TAP, and the Truman Brewery. Jane has published articles for a range of publications and sole-authored books: Production Design for Screen; Visual Storytelling in Film and TV (Bloomsbury, 2017), Production Design: Architects of the Screen (Wallflower Press, 2004), and The Fundamentals of Film Making (AVA Publishing, 2008). Dr. Craig Batty  works as Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and he is an award-winning educator, researcher, and supervisor in the areas of screenwriting, creative writing, screen production, and creative practice research. He has published over 70 books, book chapters, journal articles, and creative research works, as well as many industry articles, book reviews, and interviews. He has also guest edited 10 journal special issues. He has worked on a variety of screen projects as a writer and script editor, and is a regular speaker and consultant on screenwriting, creative practice research, and doctoral training.

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Dr. Rodger C. Benefiel received his Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. He is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Benefiel is a 24-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, working at 9 different institutions. His research interests include the impact of informal structures and subcultures on prison operations, the influence of external stakeholders, linelevel and mid-level prison management, labor-management relations, inmate misconduct, and contemporary challenges facing modern corrections, such as managing and meeting the needs of special populations. His most recent work on positive administrative control was published in Justice Quarterly. Dr. Jamie Bennett  is Governor of HM Prisons Grendon & Springhill and a Research Associate at University of Oxford. He has been editor of the Prison Service Journal since 2004 and has produced five books, including the monograph The Working Lives of Prison Managers: Global Change, Local Culture and Individual Agency in the Late Modern Prison (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Dr. Annette Brömdal is a Senior Lecturer in Sport, Health and Physical Education at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Prior to her academic position at USQ, Annette worked at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (now UN WOMEN) and coordinated projects and initiatives preventing trafficking in women in Thailand by addressing normative dimensions of demand. Annette’s current research interests fall within the areas of bodies, gender and sexuality in elite sports, medicine, contemporary sexuality education, and the corrective service system. Annette is leading a research project investigating the lived experiences of formerly incarcerated transgender people in Queensland and is the Convenor of the Gender, Sexualities and Cultural Studies Specialist Interest Group for the Australian Association for Research in Education. Annette is the author of The Making of ‘Intersex’ in Female Elite Sports (forthcoming 2019) and her recent publications include Experiences of Transgender Prisoners and their Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Regarding Sexual Behaviours and HIV/STIs: A Systematic Review (2018) and Intersex Bodies in Sexuality Education: On the Edge of Cultural Differences (2017). Erika Canossini is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research interests lie in sociology of punishment and socio-legal studies, and more specifically in the process of offenders’ reentry into society. She recently started working on a research project on clemency provisions. Erika holds a B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literature from the University of Bologna, a B.A. in Sociology from Queen’s University (Kingston), and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Toronto. Dr. Dawn K. Cecil is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Her research focuses on media representations of crime and justice. Her work on media representations of prisons has been published in Feminist Criminology, Howard Journal of

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Criminal Justice, and in her book Prison Life in Popular Culture: From The Bog House to Orange Is the New Black. Dr. Katrina Clifford is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University. She has published in the areas of media criminology and journalism studies. Among her recent publications are Media and Crime (Oxford University Press, 2017, with Rob White) and Policing, Mental Illness and Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Dr. Erin DiCesare works as Associate Professor and currently serves as the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies, Religion and Philosophy Department at Johnson C. Smith University. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Florida State University. Her major research areas are in the fields of gender and sexuality studies and mass media and popular culture. Her current research focuses on the prevalent and growing problem of human trafficking in the Charlotte area and the digital tools used in the recruitment and connection of victims. Her focus is to bring awareness of the growing problem to Charlotte and the surrounding areas and to help find ways to protect those labeled as vulnerable from becoming a victim of human trafficking. She is also dedicated to finding various pedagogical practices to aid in her students’ ability to develop key skills that will aid them both in the classroom and in the workplace. Dr. David Scott Diffrient  works as Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Film and Video, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is the author of Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema (Edinburgh University Press) and the co-author of Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema (Rutgers University Press). He recently served as the co-editor of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. Dr. Kenneth Dowler is an Associate Professor of Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University-Brantford. As a founding member of Laurier Brantford criminology program, he has developed numerous courses including Gangsters, Goodfellas and Wiseguys, International Organized Crime, Outlaw Bikers, and Mean Justice (Wrongful Convictions). His major research interest is media criminology. His past work focused on the portrayal of crime in broadcast news and the media influence of on public attitudes toward crime and justice. His media-based research has been published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Journal of Crime and Justice, Policing & Society, Journal of Crime and Justice, and the American Journal of Criminal Justice. Currently, his work is centered on the depictions of crime and justice within film and television. Currently, he is writing a book on the history of television police procedurals.

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Dr. Tessa Dwyer is Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University and author of Speaking in Subtitles: Rethinking Screen Translation (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). She is a leading figure in screen translation and transnational screen reception, especially in relation to media fandom, piracy, and digital streaming platforms. She is co-editor of Seeing into Screens: Eye Tracking the Moving Image (Bloomsbury, 2018) and has published widely in journals including the South Atlantic Quarterly, Participations, [In]Transition, The Velvet Light Trap, and The Translator and the Journal of Australasian Screen Studies. She is president of online journal Senses of Cinema (www.sensesofcinema.com). Dr. Jack Dyce  is an Emeritus Research Professor of Nordic theology at the Scottish United Reformed and Congregational College but his research interests embrace a broad Scandinavian panorama—from Danish national thought (for a Ph.D. in adult education and a Scandinavian studies MLitt) to Nordic Noir literature and film, to theological and philosophical perspectives on societal criticism and environmental concerns. Dr. Julia Echeverría-Domingo holds a doctorate in Film Studies at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, where she teaches undergraduate courses as an adjunct professor. Her dissertation explores the rebirth of the epidemic film genre in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Her previous publications include “Liquid Cinematography and the Representation of Viral Threats in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men,” published by the journal Atlantis (2015); “Moving beyond Latin America: Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness and the Epidemic of Transnational Co-productions,” published by the journal Transnational Cinemas (2017); and “Pathogens, Vermin and Strigoi: Contagion Science and Vampire Myth in Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain,” published by the Journal of Science and Popular Culture (2017). Dr. Colleen P. Eren  is Associate Professor of Sociology at William Paterson University and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Her book, Bernie Madoff and the Crisis: The Public Trial of Capitalism, was published by Stanford University Press in 2017, and she has been featured in several documentaries about the Madoff case. She has published in peer-reviewed journals on a wide range of topics, including extreme endurance sports, substance abuse on college campuses, and the death penalty abolition movement. Julie Escurignan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Film and Television Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Communication Studies from the Sorbonne University. She researches questions of cross-media, cross-border, and cross-cultural adaptations in television series in association with the AHRC-funded network Media Across Borders. Her thesis examines the way transnational fans of Game of Thrones experience the franchise across multiples sites.

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Vanessa Evans is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at York University. Her dissertation is a decolonial project which constellates Indigenous world literatures from seemingly disparate locations toward an analysis of indigeneity’s resurgence and planetary presence. Her other research interests include manifestations of punishment in contemporary fiction, postcolonial temporality, and diaspora studies. Vanessa holds a B.A. in English from the University of Calgary and an M.Litt. in Modernities from the University of Glasgow. Dr. Lewis Fitz-Gerald lectures in Screen Studies at the University of New England. He is a widely experienced educator, as teacher of screen direction, screen performance, and documentary production. A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Lewis has worked extensively in film, television, and the theater in Australia and abroad. Lewis’s career in Australian film began with Bruce Beresford’s landmark feature Breaker Morant. As performer and writer, and as director of both drama and documentary, Lewis’s skills and experience have led to a parallel career as an academic. Lewis’s intimate Ph.D. documentary feature 39,000 Doors explored the contemporary experience of foster care against a background of feverish public debate. Lewis continues to work professionally, and will be seen in the forthcoming Netflix series Pine Gap. Jessica Ford is an early career researcher at UNSW, Sydney. Jessica is a co-founder of the Sydney Screen Studies Network—a community of screen studies scholars and researchers. She has published on various female-centric US television series, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bunheads, and Girls. Jessica’s research examines women and feminism on screen. Dr. Mine Gencel Bek is DFG-funded Mercator Fellow at the Locating Media, University of Siegen. She was dismissed from her position as a Professor in the Department of Journalism, Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey, with the decree law in February 2017 for signing the petition for peace. She completed her Ph.D. at Loughborough University in 1999. She was a visiting lecturer at MIT Comparative Media Studies, Open Documentary Lab, and Civic Media Lab in 2013 and 2014. Her current research and teaching are focused on immigration and exile cultures; memory; journalism, peace and trauma; changing media forms; technological innovations; and the use of participatory tools in civic advocacy. Dr. Jessica Gildersleeve works as Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Southern Queensland. Her research addresses affect and ethics in contemporary literature and film. She is editor of the Routledge Companion to Australian Literature (forthcoming 2020), and her recent publications include Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision (Cambria, 2017), Don’t Look Now (Auteur, 2017), Memory and the Wars on Terror: Australian and British Perspectives (ed., with Richard Gehrmann, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma: The Ethics of Survival (Brill, 2014).

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Dr. Jeff Gow  works as Professor of Economics in the School of Commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, and he holds Ph.D. He is also a Research Associate of the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, and a Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research interests encompass health economics, especially HIV/AIDS globally, and Australian agricultural economics and international wine economics. Dr. Barbara Harmes lectures in Communication at the University of Southern Queensland, with a particular focus on international students. Her doctoral research focused on the discursive controls built around sexuality in late-nineteenth-century England. Her research interests include cultural studies, postgraduate education, and religion. She has published in areas including modern Australian politics, postgraduate education, 1960s American television, and her original field of Victorian literature. Dr. Marcus Harmes works as Associate Professor and has published extensively in the field of popular culture. His most recent publications include Roger Delgado: I Am Usually Referred to as the Master (Fantom Publishing, 2017) and Doctor Who and the Art of Adaptation (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). He is the author of numerous studies on the church in modern popular culture, including book chapters in the collection Doctor Who and Race, and articles in journals including Science Fiction Film and Television, and Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. In 2018, he edited the Handbook for Springer on Postgraduate Education in Higher Education. Meredith Harmes teaches communication in the enabling programs at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. Her research interests include modern British and Australian politics and popular culture in Britain and America. Her most recent publication in the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture was on race and cultural studies on American television. She holds an honors degree from the University of Queensland in political science and a Graduate Diploma of Journalism and a Masters of Public Relations from the University of Southern Queensland. She is co-editor of Postgraduate Education in Higher Education (Springer, 2018). Catherine Harrington  is a Ph.D. candidate in the Screen Cultures program in the Radio, Television, and Film Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Her dissertation centers on prison media from the 1970s onward and its relations to industry, subjecthood, and everyday life. She has presented her work at the annual conferences of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the American Studies Association, and Console-ing Passions. Catherine holds a combined B.A. in English and Human Rights from Barnard College and an M.A. in Gender and Cultural Studies from Simmons College.

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Robert Hensley-King is a film historian and cultural commentator. His research and publications focus on constructs of heroism and anti-heroism, as well as the role of film as cultural commentary. He has spent time as a Visiting Research Scholar at Harvard and Boston College and taught in a variety of settings including prison education. He is currently in the final stages of his Ph.D. at Ghent University as a mature student. Juan Juvé  is a lecturer in sociology, horror cinema, and popular culture. He has published in journals such as Lindes and Vita e Pensiero, and in books such as Science Fiction and the Abolition of Man Finding C. S. Lewis in Sci-Fi Film and Television, edited by Mark J. Boone and Kevin C. Neece, Bad Mothers: Regulations, Representations, and Resistance, edited by Demeter Press, Requiem for a Nation: Religion, Politics and Visual Cultures in Postwar Italy (1945–1975), edited by Roberto Cavallini, and The Rwandan Genocide on Film: Critical Essays and Interviews, edited by Matthew Edwards, among others. Dr. Victoria Knight is a Senior Research Fellow for the Community and Criminal Justice Division in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at De Montfort University. Victoria has led and managed a number of research projects and evaluations with respect to basic skills interventions for young offenders. These include an evaluation of the Scratch program in Leicestershire (2004–2007) a subsequent recidivism analysis of this program (2007–2008) and more recently a study into 16+ NEET young offenders for Leicestershire YOS. She has completed a range of prison studies including minority ethnic prisoners’ perceptions of the Prison and Probation Service (2004), and mass communication consumption in a closed male young offenders’ institution (2000). Her doctoral thesis explored the role of in-cell TV in male adult prisons. Victoria is a member of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Leicester and the editorial board for the Prison Service Journal. Victoria recently secured a book contract to publish this work on in-cell television—Remote Control: Television in Prison (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Victoria is convenor of the Emotion and Criminal Justice Cluster at De Montfort University. Dr. Matt Logan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at California State University, San Bernardino. Prior to joining the department, he received his Ph.D. from the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests focus on institutional corrections, including the experiences of both inmates and correctional staff. His work has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals including American Journal of Criminal Justice, Victims and Offenders, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and Society and Mental Health.

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Dr. Lesley McLean is a Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion within the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England. She has published in the area of animal ethics—her philosophical interests—and is currently researching the fascinating intersection of “cults,” so named in popular discourse, with dark tourism—her religious studies interests. Dr. Josephine Metcalf is a Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull who is interested in contemporary representations of prison and gangs in American pop-culture. Her first monograph, entitled The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs, was released in 2012 and she has co-edited two collections of essays, one on Ice-T (with Will Turner, Ashgate, 2014) and the other on African American Culture and Society After Rodney King (with Carina Spaulding, Ashgate, 2015). She has published in the European Journal for American Studies and Crime, Media, Culture and is currently working with a group of former prisoners on a British Academyfunded research project, entitled “Prison, Pop-Culture, and Transatlantic Perspectives: How Former UK Prisoners Interpret American (Penal) Culture.” Dr. Amy Mullens  is a clinical and health psychologist, and has worked across public, private, academic, and community settings spanning the past two decades. Her work has focused on supporting people from priority groups/ communities (e.g., migrants, LGBTIQ, offenders) and health professionals regarding management of chronic health conditions (prevention, screening management), health behavior change, mental health, substance use, and sexual health (including gender, sexuality, HIV/STIs). She has effectively lead large grant-funded collaborative research projects with industry partners. Amy completed her clinical psychology master’s degree (behavioral medicine) in the USA in 2001; completed a Ph.D. in Psychology at Queensland University of Technology in 2011; and is now an Associate Professor at University of Southern Queensland. Throughout her career, Amy has been actively involved in numerous local and state-wide community and professional boards, advisory groups, and clinical governance committees—advocating for the health and well-being of marginalized community members. Dr. Radha O’Meara is Lecturer in Screenwriting in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her critical research focuses on narrative in contemporary film and television. She has published on soap operas, superheroes, and cat videos. Dr. James C. Oleson  is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Auckland. After his discharge from the US Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, he earned his B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology from St Mary’s College, California, his M.Phil. and fast-track Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, and his JD from the University of California,

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Berkeley (where he was Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review). He was selected as one of the four 2004–2005 US Supreme Court Fellows, earning the Tom C Clark prize. He then served as the Chief Counsel for Criminal Law Policy for the United States Courts, 2005–2010. He is interested in biosocial criminology, theory, sentencing, penology, and criminal justice in popular culture. Tayte Olma is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Criminal Justice. Her research interests include institutional corrections, including the examination of racial disparities in prison outcomes. She is also interested in the relationship between immigration and crime, and the extent to which it is conditioned by religiosity. Her recent research has appeared in the Journal of Criminal Justice. Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns works as Professor in “Literatura de las Artes Combinadas II” at Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)’s Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina). He teaches seminars on international horror film. He is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite” and has published articles on Argentinian and international cinema and drama in the following publications: Imagofagia, Vita e Pensiero: Comunicazioni Sociali, Anagnórisis, Lindes, and UpStage Journal. He has published chapters in the books Divine Horror, edited by Cynthia Miller, To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post 9/11 Horror, edited by John Wallis, Critical Insights: Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Douglas Cunningham, Dreamscapes in Italian Cinema, edited by Francesco Pascuzzi, Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews, Time-Travel Television, edited by Sherry Ginn, James Bond and Popular Culture, edited by Michele Brittany, and The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy, edited by Bruce Krajewski. He is currently writing a book about the Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir. Dr. Fran Pheasant-Kelly is MA Film and Screen Studies Course Leader and Reader in Screen Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Her research centers on American film, including fantasy and science fiction, terrorism and post-9/11 cinema, space, science, and abjection. She is the author of numerous publications including two monographs, Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film (I.B. Tauris, 2013) and Fantasy Film Post 9/11 (Palgrave, 2013), and the co-editor of Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (Routledge, 2015). She is currently working on a third monograph entitled The Bodily Turn in Film and Television. Tania Phillips is a Researcher at the University of Southern Queensland, currently completing her bachelor of psychology (Honours) in 2018, and intends to peruse further postgraduate study in psychology. Her research interests include HIV, STIs, drugs, alcohol, chronic diseases, minority and

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marginalized groups, such as LGBTIQ+, culturally and linguistically diverse, regional, and disadvantaged populations. She has publications relating to HIV risks, testing and prevention among sub-Saharan African community members in Australia; and experiences of incarcerated transgender and gender-diverse people and their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding sexual behaviors and HIV/STIs. Dr. David Pierson is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Southern Maine. He has published book chapters and articles on C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, Combat!, Mad Men, Seinfeld, The Discovery Channel, and Turner Network Television TV westerns. He has published an edited collection on AMC Network’s Breaking Bad for Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield and a book on the 1960s TV series The Fugitive for Wayne State University Press. Dr. Nicoletta Policek  is an Associate Professor of Policing and Criminology at the University of Cumbria, UK. She brings a wealth of experience in the field of criminology and justice issues, policy making, strategic planning, and education. She has the unique combination of extensive experience in conducting participatory action-oriented research, and developing and implementing programs and policies. Broadly, her current academic work aims to deconstruct historical and existing theoretical models of incarceration. Her research aims to delineate how transformations in a global political economy shape the formulation of incarcerated subjectivities, in particular, children and women. Kaitlyn Quinn  is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her most recent research projects use field theory to explain contestation within the penal voluntary sector and conceptualize the process of community reentry for formerly imprisoned women. Her other research interests include images of penalty and constructions of prisoner subjectivity in fiction, television, and prison tourism sites. Kaitlyn holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Washington State University and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Alberta. Dr. Gwenola Ricordeau is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the California State University, Chico (United States). She has devoted most of her research to family relationships, gender identities, and sexuality in prison in France. Her recent work focuses on the representations (especially in movies and museums) of the penal system. She has edited, with Régis Schlagdenhauffen, “Sexualités et institutions pénales/Sexualities and penal institutions,” Champ pénal/Penal Field (vol. 13, 2016). Her recent publications include: “Prisons, jailbreaks and escapees in two popular TV series: The Prisoner and Prison Break” (in Tomas Max Martin, Gilles Chantraine, ed., Toward a Sociology of Prison Escape, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and with Fanny Bugnon “In the steps of the count of Monte Cristo and the last

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queen of France: French revolution, literature and tourism” (in Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, Kevin Walby, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Dr. Francine Rochford is a Senior Lecturer at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. Her research often traverses the intersection of sociology and the law; her master’s thesis was an application of Habermas’ discourse theory to common law and her doctoral thesis considered both the causes and effects of litigation in higher education. More recently, she has been researching Victorian water policy and its effects, including semiotic approaches to restoration of water to the environment. She co-ordinates the regional operations of the La Trobe Law School and convenes subjects in Water Law, the Law of Education and the Law of Torts, and teaches contract law, consumer law, and constitutional law. Dr. Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco is a Researcher and Full-Time Professor at Iberoamericana University in Mexico City. He is registered as a part of the National System of Researchers in Mexico (SNI). His research focuses on the narratives, discourse and regimens of representation in visual culture, photography, and journalism. He has studied violence, social exclusion, gender issues, the naturalization of hegemonic discourses, and the construction of memory in cultural productions in Mexico and Latin America. As a Professor at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City, he teaches seminars on Latin American photography, narrative journalism, and discourse and representation analysis. Furthermore, he teaches theories of art and history at UNAM. As an author of non-fiction, he has received federal funding from the National Fund for Culture and Arts in the “creative writing” category. Ravi Shankar is author/editor of a dozen books, including most recently The Golden Shovel: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and Autobiography of a Goddess, translations of the nineteenth-century Tamil poet/saint, Andal, which won the 2016/2017 Muse India Translation Award. He founded the online journal of arts Drunken Boat, has won a Pushcart Prize and a RISCA artist’s grant, has appeared on Radio NPR, the BBC and PBS, in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Caravan, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and has been interviewed and translated into over 10 languages. He currently holds a research fellowship from the University of Sydney. Dr. Stayci Taylor is an Industry Fellow and Lecturer with RMIT’s media program. She brings to her teaching and research a background in screenwriting for New Zealand television and continues to contribute to that industry as a consultant. She was recently co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Screenwriting on script development and has published on screenwriting practice and gender in such journals as Senses of Cinema, Celebrity Studies, New Writing, and TEXT.

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Dr. Kwasu David Tembo is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Edinburgh’s Language, Literature and Culture Department. His research interests include—but are not limited to—literary theory and criticism, philosophy, particularly the so-called prophets of extremity—Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. He has published on Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, in The Cinema of Christopher Nolan: Imagining the Impossible, ed. Jacqueline Furby and Stuart Joy (Columbia UP, 2015), and on Superman, in Postscriptum: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Studies (2017). Dr. Jennifer C. Thomas works as Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at her alma mater, Howard University. Her career spans more than 25 years in network and local news, most recently as an executive producer with CNN. She earned a master of arts degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A published author, her research interests include the dissection of current practices and pedagogies in journalism, the transition from professional to professor, and the complex facets of women, media, and images. Dr. David Waldron  is a Lecturer in History and Anthropology at Federation University Australia based in CRCAH (Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History) with a research focus on folklore and community identity. He is the author of Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival (Carolina Academic Press, 2008), Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Case Study in Local Folklore (Hidden Press, 2010) and Snarls from the Tea-Tree: Victoria’s Big Cat Folklore (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2013) and editor/contributor of Goldfields and the Gothic: A Hidden Heritage and Folklore (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2016). He is also the co-writer and researcher for the local dark history podcast series Tales from Rat City at www.Talesfromratcity.com. Dr. Rob White is Professor of Criminology at the University of Tasmania. He has published extensively in criminology, youth studies, and public policy. Among his recent publications are Media and Crime (Oxford University Press, 2017, with Katrina Clifford) and Climate Change Criminology (Bristol University Press, 2018). Dr. Jenny Wise is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology within the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England. Her research focuses upon the social impacts of forensic science on the criminal justice system, the role of the CSI effect changing criminal justice practices, dark tourism, and crime as a form of leisure. Dr. Cornelia Wächter is Assistant Professor of British Cultural Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. She is the author of Place-ing the Prison Officer: The ‘Warder’ in the British Literary and Cultural Imagination

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(Brill, 2015) and co-edited Middlebrow and Gender, 1890–1945 (Brill, 2016) with Christoph Ehland. She currently works on a book project on Complicity and Queer Modernism and an edited volume, in cooperation with Christoph Singer and Elisabeth Punzi, entitled Institutions and Well-Being: Heritage, Space & Bodies. Dr. Martin Zeller-Jacques  is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at Queen Margaret University, and the program leader of the B.A. Film and Media degree. He researches narrative in contemporary media, including film, television, digital media, and comics and has also previously published work on gender and sexuality in comic book adaptations and television drama.

List of Figures

How Does the Design of the Prison in Paddington 2 (2017) Convey Character, Story and Visual Concept? Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16

The Brown family home exterior in Windsor Gardens The scale model of the prison furnishes the audience with a privileged access to view the whole interior in one frame The simultaneous action in each of the four cells as the escape is initiated When Paddington first enters the prison, the intimidating scale of the structure is exaggerated through the use of a bird’s-eye view shot The prison exterior—a gothic nightmare fortress Paddington writes to Aunt Lucy at his bedroom window in 32 Windsor Gardens Paddington writes to Aunt Lucy at his prison cell window Paddington is lead to his cell up the stairs through the main communal area Paddington maneuvers his way through the cogs of the clock mechanism as part of the escape plan The daring escape features expansive cityscapes that intensify the sense of liberation Darkness in the dining hall before the marmalade making The warden’s office interior The kitchen has become a colorful therapeutic space of making and baking The ‘prison sweet prison’ banner replaces the phrase ‘home sweet home’ playfully connecting prison to the positive connotations of the home The once monotone walkways have been injected with color The symmetrical prison dining hall prior to the makeover

227 229 230 231 231 232 232 233 234 234 235 235 236 237 237 238

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Fig. 17 The dining hall transformed into Aunt Lucy’s tea room Fig. 18 Phoenix Buchanan continues the transformation initiated by Paddington, adding theatrical lighting and costume adjustments

239 239

The Legend of Madman’s Hill: Incarceration, Madness and Dark Tourism on the Goldfields Fig. 1

Front view of the lunatic asylum Ararat (c.1880)

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Ulucanlar from Prison to Museum: Contestation on Memory and the Future in Turkey Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Museum shop A general view of women’s exhibitions in the previous women’s ward Bed room embroidery and hand-craft in women’s exhibitions in the previous women’s ward Museum exterior

752 753 753 757

List of Tables

“Pack of Thieves?”: The Visual Representation of Prisoners and Convicts in Dark Tourist Sites Table 1 Images used at dark tourist sites Table 2 The use of images in site brochures

560 567

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Popular Visions of Incarceration Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes

Incarceration is attracting unprecedented levels of interest; globally, there are more prisons and more prisoners than ever. Mandatory sentencing has caused prison populations to boom. Law and order are central aspects of electoral success for governments in the United States, the UK, Europe, and Australia, who promise to deliver punitive justice (Harmes et al. 2019, 6). As prisons and prisoners proliferate, it is both timely and important to investigate how incarceration sits in popular consciousness. There are questions and anxieties about incarceration: what prisons are for and what they do; their future development; the intrusion of surveillance into ordinary life; and if incarceration will actually redeem and rehabilitate people. However, many of the iterations of prison life presented in popular media distort, sensationalize and trivialize (Bennett 2006, 97). As the prison population has risen, so too has the focus of much popular culture, and many smash hit series of the last decade are set behind bars. We may be reaching a saturation point as incarceration extends across many genres: soap opera, drama, science fiction and fantasy, and into advertising, carrying different messages in each paradigm or making different points about incarceration and the incarcerated (Cecil 2015, 51; Ross 2018, 75). These genres are the options available on the small screen but other newer and M. Harmes (*) · B. Harmes · M. Harmes  Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] B. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] M. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_1

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non-traditional types of media also showcase incarceration. Some prisons such as Guantánamo Bay are themselves infamous. The fictional presentations of prison, which may be prurient and sexploitative, high minded or fantastical, are matched by the barely factual and highly sensationalized prison of reality television. Orange Is the New Black (2013–present) and Wentworth (2013– present) are only the latest popular examples of the compulsion felt by media of all types to look inside the prison. The imprisonment of Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons (1990–), the cooking lessons of Gordon Behind Bars (2012) or the reboots of Porridge (2016–2017) and The Prisoner (2009) are instances of looking behind bars. The attention to miscarriages of justice such as the Hillsborough disaster, the trials and prison sentences that have followed in the wake of #MeToo, and the way that the law has (hopefully) become more transparent, fuel this compulsion. They have all contributed to the current enormous levels of interest in incarceration. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an impression of the current scholarly landscape, to give coherence to how both media and incarceration will be conceptualized and used in the following chapters, and to introduce the collection. As we will see, the chapters assess different mediatized encounters with incarceration, reflecting what Jeffrey Ian Ross (2015) has theorized as the high-end to low-end continuum of experiences: from direct and authentic experiences to voyeuristic encounters with prisons and prisoners. At the core of this collection is the scrutiny of multiple communication channels, divergent voices and messages, and the contradiction of a media saturated with images and iterations of incarceration but where publics continue to lack knowledge of incarcerated spaces (Ross 2018, 75).

Prisons and Prisoners in View It is important to remember that receiving a prison sentence, especially a long prison sentence, is a recent phenomenon of criminal justice, especially in the UK. The eyres and assizes of medieval and pre-Industrial England sentenced people to a range of punishments. They could fine, mutilate, execute, transport, or shame, but the purpose of a trial was actually to empty the jails and deliver felons to their punishment (hence the Commission of Gaol Delivery), not to fill them (Cockburn 1972, 60; Maitland 2001, 140). Transportation is on a continuum with imprisonment. For a British person to be sent to plantations in the Caribbean or to penal colonies in North America or Botany Bay was to be sent to a type of carceral geography in which, for example, the whole of the Australian landmass was a giant holding pen from which there was no escape. Transported prisoners were out of sight, whereas the condemned prisoners in London’s Newgate Prison or in the Bridewell were a public spectacle. The dramatist Thomas Dekker used the capital’s decaying medieval prisons as the setting of the action in plays such as The Second Part of the Honest Whore in the reign of James I (Shaw 1947, 368). Actual sites of incarceration were inherently theatrical. Much has been written about the

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riotous, carnivalesque aspects of public punishment and execution at Tyburn, especially in the eighteenth century when the procession to the public gallows and then the hangings drew large crowds of spectators (Mackenzie 2007, 22). Even inside the prions the incarcerated, especially the condemned, were accessible via print media. The publications by the ordinaries (or chaplains) of Newgate Prison recounting the thoughts and fears of the condemned were ephemeral but also popular. In the nineteenth century, these circumstances changed, partly because transportation became less viable after the American Revolution in the first instance and eventually with the discontinuation of transportation to Australia because it was perceived by free settlers as being unnecessary and unwelcome. Prisons themselves became better regulated under the influence of the Prison Reform Movement in the Victorian period and the inmates less vulnerable to exploitation as the objects of display and entertainment. Capital punishment remained a penalty in both theory and practice into the 1960s in Britain, but took place in private. Not all crimes led to the gallows and new edifices were needed to contain felons. Medieval castles such as Oxford and Lancaster were recommissioned to active service or new prisons were constructed, aping the scale and fearsomeness of a medieval structure. For example, HMP Holloway looked like a vast medieval fortress deposited in North London and others, Reading, Pentonville, Wandsworth, Wormwood, or Strangeways, created a similar impression of instant and daunting medievalism. The ‘time feared ramparts and towers’ of these pseudo gothic buildings were, as the architectural historian Robin Evans says, ‘expressive of imprisonment’ in the way earlier structures were not (1982, 383). These prisons were intentionally visible; built in town centers, they accordingly had an impact on the imagination and entered literature in accounts heavily indebted to actual prisons and their conditions. Oliver Goldsmith’s titular character in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) was jailed for debt, and the novel contains a largely sympathetic account of the vicar’s patient efforts to edify his fellow prisoners. Charles Dickens, who entered the Marshalsea Prison aged 12 when his father was imprisoned for debt, left memorable descriptions of the prisoners in solitary confinement in his American Notes and of English prisons in several novels including Little Dorrit. Perhaps more unexpectedly, an extended and brutally forceful account of incarceration in a gothic castle prison comes in chapter six of The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 children’s novel. Grahame’s book is recalled for its lyrical and evocative account of life on a dreamy English riverbank. That charm is shattered when the character Mr. Toad is sentenced to prison for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. Remembering it is a children’s book, Grahame’s vivid and robust description of the prison as a dank place of torture and execution is extraordinary. It presages more than a century of works that have come in its wake, delineating prison interiors as dark, hellish, stinking, and evil places (Jewkes 2014, 47) and merits quoting at length:

4  M. HARMES ET AL. across the hollow-sounding drawbridge, below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; past guardrooms full of grinning soldiery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a horrid, sarcastic way, because that is as much as a sentry on his post dare do to show his contempt and abhorrence of crime; up time-worn winding stairs, past men-at-arms in casquet and corselet of steel, darting threatening looks through their vizards; across courtyards, where mastiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and the thumbscrew-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold, till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the heart of the innermost keep. There at last they paused, where an ancient gaoler sat fingering a bunch of mighty keys. (Grahame 2009, Chap. vi)

Grahame also carefully describes the carceral geography of the prison, reconstructing a landscape where the impressive courthouse is just across the town square from the fierce old prison. Semiotically, the two institutions responsible for delivering justice and administering punishment face each other and reinforce the impression each creates of the other. Grahame includes an aspect of the carnivalesque in the account of Toad’s trial and imprisonment, narrating how a raucous crowd gathered to watch Toad’s miserable descent into the prison, whereby ‘the playful populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic and helpful when one is merely “wanted,” assailed him with jeers, carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight of a gentleman in difficulties’ (Grahame 2009, Chap. vi). Grahame’s remarkable and brutal account of lower order’s pleasure in a gentleman’s downfall contains an important reminder that incarceration has the capacity to entertain and delight an audience. The insane kept locked inside Bedlam (St. Mary Bethlehem Hospital), could be viewed on payment of one penny (Friedson 2017, xxx), as could the lunatics in the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris (Byrd 1974, 39). The capacity for sites of incarceration to provide carnivalesque thrills, prurient observation and delight in the torments of others is captured in Foucault’s extended account of the implications of Bentham’s Panopticon designs of 1791. The Panopticon is a largely unfulfilled architectural model for a prison whereby the prisoners can be seen without seeing who is watching them, or as Foucault accounts for it, the ‘panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. It reverses the principle of the dungeon’ (Foucault 1977, 200). In Foucauldian terms, the carceral and the means of representation cohere. Foucault theorized a ‘regime of representation’ (in Mason 2006, 253), with the power to construct discourse and therefore the power to shape how the incarcerated are represented. The Jacobean stage, the Tyburn rituals, and the novels of Grahame and Dickens are all landmark moments in how a broader public has been able to

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see incarceration prior to modern media; prisons and the apparatus of corrections such as the gallows have been part of broadcast and electronic media since the early twentieth century. D. W. Griffith’s 1916 silent epic Intolerance included the drama of the ‘boy’ being taken to the gallows. Since the turn of the twentieth century, there has been an astonishing diversity of ways to bring the prison onto the big and small screens, into print, into documentaries, and into new burgeoning forms, from reality television to the podcast. Conventions have been established, only to be mocked and deconstructed. Rituals from the awful momentum leading a condemned person, a chaplain, the governor and witnesses from the condemned cell to the scaffold, to ritualized actions such as the strip search, solitary confinement or rape and hazing are surely established in film and television but can be overturned through familiarity and parody. Comedy is an obvious source of this approach. The British comedy trio The Goodies made an episode of their series Goodies in the Nick (1974) which one by one used and abused each cliché about imprisonment inside ‘HMP Strangemoor Scrubs.’ They arrive at the prison in a Black Maria (the traditional prison van) and with blankets covering their faces, but the policeman has one over his face too. Their prison uniform is a traditional outfit with arrows, but the arrows come off and can be used as darts. The notion of ‘Her Majesty’s Prison’ then gets very literal with the discovery in the cell of obscene graffiti by Prince Phillip, crowns, coronets, a drinks cabinet and finally the ‘royal flush,’ or an opulent water closet. American comedy has proved as adept as British in the abuse of prison tropes. In The Simpsons, the recurring character Sideshow Bob describes his life behind bars: ‘In our overcrowded cell, we became little more than beasts’ he says, establishing a link to hard-bitten jail narratives, but then the flashback shows the crowded cell and with Bob’s concern being laughably prissy as he demands ‘Who used my chapstick?’ In another notable animation comedy, Cartman’s imprisonment for hate crime in South Park allowed a narrative and a mise en scène that parodies both Oz and the media frenzy around O. J. Simpson’s arrest on a Los Angeles highway in 1994. In another episode, the phenomenon of ‘mass imprisonment’ came in for parody when the entire adult population of the town was collectively sent to prison for child abuse. However, the apparently non-traditional treatment of prison themes and imagery can also in the end endorse long-standing stereotypes and approaches. The Walking Dead turned a prison into a place of refuge from the ‘walkers’ stalking the few surviving humans. Yet as Cecil points out, by turning the prison inmates into literal zombies, the figurative ‘demonization’ of prisoners is repeated, but in an original way (Cecil 2015, 50). Many, but by no means all, mediated views of prison are fictional. In Britain since the 1970s, documentary makers began to be allowed into prisons, often as a means to pressure the Home Office into improving conditions by revealing run-down institutions. Actual functioning prisons are often reluctant to let cameras in, but occasions arise. In 1989, the serial killer and necrophiliac Ted Bundy was interviewed on-screen in prison by

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the conservative Christian advocate, Dr. James Dobson. Equally, the appearance of prisons and their inmates in popular culture can be epistemologically unstable, and their meaning and development can move along a continuum. In Australia, evening news bulletins in 2016 carried explicit footage of young offenders in the Alice Springs prison and the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre (both in the Northern Territory) being forcibly detained, tied up, strapped into chairs with masks over their faces, and having their clothes ripped off their bodies. The footage of large burly men stripping young boys and dominating their naked bodies was similar to the scenarios played out in countless instances of gay prison-set pornography and the barrier between the shockingly real and the exploitatively fake blurs. Prisons serve other creative and dramatic uses across media. Given the potential of prisons to register in the public consciousness where sexual assault is frequent or prisoners turn ‘gay for the stay,’ a great deal of pornography used the prison cell or the prison showers as a setting. In many instances, prisons simply represent themselves but on other occasions incarceration is an oblique or suggested presence. The films of the Saw franchise each unfold within a complex, enclosed, and dangerous environment. These ‘torture warehouses’ are not prisons per se, but they are environments in which penitence and rehabilitation are a very real possibility (Oleson and MacKinnon 2015, 36).

Understanding Media and Popular Culture The Panopticon had a number of implications that modulated into consequences about the media and incarceration. The capacity of ‘new media’ in particular to surveil and control is noted by Kelli Fuery (2009, 67). Where categories of deviance may be mobile and changeable, Fuery also notes that one implication of power structures is to manage and control the human body (68), a point that indicates the quintessence of incarceration. That control includes watching and therefore imbricates the media with incarceration. Although an actual Panopticon, one completing and truly embodying Bentham’s plans was never built, the carceral state is one of watchfulness. As Fuery articulates, the prisoners are often unable to tell how much or how often they are watched, meaning their anxiety about being watched increases and the greater the power of those governing the prisoners becomes (68). The dark, even ‘nasty,’ implications of media that Fuery points to include a culture of subjection and increased paranoia engendered by media technologies. Media, in short, is intrusive, including into the interior spaces of jails. A medium after all is a means of accomplishing something. The watchtowers, intelligence, and surveillance equipment that monitor prison activities are a form of watchfulness. Media however are also fragmented and diverse. In sociological terms, the ‘mass communication’ of mass media has undergone a cultural shift to a media culture ‘rich in stories, information and meanings’ (Real 1996, xiii) and no longer a single form of media. Understanding of media extends beyond the more monolithic impression of media industries

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and owners to the users of media and the subjects of scrutiny. As Cheliotis reminds us (2010, 170), especially in relation to media and crime, the media have different goals and different modes of production presented in polysemous media texts. Media culture is therefore eclectic but to speak of users in relation to incarceration is to address tensions and peculiarities, namely that the incarcerated themselves are the reluctant subjects of watchful scrutiny and surveillance. Media is a large, invasive, and ‘signifying’ force (Real 1996, xvi), and an eclectic media culture has found numerous ways to bring jails and their inhabitants into view and provide a range of semiotically coded impressions of prisons. In response, only a privileged few inmates or former inmates, for example, Paris Hilton, Martha Stewart, or Lord Black, will ever become a dynamic, media-shaping force. Cheliotis points out that only a select few prisoners have the celebrity required to meet a threshold for ‘mass-mediated visibility’ (Cheliotis 2010, 177). As white as well as ‘white collar’ criminals, they also stand apart from an emphasis on the ‘regime’ of representation that dwells on the rapists, murderers, drug dealers in the prison population, turning them into a metaphor for all prisoners. Who in that case is in prison, and who therefore are the unwilling objects of and participants in a rich media culture about incarceration? To expand for a moment beyond incarceration to media and crime is to open up important vistas. Crime and its detection and punishment is an important wider framework for understanding how incarceration is mediatized. Prisons have become indispensable to a variety of expressions of popular culture. Major crime dramas (CSI, Criminal Minds, NCIS) are not complete without an episode or episodes that take a character inside a prison. More broadly however, crime is indispensable to the media which has, as Jewkes conceives it, staked a ‘hegemonic power’ on mediatizing crime (2014, 43), and within that process creating a spectrum from the included to the excluded (55). Complicit in that process are political regimes and structures seeking public participation in and approval of ‘tough on crime’ practices and legislation. As noted therefore, the likes of Paris Hilton, Conrad Black, or Martha Stewart are unrepresentative samples of a prison population. Patterns of incarceration in the United States, the UK, and Australia are notable and striking. To start with, the populations are vastly greater than in the past, as a ‘tough on crime’ approach will inevitably mean more people are going to prison. In the United States, more black people are going to prison than before (Jewkes, 43), in the UK more Muslim people, and in Australia more Indigenous people (Waquant 2009; Harmes et al. 2019, 2). ‘Mass imprisonment’ is both an approach and an outcome of law and order campaigns for a tough on crime approach, so that currently around 2.3 million people are in US prisons (Jewkes, 51). Set against these figures, there is logic in the creative decision in 2013 by the makers of Sesame Street, a program intended to encourage creative learning and developmental opportunities for minority children, to showcase a character with an incarcerated parent. In the UK, the

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passing of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in 1984 gave police stop and search powers that are exercised disproportionately against ethnic minorities (Jewkes, 52). These populations are locked away, but they do not remain invisible. The discourse of ‘tough on crime’ that particularly emerged in the 1980s includes a type of ‘punitive display’ (Garland 2001 in Mason 2006, 252), putting the punishment on display as a distraction away from what Mason condemns as cruel and populist policies (252). He further contends that the appearance of prisons and prisoners in media is remorselessly negative, often with prisons and the authorities responsible for them castigated for making prisons too soft (254). That impression though is not absolute and media is sometimes on the side of the inmates. The academic and prison governor Jamie Bennett has divided films into the ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘ugly,’ and among the good are works such as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) which encourages the audience to admire the daring of the escapee and sympathize with his plight (Bennett 2006, 102). The British sitcom Porridge (1973–1977) is a notable instance where the sympathies of the writers and then the audience were with the prisoners of HMP Slade, whereas the guards were either officious or benignly incompetent. In the same decade, a small but distinctive subset of films suggested the vulnerability of prisoners to exploitation and even sinister experimentation. A Clockwork Orange, the 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, positioned the central character Alex, who was not only a rapist and murderer but also a cultured admirer of Beethoven, as a complex antihero and the scientists, ministers and prison staff are depicted as sympathetic or admirable. In the Phantom of the Paradise, a 1974 cult horror film, the inmates of Sing Sing are subjected to disfiguring scientific experiments. Add to that the fact that the central character has been wrongly imprisoned and the impression of the inmate is far more sympathetic than the prison staff. Taking a different approach, the successful 1974 film Death Wish bypassed prison altogether by instead privileging the dispatch of criminals by vigilante justice.

This Handbook This Handbook provides encounters with incarceration and popular culture from perspectives including cultural studies, popular culture, criminology and sociology and from the diversity of methodologies and theoretical insights now available to scholars of culture and media (Real 1996, xviii). The collection is thematically rich and based on a stimulating range of genres. Chapters examine the aesthetics of reality-based programming, social-problem cinema, comics, situation comedy, television drama podcasting, and documentaries. The places and spaces of punishment and the articulation of regulations and norms are elements of this thematic richness.

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The Handbook covers famous prisoners, real and fictional, from the Count of Monte Cristo to Paddington Bear and prisons from Guantánamo Bay to HMP Slade. Chapters cover prisons and carceral representations from the United States, Canada, Europe, the UK, South America, Turkey, and Australasia. At their core is analysis of the impressions in popular culture, both fictional and non-fictional, about incarceration. Most chapters take incarceration to mean imprisonment after conviction for a crime, but the Handbook is expansive in meaning and includes the incarceration of the mentally ill and of political prisoners. These expressions of popular culture modulate from the imaginative use of future settings in science fiction that explore concerns about panoptic surveillance and mandatory sentencing, to the actual creative achievements of current prisoners, the racialization of justice, and the way the media in their own creative ways can distort or sensationalize incarceration. Some of the chapters engage with representations of incarceration which are explicitly fantastical, such as the science fiction of Black Mirror or The Prisoner. Others engage with texts that purportedly show a realistic vision of incarceration. The tension between intention and outcome, or between reality and exploitation, is pronounced. The blurred lines between the realistic and the fictional (Dowler et al. 2006, 838) are both dominant and compellingly disturbing aspects of incarceration in popular culture. Following this introductory chapter, the chapter “Unlocking Prisons: Toward a Carceral Taxonomy” by James Oleson opens the handbook with a general overview of themes. It proposes key means to visualize incarceration and the place of prison in the carceral landscape. Part I: Voices from Within provides analyses of unique resources: the voices of actual prisoners from inside prisons as they view dramas about their experiences, create audiovisual resources, or knowingly become subjects of media representation. Contributors include a former prison governor turned Oxford academic who presents and analyzes the fascinating potential of prisoners reflexively viewing scenes of imprisonment, the narratives they create, and the stories they themselves tell. “Reading Bronson from Deep on the Inside: An Exploration of Prisoners Watching Prison Films” draws on the insights of prisoners themselves, those who are immersed in the prison experience, who view and critique the film Bronson as a representation of prison. Chapter “Ear Hustling: Lessons from a Prison Podcast” interprets the interactions of people behind bars, by ear hustling or eavesdropping via the medium of podcasts, situating this award-winning podcast series as one of the newest expressions of popular prison representations. Guantánamo Bay, the primary site for detainees captured during the War on Terror, has been much written about, but chapter “‘O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage’: The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Memoirs of Guantánamo Bay” explores the culture that has developed within, in this case a literary culture comprising memoirs by detainees, positioned in this chapter as ‘peculiar narratives’ based on their contestable generic forms and relations with other types of prison

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literature. Insights from study groups undertaken with former prisoners in the UK discuss the conceptualization of this prison. Another site for political prisoners, North Korea’s Kaechon internment camp, is the focus of chapter “Human Rights Documentary or Plot-Driven Prison Drama? Animation and Nonfiction “Storytelling” in Camp 14: Total Control Zone”’s examination of documentary, and the contested accuracy of one political detainee’s account of his time there and the storytelling strategy of the documentary made about him, considered here as a hybrid which blurs the lines between history and fiction. Chapters “How Race and Criminality are Embodied in Memoir and Film: An Investigation of Jamaa Fanaka and Austin Reed” and “Taxonomy of Genre: Prison Memoirs by American Men of Color” are the final chapters in this section, again considering memoirs by prisoners about their times in prison. Addressing prison as a racialized phenomenon through memoirs by American men of color, chapter “How Race and Criminality Are Embodied in Memoir and Film: An Investigation of Jamaa Fanaka and Austin Reed” traverses written works from the nineteenth century to film in the twentieth century and chapter “Taxonomy of Genre: Prison Memoirs by American Men of Color” surveys the generic features of a range of memoirs and the privileged insights to prison life they provide. Collectively, chapters in this section extend beyond the notion of the penal imaginary, whereby impressions of life in prison form in the minds of people who have never been in one, to instead present and interpret the ideas of actual prisoners. The chapters in Part II: Constructions of Prisons and Prisoners: Media and Fictions focus primarily on film and television, and many chapters adopt the methodology of examining one to two key texts (a film, a television program, a media artifact) in terms of its production history, themes or relationship to the carceral and social/political context from which they emerge. Chapter “‘Within These Walls’: The History and Themes of Prison-Themed Television Series” introduces the shifting preoccupations of program makers and the evolving themes of prison-based television across several decades. Chapter “Prison on Screen in 1970s Britain” examines one decade in particular, the 1970s, and the prison-set drama of that era as distillations in British popular culture of anxieties concerning British and American carceral approaches. In chapter “The 1980s Behind Bars: The Punitive System in Prison (1987) and Lock Up (1989),” the same approach of identifying commentary on incarceration in popular culture is applied to the 1980s and to films which distill a public concern with the possibility of injustice. The Count of Monte Cristo, a prisoner created in nineteenth-century fiction, appeared on-screen in Kevin Reynolds’ film, examined here in light of the carceral strategies it presents. Chapters in this section analyze the portrayal of prisons in film and television fictional drama and the performance of the role of the prisoner, and therefore the chapters examine works looking in at the fictional prison or semi-fictional iterations. Contributors include a film actor and director who played one of the prisoners in Breaker Morant, discussed in chapter

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“‘You’re in Trouble Mate’: Prison and Screen Practice” and with further behind the scenes insights in chapter “How Does the Design of the Prison in Paddington 2 (2017) Convey Character, Story and Visual Concept?”, which studies the on-screen visualization of prison in Paddington 2. The final chapter in this section is written by a prison warden turned academic and like other chapters in this section, a major strand is the dyadic relationship of possibly unrealistic and even romanticized visions of prison compared with actualities. The discursive constructions of places and sites of incarceration and punishment modulate into Part III: Empathy and Injustice Framed in the Media, which reveals the complexity of prisoner experiences as they are presented in popular culture. This section includes a study of outputs with sharply divergent intentions. Chapter “Mediated Representations of Prisoner Experience and Public Empathy” ponders the disjunction between the complex realities of prisoner existence distinct from mediated appearances, themes continued in chapters “Separating Popular Myth from Empirical Reality: The White-Collar Prison Experience” and “Club Fed? White-Collar Incarceration in the American Imagination” which discuss the competing accounts of putatively ‘soft’ white-collar incarceration. Chapter “The Queen Without Kingdom: Vulnerability, Martyrization, Monolingualism and Injury Toward a Quechua-Speaking Woman Imprisoned in Argentina” examines the highminded account of a South American woman languishing in prison unaware of her crime. This chapter uses critical discourse analysis to examine this prisoner’s identity as it intersects with her vulnerability. Chapter “‘We Don’t Recognize Transsexuals … and We’re Not Going to Treat You’: Cruel and Unusual and the Lived Experiences of Transgender Women in US Prisons” outlines the distinctive and traumatic experiences of transgender prisoners as represented in documentaries. Finally, chapters “Incarceration as a Dated Badge of Honor: The Sopranos and the Screen Gangster in a Time of Flux” and “Innocence Lost (and Then Found): The Depiction of Wrongful Convictions in Prison Films” return to fiction and specifically HBO’s The Sopranos (1999–2007) and the ways the series evoked the poignancy of the experiences of released long-term prisoners and the dramatization of miscarriages of justice and the imprisonment of innocent people. Part IV: Learning from Prison: Ethics, Education, and Audiences examines how documentaries about prison have been used to instruct as much as entertain, as well as the types of incarceration which have inspired innovative documentary storytelling. The lessons learnt or not learnt from the Stanford Prison experiment and its reiterations are pursued in chapter “The Lord of the Flies in Palo Alto”. Quiet Rage, Zimbardo’s 1992 documentary about the experiment, is the starting point for exploring the progeny of this notorious research and the reflections of this academic exercise in popular culture. The capacity of prison to scare people into good behavior has been the intention of documentaries examined in chapters “Bad Teens, Smug Hacks and Good TV: The Success and Legacy of Scared Straight!” and

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“Reality TV: Instilling Fear to Avoid Prison”. Scared Straight! is scrutinized in chapter “Bad Teens, Smug Hacks and Good TV: The Success and Legacy of Scared Straight!” in terms of its impact on prison representation and especially juvenile delinquency. Other reality television visions of prison including Lock Up and the Netflix original Girls Incarcerated are studied in chapter “Reality TV: Instilling Fear to Avoid Prison,” examined as works which turn a camera on inmates but also provoke anxiety that we ourselves are under surveillance. Reality television, including again Scared Straight! receives attention in chapter “Women Behind Bars: Dissecting Social Constructs Mediated by News and Reality TV,” which especially focused on the way women feature in reality entertainment. While considering that the media technically has a watchdog role, this chapter posits that real-life stories are distorted, creating troubling impressions of the purported reality of female incarceration. The chapters in Part V: The Prison as Dystopia situate creativity in the speculative potential of science fiction. Black Mirror, one of the most popular and important science fiction anthology series of recent years, is the primary focus of the section in chapters “Speculative Punishment, Incarceration, and Control in Black Mirror”, “Carceral Imaginaries in Science Fiction: Toward a Palimpsestic Understanding of Penality” and “It’s More Like an Eternal Waking Nightmare from Which There Is No Escape: Media and Technologies as (Digital) Prisons in Black Mirror”. An anthology series, with a new story in each episode, it provides a rich basis for what good science fiction does: It holds up a mirror to current concerns by thinking of the future. Specific episodes including ‘White Bear’ (2013), ‘White Christmas’ (2014), and ‘Black Museum’ (2017) provide the means to examine representations of punishment and incarceration as speculative visions. Underpinning it is a generation of earlier science fiction centered on incarceration most famously 1967s The Prisoner, examined in chapter “Dark Fantasies: The Prisoner and the Futures of Imprisonment” as a distinctively 1960s pop culture commentary on the troubled reality of actual prisons. These chapters highlight current cultural anxieties regarding social control, the rise of penal tourism, surveillance, sex offenders in the community, and capital punishment. The dystopian bleakness of these visions then widens fiction in chapters “Minority Report, Abjection and Surveillance: Futuristic Control in the Scientific Imaginary” and “Moral Ambivalence and the Executioner’s Hood: Averting the Retributive Gaze in Dystopian Fiction” to the ways science, including Escape from New York and Alien 3 have imagined incarceration and punishment or the experience of civil death and the state of abjection. Part VI: Creative and Commercial Transformations: Dark Tourism in Dark Places explores the creative transformation of some of the darkest spaces. Chapter “Dark Tours: Prison Museums and Hotels” opens this section with a wide-ranging study of how prison tourism, whether licit through tours of non-operational prisons that have become museums or through the urban exploration of ruins, provides access to the interior spaces of prison that are otherwise inaccessible. The closure and repurposing of old prisons

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and other spaces of incarceration such as the lunatic asylum are among the most striking trends in hospitality and tourism in many countries and are examined in this section in chapters “‘Pack of Thieves?’: The Visual Representation of Prisoners and Convicts in Dark Tourist Sites” and “The Legend of Madman’s Hill: Incarceration, Madness and Dark Tourism on the Goldfields” in terms of how dark tourism demonstrates public fascination with what happens inside a prison. The chapters reveal the various and sometimes contrasting implications of dark tourism, including how it can sensationalize rather than educate about criminal and penal history, and be part of folklore, addressed in chapter “Three Related Danish Narratives: The Film R, the Penal Museum at Horsens and the Replacement Prison of East Jutland”. The possibility that purportedly educational or serious museums may in turn sensationalize is explored in relation to sites such as Port Arthur and the former Ararat Lunatic Asylum. Chapter “Three Related Danish Narratives: The Film R, the Penal Museum at Horsens and the Replacement Prison of East Jutland” presents for English language scholarship the museology of Horsens Prison (Horsens Straffeanstalt), the Danish prison which has been the subject of interest from filmmakers, folklorists, and novelists, each in their own way entering the old prison as curious tourists. The chapter looks at decades of creative interest shaped by different forces, including state penal systems, filmmaking, the heritage industry, academia, and public opinion. Part VII: Women on the Screen explores the explosion of interest in making drama about women in prison that has followed in the wake of Orange Is the New Black (OITNB), as well as some influential predecessors from the stable of women in prison films. Chapter “Can Prison Be Feminist?: Interrogating Scripted Television Representations of Incarcerated Women and Women’s Incarceration” takes as its starting point the fact that prisons are single-sex environments and asks whether the many televisual depictions of women’s prison can be feminist. It seeks to distinguish between the characters and discourses and the infrastructure of the prison, arguing that feminism is to be found in the former. Contrastingly, chapter “Women in the ‘Prison Movie’ Genre and Carceral Masculinities” considers around 30 films showing women, not in prison, but in the orbit of the prison as wives and mothers of prisoners and nurses. Films and television programs showing women in prison Apart from OITNB itself, the focus is on its Spanish remake in chapter “Is Yellow the New Orange? Vis a Vis: The Transnational Phenomenon of Female Prison Dramas and the Rise of Spanish Television” and the Australian successes Prisoner: Cell Block H and Wentworth in chapters “Wentworth and the Politics and Aesthetics of Representing Female” and “From the Stony Ground Up: The Unique Affordances of the Gaol as “Hub” for Transgressive Female Representations in Women-in-Prison Dramas”. Chapter “The Pleasure Politics of Prison Erotica” returns to the way that heteronormativity can be endorsed or disrupted that is also explored in chapter “Women in the ‘Prison Movie’ Genre and Carceral Masculinities,” looking at erotic portrayals of women in prison, notably the ‘lesbian and heterosexual imaginary’

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that comprises prison-set erotica, and theorizes how adherence to a heteronormative ‘pornoscript’ shapes how prison-set erotica shows sexual pleasure to an audience. A longer heritage of exploitation in women in prison, the type critiqued in early chapters in this section, is examined in chapter “Let’s Have Redemption! Women, Religion and Sexploitation on Screen”’s study of 1970s American and British cinema. As with other chapters in this section, this suggests seemingly counter-intuitive aspects of exploitation, in this case the intersection of the exploitative and the ecclesiastical. Finally, Part VIII: Politicized Prisons considers when and how media creations about incarceration make political statements. The exploitation of women considered in chapters in section eight modulates into this final section, including statements about human rights, about the neoliberal impulse that frames prisons, explored via the Bitch Planet comics in chapter “‘Are You Woman Enough to Survive?’: Bitch Planet’s Collaborative Critique of the Neoliberal Prison-Industrial Complex”, as it does many other enterprises and institutions. The political impulse underpinning documentary filmmaking in Italy in chapter “Prison on Screen in Italy: From ‘Shame Therapy’ Propaganda to Citizenship Programmes,” and the way prisons can contain the victims of appalling miscarriages of justice is seen in two chapters: chapter “Ulucanlar from Prison to Museum: Contestation on Memory and the Future in Turkey” provides a study of the sanitized prison museum overseen by the Turkish government, and chapter “In the Name of the Father: (Re) Framing the Guildford Four” presents the creation of a landmark film about justice and imprisonment.

References Bennett, Jamie. 2006. “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Media in Prison Films.” The Howard Journal 45, no. 2: 97–115. Byrd, Max. 1974. Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the Eighteenth Century. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Cecil, Dawn C. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture: From The Big House to Orange Is the New Black. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Cheliotis, Leonidas K. 2010. “The Ambivalent Consequences of Visibility: Crime and Prisons in the Mass Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 6, no. 2: 169–184. Cockburn, J. S. 1972. A History of English Assizes 1558–1714. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowler, Ken, Thomas Fleming, and Stephen L. Muzzatti. 2006. “Constructing Crime: Media, Crime and Popular Culture.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48: 837–850. Evans, Robin. 1982. The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 1750– 1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Michael. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin. Friedson, Meredith Lynn. 2017. Subjective Darkness: Depression as a Loss of Connection, Narrative, Meaning, and the Capacity for Self-Representation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Fuery, Kelli. 2009. New Media: Culture and Image. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Grahame, Kenneth. 2009. The Wind in the Willows. Project Gutenberg. Harmes, Marcus K., Susan Hopkins, and Helen Farley. 2019. “Beyond Incarcerated Identities: Identity, Bias and Barriers to Higher Education in Australian Prisons.” International Journal of Bias, Identity and Diversities in Education 4, no. 1: 1–16. Jewkes, Yvonne. 2014. “Punishment in Black and White: Penal ‘Hell-Holes’, Popular Media, and Mass Incarceration.” Atlantic Journal of Communication 22, no. 1: 42–60. Mackenzie, Andrea. 2007. Tyburn’s Martyrs: Executions in England, 1675–1775. London: Hambledon Continuum. Maitland, Frederic Pollack. 2001. The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures Delivered. Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange. Mason, Paul. 2006. “Lies, Distortion and What Doesn’t Work: Monitoring Prison Stories in the British Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 2, no. 3: 251–267. Oleson, J. C., and Tamara MacKinnon. 2015. “Seeing Saw Through the Criminological Lens: Popular Representation of Crime and Punishment.” Criminology, Criminal Justice Law, and Society 16, no. 1: 35–50. Real, Michael R. 1996. Exploring Media Culture: A Guide. London: Sage. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2015. “Varieties of Prison Voyeurism: An Analytic/Interpretive Framework.” The Prison Journal 95, no. 3: 397–417. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2018. “How American-Based Television Commercials Portray Convicts, Correctional Officials, Carceral Institutions, and the Prison Experience.” Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research 3, no. 2: 73–91. Shaw, Phillip. 1947. “The Position of Thomas Dekker in Jacobean Prison Literature.” PMLA 62, no. 2: 366–391. Wacquant, L. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Unlocking Prisons: Toward a Carceral Taxonomy James C. Oleson

In 2018, nearly 2.3 people were incarcerated across a fragmented a­ rchipelago of US criminal justice facilities. These facilities included “people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 1,852 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories” (Wagner and Sawyer 2018). Census counts of this kind are indispensable for making comparisons between countries or measuring change over time (Walmsley 2018). But prison populations are a direct function of what is definitionally included. Exclude immigration detention and civil commitment centers and the population will decrease; add halfway houses and homeless shelters and the population will increase. Therefore, defining what constitutes a prison and therefore should be counted is of great practical value to jurists, penologists, and criminologists. Of course, the definitional question also has serious implications for those who are interested in popular representations of prisons on film (e.g., Cecil 2015; Crowther 1989; Mason 2006; Oleson 2015; Rafter 2006). Scholars of popular culture debate how central the institution of the prison must be in order to qualify a movie as a “prison film,” with some suggesting that any representation is sufficient to qualify (e.g., Hughes 2006) and others arguing that “a film becomes a prison film [only] when the imagery and effects of incarceration overshadow all other aspects of the film” (Kehrwald 2017, 12).

J. C. Oleson (*)  University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_2

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Logically, before the question of how much can be debated, the question of what must be settled. Most viewers would classify IMDB-favorite The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as a prison story: Its drama is almost entirely contained within prison walls and its core narrative tension relates to what Sykes (1958) characterizes as the pains of imprisonment. But what about Schindler’s List (1993), in which the Jews of Auschwitz are confined, not as punishment for some prior criminal wrongdoing, but for racial extermination? Or what about A Clockwork Orange (1971) or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), in which the confinement takes place in a hospital setting, ostensibly for treatment? And, finally, what about the Southern slaveholder plantation in Twelve Years a Slave (2013) or the setting of Mad Men (2007–2015), in which Betty Draper chafes against the vapid existence of a suburban trophy wife? Which of these are genuine prisons, and for which is prison a misnomer? When Hamlet laments “Denmark is a prison” (Shakespeare 1602/1905, 882), we read him figuratively. Surely, a nation cannot be a prison. But Australia was settled by Europeans through transportation (Hughes 1986) and during the Cold War, dozens of people were shot at the Berlin Wall, dying as they tried to escape from Soviet East Germany into West Germany. Today, Gaza is sometimes described as the “world’s largest open-air prison.” The farther we move from a stereotypical adult male civilian prison constructed of bricks and bars, the less likely we are to define it as belonging to the prison genre (Cheatwood 1998), yet confinement and lost liberty characterize a multitude of institutions. The prison is exemplary, although hardly unique, as an institution of social control: factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals all resemble prisons (Foucault 1979, 228). Carnochan observes, “The prison theme is not encompassed by dungeons, debtor’s prisons, penal colonies, internment camps, jails, or penitentiaries alone; such a list, though something of a practical necessity, overlooks the larger, metaphorical pattern that includes all manner of restraint on human action” (1995, 381). Thus, before we can usefully study representations of the prison, we must first define the prison.

Defining Prison A deductive, top-down approach will not work, since there is no universally accepted definition of prison. Rather, dictionaries offer an array of definitions, with considerable overlap—but also crucial differences—between them. Nor does an inductive, bottom-up, approach solve the problem, as there is no agreed upon set of carceral institutions from which to derive an answer. Instead, to define the prison, an abductive approach is needed, using inference as the best practical explanation. Three steps might be useful. First, the etymology and pre-history of the term are surveyed; second, multiple definitions are examined and a synthetic definition is drafted using the shared

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definitional elements; and third, the validity of the definition is tested by comparing it against a range of examples—jails, dungeons, POW camps, leper colonies, and zoos—and asking if these results square with both experience and common sense. The etymology and pre-history of the word provide useful foundations. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2007), the word prison emerges in approximately 1100 CE from Anglo-Norman and Old French: prison/prison, which is in turn derived from early Latin prehensionem (“a taking”). And of course the institution of the prison pre-dates the modern word for it. Early antecedents of the term include the Babylonian bit asiri (forced labor of foreign captives) and bit kili (a place of confinement for rebels, captives, and hostages); the Greek concepts desmoterion (δεσμωτήριον: chaining) and phylake (ϕυλακή: prison); and the corresponding Latin concepts of vinculum (chaining) and carcer (prison) (Peters 1995). Dictionary definitions reinforce these protean themes of taking and confinement, but provide important elaboration. The following five definitions— drawn from two general use dictionaries, two legal dictionaries, and a leading scholarly work on prisons—illustrate some of the definitional challenges: • Webster’s Dictionary (1913): “[A] place where persons are confined, or restrained of personal liberty; hence a place or state of confinement, restraint, or safe custody. Specifically, a building for the safe custody and confinement of criminals and others committed by lawful authority.” • Oxford English Dictionary (2007): “[A] building or other facility to which people are legally committed as punishment for a crime or while awaiting trial.” • Black’s Law Dictionary (Garner 2014, 1387): “A building or complex where people are kept in long-term confinement as punishment for a crime, or in short-term detention while waiting to go to court as criminal defendants; specif., a state or federal facility of confinement for convicted criminals, esp. felons.—Also termed penitentiary; penal institution; adult correctional institution. Cf. jail.” • Webster’s New World Law Dictionary (Wild 2006, 197): “Any jail or other place of confinement including work camps, jails, reformatories, penitentiaries, and correctional institutions.” • The Oxford History of the Prison (McConville 1995, 117): “The word prison is apt to prove confusing because of different American and British usage and because the uninstructed may apply it anachronistically. Prison is the generic term for all institutions and many devices that hold captives.” Christie noted a tendency to analogize other social institutions—schools, factories, and hospitals—as prisons. He also noted a countertendency to deny the existence of prisons, euphemistically labeling them as institutions,

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treatment units, or improvement homes. He therefore identified the prison as (A) a physical structure, (B) creating high internal visibility, (C) with possibilities for some absolute restrictions in movements, (D) where the stay is decided by other persons, (E) independent of the wishes of the person staying there, (F) because those staying there are to blame, and (G) with the purpose of creating pain (1978, 183). Christie’s focus on blame and suffering underscores the centrality of punishment in defining prisons. Therefore, to understand what constitutes punishment, Hart’s (1968) jurisprudential formulation is instructive. Punishment must (A) involve pain or other consequences normally considered unpleasant, (B) be for an offense against legal rules, (C) be of an actual or supposed offender for his offence, (D) be intentionally administered by human beings other than the offender, and (E) be imposed and administered by an authority constituted by a legal system against which the offense is committed. Drawing upon all of this information—the etymology and pre-history of the term, the five dictionary definitions, Christie’s seven criteria, and Hart’s five criteria for punishment—it is possible to proffer a synthetic definition that incorporates the common elements. A prison is a facility used to confine human beings, securely and involuntarily, under the authority of law for the purpose of punishment, pretrial detention, or to advance other compelling state interests. The definition is workmanlike. It is concise and captures the nucleus of the definitions, and it squares with common sense. Under this definition, zoos are not prisons because prisons are for human beings. Under this definition, psychiatric hospitals are prisons because prisons confine people for compelling state interests (e.g., involuntary treatment). And under this definition, Kathy Bates’ cabin in Misery (1990) is not a prison because James Caan’s confinement does not have the authority of law. But the synthetic definition leaves unexplored and unresolved a number of ontological questions about the prison. Eight are sketched out below. They are useful in highlighting the unquestioned assumptions and lacunae within the definition, but more generally, they also allow us to glimpse carcerality and punishment in a more critical way.

Eight Ontological Prison Questions First, by defining the prison as a facility to detain human beings, it excludes a whole range of locations where non-humans are detained. Common sense instructs that cattle ranches and chicken farms are not prisons, but why? Chicken Run (2000) is full of homage to The Great Escape (1963): Is Chicken Run not a prison movie (Lambert 2016)? Do we exclude farms from the list of prisons because its inhabitants are non-humans (Bierne 2018)1 or because they are not confined as punishment? What of those cases where, in both secular and ecclesiastical courts, animals have been tried for criminal offenses (Evans 1906)? Why wouldn’t the pretrial detention of a pig or an elephant

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constitute imprisonment? Similarly, we think of zoos as categorically different from prisons, as focused on education and entertainment instead of punishment, but our confidence in this distinction might be misplaced, as well. Cox explains: Prisons were major tourist attractions. As early as 1839, Pennsylvania’s Eastern Penitentiary was attracting four thousand admiring tourists a year. At about the same time, New York’s Auburn Prison was being visited by more than seven thousand a year, despite the substantial admission fee of twenty-five cents—in today’s money, the price of a first-run movie. During the next hundred years, prisons continued admitting guests and earning cash. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Atlanta’s federal penitentiary was toured by up to three thousand people a day, and permanent passes were issued so that civilians could prowl about on any day they wanted. When a new warden arrived at Sing Sing penitentiary in 1919, he found the yard “as crowded with visitors as with prisoners. All mingled freely.” He said that Sing Sing, which was just up the Hudson River from New York City, was considered “more famous perhaps than the Statue of Liberty.” (2009, 2)

Perhaps we exclude non-human confinement from the category of prison because fish, fowl, pigs, and cattle lack understanding of their circumstances? In criminal cases, incompetent or insane defendants are hospitalized instead of being punished in prison, but under our synthetic definition, involuntary confinement in psychiatric hospitals is counted as prison. Perhaps the confinement of animals with human-like intelligence (e.g., great apes, cetaceans) should also be counted as prison. Second, the prison is defined as fundamentally spatial. Our synthetic definition notes a facility; earlier definitions reference place, building, and complex. But Webster’s Dictionary (1913) also mentions a state of confinement. What of the possibility that prison could denote a condition or state, rather than a location? In Genesis 4:15, God places a mark upon Cain that identifies him as a fratricidal killer, a fugitive, and a vagabond, but—under threat of sevenfold vengeance—prevents others from killing him. Under Roman law, as made famous by Agamben (1998), the oath breaker, designated as homo sacer, stood outside the law and could even be killed with impunity. Anglo-American courts, writing of “civil death” described a similar outlaw state (Ewald 2002). Frye (1983) writes of another kind of invisible prison: a labyrinth of repressive social and institutional barriers—each one like a single wire spoke—that collectively and interlockingly operate as a “birdcage” of repressive social control. In Rogue One, the 2016 Star Wars film, the blind warrior-monk, Chirrut Îmwe, says, “There is more than one sort of prison, Captain. I sense that you carry yours wherever you go.” And while that sounds trite, Zimbardo has extrapolated the findings from his Stanford Prison Experiment in order to crack the “prison” of shyness (Zimbardo et al. 1974). Finally, perhaps pharmaceuticals can operate as a chemical prison.

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California and Florida both mandate chemical castration for some sex offenders (Oleson 2002). Many jurisdictions require alcohol-dependent offenders to take disulfiram drugs, which react in the presence of ethanol to produce immediate, intense hangover symptoms such as headache, nausea, and vomiting. In the future, law enforcement officers might screen offenders not to deter narcotics consumption, but to confirm that the offenders are taking the antidepressants, antipsychotics, and tranquilizers—the soma (Huxley 1932)— that render them into compliant citizens. Of course, even assuming that the prison is spatial, and not a state or condition, it is still not clear whether walls are an essential feature. Lovelace has written famously that “stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage” (in Crofts 1995, 86). Defoe’s literary castaway, Robinson Crusoe, thought that no walls were necessary: “The Island was certainly a Prison to me” (1844, 41). In some Soviet gulag camps, walls were superfluous: Prisoners who escaped the camp would find themselves in the middle of a frozen wasteland with nowhere to run (Stone 2017). Today, with GPS monitoring, probation and parole officers can know (theoretically) the location of an offender at any time; officers can establish inclusion zones (from which the offender cannot stray) and exclusion zones (into which the offender cannot enter), adjusting them by time of day. Modern SCRAM devices can also detect and alert officers to the consumption of alcohol. Thus, GPS surveillance might create an illusion of freedom while simultaneously constraining behavior in ways that are functionally analogous to prison bars and inmate counts. Perhaps walls are not required to create a prison. But if walls are essential, perhaps gestural walls are sufficient. In A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966), a man is inexplicably able to confine a group of picnickers, simply by marking out a rectangle in the dirt. While that is the stuff of arthouse cinema, an allegorical prison, there are real-world analogues: Andersonville, the notorious Civil War POW camp, consisted of little more than a double stockade fence. There were no buildings to speak of: Northern prisoners slept in improvised tents and in pits dug into the ground (Marvel 1994). Prison hulks and prison ships are formally vehicles, not buildings, so perhaps definitional reference to facilities and buildings is misplaced. Third, many facilities employed as prisons serve multiple purposes: Do they nevertheless qualify as prisons? For example, under house arrest, one’s own home serves as a prison (Corbett and Fersch 1985). Is it a prison or a home? The Doge’s Palace in Venice contains numerous prison cells and the notorious Tower of London was used as a prison between 1100 and 1952. Yet incarceration was only ever a secondary function in these sites: They functioned principally as fortresses of state power. Similarly, holding cells in police precinct houses—exemplified by the iconic lockups from the 1970s sitcom, Barney Miller2 (1975–1982)—present the same question of the whole and the part. At what threshold does the carceral function of a mixed-use facility qualify it as a prison? This question operates in both spatial (e.g., what percentage of a castle must be dedicated to confinement cells before the castle

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is considered a prison?) and temporal terms (e.g., if a facility is first used as a garrison, but is later employed as a prison—such as San Francisco’s Alcatraz or Tallinn’s Patarei Sea Fortress—what quantum of use is sufficient to relabel it as prison instead of fortress?). Fourth, the definitions are silent about the duration of confinement. If a person of interest is involuntarily detained under legal authority for, say, 48 hours in a holding cell, is that a prison? Perhaps. But what if the person is detained for only one hour? And what if, for that one hour, the person is not housed in a cell, but is outside, on a city street, but in handcuffs, under police control? If any involuntary detention constitutes a prison, then the definition of prison collapses into the legal definition of seizure, and that does not seem useful. But there is evidence pointing in this direction: Black’s Law Dictionary defines prisoner as “someone who has been apprehended by a law-enforcement officer and is in custody, regardless of whether the person has yet been put in prison” (Garner 2014, 1388). Moreover, in support of this position, it cites a leading treatise on criminal law: “If an officer arrests an offender and takes him to jail the layman does not think of the offender as being ‘in prison’ until he is safely behind locked doors, but no one hesitates to speak of him as a ‘prisoner’ from the moment of apprehension” (Perkins and Boyce 1982, 566). Whether sites of execution should be included is an interesting question. Lynching sites would be excluded under our definition, since they do not operate “under the authority of law,” but places of legally sanctioned execution—such as London’s notorious Tyburn Tree or the death chamber at San Quentin—might be included. After all, the condemned are detained under legal authority at the site for the duration of the execution (i.e., the rest of their lives). The question of whether an execution site is a prison can be asked of both fixed locations such as the federal US penitentiary at Terre Haute and ad hoc sites like Babi Yar, the notorious ravine in Kiev where Nazis murdered 30,000 Ukrainians in 1941. Fifth, because our definition defines prisons as institutions administered under authority of law, it excludes sites of confinement operated by non-state actors. Although for-profit prisons such as those operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) are private (Bauer 2018), they operate with a delegated legal authority. But perhaps the definition should encompass non-state confinement. Black’s Law Dictionary includes a provocative definition of prisoner: “Someone who is taken by force and kept somewhere.” The confinement in Room (2015) or Dogtooth (2009), echoing the Fritzl case (Cawthorne 2008), certainly feels like a prison. One of the participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment, assigned to the prisoner group, later rejected the idea that Zimbardo’s experimental prison was not a real prison. In Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment (1992), he explained, “It was a prison to me; it still is a prison to me. I don’t regard it as an experiment or a simulation, because it was a prison run by psychologists instead of run by the state.” And while most tort cases of false imprisonment

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(Keeton 1984) are not motivated by punishment, it is plausible that private actors could confine prisoners using the same rationale as the punishing state. In El Secreto de Sus Ojos (2009), for example, a grieving survivor of a violent crime circumvents the impotent Argentine criminal justice system by imposing his own sentence of solitary confinement. Similar plots operate in Oldboy (2003) and Prisoners (2013). Sixth, while many definitions of prison emphasize punishment (see Hart 1968, supra), some definitions—and our definition—also incorporate nonpunitive functions. To what extent should involuntary detention for reasons other than punishment be included within the definition of prison? Several standard definitions allow for pretrial confinement, but how far does the logic of incapacitation extend? Does it include CIA black sites (Siems 2017) or the secret training facility in Le Femme Nikita (1990)? Some detainees in the War on Terror have been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay without charge for more than 15 years (Al-Awli v. Trump 2017). The confinement of asylum seekers has been characterized as “crimmigration” (Stumpf 2006); while such detainees are not charged criminally, their involuntary confinement is nevertheless justified on the basis of security. Similarly, hospitals for the criminally insane—such as those depicted in Titicut Follies (1967), Terminator II (1991), or Batman Begins (2005)—are ostensibly operated for the safety of the public under therapeutic, not punitive, frameworks. Analogous security-based logic justifies non-criminal detention in orphanages, leper colonies and quarantine facilities, and POW and internment camps. Seventh, the definitions do not resolve the question of subjective awareness. Many of us, ensnared in panoptic societies, are surveilled and restricted in our movements, yet we do not conceive of ourselves as prisoners. If a prisoner does not realize he is confined, either because of cognitive limitations (e.g., madness) or because the walls of the prison are invisible in some way, is he nevertheless still in prison? The idea is explored in The Matrix (1999)—when Neo is awakened from a hallucinatory dream-life to realize that his true self is an energy source exploited to power the machines that imprison him—and in The Truman Show (1998)—where the reality-TV phenomenon Truman resolves to leave the comforts of his idyllic town, despite the director’s efforts to confound him. Finally, eighth, our definition includes an element of involuntariness. Secure facilities surrounded by walls, gates, CCTV, and uniformed guards are called “gated communities” when the people inside live there voluntarily, and prison when they are there against their will. For this reason, monasteries, convents, homeless shelters, military barracks,3 and other voluntary institutions do not qualify as prisons—even though they are “total institutions” (Goffman 1961). But how should we understand facilities where some people are there voluntarily and others are confined involuntarily? Can a place be a prison for one and not the other? In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for example, a handful of patients are committed involuntarily—such the

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protagonist Randle McMurphy—but most are admitted voluntarily and are free to leave at will. Is the state hospital a prison? Of course, voluntariness is not a simple binary (voluntary versus involuntary) but a graduated continuum. For example, Julian Assange has avoided arrest since August 2012 by taking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The embassy is not a prison, but if Assange should leave the safety of the embassy, he could be arrested for breach of his UK bail conditions and extradited to the USA (where he believes he would face the death penalty for Wikileaks revelations). Therefore, Assange chooses to remain in the embassy, even though his choice is clearly coerced and the embassy itself has become a de facto prison. If Assange is correct about extradition, however, the Ecuadorian embassy might be a better prison than its alternative. The Anne Frank House exemplifies a similar dilemma. And if we expand the voluntariness criteria to acknowledge the restrictions of oppressive social norms or economic limitations, then many of us—most of us—not just Betty Draper in Mad Men—occupy de facto prisons. Baudrillard observed that “prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral” (1994, 12, italics added). This possibility—that the social world is itself carceral—is explored in the next section.

A Carceral Taxonomy Dictionary definitions of prison probably seem desiccated and bloodless, possibly the least interesting thing about prisons. But definitions are powerful tools, circumscribing the class of things that rightly can be called prison and excluding those that cannot. Exegesis of multiple definitions can reveal the topography of the carceral landscape. Specifically, by manipulating definitional elements, it is possible to distinguish categories of prisons and prison-like institutions. A full explication lies beyond the scope of this chapter, but an example of the approach might be instructive. If the definitional element, “related to criminal adjudication,” is substituted for the element, “under the authority of law,” in our synthetic definition of prison,4 the field of sites that would qualify is narrowed considerably. Jails and prisons (and possibly halfway houses and hospitals for the criminally insane) would remain within the scope of the term, but many places of state confinement would be excluded: immigration detention, quarantine facilities, POW camps, and concentration camps. What is it, then, that distinguishes the criminal prison from the concentration camp? Stone defines concentration camps as sites of Agambenesque (2005) legal exception: The crucial characteristic of a concentration camp is not whether it has barbed wire, fences, or watchtowers; it is, rather, the gathering of civilians, defined by a regime as de facto ‘enemies’, in order to hold them against their will without charge in a place where the rule of law has been suspended. (2017, 123)

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The distinction between the concentration camp (a site of involuntary confinement, without charge, without rule of law) and the penitentiary (also a site of involuntary confinement, but juridical and individuated) establishes one dimension, across which the secure confinement of individuals deemed dangerous to state interests can be differentiated. In addition to the exceptionalist v. juridical dimension, it is possible to map facilities by their formal objectives. The post-rehabilitative warehouse prison of the late twentieth century was intended to punish (Oleson 2002). Incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation were incidental. But other facilities—bridewells and workhouses, quarantine facilities, and hospitals, for example—are intended to securely manage and to help. They are not designed to punish, to—in the words of Hart—“involve pain or other consequences normally considered unpleasant” (1968, 4). Of course, this is just a crude grid, an X-axis, and a Y-axis, but it might be an interesting starting point for mapping a carceral taxonomy.5

Conclusion Of course, constructing this kind of analytical grid is perilously close to the exercise that was mocked in Dead Poet’s Society (1989)—plotting poems against an X and Y plane for their perfection and importance. In the film, Robin Williams instructed his students to tear the pages of that pedantic introduction out of their books—“make a clean tear,” he said—and to throw those pages away. Unfortunately, carceral distinctions cannot be cast aside in the same way. Christie was right when he said that “words are weapons” (1978, 179). Definitions of prison matter, and in legal discourse they have enormous consequences. Under sexually dangerous person laws, it is possible for a sex offender in the USA to serve the entirety of their criminal sentence in prison, and on the day that he is to be released—it is usually a he—the government can move to civilly commit the offender into indefinite custody (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §1848). As long as the state can demonstrate a previous sexual offense, mental abnormality, or mental disorder that interferes with control, and a risk of future dangerousness, the offender can be detained, until the abnormality is corrected or the risk of reoffending is reduced to acceptable levels. And although the offender might even remain in the same prison complex after his commitment—sex offenders in the federal treatment program who are committed often languish in the same corrections complex where they were imprisoned (Heath 2012)—this detention is civil, not punishment. This means that legal prohibitions against ex post facto laws, double jeopardy, or cruel and unusual punishment do not apply (Kansas v. Hendricks 1997). Baudrillard was probably right when he suggested that the social world is itself carceral, but that carceral world is not homogeneous. Researchers of prisons (and represented prisons) have a social duty to call a spade a spade, even if it is not identified as such. If immigration detention really is a prison,

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we should find the courage to name it as such. Let ugly things have ugly names. On the other hand, we must never minimize the experience of prison by reifying our metaphors, counting things as prisons that are not truly prisons. To accurately define the contours of the prison and its carceral cousins is to acknowledge the experience of those who are confined.

Notes 1. The Planet of the Apes films neatly invert this issue, elevating gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees into the roles of intelligent, verbal masters, and subordinating humans into the roles of inarticulate beasts. Yet we should not make too much of the animal/human distinction. Humans are animals. And there is assuredly a marked tendency to dehumanize those who are confined in prisons. 2.  The bars from the Barney Miller holding cells are held by the Smithsonian Museum of American History. 3. Military barracks might very well qualify as prisons if the personnel have been drafted or conscripted. Thus, a dilemma: a facility that is a prison for some but not all its inhabitants. Shall we identify it as a prison? Of course, even those who joined the military voluntarily are not free to leave: They face the threat of prosecution and incarceration in a military prison if they should be absent without leave (AWOL). 4.  The reframed definition reads, “A prison is a facility used to confine human beings, securely and involuntarily, related to criminal adjudication for the purpose of punishment, pretrial detention, or to advance other compelling state interests.” 5. Alternatively, or additionally, one could map the duration of confinement, the intensity of hardships, the visibility of the bars, or the degree of voluntariness in acquiescing to confinement. Each of these axes can reveal the distribution of carcerality.

References 18 U.S. Code §1848. Civil Commitment of a Sexually Dangerous Person. Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4248. Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Al-Awli v. Trump. 2017. United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4253645-Alwi-CADC-II-Opening-Brief-Corrected-2017-10-04.html. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bauer, Shane. 2018. American Prison: A Reporter’s Journey into the Business of Punishment. New York: Penguin. Bierne, Piers. 2018. Murdering Animals: Writings on Theriocide, Homicide and Nonspeciesist Criminology. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Carnochan, Walter B. 1995. “The Literature of Confinement.” In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 381–406. New York: Oxford University Press.

28  J. C. OLESON Cawthorne, Nigel. 2008. House of Horrors. London: John Blake. Cecil, Dawn. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Cheatwood, Derral. 1998. “Prison Movies: Films About Adult, Male, Civilian Prisons: 1929–1995.” In Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice, edited by Frankie Y. Bailey and Donna C. Hale, 209–231. San Francisco: Wadsworth. Christie, Nils. 1978. “Prisons in Society, or Society as a Prison—A Conceptual Analysis.” In Prisons Past and Future, edited by John C. Freeman, 179–187. London: Heinemann. Corbett, Ronald P., Jr., and Ellsworth A. Fersch. 1985. “Home as Prison: The Use of House Arrest.” Federal Probation 49: 13–17. Cox, Stephen D. 2009. The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison. New Haven: Yale University Press. Crofts, Thomas, ed. 1995. The Cavalier Poets: An Anthology. New York: Dover Publications. Crowther, Bruce. 1989. Captured on Film: The Prison Movie. London: B. T. Batsford, Ltd. Defoe, Daniel. 1844. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. New York: Alexander V. Blake. Evans, Edward P. 1906. The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. London: William Heinemann. Ewald, Alec C. 2002. “Civil Death: The Ideological Paradox of Criminal Disenfranchisement Law in the United States.” Wisconsin Law Review 2002: 1045–1137. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage. Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Freedom, CA: Crossing. Garner, Bryan A., ed. 2014. Black’s Law Dictionary. 10th ed. St. Paul: Thomson Reuters. Goffman, Erving. 1961. “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions.” In Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, 1–124. Garden City: Doubleday & Co. Hart, H. L. A. 1968. Punishment and Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press. Heath, Brad. 2012. “Imprisoned for Crimes They Might Commit.” USA Today, March 19, 2012. Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www.pressreader.com/ usa/usa-today-us-edition/20120319/288943926526471. Hughes, Howard. 2006. Crime Wave: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Crime Movies. New York: I. B. Tauris. Hughes, Robert. 1986. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Huxley, Aldous. 1932. Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus. Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 1997. Keeton, W. P. 1984. Prosser and Keeton on Torts. 5th ed. St. Paul: West. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. New York: Wallflower. Lambert, Celia. 2016. “Flying the Coop: Chicken Run, Escape Narratives, and Modern History.” Screen Education 80: 40–45.

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Marvel, William. 1994. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Mason, Paul, ed. 2006. Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture. Portland: Willan Publishing. McConville, Seán. 1995. “The Victorian Prison: England, 1865–1965.” In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 117–150. New York: Oxford University Press. Oleson, J. C. 2002. “The Punitive Coma.” California Law Review 90, no. 3: 829–901. Oleson, J. C. 2015. “Rituals Upon Celluloid: The Need for Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Film.” Cleveland State Law Review 63: 599–743. Oxford English Dictionary online. 3rd ed., OED. 2007. New York: Oxford University Press. Accessed February 12, 2019. Perkins, Rollin M., and Ronald N. Boyce. 1982. Criminal Law, 3rd ed. Mineola: Foundation Press. Peters, Edward M. 1995. “Prison Before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 3–43. New York: Oxford University Press. Rafter, N. (2006). Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, William. 1905. “Hamlet.” In Shakespeare: Complete Works, edited by W. J. Craig, 870–907. New York: Oxford University Press. Original work published circa 1602. Siems, Larry. 2017. “Inside the CIA’s Black Site Torture Room.” The Guardian, October 9, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/ oct/09/cia-torture-black-site-enhanced-interrogation. Stone, Dan. 2017. Concentration Camps: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press. Stumpf, Juliet. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” American University Law Review 56: 367–419. Sykes, Gresham. 1958. The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wagner, Peter, and Wendy Sawyer. 2018. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018. Released March 14, 2018. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html. Walmsley, Roy. 2018. World Prison Population List. 12th ed. Accessed February 12, 2019. http://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/ wppl_12.pdf. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. 1913. Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Co. Accessed February 12, 2019. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/673. Wild, Susan Ellis, ed. 2006. Webster’s New World Law Dictionary. Hoboken: Wiley. Zimbardo, Phil, Paul Pilkonis, and Robert Norwood. 1974. “The Silent Prison of Shyness.” Stanford University. Accessed February 12, 2019. http://www.dtic.mil/ dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a101822.pdf.

Voices from Within

Reading Bronson from Deep on the Inside: An Exploration of Prisoners Watching Prison Films Victoria Knight and Jamie Bennett

Introduction In a world of unprecedented media consumption, where the screen is a ubiquitous, indispensable accessory, representation becomes an essential way of seeing and making sense of society. In relation to imprisonment, the role of the media has been described as particularly important in shaping public attitudes (Surette 1997). This point largely rests upon the assumption that most people do not have direct experience of prisons as prisoners, having friends or family imprisoned, or working in prisons, and so in the absence of this grounded knowledge, their perceptions are shaped by political rhetoric and media representations (Surette 1997, 1998). This chapter is not concerned with this apparently naïve public, but instead with the response to media representation of prisoners themselves, a group who have significant expertise. They are immersed in the lived experience of imprisonment and are the subject of the media representation. This chapter reports on a small-scale project screening contemporary British prison films to people serving sentences in British prisons. In particular, this will focus on one of the films, Bronson (2008), a stylized biography of notorious V. Knight (*)  Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Bennett  University of Oxford, Oxford, UK © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_3

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British prisoner Charles Bronson. The chapter will set out the theoretical groundwork regarding the representation of prisons in the media and its effects upon society and individuals. It will go on to explain the methodology of the study and summarize the narrative of the film before exploring the responses of the audience. The responses particularly focus on issues of power, resistance and hope. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the consumption of prison media by prisoners and its implications for individuals and social control.

Prison Films and Society An important strand of existing research focusses on the debate about the effects of media representation, in particular how this can shape perceptions, attitudes and responses. This “social construction” approach asserts that in the absence of direct experience and with high levels of exposure to media representation, these images can shape public perceptions. What is presented in the media contains embedded perceptions and judgements about social life, it is, as Hall (2013) has described, encoded with values and assumptions. These codes include beliefs about the role and practice of imprisonment (Rafter 2000). These values are the product not only of individual choice by those who produce media content, but are the outcome of a commercial process that is located within a particular set of regulatory, economic, institutional and creative contexts (Lam 2014). Media representation can offer a façade that projects an idealized vision of the prison (Fiddler 2007), but just as the role of criminal justice in society is contested, so this is reflected in representations (Rafter 2000; Rafter and Brown 2011). These depictions play an ideological function in explaining crime, framing the problems and guiding emotional responses (Rafter 2000). Over time, these representations legitimize and normalize particular values and approaches (Carrabine 2008). Criminal justice strategies may vary and be contested in practice and in representation, reflecting political discourse. Media representations are a “power resource” (Ericson et al. 1991, 11), which “provide people with preferred versions and visions of social order, on the basis of which they will take action” (4). The differing visions represented may include encouraging regressive and punitive responses (Lee 2007; Nellis 2005), being concerned with order and the maintenance of social systems including penal populism (Ericson et al. 1991; Surette 1997; Brown 2009), promoting liberal-humanitarian reform (Rafter 2000; Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004) or presenting a more radical critique of power and inequality (Bennett 2014). The contested nature of criminal justice is therefore played out in popular culture as a form of “popular criminology” (Rafter and Brown 2011), offering a medium for public discourse about crime and punishment. None of the proceeding discussion is intended to suggest that there is a definitive way of understanding or reading particular texts or that viewers are passive recipients of media messages. Viewers bring with them pre-existing attitudes or values and are situated within a particular social context including

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gender, class and ethnicity (Morley 1980; Moores 1993; Jewkes 2006; Carrabine 2008). They use these resources both to choose from the wide variety of media products on offer to them, but also draw upon this in the ways that they interpret, understand and respond to what they consume. Moreover, the context of consumption shapes how audiences interact with the text (Morley 1980; Moores 1993). Consumption goes beyond taste but is part of the ways in which people construct and sustain their self-identity and individual subjectivity (King and Maruna 2006). As Hall (2013) has described, texts are encoded with particular meanings and ideology, but viewers decode these in particular ways, so that there are “cultural struggles over meaning” (Moores 1993, 7), which deploy the relative power of text and reader. Together, these analyses suggest that media production, representation and consumption are not mere entertainment, but are deeply implicated in the power dynamics of social life. Production and representation are fields in which the battle of ideas and values about penal policy are enacted. Individual viewers also explore, construct and express their identity through consumption. Considering this research and theory in relation to prisoners as consumers of media, two important studies of media and television in prisons (Jewkes 2002; Knight 2016) have explored how this is used as a means to express identity and manage emotions, but is also entangled with institutional modes of social control. These studies highlight important issues but focus on television viewing as an activity rather than the detailed readings of specific texts about prisons. These detailed readings by prisoners raise distinct questions. We argue that they are an informed audience whose lived experience and context will shape their response to media texts. We therefore seek to explore this by asking whether a prisoner audience read the encoded messages of prison media and decode them in relation to their own lived experience. We also seek to explore the effects of their readings for their identity and lived experience as serving prisoners. Together these questions examine the nature of media consumption for this particular group with regard to both agency and social structures. As Girling et al. (2000) described, this is a search for media consumption and its relation to a sense of place: “…that is, of both the place they inhabit (its histories, divisions, trajectories and so forth), and of their place within a wider world of hierarchies, troubles, opportunities and insecurities” (17, emphasis in original). In other words, what role do these representations play in reflecting and enabling their understanding of the prison as a socially structured institution, and their place as prisoners within that context?

Methodology Disentangling text from context is challenging and our research approach took inspiration from Moores’ “audience ethnography” (1993). His critical ethnographic approach “is committed to critically analysing culture as well as describing it” (4). He asserts critical ethnography can: “…take extremely

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seriously the interpretations of the media constructed by consumers in their everyday routines. At the same time, it [ethnography] is not afraid to interrogate and situate their spoken accounts…” (ibid., 5). This chapter features analysis from a larger study of prisoners watching a British prison film. As described at the beginning of this chapter, understanding audiences within the prison context (Jewkes 2002; Knight 2016) has been explored but there are limitations to this work. We do not know enough about the prisoner “gaze”: the intersection between viewer and text (Mulvey 1989). The project was therefore designed to explore this gap to explore how this informed audience—the prisoner—would respond, relate and interact with the prison film genre. The project was located in a single closed adult male English Prison. After a range of approvals and logistical details were finalized, ten adult male prisoners were invited to take part in the study. All of the men were serving life sentences and all had served a significant number of years. They varied in age and ethnicity. The research took place over a period of two weeks. In the first week, five contemporary British prison films were screened in a classroom space; it was private and located on the main corridor of the prison. Following the screenings, group discussions with the men took place. In the second week, all of the ten men were interviewed separately. The group discussions and interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. In addition, we made notes during the film screenings to record the men’s responses to each film. These notes were invaluable as they allowed us to quickly identify which aspects of the specific films required further exploration during the group discussions that followed on the same day. For example, the films provoked discussion during the screenings, including moments of laughter, banter and outbursts. We noted that there was a range of visual and audible responses to the films including joy, sadness, disgust and fear. Certain scenes in the films generated observable responses such as violence and sexual content. In summary, the film Bronson provided a springboard for reflection and discussion firmly located within the prison context and experience. Our analysis was thematic, based on in-depth readings of the transcripts (group discussions, researcher notes and prisoner interviews) and listening to the audio recordings. Based on the film Bronson, we identified a number of themes that will be discussed in this chapter. This includes a reflection on key features of prison social life, specifically power, resistance and a sense of hope.

Bronson: A Summary Danish auteur director Nicolas Winding Refn fashioned a distinctive film biography of notorious British prisoner Charles Bronson, mixing scenes from his life in and out of prison, with scenes in which Bronson playfully comments and reflects on events from the stage of a vaudeville theatre. This highly stylized structure and heightened visualization is grounded by a compelling central performance by Tom Hardy, in which he not only impersonates but embodies the real-life character of Bronson.

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At the opening of the film, Bronson announces himself on stage: “My name is Charles Bronson and all my life I’ve wanted to be famous. I know I was made for better things. I knew I had a calling. I just didn’t know what as. Can’t sing, can’t fucking act. Running out of choices really”. Images play of him in prison, shadow boxing and training in a solitary cage, scored by the dreamy opening of The Walker Brothers’ The Electrician. As the music changes gear into the chorus, prison officers storm the cage, only for Bronson to fight back, battling heroically. This first sequence closes with a title asserting: “This film is based on a true story”. Yet, this is not a film intended as a slice of natural realism. Refn intended to focus on Bronson’s creation of “his own mythology”, and romantically represent him as a savage performance artist to whom “violence is the brush and life is the canvas” (Lim 2009). The film reflects the subjective perspective of Bronson, representing his inner life: “This is not a movie about a man escaping outward, which is usually the objective of prison movies, but about a man escaping inward” (Lim 2009). Born as Michael Peterson, Bronson’s early life is briefly depicted, including various fights and acts of violence, although he claims, “I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t bad, bad. I still had my principles”. He marries and has a child, but is quickly disillusioned: “They don’t give you a star in the walk of fame for that, do they?” He finds himself in prison after a robbery, sentenced to seven years. His first night in prison he is shown from behind, wracked with tears. The scene then match cuts to him heavily made up in the theatre, laughing, suggesting that the tears were a performance. This is deliberately ambiguous as to which scene is real and which is performance. Bronson sees the prison as a new chapter in his life. He is shown circling his cell as his voiceover describes: “prison was finally a place where I could sharpen my tools, hone my skills. It’s like a battleground innit? It’s an opportunity and a place where pretty soon every native was going to know my name”. He provokes a confrontation in the sewing workshop where he is being asked to undertake menial work. A group of officers arrive in order to intimidate him, but he refuses to back down and has to be restrained by them, fighting all the way. As he is dragged through the prison, he imagines the applause from the theatre rapturously greeting his performance. Later, while working as a trustee serving tea from a trolley, Bronson meets Paul Daniels, a fellow prisoner and nightclub owner. Daniels appears as a camp, mannered theatre impresario, admiring Bronson’s physique. Continuing to build his reputation, Bronson claims “I am Britain’s most violent prisoner”, and starts to attract media interest. His power base, however, is undermined by him being constantly, “ghosted”, or moved from prison to prison. His continued violence leads to him being transferred to Rampton secure hospital, where he is forcibly medicated and reduced to physical powerlessness, although he continues to psychologically resist and refuses to surrender. After strangling a fellow detainee, a child sex offender, Bronson is

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taken to Broadmoor special hospital. Documentary news footage of a rooftop protest is shown with Bronson announcing, “This is what I call Charlie vs Broadmoor”, a scene scored by David Cassidy’s When I’m A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star. The cost of the damage leads Bronson to be popularly designated “Britain’s most expensive prisoner - not the moniker I was looking for”. He is declared sane and released from prison. Outside, he meets up with Daniels and joins in the illegal fight scene. Taking on the “fighting name” Charles Bronson, he fights anyone and anything, including dogs. He also meets Alison, who he falls in love with, and although she has a sexual relationship with him, there is no romance as she has a fiancée. He steals an expensive ring for her and is returned to prison, a mere 69 days after his release. On his return, Bronson is met by prison officers ominously holding batons, who take him to the governor’s office. The governor dismissively describes him as “ridiculous” and “pitiful”. Bronson’s response is to take a placid officer-librarian hostage, although not physically harming him. The stand-off ends with Bronson smeared in butter and fighting off the officers who storm in. After being returned to solitary confinement, Bronson receives warning from the governor that he faces the prospect of dying in prison. Later, Bronson joins an art class where he displays some talent and is encouraged by the flamboyant teacher, Phil Danielson, who implores him: “find a piece of you Charlie. That piece that doesn’t belong here”. Bronson’s behaviour improves and Danielson attempts to get him to show his artwork to the governor. The governor is again dismissive, asking for it to be handed to an officer rather than looking himself, seeing the art as nothing more than a means to control and subdue Bronson. Bronson bristles with barely contained anger at the humiliation. When Danielson encourages Bronson that release may be possible and says “we can do this”, Bronson baulks, “what do you mean ‘we’?”. He takes Danielson hostage and demands that music is played. He paints himself black and dresses the scene, with Danielson made up with Bronson’s hat and glasses, and an apple placed in his mouth. When this human still life has been completed, Bronson calls for the officers to come in and he is returned to solitary after another violent hand-to-hand battle, played out in slow motion accompanied by the Viens, Mallika (aka Flower Duet) from Leo Delibes’ opera Lakme. In the final scene, Bronson is shown bloodied, barely human, in a cage with only enough room to stand, with an opening where his face is. Titles state: “Charles Bronson is Britain’s most famous prisoner…He has spent 34 years in jail, 30 of them in solitary confinement…He has not yet been granted a release date”. The pulsing electronic soundtrack, Digital Versicolor by Glass Candy, suggests that Bronson is not yet broken or beaten.

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Power Power is central to the prison experience. The institution has been used as an exemplar of total social control (Sykes 1958), while Foucault drew upon prisons as a means to illustrate the evolving nature of social power (Foucault 1977). Perspectives from inside prisons have also described the assertion of power and authority, and the response of prisoners, form “the centre of gravity of prison life” (McVicar 1981, 226). Power is also a central concern of Bronson, in which the eponymous character is the subject of attempts to control and contain him, including through physical force. In his analysis of the social life of English prisons, Ben Crewe (2009) suggests that social order in prisons is constructed primarily through four means: coercion, including physical constraint, force, threat and deprivation; manipulation or inducement, meaning the appeal to self-interest and the orchestration of needs and desires; habit, ritual or fatalistic resignation, born from a sense that there are no alternatives and that subordination is inevitable, and; normative justification or commitment, in other words that power relationships are based upon shared values. Crewe argues that an era of authoritarian power held sway broadly between 1970 and 1990, characterized by few material comforts, and a rigid hierarchy backed by staff brutality and violence. The subsequent late modern era has seen this superseded by the emergence of neo-paternalism. This form of authority is characterized by greater bureaucratization, cultural softening and dispersal of power. In particular, this approach deploys soft power by nurturing self-interest through the use of conditional incentives, fostering closer social relations, and introducing discretionary decision-making in relation to access to material rewards, custodial progress and release. Through these means, the contemporary prison is less brutal but, nevertheless exerts power in ways that are equally pervasive, albeit indirect (through reports, records and documents rather than violence) and deferred (no immediate consequences but later part of parole and other decision-making). Many of the events depicted in Bronson (which starts in the 1970s) are based in the authoritarian era and can be seen to epitomize the raw coercive power and violence of the time. The group who viewed the film saw this as a historical representation, claiming: “this film was old in age because it was like old because certain things that were happening there we have never seen”; “it was of the time wasn’t it?”, and; “it’s slightly different now and [prison officers] are different”. That was not to say that the group suggested that violence between staff and prisoners was non-existent. Indeed, some described having witnessed or experienced prison staff behaving in provocative ways or using force in ways they perceived as heavy-handed or illegitimate. Predominantly, though, the group described that the nature of power and authority they experienced was different, reflecting the neo-paternalism described by Crewe. This was particularly drawn out in the responses to two key scenes in the film. The first was Bronson’s initial violent encounter with

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staff. This took place in a sewing workshop after he refuses to work and is confronted by a large group of staff. In the focus group, this scene was discussed, with the participants reflecting upon their own experiences of power: And that thing that happened to him there still happens now because they will tell you, you have to go to the workshops. I don’t want to work in the workshops. If you don’t go, you get IEP’d [the incentives and earned privileges scheme, under which access to material comforts is dependent upon behaviour]. If you are ‘enhanced’ [the highest level of privileges under the IEP scheme], you end up on ‘basic’ [the lowest level] and if you are ‘basic’ just like he is still in prison, you will stay on ‘basic’ because you don’t want to go and work. That’s the clerical way of demotion instead of the physical one. They have changed it around. They have made it more subtle now. They’ve made it soft, so you don’t know. But it’s still the same thing.

The men saw the role of material comforts as exerting a powerful hold upon them: a manipulation or inducement. For example, one participant described “The system introduce Xbox, introduce more gym sessions, I don’t want to lose my DVD player…the strategy is very clever”. More powerfully, the conditional nature of custodial progress and release also entangled the men in the web of power. They described the hope was an instrument of control: when you take hope away from a man that’s when you lose control totally. So you know prison it was very clever so it’s not that harsh but they give you hope still. Once you take away a man’s hope fully, that’s when that man will never have control again.

The responses to this scene illustrated how the participants interpreted and interacted with the content from their own position. They did not view this as a direct representation of their experiences, but it nevertheless chimed with their emotional lives, offering both a visual metaphor and a meaningful critique of their lived experience. The second scene the group particularly responded to involved Bronson accessing the art classes. The governor is only interested in this as a means of control rather than in the nurturing Bronson’s talent. The group saw this scene as stripping away the veneer and exposing the exercise of neo-paternal power. They described the incentives and interactions as being based upon “a false pretence”, serving “an ulterior motive” and being a form of “mind games”. They described this in ways that revealed how they experienced this exercise of power as demeaning and infantilising. In one particularly resonant phrase, Bronson’s offering his painting to the governor was described as being “like a child giving a bouquet to The Queen”. There was also some empathy for Bronson’s subsequent violent reaction to this. In particular,

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one group member described how people in prison could ruminate on such sleights and indignities. Others also concurred that they themselves felt driven to aggression and confrontation through their feelings of powerlessness and being “[pushed] to the fucking limit”. This scene depicts the movement from authoritarian to neo-paternal power strategies. This more directly resonated with the participants contemporary experiences of power in prisons. Together, these two scenes reveal the ways in which members of the group drew upon their lived experience to respond to particular aspects of the film but also to reinterpret, reimagine and make meaning from other scenes so as to contextualize them within their own experiences. The participants looked beyond the prison in order to reflect upon how media representation was itself deeply entangled in social structures, being a power resource (Ericsson et al. 1991). Although the film, to some extent, deconstructed media representation and exposed official brutality, the group were sceptical of how conventional audiences would read the film. In particular, they described that the general public had a deeply ingrained hostility to prisoners, reinforced by media and politics, so that, “They only see one side of the story”. They described that the extreme violence and the choice of Bronson as the subject of the film, when he is atypical and unrepresentative, made him “the poster boy for the reason why they do the things they do”. In this way, they argued that the representation of Bronson would reinforce conventional penal policy and popular punitiveness: “It’s the government isn’t it? The government always wins”. As such, this was a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1990), which legitimates the social subordination and marginalization of prisoners. This was a position that the group were conscious of but resigned to as inevitable. In engaging with the film as viewers, the group members were sophisticated and active consumers. They drew upon their own lived experience in order to decode the film, make meaning from it and create sense of both the text and their social position. They present a unique and privileged position, and in contrast considered that non-prisoner audiences could not fully understand and read prison texts.

Resistance With some inevitability, the preceding discussion of power leads into a consideration of adaptation to that power. This includes compliance and, more obviously depicted in Bronson, through resistance. In sociology, resistance has been the subject of considerable analysis, exploring both macropolitical forms on the one hand, such as political revolution and the micropolitics of everyday resistance on the other. Similarly, the sociology of prisons has drawn attention to collective acts of resistance including rioting and protesting (Scranton et al. 1991; Carrabine 2004) and more individualized forms of mundane resistance (Cohen and Taylor 1981; Crewe 2009).

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The events of the film take place during the authoritarian era and in their study of long-term imprisonment in the 1970s, Cohen and Taylor (1981) described some prisons having an oppositional and confrontational relationship with authority, and holding an ideology of romantic anarchism. They could display a “distinctive blend of recklessness, anti-authoritarianism and egoism which has characterised many of the political bandits celebrated in films and novels” (177) and engaged in “[a]bsurd acts of bravery in the face of hopeless odds” (178). They argued that such men were not necessarily driven by an overtly political agenda, but by “the idea that life cannot be lived fully within present society, and that one can only make out by taking on orthodox society in a direct manner” (178). In the film, although Bronson does engage in collective acts of indiscipline, in particular the riot and rooftop protest at Broadmoor, he describes these as individual battles: “This is what I call Charlie vs Broadmoor”. Most of his fights pit him, outnumbered, against several prison officers. As one of the prisoner viewers described: “it’s like a hundred of them versus one man and he’s trying his best”. The text reflects the spirit of romantic anarchism. The group read Bronson’s resistance to authority within this frame, but also saw a political dimension to his opposition to the prison system. They saw him as engaging in a fight against what they perceived as “oppression”: Bronson was fighting against the supposedly right policies and his way of fighting against it was by violence because no other ways work…So the only way he could do it, and the only way he knew how, was to physically confront it.

Comparisons were drawn by group members between Bronson and the political resistance of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, as well as the prison protestors from the Manchester (UK) riots of 1990. From this perspective, the group situated Bronson as a figure in the movement for progressive social reform: “If them guys hadn’t done certain things what they done, the prison wouldn’t be like it is now…so they fight oppression”. For other members of the group, Bronson is closer to what Crewe has described as a “retreatist” (Crewe 2009, 191). That is a prisoner who has limited social engagement inside or outside the prison, and who rejects the prison’s mode of domination, not being motivated by incentives or release. For some group members, he was a “loner” or “a one man band” who “didn’t want to tick any boxes for anyone”. However, for some of the group, this was not politically motivated, but was a spectacle created as an act of egotistical self-aggrandizement: “Bronson wants to be Bronson doesn’t he? He wants the media on him and he wants the telly on him, he enjoys all that…He wants that limelight doesn’t he really?”; “…he has made his life in prison as notoriety, as a public image”.

The rejection and subversion of the organizing logic of the contemporary prison system meant that Bronson was perceived as being “a one off”,

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“unique”. The viewers suggested that from this idiosyncratic perspective: “… in his mind he thinks he is winning”. The readings of the film generated indicate that the group were reflexive and questioning. They engaged with the figure of Bronson as an individual examining his motivations and agency, but also questioned the social context in which he was situated, not just the prison but wider society. The prisoners in the group saw themselves as adopting a different perspective to that of Bronson. They accepted the reality of the domination of penal power, while not seeing it as entirely legitimate, or leaving it uncontested. As life sentence prisoners, for who release would be discretionary and conditional, they had a fatalistic acceptance of penal power and the need to demonstrate compliance. They largely showed the characteristics of what have been described as “stoics”, who were “acutely aware of the strategies by which their compliance was accomplished, and were far more cynical about the mechanisms of power in which they were enmeshed” (Crewe 2009, 179). They would perceive power “…in negative, coercive terms: there was little to gain from compliance, but much to lose from defiance or dissent - not just added days or loss of privileges, but sometimes years of supplementary captivity” (ibid., 182). From this perspective, they described themselves involved in “a daily fight”, which they would have to engage in “physically maybe, mentally maybe, or spiritually maybe”. They would be selective as to what they challenged: “Sometimes you have to pick the right fight and fight the right fight”. As one of the men described: …you have to pick your fights wisely, you can’t just fight every bloody thing that they want to do to you. We are in prison at the end of the day. My fight is trying to go home trying to do what I need to do, trying to keep my head down. That’s my fight. I am not trying to fight for every little stupid, well I wouldn’t say stupid thing, everyone has got their own different principles but some fights to me are not worth fighting for.

Their methods would not necessarily be violent. Fighting the system could be through “the pen” by making complaints, or could be by verbally challenging inefficiency, disrespectful interactions or personal indignities. Although adopting different forms of adaptation and different methods, they found the character of Bronson relatable, admiring qualities including his “resilience”, “having a heart” and being “a principled man”. These were qualities that they felt they needed to display in order to navigate the neo-paternal penal power that entangled their everyday lives: “I think we are all resilient. All of us here are resilient anyway”. For the men viewing the film, the actions of Bronson in continually contesting penal power and reducing it to physical form exposed the “hidden transcript” of resistance, that is the “discourse that takes place ‘off stage’, beyond direct observation by powerholders” (Scott 1992, 4) in contrast to

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the “public transcript” of ritualistic compliance and deference. The visual representation of power and resistance gave the men a vehicle for vicariously experiencing the thrill of rejecting the authority that they themselves, just like Bronson, were subjected to. It reflected their own feelings of discontent and desire to challenge domination. The appeal of romantic anarchism was not restricted to those in prison; the group also recognized that there was a wider appeal of “[s]omebody who fights against the system”. They described Bronson as a “hero” to some: “He is loved isn’t he, he is loved by people on the out not just us in here because of the way he is. The media love all that don’t they, they build him up”. The appeal of such a character could create empathy with prisoners and was part of an alternative tradition challenging conventional public and political narratives (Rafter 2000). Those viewing the film described that: “Making this film now is his way of saying what happened, what was behind those things so it’s only now we get to find out exactly what took place and why it took place”. More broadly, they saw such films as having the potential to communicate something of their own experience: “I want the public, I want the independent people to be aware of our concerns”. They also saw this as a way of generating public or political disquiet and pressure for reform. In particular, the visceral nature of the violence would lead to stark inside knowledge about penal power: “Hold on, is that the way they treat prisoners? They beat shit out of them”. Although the men saw Bronson as depicting an ideology and methods of resistance that were from a different age and different from their everyday reality, they nevertheless related to this in the context of their own lived experience. They felt that they held a privileged position from which they could engage with the text. In particular, they read the film in a way that appreciated it as exposing the exercise of penal power and they celebrated its depiction of heroic resistance. This offered the prison audience a vicarious outlet for their own hidden transcripts of discontent, and they also considered that it had potential to create a vehicle for public communication.

Illusions of Hope There is a long history of more progressive ambitions in prison management and reform. Recently in England and Wales, this has focused on creating positive social climates, which have been variously described as “rehabilitative cultures” (National Offender Management Service 2015) or “enabling environments” (Royal College of Psychiatrists 2013). Such climates are characterized by a sense of hope and the possibility of personal transformation (see Bennett and Shuker 2018; Liebling et al. 2019). Hope is an affective state that can both help people to sustain themselves through adverse situations, and propel them towards desirable goals, which can “encourage inmates to find the[ir] life worth living and the motivation to make positive changes in their lives” (Martin and Stermac 2010, 703).

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The experience of hope may be a feature of particular prison environments, but prisons vary in their cultures, social climates and quality of life (Liebling assisted by Arnold 2004). As was described earlier, Crewe has analysed the transformations in penal power over recent decades. He has also attempted to explore the experiences of prisoners being subjected to this. Relevant to our study in a prison exclusively for men serving life sentences, Crewe (2011a) suggests that modern pains of imprisonment include uncertainty and indeterminacy. He went on to describe the experience of prison life as being characterized by “depth” (“being buried far from liberty, deep below the surface of freedom” [ibid., 521]); “weight” (“the psychological onerousness of imprisonment – the degree to which it weighed them down or bore upon them” [ibid., 521]) and “tightness” (describing the way soft power constrains autonomy and acts “like an invisible harness on the self” [522]). The men described that they lived with the uncertainty of indeterminacy. Their future release was dependent upon discretionary decision-making. They felt the uncertainty about how to navigate and respond to the soft power deployed within the prison. As was described earlier, the group particularly responded to the scene in Bronson where the governor feigns interest in Bronson’s art solely as a means of exercising control rather than any authentic interest in his talents and personal growth. For the group, this exposed the exercise of soft power and the pains of being subjected to this. One man described how soft power created a “charade” (Crewe 2011b, 458), where behaviour was an inauthentic performance: ….with everything there is an agenda. So how can we control him, what can we use to our advantage and stuff like that. This is what it is, this is what I’m trying to say, this place is not really genuine. So when you’re talking about rehabilitation, that comes from the person surely. You understand? You have to want to change yourself and stuff like that. For me that’s calculated, you know, like you’re trying to find a person’s weak point. For me that’s vindictive, that’s malicious isn’t it…. there’s no genuineness there, so it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work.

The men recognized the importance of hope, and indeed their experiences of this. As described earlier, they desired material comforts in prison, including DVD players and games consoles, but more significantly aspired to be released in the future. They could see that these “hopes” were a powerful means of exercising control. The men described that they had some admiration of Bronson’s subversion of the organizing logic of the prison, rejecting material comforts and the prospect of release. Nevertheless, they acknowledged the cost of this and were not willing to give up hope of those outcomes for themselves. Bronson ends with a visual representation of the depth and weight of imprisonment: Bronson is physically contained within a cage so restrictive that he can only stand. The cage is in an empty room, isolated from others. It

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is a scene in which there is apparently little hope. The group viewing the film empathized with this stark depiction of penal power. They faced indeterminate sentences, uncertainty and they felt the tightness of the soft power that enmeshed them. For them, they did not see institutionally defined notions of “hope” as progressive, but instead often as inauthentic, illusory and a means of exercising control. That is not to say that the men were without hope. Certainly many aspired release in the future and return to their families, a dream that was profound, even if distant. Also, hope came in the small acts, spaces and activities in which they could behave authentically and exercise agency. Even in the suffocating physical conditions, Bronson is confined within at the end of the film, the audience found hope in his refusal to compromise. Hope for these men was not to typified by a romantic notions of a melodramatic transformational moment, but instead was more modestly to be found in the meaning they felt in their everyday survival, sustaining their autonomy, and remaining psychologically intact.

Conclusion The intention of this chapter has been to explore the ways in which a prisoner audience consumed media representation of the prison—through prison film. In particular, how they make meaning, not only of the films themselves, but also of the context in which they live, and their own identities. This prisoner audience related to the text in a way that not only decoded the content of the film, but also drew vividly and acutely upon their own lived experience of prison life. As has been described, they saw Bronson as depicting a historical epoch, but used this in order to reflect upon and contrast with their own experiences of power and domination. They also responded to the film’s theme of romantic anarchism and heroic individualism, without seeing this as offering a template for their own conduct. They drew solace from the spirit of resistance and personal qualities that were depicted by the character Bronson rather than the methods reflected in the film. The viewers also drew hope despite the depth and weight of the punishment of imprisonment. The prisoner audience engaged with the film actively, interpreting and responding to it in sophisticated ways. The text was a vehicle not only for entering into the world of Bronson, but also a way of making sense of their own present reality. The media content was a medium to critique the institution of imprisonment to which they were subjected, but also a means to examine and reaffirm their own strategies for navigating their everyday lives. The readings of the film offered an insight into these everyday strategies, in which the men largely accepted the exercise of penal power without fully accepting or legitimizing it. In doing so, they retained and asserted their own individuality and identity without engaging in open revolt. The everyday negotiation of power and order was revealed and reflected in the ways these prisoner viewers consumed, interpreted and decoded the film. The group were also sensitive to the coded symbolism contained within the film and how

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this could be digested by a general public audience. In particular, they felt the violence and dangerousness of prison and prisoners in the film could legitimize punitiveness and exclusion. The ways in which the prisoner audience engaged with the film suggests that there is significant potential to further develop the use of media in general, and film in particular, as a resource in penal reform and personal development. The increasing interest in arts programs in prisons (e.g. Bilby et al. 2013) and other initiatives such as reading groups (e.g. Prison Reading Groups 2013) offer a template for this approach, using culture, including popular culture, as a medium for critical engagement with the world, personal reflection and growth. The expansion of digital resources in prisons also opens up an opportunity to think more imaginatively about the material that might be made available and the ways in which people in prison may consume this. Placing the end user at the centre of digital strategy offers the greatest prospects for making the most of its potential (Van De Steele and Knight 2017). This chapter has offered an empirical insight into the capacity, capability and creativity of that consumer: people in prison.

References Bennett, J. 2014. “Repression and Revolution: Representations of Criminal Justice and Prisons in Recent Documentaries.” Prison Service Journal 214: 33–38. Bennett, J., and R. Shuker. 2018. “Hope, Harmony and Humanity: Creating a Positive Social Climate in a Democratic Therapeutic Community Prison and the Implications for Penal Practice.” Journal of Criminal Psychology 8, no. 1: 44–57. Bilby, C., L. Caulfield, and L. Ridley. 2013. “Re-imagining Futures: Exploring Arts Interventions and the Process of Desistance.” London: Arts Alliance. Available at https:// www.artsincriminaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Re-imagining_ Futures_Research_Report_Final.pdf. Accessed on March 10, 2019. Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brown, M. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Carrabine, E. 2004. Power, Discourse and Resistance: A Genealogy of the Strangeways Prison Riot. Dartmouth: Ashgate. Carrabine, E. 2008. Crime, Culture and the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cohen, S., and L. Taylor. 1981. Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long Term Imprisonment, 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Crewe, B. 2009. The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation, and Social Life in an English Prison. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Crewe, B. 2011a. “Depth, Weight, Tightness: Revisiting the Pains of Imprisonment.” Punishment and Society 13, no. 5: 509–529. Crewe, B. 2011b. “Soft Power in Prison: Implications for Staff–Prisoner Relationships, Liberty and Legitimacy.” European Journal of Criminology 8, no. 6: 455–468. Ericson, R., P. Baranek, and J. Chan. 1991. Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Fiddler, M. 2007. “Projecting the Prison: The Depiction of the Uncanny in The Shawshank Redemption.” Crime Media Culture 3, no. 2: 192–206.

48  V. KNIGHT AND J. BENNETT Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. Girling, E., I. Loader, and R. Sparks. 2000. Crime and Social Change in Middle England: Questions of Order in an English Town. London: Routledge. Hall, S. 2013. “The Work of Representation.” In Representation, edited by S. Hall, J. Evans, and S. Nixon, 2nd ed., 1–59. London: Sage. Jewkes, Y. 2002. “The Use of Media in Constructing Identities in the Masculine Environment of Men’s Prisons.” European Journal of Communication 17, no. 2: 205–225. Jewkes, Y. 2006. “Creating a Stir? Prisons, Popular Media and the Power to Reform.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 137–153. Cullompton: Willan. King, A., and S. Maruna, S. 2006. “The Function of Fiction for a Punitive Public.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 16–30. Cullompton: Willan. Knight, V. 2016. Remote Control: Television in Prison. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lam, A. 2014. Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for Television Broadcast. Abingdon: Routledge. Lee, M. 2007. Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety. Cullompton: Willan. Liebling, A. assisted by H. Arnold. 2004. Prisons and Their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Liebling, A., B. Laws, E. Lieber, K. Auty, B. Schmidt, B. Crewe, J. Gardom, D. Kant, and M. Morey. 2019. “Are Hope and Possibility Achievable in Prison?” The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 58, no. 1: 104–126. Lim, D. 2009. “Looking at an Inmate, Seeing an Artist.” New York Times, October 1, 2009. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/movies/04lim.html. Accessed on December 1, 2018. Martin, K., and L. Stermac. 2010. “Measuring Hope: Is Hope Related to Criminal Behavior in Offenders?” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 54, no. 5: 693–705. McVicar, J. 1981. “Postscript.” In Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long Term Imprisonment, edited by S. Cohen and L. Taylor, 2nd ed., 221–239. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Moores, S. 1993. Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of Media Consumption. London: Sage. Morley, D. 1980. The ‘Nationwide’ Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: BFI. Mulvey, L. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. National Offender Management Service. 2015. High Security Estate Rehabilitative Culture Handbook. Unpublished Internal Report. Nellis, M. 2005. “Future Punishment in American Science Fiction Films.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 210–228. Cullompton: Willan. Prison Reading Groups. 2013. “What Books Can Do Behind Bars: Report on the Work of PRG 1999–2013.” Available at https://prisonreadinggroupscouk.files. wordpress.com/2016/03/what-books-can-do-behind-bars.pdf. Accessed on March 10, 2019.

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Rafter, N. 2000. Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rafter, N., and M. Brown. 2011. Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture. New York: New York University Press. Royal College of Psychiatrists. 2013. Enabling Environment Standards. London: Royal College of Psychiatrists. Available at https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/ default-source/improving-care/ccqi/quality-networks/enabling-environments-ee/ee-standards-document-2015.pdf?sfvrsn=abdcca36_2. Accessed on March 30, 2019. Scott, J. 1992. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Scranton, P., J. Sim, and P. Skidmore. 1991. Prisons Under Protest. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Surette, R. 1997. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. 2nd ed. Belmont: West/ Wadsworth. Surette, R. 1998. “Prologue: Some Unpopular Thoughts About Popular Crime.” In Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice, edited by F. Y. Bailey and D. C. Hale. Belmont: West/Wadsworth. Sykes, G. 1958. The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum-Security Prison. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van De Steene, S., and V. Knight. 2017. “Digital Transformation for Prisons: Developing a Needs-Based Strategy.” Probation Journal 64, no. 3: 256–268. Wilson, D., and S. O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press.

Ear Hustling: Lessons from a Prison Podcast Dawn K. Cecil

Introduction Prisons are ingrained in popular media and culture, with both fictional and nonfictional representations attempting to capture aspects of prison life. With few alternative ways of learning about these closed institutions and about those who are incarcerated, people commonly turn to these popular images to get a glimpse of what goes on behind prison walls. In turn, this imagery contributes to their perceptions of prisons (Cecil 2015). These images, however, are shaped by their creators and these individuals are not likely to have directly experienced incarceration. Whether it is meant to be a dramatic recreation or a presentation of reality, the final product is driven by the intention of the producers, their life experiences, and many other factors. It is their interpretation of the reality of life behind bars. But what happens when those who are incarcerated are in charge of the story? What can people learn from listening in on interactions behind prison walls? An essential part of the prison subculture is the jargon or slang that develops. Ear hustling is one such word, that is meant to signify eavesdropping (Woods and Poor 2017, June 14). Drawing its title from this prison slang, Ear Hustle is an award-winning podcast that debuted in 2017. This program essentially allows the audience to listen in on the stories of those who are currently incarcerated. Instead of having an outside producer come into the prison to record these conversations, as is typically done, this podcast is created by those serving time, with the help of a volunteer at the prison.

D. K. Cecil (*)  University of South Florida St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_4

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Earlonne Woods, who was serving a 31 year to life sentence at San Quentin State Prison,1 and Nigel Poor, a local artist and volunteer at the institution, serve as the hosts, giving listeners a guided audio tour of San Quentin and the lives of the men who are incarcerated within its cellblocks. Given that Ear Hustle is created by those experiencing incarceration firsthand, it provides an opportunity to present important lessons on life behind bars. Throughout the first two seasons of the podcast, listeners are introduced to 48 people serving time in San Quentin and hear the voices of others through the “yard talk” and “count time” segments of the program. They hear from Emile and Eddy, brothers who tell an entertaining story of sharing a cell, and Derrick Sr., who gets to know his son while they are incarcerated together. Lady Jae, a transgender woman, who has been in prison for 30 years tells her story. They are also introduced to Drew Sabatino, the prison party planner, and Mesro, a self-proclaimed nerd, who has created his own fantasy card game. They hear the stories of men who have spent many years in solitary confinement, those currently on death row, and from some who are about to return to the free world. The men who are featured on Ear Hustle have committed serious crimes and are serving long sentences. Most of them are long-termers, having already spent a decade or more behind bars, and many will spend the rest of their lives incarcerated. These are the type of men who have traditionally been demonized in prison imagery (Cecil 2015), but Ear Hustle provides the opportunity for people to get to know who they are. As Woods told Rolling Stone, “I want the listeners to be able to relate to the struggles that we go through on a day-to-day basis and not get caught up in the us-versus-them mentality” (Ganeva 2017, para 6). Ear Hustle presents stories of their lives before prison, of coming to prison, surviving in an institution, and the hope of going home. Their tales are filled with violence, tragedy, and heartbreak, but also friendship, laughter, and love. This chapter examines the first two seasons of Ear Hustle to uncover the valuable lessons listeners can take away about prison life from the stories of men who have spent decades behind bars.

Crime and Justice Podcasts Podcasting is a relatively new medium, becoming popular in 2005 when Apple altered the structure of iTunes. This change allowed people to download podcasts, enabling them to listen to these programs at any time, anywhere (Berry 2015). Seen as an extension of radio, podcasting has blossomed into a major source of both information and entertainment. Since their introduction, technological advances have contributed to the growth of the number of podcasts and an ever-increasing number of listeners (Berry 2015). According to Edison Research (2018), 44% of adults in the United States have listened to a podcast and an estimated 48 million (17%) listen to podcasts weekly. While reaching a smaller audience than more traditional media

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sources, podcasts are becoming more mainstream and, given their accessibility, are likely to remain a venue for alternative storytelling. Podcast listeners can select from numerous topics, including sports, popular culture, self-help, cooking, fitness, news, and fiction. One subset that has flourished in the world of podcasting is crime-related programs. While many crime podcasts feature stories of murderers, missing persons, and unsolved cases, others have delved into justice-related issues (Cecil 2017). Within the context of crime podcasts, incarceration-related stories have emerged. Some are tales of those who have been wrongfully convicted and others unveil the mysteries of life behind bars. For example, Written Inside is an eight-episode series that aired in 2017. Author Alex Kotlowitz went into Statesville Prison in Joliet, Illinois to teach writing. Each episode, which runs between seven and seventeen minutes, features one of the stories written in his class read by an actor (McNulty 2017). This program provides some insight into the minds of those who are incarcerated. In the podcast universe, Ear Hustle is extremely unique as it is the only one produced within a correctional institution. According to Poor, “the sounds in prison are so amazing and the different men’s voices are more beguiling than an image” (Ganeva 2017, para 5). By capturing these sounds and their voices, this podcast offers listeners a unique immersion into the prison environment.

Ear Hustle and Lessons About Prison Life Ear Hustle is produced in the media lab at San Quentin State Prison, which is located near San Francisco, California. This prison houses approximately 4300 people, including 658 who are on death row (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation 2018). Despite being an infamous institution, it is no longer a violent one. Instead, it is a prison filled with opportunities. Volunteers from the community come into the institution and support a plethora of prison-based programs available to the people serving time in San Quentin. Those incarcerated there are likely to have spent significant portions of their lives behind prison walls, and many will remain incarcerated until they die. It is a complex institution that has been the setting for fictionalized films and documentaries. Ear Hustle, however, offers an unprecedented look at life in San Quentin State Prison. Ear Hustle was born out of the desire to create a documentary about life in San Quentin, but the red-tape and technical issues related to filming at a correctional institution led the documentary makers to consider the power of audio (Ganeva 2017). While Woods and Poor have the freedom to create this podcast, like most things in prison, the final product is controlled by the administration. All content is approved by a staff member before it airs. Thus, when listening to Ear Hustle, it is important to remember that it is still shaped by the prison’s gatekeepers. Despite this control, the stories are unique, insightful, and at times, critical.

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During the first two seasons of Ear Hustle, which aired in 2017 and 2018, there were 18 regular episodes produced, plus two “Catch a Kite” episodes, which feature listener questions.2 Each regular episode focuses on a central theme, including cellmates, solitary confinement, death row, married sex in prison, race relations, hope and hopelessness in the face of long sentences, parenting, getting old in prison, LGBTQ issues, getting a release date, and others. Within these themes are valuable lessons about prison life, allowing listeners to learn a lot about the men who are incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison. In prison, there’s a lot of rules and I mean a lot of rules. –Earlonne Woods (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13)

Life in prison is dictated by rules; some of these are the formal rules and regulations formed by the prison administration that are set in place to maintain institutional safety and security. Like those who watch prison documentaries, listeners of Ear Hustle take away some knowledge of how the administration expects those living, working, and visiting prison to behave. Poor explains that she is not allowed to wear certain colored clothing or to share food with those who are incarcerated and is prohibited from entering many areas of the institution (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). It is also revealed that people are housed by race or ethnicity, phone calls are limited to fifteen minutes, and toilets can only be flushed two times in a five-minute period. These are the types of rules and regulations that newcomers learn during orientation; but as Woods points out, there are other important rules. “These are the unwritten rules amongst the prisoner population that we enforce ourselves” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). These rules are the basis of the inmate social system and they govern daily life and relations behind bars. There are simple rules set by those sharing a cell, such as “don’t touch my stuff…because if you do, that’s like the ultimate form of disrespect” (Woods and Poor 2017, June 14) and, so as not to spread germs, one must spit in the toilet when brushing their teeth (Woods and Poor 2018, April 11). In “The Boom Boom Room” (Woods and Poor 2017, August 30), listeners learn that at another institution there is an understanding that during the first and last hours of visitation, the patio is reserved for couples only; this time is for them to find creative ways to fulfill their sexual needs. Ultimately, rules like these are meant to make life in confinement with thousands of other people more tolerable. Some of the most complex rules govern race relations, and depending on when one was serving time and at what institution, there are dire consequences for not abiding by them. In the 1970s, California’s prisons were plagued by race riots. According to Gus Lamumba Edwards, who has spent more than 40 years in prison, you had to tape books around your stomach when leaving your cell in case someone tried to stab you. He states,

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the general rule was “you gotta do or die” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 20). In “Unwritten” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13), Charlie recounts an event from his first days in prison. Someone of another race offered him a dinner roll off his tray; seeing it as a nice gesture, he accepted. Later another inmate issued the following warning, “Hey, youngster, um, I’m glad nobody else seen that, and I’m not going to say anything, but if you ever take something off of another race’s tray again, we will kill you” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). In San Quentin, informal race-related rules still exist. If someone from another race or ethnicity gives you a packet of food as a part of a barter, it must be sealed for you to eat it (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). Both the yards and showers are racially divided and one is expected to adhere to these invisible boundaries. Wayne Boatwright, who has been imprisoned since 2012, believes that “these things are actually more for our own safety, not as a barrier to keep people out, but to make sure that everybody within that area is safe” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). These rules are not entirely unique to San Quentin, but each institution is its own entity and the rules are likely to vary. Woods informs Poor that “in maximum security, where they politic hard, you can get killed for the smallest infractions if you violate the political structures” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). Informal rules not only vary by institution, but also over time. Those governing sexuality and gender identification are an example presented in Ear Hustle. An episode titled “Down Low” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 6) focuses on LGBTQ issues and begins with Poor making the following observation about San Quentin: “I think it’s safe to say it’s a pretty homophobic institution.” Mike Adams is one of the few men who was willing to tell his story on the podcast, but he does not identify as gay, even though he has been labeled as such while in prison. According to Adams, The environment in itself is based on hyper-masculinity, so homosexuality or any LGBTQ issues actually undermine the strength because heterosexual people see it as a weakness. And so, where it’s kill or be killed…homosexuality is seen as a fault, as, as really a liability. (Woods and Poor 2018, June 6)

A similar observation is made by Woods when he states, “it’s a challenge to your masculinity, and that kind of challenge can escalate into violence real quick” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 6). But this was not always the case; what used to be acceptable now puts a target on an individual. The complexity and ever-changing informal rules are further explored through Lady Jae’s story. Lady Jae has been incarcerated for 30 years of a 27 year to life sentence and has witnessed changes in the way transgender inmates are treated. Early in her prison sentence she “married” her cellmate and by proxy became a part of his gang family. But now this type of relationship would not be accepted (Woods and Poor 2018, June 6).

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Other rules of the inmate social system are woven into the stories told by those featured on Ear Hustle. These unwritten rules demonstrate the complexity of the prison environment. Poor, serving as the voice of the audience, wonders who made these rules. Woods tells her, “I don’t know. These are the rules that were in place before any of us got here. These are the rules we live by…” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). Research on the prison community has argued that the inmate social system and its rules developed in response to the deprivations prevalent in prison are based on beliefs imported from the outside world, or a combination of the two (see Clemmer 1958; Irwin and Cressey 1962; Sykes and Messinger 1960). The deprivations faced by these men and how they deal with them are other lessons the audience of Ear Hustle can take away. There’s a lot that can get you down in here, like long days, bad food, no women. One way to show yourself and everyone else that prison doesn’t own you is to look your best. It’s self-respect, self-preservation. –Earlonne Woods (Woods and Poor 2018, April 11)

In Society of Captives, Gresham Sykes (1958) identified pains of imprisonment. When incarcerated, people are deprived of many things, including liberty, heterosexual contact, access to goods and services, security, and autonomy. The denial of these things can cause significant psychological stress and elements of the inmate social system develop in response to these pains of imprisonment (Sykes 1958). Through the stories presented in Ear Hustle, people hear firsthand accounts of different deprivations, their impact on those in prison, and how they attempt to adapt. What appears to be one of the most difficult deprivations to deal with while incarcerated is the loss of love. Like men on the outside, they want to find love, spend time with their families, and connect with their children. Greg Eskridge, who is serving a life sentence, met his wife while in prison. He expresses joy regarding an upcoming visit, but then discusses the pain and depression that follows (Woods and Poor 2017, August 30). Curtis, serving 50 years to life, for a non-violent third felony conviction, tells a tale of being a father from behind prison walls. When he was sentenced, his wife left with his daughter. The letters he wrote were returned, so he began writing what he calls the “miracle diaries.” Each one was filled with letters to his daughter. Through a strange twist of fate, Curtis’ pen pals find that his daughter is living in their hometown. They approach her, eventually giving her the diaries. This leads to a short-lived reconnection between father and daughter. Despite the painful ending, remembering the “miracle” still gives him hope and happiness (Woods and Poor 2017, September 27). The episode “Thick Glass” (Woods and Poor 2018, April 25) focuses on parenting from prison. Listeners hear the story of Derrick Holloway, who was incarcerated before his son’s first birthday. Twenty-one years later, he gets to know his son, Derrick Jr., when he begins serving a sentence in San Quentin. Derrick Jr. is eventually

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transferred to another prison and his father worries that “that he won’t make it out” (Woods and Poor 2018, April 25). Ronnel Draper, a.k.a. “Rauch,” takes a different approach to finding a connection behind bars; he finds pets, including spiders, snails, and rodents. “I take care of animals because they teach me what I can’t learn from people. It’s unconditional affection or appreciation…” (Woods and Poor 2017, July 12). These stories of love and heartbreak mimic those on the outside, demonstrating that in many ways these men are like those who are not incarcerated; but for many locked up for years on end, this longing extends to physical contact. While sex may be one of the first things many listeners think of, the stories featured on Ear Hustle demonstrate that behind bars things are not always as they seem. Some of those who are incarcerated seek human touch of any kind, which is addressed in both “The SHU” (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26) and “The Row” (Woods and Poor 2018, May 23). When left in solitude long enough, the men begin to crave human contact. Those in solitary at Pelican Bay State Prison touch pinkies through the tiny holes in their cell doors (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26). Rabbi Paul Shleffar tells the story of seeing a man on death row with broken teeth and a black eye from a very physical cell extraction, which he purposely caused to have some form of physical contact with other human beings (Woods and Poor 2018, May 23). A similar reference is made in “The SHU” (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26). Ultimately, small things that many take for granted on the outside become extremely painful for those who have been incarcerated for long periods of time. Deprivation leads to creation, or what Earlonne refers to as “workarounds.” They find ways to cook food, have sex, and communicate when on lockdown. Ear Hustle introduces listeners to these and many others. For example, they hear about Bucci’s soap business in “The Workaround” (Woods and Poor 2018, April 11). He mixes prison-issued soap with better soap purchased at the commissary, adds ingredients such as oats and dried orange peel and creates designer soap bars. Drew Sabatino has a party planning “business” and finds creative ways to decorate and make cards (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). Before Lady Jae could buy makeup through the commissary, she used to make it herself using materials to which she had access (Woods and Poor 2018, April 11). Those who are incarcerated find ways to make their time bearable, one might even say more normal. Their ingenuity shines in the face of the deprivations of prison life, which may surprise many listeners. You can’t change the factors of your case…The only thing you can do is move forward with your life and try your best to become a different person. –Earlonne Woods (Woods and Poor 2017, June 28)

Ear Hustle features men who have been incarcerated many years, even decades; many of whom will breathe their last breath behind prison walls.

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An institution like San Quentin offers these men opportunities to live a full life despite being incarcerated, especially with its focus on prison programming. They can take education classes, participate in violence prevention programs, do yoga and gardening, learn to code, and even start a podcast (Woods and Poor 2017, October 11). For some, being incarcerated for a long period of time combined with programming creates a transformative experience. Several stories within Ear Hustle demonstrate the power of programs, maturity, and time to reflect. Woods, who is now famous for his role on Ear Hustle, is one such story. Early in his incarceration, he was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison to be placed in solitary. He describes coming back to the general population, being proud of the status of having served time in Secure Housing Unit (SHU) and wanting to smoke marijuana. Poor is audibly shocked by this part of Woods’ story, to which he responds: your co-host was a fuck-up. I was 22 years old. I was rebellious back then, and CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] had place for my ass to think about my actions, which was SHU. I know looking at me today all polished up and shit you’re like, ‘How could this be?’ But I grew up. (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26)

He is careful to note that not all are positively impacted by their time in prison. According to Woods, “some guys are the same guys that walked in here years ago, they just got older…It’s like they’re frozen in time, suspended animation or something…” (Woods and Poor 2017, June 28), but the audience does not hear their stories. Instead, Ear Hustle introduces several men who have gone through major transitions while serving time. In “Misguided Loyalty” (Woods and Poor 2017, June 28), listeners get an in-depth look at the life Tommy Shakur Ross. Ross was incarcerated at the age of 19 and has been in prison for 31 years. Poor states, “the story Tommy Shakur Ross came into prison telling was probably a lot different from the one he tells now. It’s not that the facts have changed. He’s changed, and the way he tells the story has changed” (Woods and Poor 2017, June 28). His pre-prison story is one of familial conflict, seeking acceptance with a gang, murder, and ultimately the loss of his mother and brother in a revenge killing. His turning point takes place eleven years into his incarceration, when he began attending Islamic services. During this time, Ross even gets to know the brother of the person who killed his family members. Earlier in his incarceration, he would have responded with violence, but not anymore. Listeners might be most shocked to hear from men on death row, who have made the decision to better themselves. Why? According to Steve Champion, who has been on the row for 36 years, “as long as you are alive, there is hope” (Woods and Poor 2018, May 23). This attitude is adopted by others as well. Curtis, serving 50 years to life under the three-strikes law, describes his daily routine, which includes involvement in sports and church. He comments, “I was just living life. I, I was trying to make the best out of being in prison”

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(Woods and Poor 2017, September 27). Findings from research on those who are serving life in prison correspond with many of these stories. Many of those who are incarcerated for extremely long periods of time eventually find ways to make prison their “home” and to make their lives as rich as possible under the circumstances (see Irwin 2009). There are some who believe that offering prison programs means that the system is not doing its job; that it is being soft and not punishing those who have broken the laws of society. If they could hear the words of the men featured in Ear Hustle, they would see that this is not true; that these men still must live with the crimes they have committed. Even the men who have gone through a transformation during their incarceration still struggle with their past behaviors. For example, Choy was sentenced to 25 years to life for shooting a man point-blank while trying to steal his car. He describes blaming his victim for many years, holding the belief that if he had just given him the keys, he would not have had to kill him. Choy states “…it wasn’t until very later on in life that I really felt some type of remorse” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 20). After being in prison for 22 years, he has received a release date. Poor asks him whether he thinks his sentence was fair; this question is not easy for Choy to answer. He admits that he is happy to be going home, but still struggles with the fact that another family is suffering from his actions. Poor poses this type of question to others who have a chance to go home. In “Getting a Date” (Woods and Poor 2017, October 25), she asks two people awaiting a decision by the parole board, whether they deserve to be released. Danny Plunkett answers, “I struggle with whether or not I deserve to get out of prison because of the harm that I’ve caused and the life I took that can’t be returned and relived” (Woods and Poor 2017, October 25). Phillip Melendez’s answer is similar. He states, “I don’t know. I don’t know about deserving. Deserving, that’s a hard word to really, to stomach based on my accountability, just based on my understanding of…the impact I had on my victims’ lives” (Woods and Poor 2017, October 25). As Poor states, “these guys are not leaving prison thinking they got away with something” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 20). Prison imagery often paints a very different picture of those who are incarcerated. They are not shown as being as remorseful; rather, they are often presented as violent and incapable of feeling guilt (see Cecil 2015; Mason 2006; Rapping 2003; Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). Ear Hustle works toward eliminating this common stereotype of those who are incarcerated. We’re all the same. Some of us just took different routes and needed a time out and a little rehabilitation to get back to responsible behavior. –Earlonne Woods (Ganeva 2017, para 6)

Traditionally, incarcerated persons have been depicted as being very different from those who are not incarcerated, often painting them as “others” (Mason 2006); but some modern prison imagery has been successful at

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humanizing them, thereby narrowing the line between “us and them” (Cecil 2015). Humanizing those who are incarcerated is at the core of Ear Hustle. Some of the stories reveal how they ended up behind prison walls, including abuse and abandonment during childhood, loss of loved ones, or even one too many drinks before driving. But what really demonstrates that those who are incarcerated are not so different from the listeners are the things that they look forward to and dream of. Adnan discusses the joy of eating an ice cream bar while visiting with his mother for the first time in ten years (Woods and Poor 2018, March 14). Antwan Williams, a former co-producer of Ear Hustle, tells a story of being able to order a Big Mac.3 He waits in line for two hours to pick up his order and gets an ice-cold burger and fries, yet he finds joy in eating his favorite food after such a long time (Woods and Poor 2018, March 14). Listeners might be surprised that sex is not the only thing Greg Eskridge is thinking about in the days leading up to his first family visit with his wife. Eskridge is excited that there will be a real mirror, a refrigerator, and pots and pans. He looks forward to washing dishes and sleeping in a bed with nice sheets and fluffy pillows (Woods and Poor 2017, August 30). In “Getting a Date” (Woods and Poor 2017, October 25), they ask Phillip Melendez, who has been incarcerated for 20 years, what freedom means to him. He describes watching a movie on the couch with his wife and kids, after they have gone out to eat ice cream. Ron Self, who has served 23 years and is about to be released, wants to fall in love, be able to hold that person, and get a dog (Woods and Poor 2017, October 25). “So Long” (Woods and Poor 2018, June 20) features the stories of men who are about to be released from prison, with whom Woods and Poor conduct “exit interviews.” Gus Lamumba Edwards, who is being released after more than 40 years, wants to eat an omelet and visit his parents’ graves. Chayne wants to see his girlfriend and sleep in the back of the car as she drives him home. These are the normal things that they are looking forward to. Each of these seemingly simple things further erases the line between those who are incarcerated and those listening to their stories on Ear Hustle. Overall, the main lessons about prison life featured during the first two seasons of Ear Hustle include prison rules, pains of imprisonment, and transformative experiences during incarceration, and that those incarcerated are not that different from those listening to the podcast. Those who do not know much about prison life can learn many other things as well, including policies related to solitary confinement, what restorative justice is, and about life on death row. Several misconceptions are corrected through the various stories told. When discussing the issue of sex, Woods states, “When people think about having sex in prison, they always bring up ‘dropping the soap’ and all that bullshit. That shit is cliché. It don’t go down like that. It’s way more complicated” (Woods and Poor 2017, August 30). Violence is also another factor addressed. Traditional prison imagery is filled with violence

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and California’s prisons have a violent history. Woods notes that whereas stabbings were common in San Quentin during the 1980s, they are now infrequent occurrences (Woods and Poor 2017, September 13). Overall, the stories told directly from those incarcerated in San Quentin provide valuable lessons about prison life and work toward correcting common stereotypes and misconceptions about what life is like for those who are imprisoned.

Conclusion Prison imagery has been around for decades. Tales of those who are incarcerated are ingrained in popular culture. Given that prisons are removed from the daily lives of most people, this imagery is powerful. It helps shape their perceptions of these institutions and of those who are incarcerated (Cecil 2015). While many images of prison have a foot in reality, they are more often than not presented through the eyes of outsiders. Those who produce films, documentaries, and other forms of prison imagery, come with inherent biases and beliefs, which in turn shape the final product. Ear Hustle, on the other hand, is generated by those experiencing incarceration firsthand. It presents its audience with a chance to listen in on conversations held by those who are incarcerated, the people who work there, and families affected by incarceration. By the end of its first season, Ear Hustle was downloaded more than six million times (Thomas 2017), demonstrating that people want to hear their stories. Ear Hustle is based on the premise of eavesdropping. We are taught to think of eavesdropping as something invasive and rude; yet it is a part of human nature. We are curious and inquisitive beings. Writing about eavesdropping on his colleagues’ classes, James M. Lang (2004) comments that it is “the lure of the unknown” (para 9) and that he is “intrigued and seduced” by what he does not know (para 10). For many, prison is filled with the “unknown” and they too may be “intrigued and seduced” enough to listen to this type of podcast. Ear Hustle presents them with the chance to hear prison and to hear directly from those who are incarcerated. The “eavesdropping” provided by this program lets listeners in on some of the secrets of prison life and in doing so, presents critical lessons about incarceration and those who are serving time behind bars. What makes Ear Hustle both unique and special is that it is produced by those who are experiencing incarceration, but Nigel Poor also plays an important role. As a “free person” she is an outsider, thereby serving as a stand in for the listeners. She is coming from their perspective as someone who has not directly experienced incarceration in the way those serving time have. Poor has made the choice to come into the institution and has the freedom to leave at any time. After listening to the stories of men who have been in solitary for up to 26 years, she states that she cannot “wrap her mind around being there for months” (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26), and the following exchange takes place:

62  D. K. CECIL Earlonne: Naw? Just curious, where you gonna go when you leave here tonight? Nigel: Uh, I’m gonna go home. Earlonne: That’s why you would never be able to wrap your mind around this because you’re going home. (Woods and Poor 2017, July 26)

Poor makes important observations from her perspective, which Woods and the others explain, corroborate, or even correct. Listeners come to about learn Poor’s preconceived notions about prison and those who are incarcerated, which they too may have shared. In many ways, she serves as their companion on this journey through San Quentin. In a Rolling Stone article about Ear Hustle, Tana Ganeva (2017, para 11) writes, “in focusing on the person, the series mostly stays away from larger policy issues surrounding mass incarceration. But the themes that propel criminal justice reform are there.” Policy-related issues are not the focus, but they are an underlying theme. Listeners can become informed about the use of solitary confinement. They learn about the three-strikes law and the fact that many of the men who have been sentenced under it have not committed crimes of violence. But each of these things is told within the context of personal stories, which is what gives Ear Hustle the potential to cause change. People’s opinions are generally not swayed by straight facts, statistics, and detailed policy-related discussions. According to communication research, the key to getting people to change their opinions on an issue is personalization (Heath 2009; Zillman 2006). Letting people tell their stories helps others better understand and relate to the issues. Addressing the American Society of Criminology in 2016, Piper Kerman (2016), author of Orange Is the New Black and someone who has experienced incarceration, discussed the power of personal stories in inciting reform. She believes it is important to give those who are incarcerated the tools to tell their own stories, which Kerman does by teaching writing in two prisons. Programs, such as the media lab in which Ear Hustle was born and produced, do this as well. When one considers the big picture, however, these stories are only the tip of the iceberg. Worldwide there are more than 10.74 million people incarcerated (Walmsley 2018). There is still so much more people could learn from those who are serving time, but we need to give them the tools and avenues to tell their stories. Ultimately, Ear Hustle not only provides critical lessons on prison life, it serves as an advocate for correctional treatment programs. It may also leave people questioning the utility of sentencing so many people to significant portions of their lives in prison. On a final note, in the first season of Ear Hustle, Woods states, “things on the outside with the law, with our families, they happen beyond our control. Our hopes go up, our hopes go down, and when they’re down you gotta figure out how to carry on” (Woods and Poor 2017, September 27). And, carry on is what Woods has done. During his incarceration, he transformed. He participated in programs, matured, and made a name for himself

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with the public. In December 2018, Woods became a “former resident” of San Quentin after Governor Jerry Brown commuted his sentence (Woods and Poor 2018, December 12). Residing in transitional housing, he has been hired by Radiotopia to continue his work as co-producer of Ear Hustle. He leaves behind his brother and countless friends, who he feels should have a chance at release as well, which is what makes his departure bittersweet. Woods is the epitome of the lessons contained within the stories featured on Ear Hustle.

Notes 1.  In late 2018, it was announced that Earlonne Woods’ sentence was commuted by the Governor of California. He was released from in December 2018 (Woods and Poor 2018, November 24; 2018, December 12). 2. “Catch a Kite” episodes were not examined in this chapter. 3. On occasion, there are fundraising events in San Quentin, which allow the men to purchase food that they would not otherwise be able to obtain while incarcerated (Woods and Poor 2018, March 14).

References Berry, Richard. 2015. “A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, no. 2: 170–178. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2015.1083363. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. 2018. “San Quentin Quarterly Statistical Report.” California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Accessed December 9, 2018. https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Facilities_ Locator/docs/SB601/SQ-SB601-Quarterly-Statistical-Report.pdf. Cecil, Dawn K. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture: From The Big House to Orange Is the New Black. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Cecil, Dawn K. 2017. “Wrongful Convictions, Cold Cases, and Killers: An Analysis of Crime Podcasts.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology. Philadelphia: American Society of Criminology. Clemmer, Donald. 1958. The Prison Community. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Edison Research. 2018. “The Podcast Consumer 2018.” Edison Research, April 19. Accessed January 7, 2019. www.edisonresearch.com/podcast-consumer-2018/. Ganeva, Tana. 2017. “‘Ear Hustle’: How Two Inmates Created First Prison Podcast.” Rolling Stone, July 10. Accessed December 9, 2018. https://www. rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ear-hustle-how-two-inmates-createdfirst-prison-podcast-205694/. Heath, Robert. 2009. “Emotional Engagement: How Television Builds Big Brands at Low Attention.” Journal of Advertising Research 49, no. 1: 62–73. Irwin, John. 2009. Lifers: Seeking Redemption in Prison. New York: Routledge. Irwin, John, and Donald R. Cressey. 1962. “Thieves, Convicts and the Inmate Culture.” Social Problems 10, no. 2: 142–155.

64  D. K. CECIL Kerman, Piper. 2016. “Activism, Media, and Criminal Justice.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology. New Orleans: American Society of Criminology. Lang, James M. 2004. “The Benefits of Eavesdropping.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 10. Accessed December 12, 2018. https://www.chronicle.com/ article/The-Benefits-of-Eavesdropping/44622. Mason, Paul. 2006. “Lies, Distortion, and What Doesn’t Work: Monitoring Prison Stories in the British Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 2, no. 3: 251–267. McNulty, Colin. 2017. Written Inside: Stories About Prison Cells. Chicago: WBEZ. https://www.wbez.org/series/written-inside/7b02369b-9927-472b-a5cc-c16ae 7bab94d. Rapping, Elayne. 2003. Law and Justice as Seen on TV. New York: New York University Press. Sykes, Gresham. 1958. Society of Captives. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sykes, Gresham, and Sheldon L. Messinger. 1960. “The Inmate Social System.” In Theoretical Studies in the Social Organization of Prison, edited by Richard Cloward, 5–19. New York: Social Science Research Council. Thomas, Rahsaan. 2017. “Ear Hustle Wraps Up First Season with Over Six Million Downloads.” San Quentin News, December 11. Accessed December 12, 2018. https://sanquentinnews.com/ear-hustle-wraps-first-season-six-million-downloads/. Walmsley, Roy. 2018. “World Prison Population List (12th Edition).” World Prison Brief. Accessed January 8, 2019. http://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/ files/resources/downloads/wppl_12.pdf. Wilson, David, and Sean S. O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester, UK: Waterside Press. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, June 14. “Cellies.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/6/14/episode-one-cellies-1. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, June 28. “Misguided Loyalty.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/6/28/episode-twomisguided-loyalty. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, July 12. “Looking Out.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/7/12/episodethree-looking-out. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, July 26. “The SHU.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/7/26/episode-four-theshu. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, August 30. “The Boom Boom Room.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/8/30/ episode-six-the-boom-boom-room. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, September 13. “Unwritten.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/9/13/episodeseven-unwritten. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, September 27. “Left Behind.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/9/27/episodeeight-left-behind. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, October 11. “Gold Coats and OGs.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/10/11/ episode-nine-gold-coats-and-ogs.

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Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2017, October 25. “Getting a Date.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2017/10/25/ getting-a-date. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, March 14. “Firsts.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/3/14/firsts. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, April 11. “The Workaround.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/4/11/theworkaround. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, April 25. “Thick Glass.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/4/25/thickglass. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, May 23. “The Row.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/5/23/the-row. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, June 6. “Down Low.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/6/6/down-low. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, June 20. “So Long.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/6/20/so-long. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, November 24. “Big News: It’s Time.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/11/24/ big-news-its-time. Woods, Earlonne, and Nigel Poor. 2018, December 12. “Bittersweet.” Ear Hustle. Oakland: Radiotopia. https://www.earhustlesq.com/listen/2018/12/12/ bittersweet. Zillman, Dolf. 2006. “Exemplification Effects in the Promotion of Safety and Health.” Journal of Communication 56, no. 1: 221–237.

“O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage”: The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Memoirs of Guantánamo Bay Josephine Metcalf

Introduction: The Limitations of Torture Guantánamo Bay remains the primary custody center for America’s ­detainees in its War on Terror. It has received the most public attention of any incarcerated space during this period because of high-profile media coverage detailing human rights abuses (whether legal, physical, or psychological). Cultural criminologist Michelle Brown contends “much of the visualization of Guantánamo has occurred from a distance and via the cultural imaginary” (2009, 140). Yet as we will see, Guantánamo has in fact produced culture from within. Barbara Harlow, famed for her studies of Resistance Literature, applies the term “Extraordinary Renditions”—a pun on the US government justification for transporting people to Guantánamo—to the sub-genre of literature and cultural production stemming from the controversial site, including prisoner officers’ memoirs, journalists, and lawyers’ exposés, novels, plays, fictional films, and documentaries (2011, 2).1 Though Harlow only explores one example of a memoir stemming from an actual Guantánamo (former) detainee, there are at least nine such narratives to date.2 The ‘peculiar’ nature of these nine texts stems in part from the tensions between whether they fit into Extraordinary Renditions Literature or (American) prison memoirs. The latter often consider the author’s life

J. Metcalf (*)  University of Hull, Hull, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_5

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of crime prior to incarceration and reflect on the behaviors (e.g., greed) or structural violence (such as poverty or racism) that led them to the prison. Once incarcerated, the reader follows the narrator through a transformative journey whereby they come into enlightenment following their delinquency. Much of the text may revolve around “entertaining” stories of the prison to accompany details of shocking hardships and graphic violence. These elements of entertainment involve inter-personal relationships between inmates and the ability of memorable characters to form friendships in the most unlikely places. But what happens then, when as in the case of Guantánamo memoirs, there is often no ‘traditional’ life of crime and guilt is speculative? Furthermore, what happens to the prison narrative when conversion is not permitted—indeed, not necessary—and the author commonly remains in solitary confinement with their only humane relationships with those in power? It is of little surprise that such memoirs trigger provocative and penetrating reading experiences.3 Given the emerging scandals since its inception as a wartime detention center in January 2002, it is predictable that Guantánamo itself—as well as resultant culture—has become the subject of complex scholarly enquiry in a variety of theoretical frames. As lawyer Mark Falkoff puts simply, “For academics, Guantánamo is an intellectual feast” (2007a, 393). Among ­others, geography scholar Derek Gregory reflects on Guantánamo as a “space of exception” and contends we must move beyond limited ‘Agambenic’ accounts of the prison (2006). Professor of Criminal Justice, Michael Welch, provides a comprehensive overview of the structure and staffing of Guantánamo as a “Foucauldian phenomenon” (2009). Brown explores “Prison Portents” including Abu Ghraib alongside Guantánamo to consider penal “spectatorship” in a post-9/11 context (2009, 122–152). Literary expert Philipp Hubmann has addressed the novel and play, both entitled Guantánamo, to consider the ways in which authors can narrate the prison “despite its political and historical uncertainty” (2017, 323–355). Harlow considers how different modes of (literary/cultural) representations have served to present Guantánamo—usually with similar goals of seeking its closure—(2011) while political scientist John Hickman is concerned with journalistic accounts of the prison and their limitations (2011). The highprofile text, Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (2007b), edited by Falkoff, has also been scrutinized at length by scholars including Maureen Boyle (2008), Elisabeth Weber (2011), Greg Mullins (2011), and Kristina Reardon (2015).4 Writing about human rights abuses (in relation to Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir, Guantánamo Diary), philosopher Diana Meyers is convinced that “victims’ stories can make a substantial contribution to eradicating the hatred and contempt that slick the slope that descends to more flagrant abuse” (2016, 2). But, I believe we need to be wary of reading memoirs by (former) Guantánamo detainees solely for corroborating (and ceasing) torture in the contemporary US context. To refer to the narratives/narrators only

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with reference to torture is limiting and reductive; it would do the authors a disservice by ‘buying into’ the US government narrative. Rather, this chapter will assert that though these memoirists are all ultimately memorializing their experiences at the hands of the US government—and thus ‘urgent’ reads as the reader must validate (re-witness) the memorialization—they do this in different ways with varying ends and effects. Along these lines, there has been little scholarly consideration of autobiographical narratives from Guantánamo. Perhaps this is understandable given, as Michael Richardson argues, the limitations of first-person testimony when narrating torture (which, while “powerful and vital” it “says only what it can say”) (2013, 205). Rather, Richardson suggests literary writing can “speak not only the experience of torture and the trauma of living with it, but to also unmask its dynamics” (2013, 206). Most academic attention has been directed at the earliest Guantánamo memoir, Moazzam Begg’s Enemy Combatant (2006), as well as one of the more recent ones, Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary (2015). The latter—as we shall see—was notably unique in its production and publication. This chapter will ruminate on a selection of four such memoirs: Begg and Slahi’s as well as Murat Kurnaz’s Five Years of My Life (2008) and Ahmed Errachidi’s The General (2013), to contend that these narratives have produced peculiarly intense understandings and conceptualizations of incarceration for the reader. In many ways, these memoirs are both exceptional (e.g., the narrators’ need to prove their innocence having been pre-judged as ‘enemy combatants’) and unexceptional (e.g., prison narratives often demonstrate humanity and humor). Yet the use of the word ‘exceptional’ with its deeply American associations is somehow not apposite when dealing with stories in which the US government is responsible for erroneous human suffering. I hence suggest we think of these memoirs as both ‘peculiar’ and ‘universal’ in which we must pay sufficient attention to the ‘normal’ aspects of the memoirs themselves as a profound and integral part of their memorialization process. Furthermore, I believe we must simultaneously recognize the strength of these memoirs as a literary sub-genre that stand in their own right (whether of US prison memoirs or Extraordinary Renditions Literature), while yet acknowledging their individuality. Though there have been sufficient publications to warrant a generic grouping, each memoirist’s agency is of the utmost importance given the lumpen stereotyping by the US government of all Guantánamo’s detainees as Islamic terrorists.

The ‘English’ One: Brit(t)ain, Poetry, and Dignity When Moazzam Begg published Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar the year after his 2005 release, his name was somewhat familiar to the public. Begg had already featured as a character in the 2004 play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (which would have a successful run in both London’s West End and off-Broadway in New York).

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In the acknowledgments to his memoir, Begg states how word of the play reached him in custody so “when I was looking for someone to help me write my story I’m glad I didn’t have to look too far” (2006, xi). Brittain, an award-winning journalist and former associate foreign editor of The Guardian, would receive recognition as a co-author of Enemy Combatant on the internal title page as well as the copyright page, and her photograph and biography appear below Begg’s on the back inside sleeve. Yet her name does not appear on the outside cover. This is not a new phenomenon in the writing of memoirs, but with a story as intense as the one about to be told, Brittain’s name could not be afforded to ‘dilute’ the details in this case. Published originally in 2006 by The New Press, the inside sleeve declares the house is “a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book industry …. Operates in the public interest … [dedicated to publishing] works of educational, cultural and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.” Certainly, Enemy Combatant raises questions about what it means to be an engaged citizen in a twenty-first-century democracy and what it means to be civilized. The subtitle listing Begg’s three sites of incarceration (Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar) was used for the US edition of the memoir. Notably anomalous for its reversal of timeline, perhaps Guantánamo appeared first because it was the most well-known and because it constituted Begg’s longest period of incarceration. For the UK edition, the subtitle became A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantánamo and Back (or later for the Simon & Schuster version, The Terrifying True Story of a Briton in Guantánamo). The change in subtitle was noted by Harlow (2011, 7) and discussed by Begg himself in an interview with UK academic Claire Chambers (2011, 9). Begg’s citizenship plays a central role in his memoir, and Chambers’s interview suggests Begg is acutely aware of the power of his nationality in promoting his story. Begg is keen to remind the reader that MI5 are partly culpable for his status at Guantánamo (despite MI5’s assurances that they would never take part in rendition and torture), and one of the “hardest truths” he ever claims to face is “the complicity of my own government in what happened” (2006, 167–168, 392). Begg’s quintessential Britishness is flagged from the earliest pages with his father taking him to Shakespeare’s birthplace, Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, and Blenheim Palace (2006, 23). When the narrator explodes in sheer frustration at his temper and later apologizes to the camp commander “for having lost control – not because my complaints weren’t genuine, but because it was so unlike me to swear” (Begg 2006, 241), the reader might tentatively point toward British politeness (Begg 2006, 241). Moreover, Begg remarks that “England triggered the interest” of many of the military personnel; over the years, “being a British Muslim held by the US forces would be something of a novelty” (2006, 124). Begg’s nationality then, reinforced by the UK’s subtitle, disrupts ‘comfortable’ notions about distance and the Other.

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The New Press could not have anticipated that they were kick-starting a cycle of Guantánamo stories in memoir form. Nor did The New Press predict how popular such a memoir would be (in part because of its “Britishness”?). In 2007, an imprint of the (corporate) Simon & Schuster would release another edition. Having read the memoir, perhaps Brittain’s omission from the front cover is justified; Begg is an educated man who reads/discusses books and writes poetry in Guantánamo (and thus, it is implied, capable of writing a memoir alone). When the interrogators write a confession for Begg to sign, his first concern is not with his supposed actions as detailed in the document, but amusingly rather “The English used here is terrible. Nobody could ever believe that I would write such a document” (2006, 198). Begg recalls that one of his interrogators had, in a previous session, asked him to “stop using big words” (2006, 198). His poems feature in Falkoff’s 2007 collection, whereby Begg’s brief biography before his poem identifies him as a recent memoirist (assisting The New Press in their marketing on some level?) (Falkoff 2007b, 29). Often in prison memoirs, the narrative trajectory incorporates an enlightened education as the author discovers reading (or even learns to read) while incarcerated. Such informal edification is ever more impressive given the restricted conditions under which it takes place. Begg is already erudite, and his challenge under such oppression is to maintain his scholarly focus. Falkoff details the “profound” obstacles his contributors faced in composing their poems, including not being permitted regular access to pen and papers (2007b, 3). He further notes “many men at Guantánamo turned to writing poetry as a way to maintain their sanity, to memorialize their suffering, and to preserve their humanity through acts of creation” (2007b, 3). Unlike the other three memoirists, Begg memorably presents samples of his poetry, written in response to specific moments of his incarceration (2006, 274–275, 299, 301, 349). Though reading materials are hard to come by in both Bagram and Guantánamo (and books are not evidenced to the same extent in the other memoirs), Begg loves “devouring” nineteenth-century classics by Dickens and Brontë and even reads Harry Potter and a romance novel “out of sheer desperation … and straight afterwards yearned to read something new” (2006, 218). In line with Falkoff’s reasoning for writing poetry, Begg clearly writes but also reads to retain his humanity, sanity, and sense of agency, especially important in an environment where interrogators are playing mind games with detainees. In Foucauldian terms, maintaining control of one’s own mind is fundamental for survival. Begg is simultaneously both exceptional and unexceptional as a prison memoirist in his pre-prison education and his use of literacy. The theme of humanity is pervasive in all four memoirs, but perhaps particularly so in Begg’s narrative because of the detail he provides about the (‘good’) guards. American journalist David Ignatius, writing the forward to Enemy Combatant, suggests the memoir is poignant not just because Begg “retains his essential humanity amid these horrifying circumstances,” but

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because the narrator—almost unbelievably at times—“sees the humanity in his captors, as well” (Begg 2006, vii). Begg returns to this line of thinking in his epilogue, contending that the fact he became friendly with several guards “is a testimony to the natural effect of human contact even in the most adversarial circumstances” (2006, 394). Indeed, Begg finds guards with whom he can have “reasonable discussions” (2006, 121); guards with “similar values and morals to mine” (2006, 126); describes the guard who refused to process a man in his 90s who was denied a hearing aid as a security risk (2006, 175); and guards with whom he can discuss literature and poetry (2006, 179, 181, 222, 236). It was a guard who became one of his “closest friends” (2006, 248), and as a result, Begg writes “I will never forget them” (2006, 253). Given the torture Begg testifies he is subjected to in the course of his incarceration at the hands of the Americans, his decision to assert that “all Americans were not the same” (2006, 237) and to draw humane links between those from different cultures/countries who are different sides of the bars is remarkable. Diana Meyers views victims of human rights abuses as “moral agents,” and “because they are moral agents, they must decide how to continue in a mutually acceptable – that is, morally commendable – way” (2016, 3). For Begg, to merely berate his captors will not suffice. Rather, the humanity in both Begg as (a moral agent) narrator, and his ability to recognize humanity in others, serves as a steadfast challenge to the US government’s dominant narrative that the detainees are inhumane terrorists who must hence be kept in isolation (Hussain in Hafetz 2016, 213–214). Though he most certainly pays attention to the appalling behavior of guards in certain instances (a key element of prison memoirs is the Othering of guards as inciters of in-prison violence), the narrator refuses to exclusively ‘Other’ his captors. This is despite the guards adhering to the ‘Othering’ actions of the US government toward detainees. Such philosophical musings challenge the boundaries of both Extraordinary Literatures and more traditional prison writings. Alongside Begg’s Britishness, his knowledge and humanity combine to create a sense of narrative dignity throughout Enemy Combatant. Dignity is at the heart of human rights laws, yet such legalities have been dismissed as unnecessary in Guantánamo. What should these memoirists do when they cannot rely on the state for their dignity? Begg suggests he cannot maintain, or even increase, his own self-respect and sense of self-worth by reducing the dignity of others. Rather, dignity for Begg becomes a relational process; “I made a huge discovery during incarceration, about relating to people” (2006, 234). It is in his relationship with military personnel that his dignity is inadvertently reinforced. Human nature dictates that we keep our enemies at arm’s length; we often worry that by engaging the ‘wicked,’ we may become ‘wicked’ ourselves. In the case of Guantánamo, both detainees and guards perceive each other as immoral (blurring the line between perpetrators and victims). It would be ‘easy’ for both parties to demonize one another to absolve themselves of the realization that ‘ordinary’ people can

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have inhumane conduct. As Jeffrey Murer explains, “through debasement, the self is reassured of essential difference” (2002, 215). Encouraging such empathetic relationships with his captors could be risky for Begg; it could persuade readers to overlook their crimes. Nevertheless, it ironically becomes the guards in his memoirs who often undertake the transformative prison experience (almost an inversion of the conventional prison memoir), showing expressions of remorse, coming to terms with their actions, and seeking to understand (or even convert to) Islam. Begg knows of two soldiers who converted to Islam in Guantánamo while another memorably states, “Listen, Mr Begg. I’ve learned so much from you. I will never forget you” (2006, 220, 253).

The ‘Young’ One: Photos, Family, and Innocence Published originally in Germany in 2007, a logical decision given Kurnaz’s status as a German citizen (the son of Turkish immigrants), the text was released in English the following year by Palgrave Macmillan. Though the original cover sported a thumbnail image of Kurnaz himself set against the familiar photograph of orange-clad detainees kneeling, the second edition sported a plain black cover, with subtle tally markings to suggest time served. Its full title, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo, is notable for both its specific number and its calculated use of the word “innocent.” Perhaps by the publication of Errachidi and Slahi’s memoirs, the assumption of innocence would be instinctive, but at an earlier stage, this needed highlighting—many Americans were still succumbing to the government’s narrative of culpable combatants. Like Begg, Kurnaz was supported in his writing by an established author, journalist Helmut Kuhn, though similarly to Enemy Combatant the co-creator’s name has no place on the outside cover. Rather, the “foreword by Patti Smith” stands out in white writing, possibly connived to attract a culturally ‘savvy’ audience. Hickman notably references both Begg and Kurnaz in his exploration of nonfiction accounts of Guantánamo, concluding that their memoirs suggest the mistreatment of their authors and other detainees is as much for punishment itself, as it is for intelligence collection (2011, 252). Meanwhile in the edited collection Cosmopolitan Animals, Terri Tomsky notes that Kurnaz “finds consolation in the small yet subversive act of hiding his breadcrumbs and feeding them to the hummingbirds and iguanas” in order to “regain ownership of his [human] identity” while Begg’s memoir is also cited for the authorities’ treatment of detainees as “subhuman” or “animal[s] in the cage” (indeed, “lions in the cage”) (2015, 204, 205, 212). In cursory ways, Five Years proffers clichés that set it in line with ­formulaic ‘Hollywood’ prison stories. There is the “boss of the cell” when Kurnaz is being held in Peshawar where he also tries to do something “worthwhile” while incarcerated (study the Koran); the cellmate with a “good heart” in Kandahar; the monotonous routines “day in, day out”; the bad guard who

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was “simply stupid”; and instances showing prisoners were “not utterly powerless” (2008, 33, 39, 57, 65, 146, 151). Kurnaz’s inclusion of photographs in the center of the book speaks to traditional autobiographical tropes (paratextual images help to reconstruct memories and ensure ‘believability’ for both the writer and the reader). But in prison memoirs specifically, photographs are often inextricably linked with the conversion of self that takes place under incarcerated conditions, documenting transformation from childhood, through teenage years and crime, to prison, redemption, and then release in some cases. Along these lines, Kurnaz’s choice of images is curious. Of the ten photographs in the center of Kurnaz’s book, eight are Department of Defense images from 2002 showing the processing of detainees, cell size, layout, and the transport goggles/headphones that make detainees look like ‘aliens.’ This is perhaps understandable given the date of publication—some Americans may still be coming into awareness of the situation. Only the final two photographs are outside of Guantánamo; one is Kurnaz aged 16, a ‘normal’ teenager, while the last one shows him embracing his mother upon release in 2006, sporting long hair and an Islamic cap. In the closing pages of the book, he has kept his beard: “I think it looks nice, and growing a beard was the only freedom I enjoyed in Guantánamo” (2008, 232). The final photograph thus serves as a snub of sorts to Guantánamo authorities, as well as underlining the importance of religion for his sense of agency. Facial hair has long been a defining visual aspect of Islam; Begg is outraged at the American barber who vocalizes his thrill when shaving detainees because “he knew the beard was an important symbol of Muslim identity” (2006, 112). Kurnaz may have purposely ‘toned down’ the religious references in his memoir to appeal to a Western reader (again, deliberate given the early date of the memoir?); he arguably assumes a Western reader (e.g., in his explanation of Turkish weddings) (2008, 87). Though Kurnaz was on a quest to become more devout before his arrest, the two photographs suggest some degree of religious conversion (the closest we get to any conversion in these four memoirs) and the focus remains on him—his mother is obscured in the image. The lack of family photographs and the shielded mother, despite Kurnaz’s intense and extensive narration of his family, are indicative of the tensions inherent in his memoir. The narrative seemingly tries to demonstrate the impact of Guantánamo reverberating beyond prison walls itself and yet tries to protect the narrator’s family from the horrors he has been through and absolve them of further pain.5 From the outset of each of the four memoirs, family is highlighted. Erradichi dedicates his memoir immediately to his “dear mother,” Slahi to his late mother, and Begg to his father, wife, and children. In a more universal fashion, Kurnaz states his book is for “all the Guantánamo detainees and their families.” Falkoff maintains that the American public might read the poetry and start to see these detainees “not just as faceless ‘terrorists,’ but as fathers, sons and brothers…” (2007c, 2). Similarly in all four texts, the narrators regularly voice concern for family

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members (‘what do they know about my whereabouts? Have they been tortured?’). But Murnaz’s mother is identified even as early as the foreword by Patti Smith, who notes Kurnaz’s age as commensurate with her own son and states “I could only imagine the horror and frustration his mother experienced” (2008, 9). The familial theme is extended in Kurnaz’s memoir in its notably condensed narration. Begg also pays attention to his infancy and upbringing, but despite the fact he has an opening chapter “Illegally Detained,” Begg then jumps back to his childhood and spends a couple of chapters working through his life in chronological order. By comparison, Kurnaz adopts a non-chronological order, moving between family reminiscences and scenes of torture, a juxtaposition which has the effect of figuratively drawing his family into this hellish narrative. Indeed, on his second page Kurnaz tells us of his profound love for his brothers, and by the thirteenth page, the narrator has been incarcerated and is being tortured. Kurnaz’s reader is escorted from Pakistan to Afghanistan, then back to his childhood trips and wedding in Turkey, forward to Guantánamo, back to his birth and childhood years in Germany, before returning to Guantánamo. Halfway through the memoir, the narrator is pleased to receive a new neighbor who he had met in jail in Pakistan, and though Kurnaz knows a little about his background, “Salah didn’t like talking about his family and his life before Guantánamo” (2008, 147). Rather, “In prison it’s better not to open up too much about yourself” (Kurnaz 2008, 147). Kurnaz’s generic reference to prison is ever more exaggerated in Guantánamo, where threats to your family from the authorities can be a form of torture in itself. In narrating details of his childhood and family, Kurnaz thus reminds the reader of his current freed status. Kurnaz’s attention to childhood is in line with the “innocence” of his title. Not merely the fact he is literally guiltless of terrorist activities, but in his regular thinking that this is all a mistake and he would be soon set free (2008, 33, 36, 43, 45, 46). Though such beliefs are apparent in the other memoirs, it seems exacerbated in Five Years, perhaps reflecting the narrator’s significantly younger age; he was 19 when captured.6 Though Kurnaz is judiciously aware like his fellow memoirists that “torture changes people” (2008, 57), he often sounds childlike: “how strange the world was” (2008, 160). And though he is subjected to tortures the same as his fellow memoirists (beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, abuse of the Koran, hanging), Kurnaz is particularly moved by the plight of young men (“He couldn’t have been more than sixteen”), the elderly (“The man, I was told, was over ninety”), and relatives watching as one another were beaten (“There were lots of fathers and sons in Guantánamo … there were also lots of brothers”) (2008, 57, 216, 111, 148). Memorialization is an act that is often conducted by governments to demonstrate respect for victims and to acknowledge past mistakes. But in the case of Guantánamo memoirists like Kurnaz, a lack of government apology forces (former) detainees to memorialize themselves and their own stories. Kurnaz’s way to do so is to incorporate his ‘innocent’

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family and his ‘innocent’ upbringing as central to the narrative, in so doing making the horror of incarceration at Guantánamo ever more distressing for the reader.

The ‘Leading’ One: Memorials, Morals, and Collective Action Kurnaz participated in the hunger strikes that took place in Guantánamo in 2005. The intention of the actions was to seek an end to the defilement of the Koran at the hands of officers, respect for detainees’ faith, medicine for the wounded and for the restriction of torture (Kurnaz 2008, 152–153). At first glance, the strikes are not effective; as Kurnaz details: “I soon realized that we didn’t have any real power. It was just an illusion. It was up to the general alone whether or not there would be negotiations” (2008, 154). The prisoner who was nominated among detainees to confer with the authorities was a ruse so that “the real emir could remain in the background, undetected” (Kurnaz 2008, 152). Ironically, Kurnaz does reveal some semblance of power in his statement that this man “remained the real emir without the Americans ever catching on… I know his name but I’m not saying anything. As of 2007 he’s still in Guantánamo, and he’s still the prisoners’ true leader” (2008, 154). Kurnaz could be referencing Ahmed Errachidi, the title of whose memoir The General: The Ordinary Man Who Challenged Guantánamo was a retort to the ineffective military leaders at Guantánamo and Errachidi’s informal promotion to leader of detainees.7 While Kurnaz is the youngest of these four memoirists, Errachidi is the oldest, born in 1966. His leadership status stands in contrast to Kurnaz’s approach whose intermittent naivety and focus on his family reminds us of his youth. Errachidi’s memoir was published in 2013 by the Random House group; another mainstream publishing house like Kurnaz’s suggests publishers had now attuned to the financial potential in such books. Co-written with Gillian Slovo (whose name yet again does not figure on the cover), Slovo was the co-author alongside Victoria Brittain (of Begg fame) of the 2004 play Guantánamo. If the “innocence” of Kurnaz’s title is satirical, then so too is the “ordinary” of Errachidi’s. On the inside page of The General, the subtitle has been changed to: The ordinary man who became one of the bravest prisoners in Guantánamo. Several years passed between the publication of Five Years and The General yet the reasoning for each memoir is analogous. Kurnaz voices disquiet at what journalists were told when they visit Guantánamo (2008, 157, 211). Upon release, Kurnaz is asked by a reporter about the movie The Road to Guantánamo and responds: “I said that it was a good movie, but that it only depicted some of the truth” (2008, 236). In the closing paragraphs of his memoir, Kurnaz underscores, “It’s important that our stories are told. We need to counter the endless reports written in Guantánamo itself. We have to

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speak up and say … The world needs to know about … We have to describe how …” (2008, 236). Errachidi, too, feels a sense of accountability: “I came to understand that I was a witness to democracy being put into the deepest of comas. From the very first I knew it was my responsibility to let the world know what was happening” (2013, 80). Such responsibility becomes central to Errachidi’s survival: “One of the ways I kept myself sane during this terrible time was by telling myself that it was my task to bear testimony to the crimes …” (2013, 164). The reader of such memoirs must in turn actively bear witness to these testimonies in order for the writer to testify and commemorate what has happened. The act of memorialization in these contexts is worthy of consideration. Sometimes we publicly commemorate to draw a line under the past, while at times we want to ensure it does not happen again in future. In public contexts, commemorations are usually orchestrated and necessarily selective. But regardless of intent and processes, we can debate whether memorialization should have a pedagogical element. Certainly, some degree of didacticism is arguably present in all four of these memoirs. But if the reader of Five Years is taken on an emotional rollercoaster because of poignant evocation of childhood (to which we can all likely relate), the reader of The General is called to be ever more participatory because they are needed to witness (understand and verify) the resistance. One size does not fit all when it comes to memorializing violence or traumatic events, and if Kurnaz chooses to intersperse his text with childhood episodes, then the notable (or ‘peak’) moments in The General are those where his resistive behavior begins to defy the authorities, what Omar Farah elsewhere labels “Nourishing Resistance” (Farah in Hafetz 2016, 119). In line with Foucault, Michelle Brown argues prison is a “pedagogical instrument, teaching patterns of obedience and discipline, creating a ‘good’, albeit unthinking, citizenry” (2005, 985). Of the four memoirs in question, The General arguably demonstrates the most explicit challenges to being a ‘decent’ prison citizen though elements are certainly present in all the narratives. Though all four memoirists show evidence of resistive tactics, they are arguably most pronounced in The General and the reader becomes complicit in verifying these rebellious behaviors, in particular Errachidi’s leadership during the Guantánamo hunger strikes. Hunger strikes have a long and effective history in US prisons. In 2011, those that took place in Pelican Bay in California would eventually include 12,000 people in 13 prisons throughout the state. It was finally curtailed when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) promised to review policies in relation to the treatment of inmates in Secure Housing Units. In part, the prisoners’ successes stemming from Pelican Bay were dependent on media coverage (which proved negative for the CDCR). There was no such extensive media coverage of strikes in Guantánamo which makes the role of the reader ever more important in validating what the detainees did, even if in hindsight.

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Ironically in 2005, while all four narrators were still incarcerated, the federal government released guidelines for the medical and administrative management of hunger strikes in federal institutions. The report includes close staff monitoring and regular medical referrals (including mental health evaluations). The treatment evidenced by Errachidi and others once again reminds the reader of detainees’ ‘peculiar’ status whereby they are not deemed ‘eligible’ federal prisoners. They were, for example, refused medical treatment in the hope of getting them to abandon the strike (Farah in Hafetz 2016, 121). Nonetheless, the importance of the Guantánamo hunger strikes, as evidenced in The General, is that torture has become an act of self-inflicted pain with purpose in which power dynamics have shifted into the hands of those conducting the action. In Slovo’s introduction to the memoir, she recalls her first ever meeting with Errachidi. He has had problems with his voice since his incarceration but has never been able to follow up with medical treatment because he could not fulfill the doctor’s request to put a camera down this throat following “what I’d witnessed in Guantánamo in the aftermath of force-feeding” (Errachidi 2013, 3). The authorities respond in Guantánamo with further torture under the ruse of ‘humanity’ (helping to sustain life). This creates an uncomfortable reading experience, not merely for the pain of force-feeding, but because the authorities are arguably helping to preserve life. When discussing the justification of violence, Bernard Gert notes: “all killing and torturing for pleasure or profit is clearly immoral, whereas killing and torturing to prevent greater killing and torturing may sometimes be allowed by public reason” (Gert 2009, 72). There is an ironic equivocation at stake here—the military used such a line of thinking to argue in support of holding (literally) these men to avoid further terrorist attacks, but also to prevent further murders (in terms of detainee suicide). Discussion surrounding the “ethics” of incarceration at Guantánamo is thus further complicated by incorporating medical codes of conduct into legal and religious frames. If the hunger strikes engage the reader of The General in moral philosophical musings (perhaps even more so than the other three memoirs), then the reader is also enthused by the narrative’s call for collective action. Halfway through the memoir, the narrator acknowledges “solidarity was our only source of power” (Errachidi 2013, 88); they wanted to “show that we prisoners were as one” (Errachidi 2013, 95). This premise builds throughout the memoir; when watching the behavior of a swarm of ants in his cell, Errachidi comes to realize the “benefits of collective action” (2013, 127). As a result, Errachidi presents “our whole idea: we were going to create chaos” (2013, 179); “we showed them what might happen… we kept on discussing our intention to start another campaign of mass disobedience” (2013, 180) (my emphasis). Despite such communal undertakings, Errachidi’s role as a leader remains prevalent. He recognizes this is because he spoke English and because he “couldn’t stand watching the ill-treatment of my fellow ­prisoners … without trying to change the situation” (2013, 123). Scholar Padraic Kenney observes that Errachidi’s headship is certainly “rooted in personality

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and cultural advantage” (2017, 278). (For Begg too, language is powerful because he could speak English.) But regardless, the importance of these actions—whether individual and collective—has staid implications for the narrator of The General. While writing poetry provided “solace” and a means of channeling anger for Begg (2006, 41), the purpose of the memoirs is arguably multifaceted. For Errachidi, “showing this kind of resistance was the thing that kept me alive” (2013, 102).

The ‘Extraordinary’ One: Documents, Censorship, and the Reader In a 2014 review of The General, Harlow compares the memoir with Janet Hamlin’s Sketching Guantánamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals 2006–2013 suggesting both books “together illustrate the ongoing story of Guantánamo Bay” (120). In so doing, Harlow arguably does not consider the memoirs worthy of discussion in their own right. Though she proposes that Errachidi “contributes vitally to elaborating the literary corpus of Guantánamo-influenced writings” and calls the book “a distinctly honorable tribute to the monstrous dishonor that the detention camps still represents,” other memoirs are only mentioned fleetingly by Harlow and not by name (2014, 121). When Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary was released in 2015, several reviewers considered the text in isolation (Mishra 2015; Coll 2016; Shahshahani 2016). This could of course speak to the lack of other Guantánamo publications at that time, but it could also arguably be linked to the originality of Slahi’s memoir (“extraordinary” according to both Mishra and Coll). By the time of Slahi’s publication, there was no need for ‘a’ Patti Smith foreword; the situation and plight of Guantánamo residents were arguably well enough known for a memoir to attract readers without assistance. Released by Canongate books, Guantánamo Diary was edited by Larry Siems (who receives credit on the front cover) though Siems and Slahi never actually met during the time of production or publication. In Siems’s detailed introduction, he explicates that in 2005, Slahi wrote a 466-page draft of this book in segregation in Guantánamo and that it then took six years for his attorneys to negotiate the manuscript’s release. The difficulties lay in the fact that “every page he wrote was considered classified from the moment of its creation” (Slahi 2015, xvii, xviii). Such an astonishing account is authenticated by sample pages of Slahi’s handwriting at the start and end of the memoir, now marked “unclassified.” Nonetheless, this did eventually succeed in becoming the first Guantánamo memoir to be released while its author was still incarcerated. While Begg’s narrative published nearly a decade earlier sparked a number of reviews that questioned his reliability (see Harlow 2011, 8), by the publication of Guantánamo Diary, questions of veracity were no longer at stake.

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More definitively than the authors of forewords or introductions in the other three memoirs, Siems speaks of Slahi’s innocence (“I do not understand why he was ever in Guantánamo in the first place”), his renditions and interrogations (“always at the behest of the United States”), his illegal status, the confusing press coverage (“his extreme treatment is often cited as an indicator of his guilt” (Slahi 2015, xviii, xxiii, xxxiii, xxxiv, xliii). We are informed of Slahi’s ‘guilt’ in joining al-Qaeda in 1991 though the organization was a very different entity at that time (“practically an ally of the United States”) (2015, xliv). In contrast to the other co-authors/contributors, Siems deems it necessary to point to the fact that “he proves again and again to be a reliable narrator. He certainly does not exaggerate…” (Slahi 2015, xlviii). Such justifications are perhaps necessary in light of the heavy redactions (black censored bars) throughout the manuscript. Siems contends that these bars “serve as vivid visual reminders of the author’s ongoing situation… and often serve to impede the sense of narrative, blur the contours of characters, and obscure the open, approachable tone of the author’s voice” (Slahi 2015, xv). The narrative thus—both visually and in terms of reading it—is a very different undertaking than the other three memoirs. This goes some way to explaining why Guantánamo Diary has been the subject of some (solitary) scholarly enquiry (see Moore 2016; Trapp 2016; Aggarwal 2016). Mark Falkoff’s collection of poetry from Guantánamo was exposed to strict security screenings, and a number of poems were rejected before release. The Pentagon believed that the poetry “presents a special risk to national security because of its content and format” (Boyle 2008, 30). The Pentagon is seemingly similarly fearful of Slahi’s manuscript; even the poetry in his memoir is redacted (2015, 360).8 Withdrawing the voice of an oppressed people can be deemed an act of violence in itself, though the apprehension over such writings suggests Falkoff and Slahi held some degree of power. Or, should we think along the lines of Meyers, who suggests that when victims of human rights abuses have their stories suppressed, it is a form of re-victimization (2016, 16)? As a result of the government censorship, we must think of the poetry, but especially in this case Slahi’s narrative, as primary source documents or, as the Kirkus Review deemed Kurnaz’s memoir, a “vital document” (KR 2008) that can quite literally help us to record and understand history. Or as Harlow notes, resistance literature can gain control over “the historical and cultural record” (1985, 6–7). Dan Chiasson wrote in the New York Times of Falkoff’s poetry collection that “you don’t read this book for pleasure; you read it for evidence” (2007). A similar line of thinking can be applied to these memoirs, especially in the case of Guantánamo Diary. Unclassified documents are unique primary sources, especially for a country that boasts of freedom, liberty, and democracy and yet illegally detains (innocent) people. With the denials of Guantánamo abuses regularly repeated by high-profile politicians (Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney among others), politically Guantánamo soon became a Teflon situation. Even if journalists were well-meaning when visiting, they were not shown the ‘true’ story

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and even the International Red Cross had their hands tied (Slahi was hidden from the Red Cross in Jordan and deemed “off limits” during an IRC visit in Guantánamo due to “military necessity”) (2015, 168, 219). (Begg is particularly damning in his view of the IRC—“glorified postmen … funded by the US” [2006, 283].) Memoirs have arguably become key documents that ‘stick’ and challenge in light of such political spin, and we must view them as vital archival source material that can rebalance the situation when politicians have silenced the victims. Slahi’s narrative urgently highlights the differences between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ ways of memorializing, suggesting that oppressed groups may be forced to negotiate their commemoration in a way that keeps the state happy. We need to consider if this then may challenge the extent to which it can fully be deemed “resistive literature.” Of the four memoirs, Guantánamo Diary is the most immediate primary document, providing an ever more exhilarating read. Larry Siems is documented as ‘editor’ rather than co-author and though he has included extensive footnotes to explain the legalities of Slahi’s case (obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and Justice Department and US Senate investigations [Slahi 2015, xv]), he has very much taken a back seat. Translation when it comes to tackling the subject of violence can be problematic. Translation is not always neutral—it can be distortive and oppressive; if texts have been mediated or filtered, there is a need to be hesitant. Language can be sanitized in a good or bad way. Siems admits to occasionally editing a “few awkward locutions… consolidating text… streamlining the manuscript” (Slahi 2015, xiv), but Slahi’s stilted English in places reminds the reader he only learned the English language while incarcerated (reinforcing the momentous achievement of this book in our hands, government classification aside) and reminds us this is very much his authored narrative. In turn, this highlights the daunting task facing Brittain and Slovo to preserve the voice of their narrators, ever more urgent given the circumstances.9 The realness of Slahi’s memoir, his authenticity, and the preservation of his voice are further verified by his addressing of the audience. Slahi regularly refers to the “Dear Reader” (2015, 225, 232) or asks them to imagine his situation (“Just imagine yourself going to bed…”) (2015, 319). In the closing pages of his narrative, Slahi leaves final judgment of American democracy in the reader’s hands (2015, 371). None of the other three memoirists call upon the reader so explicitly. And yet, despite the lack of co-author, Guantánamo Diary regularly follows some of the formulas/themes of the other three. Like the others, Slahi details some decent human beings among the Guantánamo staff and reveals his ongoing dedication to his religion and significant detail of the events of his capture before transfer to the United States—in his case, his time incarcerated in Senegal and Mauritania. (Slahi would be as angry, if not angrier with his country of citizenship than with the United States, much like Begg.) Such narrative parallels add weight to the argument that we could—and should—start to consider the generic possibilities of these memoirs.

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Ironically, it is Slahi’s sincerity (“To be honest and truthful…” [2015, 275]) that exposes the flaws in the US government’s systems of punishment. He decides to ‘confess’ simply to keep his interrogators happy and to hope the torture may ease as a result. However, as Slahi professes to the reader “I had no crimes to confess to, and that is exactly where I got stuck with my interrogators” (2015, 275). If it were not so horrific, his plight would be hilarious in these sequences. Slahi makes up incriminating stories about people he did not know but was quizzed about by military personnel (2015, 280) and even intimates he planned to bomb a tower in Canada that he has never heard of (2015, 290). The narrative is literally farcical in its message that “torture doesn’t guarantee that the detainee cooperates. In order to stop torture, the detainee has to please his assailant, even with untruthful, and sometimes misleading, Intels” (Slahi 2015, 255). In fact, Slahi’s interrogators soon become suspicious of his confessions (2015, 297) and want him to undertake a polygraph test which paradoxically provides him the opportunity to drop his ‘confessions’ and return to the plain truth that he had conducted no crimes against the United States. Seven pages of the polygraph episode are fully redacted (Slahi 2015, 301–307) leaving the reader in the dark. Such bureaucratic hypocrisy can likewise be observed in the queries and contradictions in redactions throughout the narrative. For instance, names of officials in Guantánamo Diary are carefully redacted only to ‘mistakenly’ appear un-redacted pages later (2015, 42, 77, 141, 255). In other places, the redactions themselves are simply absurd: The name of an Egyptian president who died in 1970 is obscured (Slahi 2015, 180) while elsewhere the word “tears” is disguised (Siems notes the incredulity of this in a footnote) (Slahi 2015, 229). If resistance tactics have a long history in prison, writing prison memoirs too has long been deemed a resistive act. This is particularly notable given the authorities’ reluctance at times to let them be published (hence the ‘smuggling out’ of manuscripts to publishers). Upon Slahi’s release in 2016, a fully restored version of Guantánamo Diary was released with an update from Larry Siems and a new introduction from Slahi himself. This ‘fresh’ version is an important addition to this genre of memoirs and carries significance because it denotes freedom for its author. But I remain concerned with the redacted edition and the initial reading experience that it bestowed. Diana Meyers contends that Guantánamo Diary “is unquestionably the most important victim’s story of human rights abuse in recent US history” (2016, 2). Nevertheless, I would suggest that it is its original version that remains the most important edition.

In Closing: A Continuing Discussion Since Barbara Harlow first wrote about Extraordinary Rendition Literatures in 2011, the publishing industry’s fascination with Guantánamo continues. Montgomery Granger and Joseph Hickman have published memoirs about their time serving as officers in Cuba (2012, 2015). Scholars Don

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Walicek and Jessica Adams collated a thought-provoking collection entitled Guantánamo and American Empire: The Humanities Respond (2017), though memoirs by former detainees surprisingly play a very limited role in the work. This is despite the fact that we have witnessed two further such memoirs released in the past couple of years by Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir (2017) and Sani Alhaj (2018). I anticipate we will see more such first-person narratives appear over the coming years, particular while Guantánamo is still an active detention center (to date, an estimated 80 prisoners are still held there, and President Trump has no plans to close the site). I would contend that we need to support gathering recognition of these memoirs as a genre in their own right given the numbers now published. And we must continue to pay attention to the packaging and marketing of these texts; their paratextual features can inform our understanding of them in complex and fascinating ways. The edited collection Obama’s Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison (2016), written by lawyers who represented detainees, describes the former President’s futile promises to close Guantánamo and the costs of failure for those imprisoned there. As Jonathan Hafetz writes, “nothing can ever erase the stain of Guantánamo Bay, whose continued existence is a living reminder of lawlessness and abuse” (2016, 9). Nonetheless, the seriousness of the plight of detainees over the past seventeen years requires that we continue to consume detainees’ memoirs long after they have left or even when (if?) the site is eventually closed. As one detainee recalled, “This life will be over one day in 20 or 30 years. Everyone must decide where they want to place themselves in this history whenever it is complete” (Hussain in Hafertz 2016, 218). The continuing publication of former detainees’ memoirs can play a significant part in keeping such discussion going both now and in history. There is arguably an academic responsibility to understand this peculiar violence and commemorations of violence. How do we engage with these writings as an alternative paradigm to the one that policy makers have used to justify Guantánamo? Indeed, these memoirs complicate our understanding of Guantánamo Bay, but also incarceration and (American) prison writings. We must continue to probe further into the many purposes of Guantánamo detainees’ memoirs, including their concerns with therapy, pedagogy, memorialization, resistance, entertainment, as well as any tensions that exist in the delivery of these sometimes competing discourses. In his book, On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone (2017), Alex Danchev takes artists (including writers) as well as thinkers and public intellectuals and treats their arts as witness of current discontents, as the “essential moral witness of the terrible twentieth century, as Winston Churchill called it, and the torturous twenty-first” (2017, 12). Danchev—in line with academic enquiry thus far—includes memoirs by Begg and Slahi in this context, though Errachidi and Kurnaz could be similarly engaged. From this perspective, we must consider detainees’ memoirs as a powerful genre. Prison literature has

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long been recognized as an important social literary genre which “rehumanizes the prisoner and serves to contest the distorting imagery their societies impose upon them” (Gaucher and Frigon 2005, 735). Such dehumanization and contestation become ever more urgent in the context of Guantánamo memoirs. And we have a responsibility to acknowledge the weight of these peculiar prison narratives as both individually and generically vital.

Notes 1.  Prisoner officers include Erik Saar; Journalists and lawyers include Andy Worthington, Clive Stafford Smith, and Mahvish Khan; novelists include Dorothea Dieckmann; playwrights include Gillian Slovo and Victoria Brittain; film directors include Michael Winterbottom and Vicente Peñarrocha. 2.  These include: Moazzam Begg (2006), Murat Kurnaz (2008), Mamdouh Habib (2008), David Hicks (2010), Abdul Salam Zaeef (2010), Ahmed Errachidi (2013), Ould Slahi (2015), Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir (2017), and Sani Alhaj (2018). 3. These memoirs certainly have much in common with global narratives of political prisoners (e.g., writings by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka or Behrouz Boochani) in terms of their authors’ arrest and detention. Scholars such as Diana Tietjens Meyers (2016) and Padraic Kenney (2017) treat Guantánamo memoirs as narratives of political imprisonment. Nonetheless, given the sheer fact that Guantánamo Bay is a US institution, it is simultaneously worth considering these texts alongside the tropes and characteristics of American prison literature more generally. 4.  Two poems from the Falkoff collection inspired the title of this chapter. See Abdulaziz’s “O Prison Darkness” and “Lions in the Cage” by Ustad Badruzzaman Badr. 5. David Hicks is the only memoir to include significant numbers of personal photographs, including family members. 6. Kurnaz was born in 1982; Slahi in 1970; Begg in 1968; and Erradichi in 1966. 7. Padraic Kenney also speculates whether the reference in Kurnaz’s memoir could be Errachidi. See Kenney (2017: 279). 8.  In a piece he wrote for the ACLU post-release, Slahi notes that while “Censorship is a familiar thing in Mauritania” his family and friends were shocked that in his case, censorship “came directly from the American original [publication], which meant the information was being kept from the American people.” See Slahi (2017). 9.  That said, it is interesting to note that a host of celebrities who had been “touched by his story” would bring Slahi’s book to life by reading extracts on The Guardian Web site. See http://guantanamodiary.com/.

References Aggarwal, Neil Krishan. 2016. “Nation, Narration, and Health in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary.” Journal of Medical Humanities 39, no. 3 (September): 263–273. Alhaj, Sani. 2018. Prisoner 345; My Six Years in Guantánamo. Published online by Al-Jazeera. https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2018/prisoner345/download/ Prisoner345.pdf.

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Begg, Moazzam, and Victoria Brittain. 2006. Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. New York: The New Press. Boyle, Maureen. 2008. “Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak.” Fortnight 458 (April): 30. Boumediene, Lakhdar, and Mustafa Ait Idir. 2017. Witness of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantánamo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brown, Michelle. 2005. “‘Setting the Conditions’ for Abu Ghraib: The Prison Nation Abroad.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September): 973–997. Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Chambers, Claire. 2011. “‘Guantánamo Boy’; an Interview with Moazzam Begg.” Postcolonial Text 6, no. 2: 1–12. Chiasson, Dan. 2007. “Notes on a Prison Camp.” New York Times Book Review, August 19, 2007. Coll, Steve. 2016. “An Eloquent Voice from Guantánamo.” New York Review of Books, January 14, 2016. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/01/14/ an-eloquent-voice-from-Guantánamo/. Danchev. Alex. 2017. On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dieckmann, Dorothea. 2008. Guantánamo: A Novel. London: Gerald Duckworth. Errachidi, Ahmed. 2013. The General: The Ordinary Man Who Challenged Guantánamo. London: Chatto & Windus. Falkoff, Mark. 2007a. Litigation and Delay at Guantánamo Bay. City University of New York Law Review 10 (2): 393–404. Falkoff, Mark, ed. 2007b. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Press. Falkoff, Mark. 2007c. “Conspiracy to Commit Poetry: Empathetic Lawyering at Guantánamo Bay.” Seattle Journal for Social Justice 6, no. 1: 2–16. Gaucher, Robert, and Sylvie Frigon. 2005. “Prison Literature.” In Encyclopaedia of Prisons & Correctional Facilities, edited by Mary Bosworth, 732–735. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gert, Bernard. 2009. “Justifying Violence.” In Violence: A Philosophical Anthology, edited by Vittorio Bufacchi, 66–77. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Granger, Montgomery. 2012. Saving Grace at Guantánamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior. New York: Strategic Book Publishing. Gregory, Derek. 2006. “The Black Flag: Guantánamo Bay and the Space of Exception.” Geografiska Annaler 88, no. 4: 405–427. Habib, Mamdouh. 2008. My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t. Melbourne: Scribe. Hafetz, Jonathan, ed. 2016. Obama’s Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison. New York: New York University Press. Harlow, Barbara. 1985. Resistance Literature. New York: Methuen. Harlow, Barbara. 2011. “‘Extraordinary Renditions’: Tales of Guantánamo, a Review Article.” Race and Class 52, no. 4: 1–29. Harlow, Barbara. 2012. “Resistance Literature Revisited: From Basra to Guantánamo.” Journal of Comparative Poetics 32: 10–29. Harlow, Barbara. 2014. “The General: The Ordinary Man Who Challenged Guantánamo and Sketching Guantánamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals 2006–2013.” Race and Class 56, no. 3: 119–122.

86  J. METCALF Hickman, John. 2011. “Prisoners of the Official Explanation: Popular Nonfiction Accounts of the Guantánamo Decision.” Journal of Human Rights 10, no. 2 (April): 247–255. Hickman, Joseph. 2015. Murder at Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant’s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantánamo Bay. New York: Simon & Schuster. Hicks, David. 2010. Guantánamo: My Journey. Sydney: William Heinemann. Hubmann, Philip. 2017. “Tourist/Terrorist: Narrating Uncertainty in Early European Literature on Guantánamo.” In 9/11 in European Literature, edited by S. Frank, 323–355. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kenney, Padraic. 2017. Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Khan, Mahvish. 2009. My Guantánamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. New York: PublicAffairs Books. Kirkus Reviews. 2008. “Five Years of My Life.” Kirkus Reviews, May 20, 2010. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marat-kurnaz/five-yearsof-my-life/. Kurnaz, Murat. 2008. Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo. Translated by Jefferson Chase. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. First published 2006 by Rowohlt Berlin. Mishra, Pankaj. 2015. “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi Review— The Global War on Terror Has Found Its True Witness.” The Guardian, February 15, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/13/ Guantánamo-diary-mohamedou-ould-slahi-review-global-war-terror-witness. Moore, Alexandra. 2016. “Teaching Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary in the Human Rights and Literature Classroom.” Radical Teacher 104 (Winter): 27–37. Mullins, Greg. 2011. “Atrocity, Literature, Criticism.” American Literary History 23, no. 1 (Spring): 217–227. Murer, Jeffrey. 2002. “The Clash Within; Intrapsychically Created Enemies and Their Roles in Ethnonationalist Conflicts.” In Violence and Politics: Globalization’s Paradox, edited by Kenton Worcester, 209–225. New York: Routledge. Peñarrocha, Vincente (director). 2007. Guantanamero. Peace Arch Entertainment. Reardon, Kristina. 2015. “‘Amidst the Chime of the Razor Wire’: Narrating Poetic Justice in Guantánamo Bay.” The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (March): 44–56. Richardson, Michael. 2013. “Writing Torture’s Remnants.” In Speaking the Unspeakable, edited by Catherine Ann Collins, 197–216. Oxford: InterDisciplinary Press. Saar, Erik, and Viveca Novak. 2005. Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantánamo. New York: The Penguin Press. Shahshahani, Azadeh. 2016. “A Review of ‘Guantánamo Diary’.” The Huffington Post, January 6, 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/azadeh-shahshahani/a-review-of-Guantánamo-di_b_8926782.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_cs=zxXVvaZuTcfaHTUDj2inaw. Slahi, Mohamedou Ould. 2015. Guantánamo Diary. Edited by Larry Siems. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.

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Slahi, Mohamedou Ould. 2017. “My Guantánamo Diary, Uncensored.” ACLU, October 23, 2017. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/detention/ my-guantanamo-diary-uncensored. Slovo, Gillian, and Victoria Brittain. 2004. Guantánamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’. London: Oberon Books. Stafford Smith, Clive. 2007. Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Tietjens Meyers, Diana. 2016. Victims’ Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tomsky, Terri. 2015. “Iguanas and Enemy Combatants: Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism Through Guantánamo’s Creaturely Lives.” In Cosmopolitan Animals, edited by Kaori Nagai, Caroline Rooney et al., 201–215. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trapp, Erin. 2016. “Redacted Tears, Aesthetics of Alterity: Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary.” In Terror in Global Narrative: Representations of 9/11 in the Age of Late-Late Capitalism, edited by George Fragopoulous and Liliana Naydan, 55–76. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. US Department of Justice (Federal Bureau of Prisons). 2005. Program Statement— Hunger Strikes, July 29, 2005. https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/5562_005. pdf. Walicek, Don, and Jessica Adams, eds. 2017. Guantánamo and American Empire: The Humanities Respond. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. Weber, Elisabeth. 2011. “Literary Justice? Poems from Guantánamo Bay.” Comparative Literature Studies 48, no. 3: 417–434. Welch, Michael. 2009. “Guantánamo Bay as a Foucauldian Phenomenon: An Analysis of Penal Discourse, Technologies, and Resistance.” The Prison Journal 89, no. 1 (March): 3–20. Winterbottom, Michael (director). 2006. The Road to Guantánamo. Channel 4 Television Corporation. Worthington, Andy. 2007. The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. London: Pluto Press. Zaeef, Abdul Salam. 2010. My Life with the Taliban. Edited and translated by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn. New York: Columbia University Press.

Human Rights Documentary or Plot-Driven Prison Drama? Animation and Nonfiction “Storytelling” in Camp 14: Total Control Zone David Scott Diffrient

Introduction In the Foreword to the second edition of Escape from Camp 14, his 2012 profile of former North Korean prisoner Shin Dong-hyuk, American journalist Blaine Harden addresses revelations that were made public three years after the publication of his book’s first edition. The book narrates Shin Dong-hyuk’s harrowing escape from Kaechon internment camp at the age of twenty-two, which drew the attention of human rights organizations around the world. Between the first and second editions, it had come to light that his subject had stretched the truth and misrepresented his actual experiences as the only known person to have been born in, and to have escaped from, such a place. Although he had indeed spent much of his childhood in that Soviet-style gulag, where he was tortured and forced to watch public executions (including of his mother and older brother), Shin now claims that he was relocated to a different forced labor site (Camp 18, located on the opposite side of the Taedong River) before fleeing into China and defecting to South Korea. He also confesses that he was complicit in his mother’s and brother’s deaths, something that he had been too traumatized and guiltridden to admit until recently (Harden 2015, xii–13). Those admissions by an ex-prisoner who still bears the physical and emotional scars of his past were made public in 2015, three years after the D. S. Diffrient (*)  Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_6

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release of a feature-length documentary based on Harden’s Escape from Camp 14. That film, Camp 14: Total Control Zone, is less skeptical of Shin’s testimony than Harden’s revised text, which foregrounds the ethical dilemmas that he and other journalists face when trying to report facts that simply cannot be checked. However, in combining seemingly straightforward talking-head interviews and poetically rendered animated sequences showing the life Shin endured under a repressive military regime, the film adopts a hybridized form which blurs the line between history and fiction. As such, Camp 14: Total Control Zone serves as a useful case study through which to examine the relationship between “the art and freedom of animation” and “the realism and social purposes of the documentary,” a relationship that, in the words of Jonathan Dawson, might be thought of as being “diametrically opposed,” but which I see as being complementary, or at the very least not as contradictory as theorists have so rigidly maintained (Dawson 2006, 42). Indeed, making a distinction between what Hayden White calls “historical story-telling” and “historical reality” (2001, 375) is not as straightforward as some theorists claim, and the emergence of fully animated or partially animated documentaries such as Chicago 10 (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), The Wanted 18 (2014), Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island (2015), Chris the Swiss (2018), Samouni Road (2018), The State Against Mandela and the Others (2018), and Camp 14: Total Control Zone suggests not only the zeal with which cultural producers are embracing aesthetically “freeing” forms of narrative invention in their reconstruction of past events, but also a growing willingness on the part of audiences to question ostensibly oppositional modes of discourse. Moreover, the film, directed by German documentarian Marc Wiese, adopts the perspective of an outsider, that of the European filmmaker but also that of his North Korean subject, in highlighting how Shin remains a “prisoner” of sorts (even after finding refuge in democratic South Korea), spiritually drained and isolated from the millions of middle-class consumers flooding the streets and supermarkets of Seoul. Ultimately, I hope to reveal how Camp 14: Total Control Zone distinguishes itself from other animated documentaries by dramatizing the life of a prisoner for whom escape was not only a survival tactic but also a potentially captivating “plot point,” part of a partially fabricated story that has both galvanized and undermined the efforts of Amnesty International, NK Watch, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to end human rights abuses in North Korea. In fact, as Harden writes in his revised book’s Foreword, Shin’s story, which the young Korean was obliged to repeat when interviewed by other journalists, “had become a kind of prison” by the time he finally owned up to its partial fictiveness a few years ago (Harden 2015, xiii). Telling the truth, opening up about testimonial discrepancies in his eyewitness reports, thus became his release from captivity, a reversal of the manner in which narrative invention, poetic license, and fabulation have long been conceived of as a kind of “prison break” from the confines of history and the dictates of facticity.

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As detailed in Escape from Camp 14 and other published memoirs about the experiences of North Korean prison camp survivors, life behind the proverbial barbed-wire fence is bleak, consisting of a series of dehumanizing experiences that, in the words of Kim Yong (author of the 2009 book Long Road Home), leaves inmates wishing “they were dead” at the end of each workday (2009, 81; Harden 2015, 72). Many, like Kim (who was a lieutenant colonel in the North Korea National Security Agency before being sent to the same labor camp), succumbed to thoughts of suicide from time to time, but persevered against what he and other survivors have called “indescribable torment” (Harden 2015, 73). Indeed, the existential dilemmas and rigors of an indefinite incarceration are difficult to fathom. Besides coping with unhygienic facilities and (barely) subsisting on a rationed diet of corn gruel, watery soup, and cabbage leaves for years on end, prisoners at Kaechon are tasked, day and night, with hard labor (Tudor and Pearson 2015, 124, 126). Forced to perform manual tasks (e.g., bricklaying, coal mining, farming, and logging) under the close supervision of guards, these individuals are worn down, physically and mentally, so that they are unable to put up any resistance, individually or collectively. Underfed and overworked, and frequently subjected to the guards’ beatings, the bodies of the inmates bear the marks of a cruel and humiliating system of oppression that some North Koreans (including those like Shin Dong-hyuk who eventually escaped their respective camps) are never able to fully leave behind. Tellingly, in a few of his video-recorded testimonies featured in Camp 14: Total Control Zone, Shin offers up his physical self, his slightly deformed limbs and occasionally visible skin abrasions, to the camera as a kind of corporeal testament or living proof of the harsh realities visited upon him and his family members throughout the 1980s and 1990s; unimaginable experiences that, ironically, no photographic equipment was able to document during their actual unfolding. A “there but not there” atmosphere hangs over Camp 14: Total Control Zone, both during the expressionistic sequences in which monochromatic animation is used to fill in the missing picture of Shin’s past, as well as whenever he gives in to his own silent reckoning with it as part of this documentary’s many “non-talking” talking-head interviews. Those personal testimonies are spread out over the course of film’s nearly two-hour running time and are distinctive for the way that Wiese holds on the practically static image of Shin even when his subject cannot verbally articulate his feelings (for instance, when he is asked by the director what “water torture” is). Long stretches of time are thus spent in the virtual company of someone so weighed down by his past experiences—so visibly haunted by that which he is asked to “re-live” for the sake of other peoples’ enlightenment—that his silences speak as loudly as the offscreen English narrator’s frequent intrusions into the text. As the director indicates in the film’s press kit notes, Shin was “profoundly traumatized” by what he had been forced to endure ever since his birth in the penal labor colony on November 19, 1983. “He could barely speak for more

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than half an hour…could barely answer my questions,” Wiese explains, and his decision to include footage of the former prisoner sitting in his sparsely furnished Seoul apartment in dazed silence renders the “unspeakable” and “unrepresentable” in a genuinely discomforting way. Nevertheless, Shin does gradually open up and let his interviewer in, cautiously providing details about his incarceration at various points in Camp 14: Total Control Zone, through halting onscreen interviews and offscreen ruminations, translated into English by Steven Charles. The audience learns much of the same information that readers might have gleaned from Harden’s book (albeit with a few notable discrepancies), including specifics about his backbreaking labor in the coal mines below the camp’s surrounding mountains, where he was sent to work starting at the age of six (or the age of ten, according to Harden) (2015, 30). Those mountains are literally sketched in by an artist, Park Kun-woon, who appears alongside Shin during an early scene set inside an upscale cafe in Seoul. Sitting side by side and working in unison, the former prisoner and the cartoonist provide our first glimpse of what the camp might have “looked like,” with Shin supplying the verbal descriptions on which Park bases his charcoal drawings (the barbed-wire fence running along the mountain, the guards’ living quarters, the entrance to the coal mine, the unfurnished one-room domicile where he lived with his mother). Close-ups of the artist’s hand moving freely across a large sheet of white paper suggest the gestural aspects of the comics medium as an expressive language even though the cartoonist’s “purpose”—his reason for being in this scene—is to simply “illustrate” the main character’s experiences. That is, the velvety drawings that fill the screen, like the sometimes “smudgy” animated sequences that pepper this documentary, serve the dual function of diagramming the physical layout of the Kaechon internment camp (which can only otherwise be “seen” via satellite imagery) and aesthetically rendering a prisoner’s perhaps-hazy memory of that actual space. In much the same way that a “true picture” of prisoner abuse is said to emerge in director Leon Lee’s Letter from Masanjia, a 2018 documentary about a former Falun Gong member whose recollections of a Chinese labor camp are visualized through animation, the black-and-white cartoons of Camp 14: Total Control Zone serve as a form of visual witness. This is something to which the comics medium—as much as the cinematic medium—is particularly disposed, according to Hillary Chute. In her book Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form, Chute alludes to the functional usefulness of hand-drawn images in bringing human rights violations in secluded or shadowy corners of the world to light; an act of aestheticized witnessing that even photojournalism cannot achieve when access to such places is limited or prohibited. The celebrated work of comics journalist Joe Sacco (creator of such graphic novels as Palestine [1996], Safe Area Goražde [2000], and Footnotes in Gaza [2009])

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is most clearly in line with the author’s claim that the artist literally and figuratively “draws out” past atrocities from their respective historical frameworks (such as the Suez Crisis of 1956 or the Siege of Sarajevo during the early 1990s) and, through the use of comic-book panels and gutters, reframes them as material objects for present-day contemplation. Sacco and other cartoonists “picture the other…by inhabiting his point of view,” Chute emphasizes a physical rather than a metaphysical act in which the experience of pain or trauma is communicated through the artist’s hand. The drawer of lines on a page thus leaves a trace of his or her own body in the material form of a memory object, the visual rendering of other marked bodies’ forced flirtation with death or physical anguish. Not coincidentally, Chute ends Disaster Drawn with a paragraph partly devoted to Kim Kwang-il, a 48-year-old defector from the North who spent more than two years in a prison camp before escaping to the South, and whose own simple yet evocative line drawings were included in a widely disseminated United Nations report on human rights abuses in February 2014 (2016, 265). Those images, which depict abusive interrogation techniques and painful torture positions as well as mass graves where rotting corpses have been deposited, came from the hands of someone who directly witnessed what the UN Human Rights Council has called (in that nearly 400-page document) “crimes of extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, rape and persecution” (Coscarelli 2014). As Chute summarizes, hand-drawn images play an increasingly important role “in the public sphere as a form of witness that takes shape as marks and lines because no other technology could record what it depicts” (2016, 265). By illustrating Shin Dong-hyuk’s memories of prison life through the incorporation of both hand-drawn images (by South Korean artist Park Kun-woon) and computer-generated animation (by Iranian-born German artist Ali Soozandeh), Camp 14: Total Control Zone thus acknowledges the importance of cartooning as a form of visual witnessing. And, like the previously mentioned Letter from Masanjia (which similarly includes shots of an artist, brush and pen in hand, bringing the past to life on the page), the film contributes to expanding the boundaries of nonfiction cinema. In combining various elements associated with both fictional and nonfictional discourses, including what could be perceived as “dramatic pauses” on the part of someone who might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and whose story of incarceration and death-defying escape is “thrilling” in a way that conforms to genre-based entertainment, Camp 14: Total Control Zone also expands the parameters of what a prison film looks like. In recent years, a number of important studies of prison films have been published, and the work of Nicole Hahn Rafter (2000), David Wilson and Sean O’Sullivan (2004), Paul Mason (2006), Michelle Brown (2009), Frances Pheasant-Kelly (2013), Alison Griffiths (2016), Kevin Kerhwald (2017), and other media scholars has been instrumental in liming out the boundaries or limits, as well

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as the textual affordances or possibilities, of the genre. Ironically, in providing critical lenses through which to better see the prison film’s inner workings and sociocultural significance, academically trained theorists have constructed a hermeneutic apparatus that could be said to resemble a Panopticon-like correctional facility where objects of a disciplinary gaze are subjected to the power of authorities. Of course, one could make the same argument about other categories of cultural production, or rather to the epistemological frameworks that enclose particular genres (e.g., the Western, the romantic comedy, horror, etc.) within a kind of prison-house of familiar tropes, stock characters, or iconography. One could also respond that such contrarian claims work to maintain asymmetrical power relations by criticizing the critical act itself; that is, by deflecting attention away from the ways that media texts frequently perpetuate stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings (and therefore need to “dissect” or “interrogate” until alternatives to the status quo become commercially viable). In a way, though, the relative narrowness of the existing critical frame surrounding the prison film emulates the physical limitations placed on inmates in the penal system. As Michelle Brown states in The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle, many examples of carceral cinema have, since the earliest years of the motion picture medium, “operated as primers in prison sociology, introducing their viewers to the mechanical daily routines and bureaucratic processes of imprisonment typically through the entry of a central character into the overwhelming subculture of the institution” (Brown 2009, 58). But equally routinized are the hermeneutic moves of critics and historians who have sought to unpack what the author calls “penal representation,” turning again and again to the same set of iconographic features (bars, cells, fences, gates, guard towers, razor wire, stone walls), thematic motifs (control, oppression, transgression), and “punitive conditions” from which the spectator’s questionable “pleasure” in the text is dependably derived. Stock characters (“convict buddies, a paternalistic warden, a cruel guard, a craven snitch, a bloodthirsty convict, and the young hero, who is either absolutely innocent or at most guilty of a minor offense that does not warrant prison”) and stock plot points/narrative events (beatings, riots, escapes) are “staples of the genre,” according to Nicole Rafter, and the repetitiveness with which they occur in representative Hollywood productions (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang [1932], Brute Force [1947], Riot in Cell Block 11 [1954]) makes those films cohere as a generic corpus (Rafter 2000, 118, 121). To be sure, “media representations of incarceration contribute, at some level and in some way, to public knowledge and comprehension of penal culture.” This, Paul Mason reminds us, is one reason why prison movies matter (2006, 191). But the “spectacle of punishment” that the genre offers, like the voyeuristic fantasy or vicarious thrill of being able to enter into a carceral setting with the guarantee of “release” once the story ends, complicates the

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prison film’s edifying, socially productive function. Indeed, conventional examples of the genre “are essentially fantasies,” Rafter argues, insofar as they “purport to reveal the brutal realities of incarceration while actually offering viewers escape from the miseries of daily life through adventure and heroism” (2000, 163). The “carceral fantasies” of the genre (to borrow the words of Alison Griffiths [2016]) are such that the lure of identification—our alignment with protagonists who respond heroically to belligerent guards, malevolent wardens, and other oppressors—often “runs up against a specific voyeuristic spectacle” that is morally repulsive; for, as Michelle Brown notes, it hinges upon “manipulative acts of personal and collective violence.” Such acts of “obligatory” brutalization include torture (Cool Hand Luke [1967], Hunger [2008]), rape (American Me [1992], American History X [1998]), and execution (I Want to Live! [1955], The Green Mile [1999]) (Brown 2009, 59). All three of those acts—torture, rape, and execution—are referenced in Camp 14: Total Control Zone; as is the one “major incident”—that of the protagonist’s escape—which, according to Rafter, most clearly announces a motion picture’s membership in the prison film genre (2000, 120). But the film does so in ways that depart somewhat from traditional representations. For instance, and perhaps fittingly, the last of those three violent acts— execution—is typically the final major event to befall the tragically doomed hero (at least in a certain strain of the prison film), or else is witnessed near the end of the narrative as a reminder of the life-and-death stakes involved in his or her heroic escape. In Wiese’s documentary, however, it is presented early on, as the source of Shin Dong-hyuk’s first traumatic experience as someone born in a North Korean labor colony where public executions were common occurrences. When the director asks him to recall his earliest memory of the camp, Shin hesitates and then, after a silent pause, says, “There’s no particular event that I remember.” Quickly, though, he contradicts himself, adding that his earliest memory is “when I went to a public execution with my mother.” The flat matter-of-factness of his statement emphasizes how habituated Shin had become to extraordinary events, which for him had become ordinary circumstances starting around the age of four. This talking-head scene, occurring at the seven-minute mark of the film, comes immediately after a shot of Park Kun-woon’s hand-drawn image of stick-figure prison guards aiming their rifles at camp inmates who are tied to wooden posts. And it immediately precedes Ali Soozandeh’s animated rendering of Shin’s memory, which includes point-of-view (POV) shots from his younger self’s position in the crowd of gathered onlookers, looking out of the firing squad killing two blindfolded prisoners. Following the sound of gunfire, a reverse-angle shot zooms in on the young boy’s face. His shocked stare, fixed on what he calls “a perfectly ordinary field,” sharply contrasts with the blank gaze of the older Shin as he sits silently before the camera, clearly affected by that painful

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recollection. Shifting between newly recorded footage of the protagonist in Seoul and imaginative reenactments of what he claims to have happened when he was in Camp 14 (including images and sounds that no camera was present to record), this early passage of the film crystallizes their complementarity as a form of “documentary dramatics,” demonstrating in the process how nonfictional and fictional modes can be harnessed for the sake of both educational enlightenment and emotional connectivity. Besides this scene of execution, this originary moment of deeply engrained trauma in the life of the inmate, references to rape and torture are sprinkled into the text, but in ways that depart from traditional prison films. Notably, it is from the mouth of a former secret service officer in North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, a middle-aged man named Oh Young-nam, that we hear about the sexual victimization of female prisoners, whose voices are conspicuously absent in a section of the film devoted to a gendered power differential that resulted in many women losing their lives—or the lives of their babies— after being raped. Although no former female inmate was interviewed by the filmmaker, Oh’s comments, like those of Kwon Hyuk (an ex-commander of the guards at Camp 22, who also appears onscreen as a talking-head interviewee), are self-incriminating; a break from the genre’s “normal” method of depicting male antagonists (prison guards and wardens), as either irredeemably bad or utterly lacking in the ability to hold themselves accountable for their own past offenses. Along with the brief, unsettling footage, shot on low-resolution video and “smuggled out of North Korea by a human rights organization,” of prison guards brutally interrogating inmates, the two former officers’ comments (which are subtitled in English rather than spoken over by Steven Charles) help to substantiate or “authenticate” victims’ claims of abusive treatment. As Kwon Hyuk remarks, prisoners in his camp were not “treated as human beings” and were of less use to the officials than animals would have been. “In the camp,” he states at one point, “the life of an inmate is worth less than the life of a worm”—a statement that occurs in between blurry video images of an unidentified female prisoner crying in agony as she is beaten on the head with a stick and kicked in the stomach by a guard. The most emotionally riveting or “dramatic” scene in Camp 14: Total Control Zone arrives at the film’s halfway point, as Shin describes (after a series of lengthy hesitations) how he was involved in his mother’s and brother’s deaths. After his older sibling escaped from the camp’s cement factory and made his way into his mother’s cement-floored hovel, the protagonist witnessed him receiving the maternal affection that she had long denied Shin, and this enflamed the fourteen-year-olds jealousy. When the authorities in the camp caught wind of what had happened, they arrested Shin while he was in the camp’s meagerly furnished school (where he had been receiving ideological proselytizing rather than any actual education). They then transported him to another type of total institution: a prison inside the prison. That is, like many other internment or labor camps around the world, Kaechon has

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a maximum-security detention area within it to house those deemed most “dangerous” to the state, and the seven months that Shin spent inside the carceral setting were the most mentally and physically challenging. This jaggedly animated sequence, in which sketchy cross-hatched lines convey the regulated chaos of the situation, shows the blindfolded boy being taken to an interrogation room that recalls the location—witnessed earlier in the film—where guards had been secretly videotaped while beating and berating an unnamed woman. There, guards tie Shin up in ropes and hoist him to the ceiling, leaving him to hang there for hours on end and occasionally lighting a fire under his back to burn away his flesh. Beside this painful flame torture, he experiences water torture, although Shin—in recounting that episode—lets Soozandeh’s animation do the work of visually “explaining” what that entailed. “Many years have passed,” he says, clearly ill-at-ease while seated on the floor before the camera. “[But] I don’t want to remember these experiences anymore.” And yet, back in present-day Seoul, he raises his arms, which bow unnaturally upward, in front of the lens, and testily turns the line of questioning toward his interviewer, asking why he is cursed with such “deformed” appendages. Once again, the subject’s body “fleshes out” what even the animation is unable to fully reveal, metaphorically putting the viewer in the skin of a man who is “filled with anger” whenever he stands “in front of the mirror.” But such corporeal interfacing—between subject and object of this film’s humanitarian gaze—can only go so far in transporting the audience into the space of the “other,” someone who was tortured regularly while the authorities investigated his mother’s and brother’s “suspicious” activities beginning in April 1996. It is in this section of the film where Shin mentions his friendship with an older prisoner, who kindly tended to his wounds and was the closest thing he had to a caring parent. Meeting the feeble old man in the underground prison was, according to him, “a stroke of fortune,” and Shin attributes his survival throughout that seven-month period to his cellmate. For the first time in his life, he was the recipient of human affection, and, in a manner that suggests the strong bonds that develop between cellmates in more traditional prison dramas, the man’s show of “emotional support,” so needed after Shin’s mother was hanged to death and his brother was shot by a firing squad, was enough to sustain him for years after returning to the camp’s general population. As Nicole Rafter notes in Shots in the Mirror, one source for prison movies’ “enduring popularity” can be found in these onscreen representations of “perfect,” unsullied friendships between men (or, in some cases, women). Despite their outward differences, the paradigmatic pair of buddies who together form the heart of many prison films, from Papillon (1973) to The Shawshank Redemption (1994), are “ideal companions” in that they are “more loyal and true” to one another than they can achieve, spiritually or emotionally, with anyone else (including family members) outside the carceral setting. Bringing in Shin’s feelings about the old man with whom he

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shared a cramped prison cell, Camp 14: Total Control Zone thus puts itself in league with more traditional examples of carceral cinema, though its failure or refusal to abide by other “rules” of the genre mark it as different. Camp 14: Total Control Zone is one of several recently produced cultural artifacts that foreground social injustices and rights violations in North Korea. It thus contributes to shedding light on a subject and a region of the world that previously had been couched in a language of “shadows.” But it is also part of a new trend in documentary filmmaking, whereby hand-drawn and computer-generated animation is seen as an instrumental means of expressing the seemingly inexpressible, or simply assisting in the full disclosure of private moments that cannot be accessed otherwise. Furthermore, Camp 14: Total Control Zone distinguishes itself from other examples of the prison film genre by demonstrating how the total institution that once confined its protagonist to a life of forced labor north of the 38th Parallel has been internalized and is mentally extended into his new life south of the border. On the surface, this aligns with sociologists’ claim that, “once confined in a total institution, it can be extremely difficult to make the transition back out into the community” (Inderbitzin et al. 2017, 459). And, indeed, the totalizing experience from which Shin escaped (but which he carried with him to his new home in Seoul) is evident whenever he is shown walking by himself down the aisles of a sprawling South Korean supermarket or dining alone at a restaurant while multigenerational families sit at nearby tables. But it also manifests on distant shores, as when Shin travels to Geneva (where he speaks at the 2013 Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance, and Democracy and receives UN Watch’s Moral Courage Award) and Los Angeles (where he meets the young members of Liberty in North Korea [LiNK], an activist group that sends goods to Shin’s former countrymen). In each of these scenes, the former prisoner, quiet and reserved in the company of others, seems emotionally detached from those around him. “My home is over there,” he says during a touching scene shot near the DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ), pointing toward North Korea, which he can see but only at a distance. This sentiment echoes another of Shin’s most revealing comments: “When it comes to my body, I live in South Korea, but in my mind I still live in the camp.” As such, the film disturbs the typical character arc and narrative trajectory at the heart of carceral cinema, giving us an unconventional hero who in some ways longs to return to the place that robbed him of his dignity. There is much that is contradictory about Shin Dong-hyuk, who seems resigned to a life of quiescence yet travels the globe to share his experiences with others. The apparent inconsistencies in his character have been magnified recently, as his testimonies have come under scrutiny. This point is something alluded to at the beginning of this chapter: the fact that Shin admitted to Blaine Harden and other interviewers (in January 2015) that his initial accounts of prison life were not entirely accurate. Following those highly publicized “revelations,” human rights advocates with a vested interest in

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North Korea have “seriously questioned” Shin’s moral standing and credibility (as someone who was complicit in his mother’s and brother’s death), if not the legitimacy of his and other camp survivors’ claims about rights violations. Although the harsh conditions of Camp 14 have been revealed “to some extent” by this film, in the words of one group of researchers, the fact that “some of his testimonies were not true” (Do et al. 2015, 117) might sit uneasily with those viewers who want and expect documentaries to be fiction-less transcriptions of “real life.” However, it is worth remembering that, as Jonathan Dawson prompts his readers to do in his own study of animated documentaries, most debates concerning the apparent opposition “between the ‘actual’ and the ‘constructed’” lead to a philosophical “dead end” when it comes to this hybridized mixing of communicative forms (2006, 42); for a great deal of emotional and artistic authenticity—and perhaps even “truth”—is to be found in the dramatic use of hand-drawn and computer-generated imagery. If freedom is indeed one of the operative themes in the prison film, then our willingness to grant it to cultural producers who are drawn to stories of incarceration—or, in Marc Wiese’s case, drawn to subjects who find themselves somehow “trapped” by their newfound freedom—might unlock new ways to expand the genre beyond its own barbed-wire confines.

References Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Chute, Hillary L. 2016. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coscarelli, Joe. 2014. “The Appalling Sketches of What Happens in a North Korean Prison Camp.” New York, February 18. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/ 02/north-koren-prison-camp-drawings-un-report.html?gtm=bottom>m=top. Dawson, Jonathan. 2006. “Animation.” In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, edited by Ian Aitken, 42–44. New York: Routledge. Do, Kyung-ok, Kim Soo-Am, Han Dong-ho, Lee Keum-Soon, and Hong Min. 2015. White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea. Seoul, South Korea: Korea Institute for National Unification. Griffiths, Alison. 2016. Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prison in Early TwentiethCentury America. New York: Columbia University Press. Harden, Blaine. 2015. Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin Books. Inderbitzin, Michelle, Kristin A. Bates, and Randy R. Gainey. 2017. Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. New York: Columbia University Press. Kim, Yong. 2009. Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor. New York: Columbia University Press.

100  D. S. DIFFRIENT Mason, Paul. 2006. “Relocating Hollywood’s Prison Film Discourse.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 191–209. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing. Pheasant-Kelly, Frances. 2013. Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutional Settings, Identity, and Psychoanalysis in Film. London: I.B. Tauris. Rafter, Nicole Hahn. 2000. Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tudor, Daniel, and James Pearson. 2015. North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing. White, Hayden. 2001. “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth.” In The History and Narrative Reader, edited by Geoffrey Roberts, 375–389. London: Routledge. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester, UK: Waterside Press.

How Race and Criminality Are Embodied in Memoir and Film: An Investigation of Jamaa Fanaka and Austin Reed Ravi Shankar

Race, Shame, and Incarceration That incarceration is a racialized phenomenon in North America has become self-evident, as Michele Alexander’s groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow and Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary film The 13th have demonstrated. Statistics from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP 2015) criminal fact sheet provide the statistical evidence that “African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites….[and] in 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population [a figure which includes those on parole, probation or other form of correctional supervision].” Furthermore, there are more African-Americans under correctional control today than there were slaves during the Civil War era (Alexander 2012). While since the time of W.E.B. Du Bois in the early twentieth century, there has sociological research and reporting on the racial conditions of imprisonment under American democracy. There also has been concomitant flourishing of art and writing produced by and created about those who are incarcerated. This essay compares two such examples from different genres at different points in time; one an insider account of a nineteenth-century Connecticut prison, Austin Reed’s 1850s memoir The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict; and the other, an outsider’s genre cinematic R. Shankar (*)  University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_7

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construction, Jamaa Fanaka’s 1979 Blaxploitation film Penitentiary. I use the thread of shame to stitch together these two disparate verbal and filmic texts. In his novel Immortality, Czech writer Milan Kundera writes, “the basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone” (1999, 224). This notion has embedded in it a few related ideas, namely that shame is a public emotion, perceived as being visible to others (unlike guilt which might remain invisible) and that it sums up who someone is, rather than an aspect of their behavior. The conclusion, especially if we apply this quotation to American criminality as defined by the US prison system, has sociological value, because it implies that aspects of human behavior are calcified, without volition or any hope of change. Criminals, once literally branded as such, carry with them the stigma of shame that transfigures their lives and motivates their actions, especially in the eyes of a society that then defines them as such. Sometimes, as in the case of African-Americans, people are born into the shame of their race as a historical given and an a priori condition of their very existence, which in turn can be seen as both an origin and a consequence of criminality. In Discipline and Punish (1977), Michel Foucault begins with the premise that the spectacle of the scaffold and other forms of torture and corporeal punishment prevalent in medieval society has given way to a system of punitive measures that take place far from the public eye and often operate in extra-juridical settings. Therefore, we do not know as much about what takes place inside prisons today as we might have in the era when a convicted criminal was drawn and quartered before our very eyes. This creates a conflicted and paradoxical relationship to both the idea and the actuality of imprisonment. We are both repulsed and fascinated by what we imagine takes place within a facility for criminal offenders and depend upon the firsthand or fictionalized accounts, both written or visual, in order to help us conjure this space. Reed and Fanaka, in very different ways, provide us insights into mechanisms of incarceration and its effect on those who have been imprisoned.

Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary Jamaa Fanaka’s film Penitentiary (1979) is one of a number of Blaxploitation films from the 1970s. It is an example of the low-budget, non-mainstream genre that recast black actors in more prominent roles and glamorized violence, anti-authoritarianism, and sexuality in gritty urban settings. Both glorified and vilified during their time, primarily because of their sensationalized and degenerate portraiture of blacks, and their formulaic plots, the genre nonetheless broke significant ground in the cinematic representations of African-Americans. Penitentiary was released at the tail end of the Blaxploitation phenomenon as it had faded by the early 1980s. Filmed on a budget of only $100,000, the movie would go on to gross over $3 million dollars and become that year’s

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highest-grossing independent film, with critics like Allyson Nadia Field calling the movie “the transition moment between Blaxploitation and independent black filmmaking” (Allyson Nadia Field, The New York Times, 2017). The film follows the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone (played by Leon Isaac Kennedy), a black hitchhiker wandering the desert who gets framed for murder by the prostitute who gives him a ride. Too Sweet suddenly finds himself in a sensationalistic, violent prison where there’s the constant danger of sexual and physical abuse by the other men. In order to survive, the men rely on their brute strength and constant fighting, and as it turns out, there’s an illegal boxing tournament being held in the prison and the warden is able to free the winner of the tournament on early parole, because his brother is a boxing manager and has some clout with the parole board. The film begins in the desert where Too Sweet has camped for the day in a makeshift tent. The expansiveness of the opening shot is in stark contrast to much of the later action of the film which takes place within the confines of prison. The trope of the man wandering the desert recalls the Biblical story in Exodus where the Israelites are led from their slavery in Egypt to eventual freedom; however, rather than being with a tribe of fellow wanderers, Too Sweet is on his own, underscoring the self-reliance that he will have to depend upon throughout the course of the film to survive. The first characters we see, off in the distance, are two white bikers who disrespectfully wake Too Sweet up by kicking sand and dirt in his face. He is then picked up by a beautiful African-American prostitute who immediately offers herself to the hitchhiker, developing another theme in the film of licentious female sexuality. We later learn that this woman, Linda (played by Hazel Spears), who is en route to pick up two johns is the one responsible for the murder that gets pinned on Too Sweet. This presents us with the familiar trope of the femme fatale, whose irresistible siren-call leads to the demise of the men she seduces. When Too Sweet attempts to protect Linda’s honor in a bar, he ends up getting knocked out cold and, when he awakens, finds himself in prison. The prison depicted in Jamaa Fanaka’s film traffics in many of the fears and stereotypes that define popular imagination about what it is like on the “inside.” Firstly, the prison population mostly comprises men of color. Secondly, there is an emphasis on hyper-masculinity and psychosis, real and fictitious. One of the first interactions Too Sweet has in prison is with a man with a lit cigarette in his ear who froths and grovels in front of him like a dog. Though it turns out that this entire enactment of insanity is a charade meant to terrify the new inmate, it nonetheless plays into collective anxieties that the prison system houses those who are least desirable and who are non compos mentis. Finally, there is also the shame of being seen as exhibiting weakness on display, for Too Sweet meets another African-American inmate called Eugene who has just been beaten up by a large black man called Jesse. When Too Sweet asks him why he doesn’t stand up for himself, Eugene confesses, “But I happen to be Jesse’s property; as you gathered last night.” Too Sweet

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in amazement asks him if that’s how he considered himself, as property, to which Eugene responds, “Aw come on, man. You know what’s been happening. Everybody knows what’s happening. I’ve been, as they say, ‘tampered with’.” This exchange reminds the viewer of the history of African-Americans, when they were held as slaves and considered the property of their masters. Even after slavery was officially ended, there was an era of segregation, where blacks were considered “separate but equal.” The communal shame of this period is alluded to explicitly in this exchange with the understanding that someone like Eugene, who did not stand up for himself, deserved the ignominy of being reverted back to enslavement, or in prison parlance, “of being someone’s bitch.” When Too Sweet is propositioned by his own cellmate called Half Dead, his response is not to acquiesce but to fight back. In one of the more brutal sequences in the film, Half Dead and Too Sweet, both in their underwear, fight until the cell is covered with blood and sweat. There’s a certain homoeroticism to this violence, as the camera lingers on the drenched, half-naked men grappling with one another in a way that suggests both sex and viciousness. This fear of being sexually assaulted and physically harmed by other inmates are social anxieties encoded in the idea of the prison in popular culture and Penitentiary exploits both the fear and anxiety of sexual and physical harm throughout the course of the film. Too Sweet emerges victorious from this fight, thereby evading the shame that would have come with being physically and sexually overpowered. As a result, he gains newfound respect and when the prison boxing tournament is announced, he is the natural choice to compete. He is assigned the mentorship of a boxing trainer, an elderly black inmate called Seldom Seen. Imprisoned prison for 50 years, the character of Seldom Seen is the stereotype of the black activist intellectual. His cell is spotless, decorated with a poster of Malcolm X and with volumes by Nabokov and Tolstoy on his shelves alongside Alex Haley’s Roots (1976). Too Sweet becomes his cellmate because the Lieutenant wants the coach to be closer to his star pugilist. During their time in the cell together, the two men engage in several philosophical exchanges. The winner of the boxing tournament will get to have a connubial visit with a woman, which has worked up the inmates, Too Sweet included, into an erotic frenzy. But when Too Sweet mentions this in the most vulgar terms to the white-haired Seldom Seen, the elder man is not interested. “Survival, that’s my first concern,” Seldom tells his younger cellmate. “I faced myself a long time ago. I’m nothing … 35 years and I’ve learned to be content. I just deal with the me that’s in here … They call that institutionalized, Too Sweet. Institutionalized. And I’m it … because if I can’t have it all, then I don’t want any of it. And I’m for real Too Sweet.” Seldom Seen presents a different paradigm of masculinity from the other inmates in the yard who are forced to rely on their physical prowess in order to survive. He relies instead on his wits and exudes wisdom and

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circumspection, qualities that he passes on to Too Sweet to make him a better boxer. His shame is different from the other men in prison: He is not ashamed of lacking the physical strength to defend himself but of lacking the mental strength to live in society. This shows itself in the final scene of the film, when Seldom Seen is offered early parole so he can continue training Too Sweet. Surprisingly, he balks at this offer of freedom, because, as he has alluded to earlier, he has become institutionalized. Even though he clearly has some knowledge of recent historical events, given the poster of Malcolm X on his wall, Seldom Seen nonetheless does not know how he might survive in a world that has changed in immeasurable ways in the half-century he has been locked up. His shame is that he knows no life save other than incarceration. Too Sweet, however, is glad to have the opportunity to fight his way out of prison, and the film ends with him standing outside the gates of the correctional facility, back on the road as when we first encountered him at the beginning of the film.

Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict If Jamaa Fanaka’s film offers an exaggerated and nightmarish vision of what life is like in prison, depicted from the outside looking in (both in terms of the viewer of the cinema and because the movie’s portrayals play on extent stereotypes of prison life), then Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict (written in the latter half of the nineteenth century but not published until 2017) does the opposite. The memoir reveals to its readers from the inside what life might have been like for a black man sent to a House of Refuge and then Auburn State Prison from a very young age. Indeed, Reed spent most of his life in prison. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that what he describes is nightmarish and suffused with the consequences and of shame. The book also gives us valuable insights into the conditions of the American prison system in the nineteenth century. The earliest prison memoir by an African-American writer, The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, also happens to be the one that was most recently published. Discovered by an antiquarian bookseller at an estate sale in Rochester, New York in 2009, Austin Reed’s handwritten, handsewn manuscript was produced during his time in prison in 1858, before being unearthed nearly 150 years later. Though we are not sure how Reed was able to compose this manuscript, given its provenance, the many edits and changes attest to the fact that it was worked on off- and on-again over the course of his incarceration and then afterward, during his subsequent release. It has since been edited by Yale University English professor Calem Smith and published in its entirety in 2016 under the title The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict. Austin Reed was born into an emancipated black family in Rochester, New York around 1823, and while never formally a slave, neither was he, for all intents and purposes, a typical free man. His memoir begins with the

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death of his father and chronicles the financial and emotional difficulties his mother experienced while raising him and his siblings. He was completely uneducated and in fact remained illiterate until his later incarceration when he learned to read and write. Because his mother could not afford to take care of him, he was sent as six-year-old boy to work as an indentured servant at a local farm. There he is forced to work and when he is seen as uncompliant, he is tied to a post and whipped by the white farmer for whom he works. As an act of revenge for this act of physical abuse, Reed burns down the farmer’s house. This act of arson leads him to be sent to the euphemistically called “House of Refuge,” the United States’ first juvenile reformatory, situated in Rochester, New York. Under the guise of providing the students an education, the administrators treat the children here as criminals, and time and again, Reed is whipped anew, an act that he strongly associates with the shame of being a slave. This shame is one of the initiating factors that propels him to a life of crime and leads to his near-perpetual incarceration for the next fifty years. The whip, in Reed’s description, is a zoomorphism, referred to throughout the memoir as a “cat.” This attribution is no doubt short for the “cat o’ nine tails,” and as Reed describes it, addressing us directly, “Reader, these cats are made out of catgut with a small knot made at the ends of them and wound around with a small wire, then rubbed well with shoemaker’s wax and attached to a piece of rattan that has a pretty good spring to it, so that as when the officer strikes, it leaves a deep cut in the back, causing the tender skin to burst while the blood flows freely down the back from the cuts it leaves, leaving the entire back striped with red” (Reed, 40). Over the course of the text, Reed is whipped numerous times, each act of violence accompanied by bursts of shame, rage, and remorse. Nonetheless, Reed’s lyric wit and sense of irony are still intact as he refers to the whip as those “little kittens” or “the darling little puss,” attributions that make the childhood he never got to experience all the more heart-breaking. The violence in Reed’s case is as severe as that depicted in Fanaka’s film; however, for Reed it comes from those entrusted as his caretakers and wardens, and not from the other inmates. Even though public torture had been abolished by reformers by the mid-nineteenth century, within the privacy of the carceral space, these extreme forms of punishment were still found. Reed describes being subjected to a showering bath, which is a direct antecedent to the “advanced interrogation techniques” of waterboarding named as a prohibited form of torture by U.N. special rapporteur Nils Melzer. Furthermore, Reed is subject to the stockade, starvation, and has his limbs stretched out upon a barrel. He is also punished with up to three months of solitary confinement at a time. Going back to Kundera’s definition of shame as “the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter,” Reed’s memoir demonstrates that the act of shaming leads to violence, and violence leads to further shame, a self-perpetuating cycle.

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In his retelling, Reed’s experiences with his jailors are charged with racial animus and extreme brutality. In one passage, he refers to these men as “Mr. Hard Heart, Mr. No Feelings, Mr. Cruel Heart, Mr. Demon, Mr. Fiend, Mr. Love Torture, Mr. Tyrant, and Mr. Car Bearer” (Reed, 166). Whippings are meted out for offenses as trivial as spilling salt, back talk, writing letters, swinging in a hammock, and any number of insignificant deviations from the rules of the penal institution whose primary mode of operation seems to have been the prevention of behaviors that might normalize and rehabilitate their children? Isn’t it a juvenile reformatory? As another inmate confesses to Reed, “if I am hard, I have been harden within the walls of a gloomy prison, and if I am cruel, I have learnt it within the walls of a gloomy prison, for ‘sthere where cruelty, pain, shame and misery dwells” (Reed, 175). Throughout the roughly chronological story that Reed tells—one that moves from childhood to his release but with many imaginative detours—he wants nothing more than to go Home (and this word is always capitalized), to an imagined place of respite where he would be safe from state violence and oppression. Reed initially titled his memoir “The Inmate of a Gloomy Prison With the Mysteries and Miseries of the New York House of Refuge and Auburn Prison Unmasked; With the Rules and Regulations of Auburn Prison from 1840 up to the Present Time, and the Different Modes of Punishments” before shortening it to “The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict.” He worked on the book sporadically during his many years of incarceration interspersed with brief periods of freedom. He seems to have revisited the manuscript after eventually having been pardoned by New York’s governor, Samuel J. Tilden, in 1876, at which point he was a self-avowed Christian fundamentalist, touring “all over the union and telling sinners the troubles and trials that I Have been through and How I came to be a Christian man,” as he writes in a letter to the House of Refuge in 1895 in an attempt to get the records of his stay there. However, he never published his book, and as a result, the text we have at our disposal is raw, unfinished, a lamentation and a pastiche, darkly lyrical and linguistically inventive. Reed’s text is unlike many other confessional crime narratives that were published in the mid-nineteenth century under the guise of having been written by black authors but that, according to editor Caleb Smith, were “usually written, or heavily edited by the white ministers and lawyers who ran the penal system” (The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, xxiii). Reed’s book, though grammatically regularized and slightly edited by Smith, nonetheless comes down to us in its fragmented and incomplete state, which further reinforces the idea that shame is phenomenon that shards the psyche of the prisoner. In some respects, it would have been inauthentic were the story to appear more fluent and cohesive. The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict retains the traces of its “haunting,” and those dark spaces of violence and isolation that the book occupies have little recourse to grammatical refined language. Instead, we are presented with a pastiche of anecdotes, memories, fantasies, historical records, and wish fulfillments.

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Departures and Intersections So how can we compare and contrast these two such different texts? One is a memoir written in the 1850s by a black man who served most of his life in prison; the other a film made in the 1970s by a black director who was only incarcerated briefly. (In an interview, Fanaka talks about being incarcerated for six months in Philadelphia for being involved in a fight.) Furthermore, Fanaka’s film is clearly intended for a black audience; as with many other Blaxploitation films, it saw a limited release in the theaters of black neighborhoods and cities. Reed’s book, however, seems written for a white audience, given that he addresses some of his white captors directly and had as a paradigm, Solomon Northup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave which sold much better with white readers. This becomes clear in the ways in which Reed romanticizes the Irish families and children that he encounters in his memoir, and the gross caricatures he uses to depict men of his own race. White Americans would also have been more likely to be literate during the time of the book’s composition. Compare this description of an Irish boy about to be punished—“Could you be told my sympathies as I looked upon [his] beautiful milk white skin who was to be lash and stripped like a slave”—to the description of a black convict on his deathbed: “The impudent and black infernal black hearted nigger had the impudence to stretch out his black paw.” Additionally, Reed’s memoir, because it has come to us as an unfinished artifact, is a truly hybrid construction, a patchwork of poems, passages from the Bible, lists of tasks and punishments, dream sequences, epistles, and passages of fiction, alongside exposé and other elements that can be corroborated as factual. Fanaka’s film, on the other hand, is much more formulaic, following both the tropes of the genre and the three-act structure of most feature films, including a setup (Too Sweet is wrongfully convicted), a confrontation (Too Sweet has to fight for his life and to avoid rape), and a resolution (Too Sweet uses his boxing ability to win freedom). Additionally, Reed is constantly seeking to return Home, while Too Sweet is a vagabond and literally homeless, with the opening sequence of the film depicting him asleep in a tent in the desert. These differences are also the places where the content crosses over. Firstly, both book and film traffic in sensationalized descriptions of violence. Take the mise-en-scène of the boxing sequences in Penitentiary which show predominantly black men battering each other inside a makeshift ring, the fight sequences are so over-the-top that they make Rocky look realistic and even show the referee on occasion being given a roundhouse to the chin. Reed’s beatings are also depicted in great detail, as in this passage when he has been falsely accused of having stolen a gold watch: “he [the warden] gave me about sixty or seventy blows more, which brought me faint and senseless to the floor, and the blood came streaming from my back” (Reed, 60). While it is difficult to ascertain if these descriptions were hyperbolic, the cruelty of

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incarceration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can certainly be corroborated. As Angela Spitzer writes, “from reports of Bentham’s borderline sadistic torture of inmates to accounts of female inmates’ sexual subordination, by the 1830s the American penitentiary was no longer the model for compassionate rehabilitation” (Spitzer 2010). Secondly, in both works, the men in charge are always white, such as Lieutenant Arnsworth (played by Chuck Mitchell) in Penitentiary who sees the prisoners as nothing more than animals to be pitted in battle. Similarly, the men who run the House of Refuge and the Auburn State Penitentiary in The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict are all white. Thirdly, almost the entirety of the action in both works takes place with the prison itself, and the few sequences that take place outside are fleetingly depicted, an exception to the rule in these black men’s lives. Finally, the relative guilt or innocence of these black men doesn’t matter to their imprisonment, and in both cases their fates are sealed by their attempts to help “immoral” women. Too Sweet is framed for the murder of one of the bikers when he was trying to defend the honor of a prostitute who was actually the person responsible for the killing and as an adult Reed takes the rap for $100 stolen by a white prostitute. He pleads guilty to her theft and is sentenced to six years at Auburn as a result. There is in both cases a misogynistic representation in which women are depicted as wanton, dishonest, and the cause of male downfall. They seem to have in these instances an element of misplaced chivalry, which seems to avoid the larger social question of why these men are being incarcerated in such great numbers in the first place. Through both works, there also runs a thread of magical realism; clearly portions of Reed’s memoirs are exaggerated and invented. Time and again, he runs into his former associates from the House of Refuge in the most unexpected places, he brags about winning inordinate sums of money playing cards with sailors, and he hears the spirit of his deceased father speaking aloud, hence being a “haunted” convict. Penitentiary is also far from a realistic portrayal of prison, for the prisoners wander freely, smoking and fighting as they wish, and in one lively sequence, play guitars, drums, and a funky bass in the prison yard as the prisoners dance in a choreographed routine straight from the Jackson Five in concert. Prison in these instances takes on the hue of projection or a collective fantasy. Perhaps it is a defensive mechanism to guard some semblance of freedom from the constriction and brutality of the prison, or perhaps it’s just to entertain the audience; but regardless, neither work is social realism in any arguable sense. A final connection tracks back to the representations of race, which is conjoined by the psychological phenomenon of shame. In the case of Reed’s memoir, there is internalized racism in his descriptions of himself and other black men. This self-loathing is set against the romanticized portrayals of the Irish boys and families that he meets. An example of this mentality is present in this passage from Reed’s time at the House of Refuge:

110  R. SHANKAR He [Mike Flinn, Irish in descent] was a boy that was fair and beautiful, and when I look upon the fair white skin of his all cut in pieces and lacerated with the cats, it made me bow my head in sorrow…Yes, me brave Irish boys, me loves you till the day that I am laid cold under the sod, and I would let the last drop of this dark blood run and drain from these black veins of mine to rescue you from the hands of a full blooded Yankee. (Reed, 41)

This contrasts with his depiction of another black inmate as a “thick lip nigger” and an “infernal black whelp.” Fanaka’s film also reduces many of the black inmates to brutal, sadistic, over-sexualized beings who are intent on destroying one another. Even the one person who doesn’t fit this paradigm, Seldom Seen, is flatly rendered and has a glaring weakness that renders him impotent. Such moments abound in both texts, problematizing the notion of racism, which doesn’t always emanate from outside of the authors in, but often from inside the authors, out into the world.

Double Consciousness and Representations of Race The vexing conundrum of racial self-representation might be better explained by W.E.B. Du Bois notion of “double consciousness,” which he describes as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others … [a] twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois, 8). Reed manifests this double consciousness when he threatens to split his birth mother’s head with an axe if she punishes him for destroying some fruit trees, but then waxes rhapsodically and melodramatically about the kindness of the Irish families who take him in, clothe and feed him after he has escaped from prison. Shame of this kind comes from being born into a post-plantation world where from an early age, though slavery did not exist per se, blacks were nonetheless seen as less valuable than were their white counterparts. Because of Reed’s interest in reading and education, it makes a certain kind of warped sense that he would identify with his oppressors. In Fanaka’s film, a different kind of shame is at play, related to the larger genre of Blaxploitation itself. While, on the one hand, the films transformed the roles available to black actors beyond characters who were stereotyped as submissive or hilarious—such as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939) or Little Black Sambo (1935)—many of the newer films ended up replacing those older tropes with new stereotypes that were just as damaging. Instead of being typecast as maids or butlers, the Blaxploitation films showed blacks as vicious, hyper-sexualized, lawless, and antisocial; they were shown on screen as pimps, prisoners, and thugs. These stereotypes are double-sided for they indicate the unleashing of power in inchoate ways and the limited forms of subversive authority available to a man of color. Additionally, white studios benefited financially from these films. Penitentiary is no exception; the movie presents sensationalized and stereotyped portraits of black men and

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women, including Linda, who offers up her body within minutes of picking up a bedraggled hitchhiker. The black men in the movie have names such as Half Dead, Lying Latney Winborn, and even Magilla Gorilla. These men are depicted as sex-crazed, violent criminals who seek to sodomize one another, or are intent on battering one another to death. Even the protagonist Too Sweet speaks about women in a crass and demeaning way, and even though he mainly engages in violence in order to defend himself, he is nonetheless as brutal as the other men. The one exception to this hyper-masculine portrayal is Seldom Seen, the older intellectual, who is also characterized as weaker than all the other men, in that he is institutionalized and can no longer face the challenge of prison. Most of the other men we meet in prison are one-dimensional caricatures and this is not due to the edit of some white studio head. This film was written, directed, and produced by Jamaa Fanaka, and in an ironic twist, because of the success of this film, Fanaka found himself compelled to remake this same kind of film over and over again. His only other feature-length films, each doing less well at the box office than those before it, were the sequels Penitentiary I and Penitentiary II. His attempts to make other kinds of films were routinely rebuffed and stalled in development. Eventually, he would file a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against Directors Guild of America, in part because of the discrimination he experienced in Hollywood. As he would later say in an interview, “They always say Hollywood is a liberal town, but it’s actually one of the most conservative, racist towns I’ve encountered” (Fanaka 2010). This internalization of racism and misogyny in Reed’s memoir and Fanaka’s film suggests the power of shame to distort conception. In an article on “Assessing Jail Inmates’ Proneness to Shame and Guilt: Feeling Bad About the Behavior or the Self?” in Criminal Justice Behavior, the authors write: When shamed, people feel physically, psychologically, and socially diminished. There’s a dramatic shift in one’s perception and experience of the self. People in the midst of a shame experience feel small, inferior, unworthy, despicable, even … The knee-jerk response is not to apologize and repair, but rather to hide or escape. This is understandable because the pain is great, the self is impaired, and the job (to transform the self from fundamentally flawed to good) is impossibly immense. (Tangney et al. 2011)

Reed’s memoir provides an example of this syndrome, whereby he vacillates between remorse and rage, and values the life of an Irish boy more than his own. Shame might also help account for his continual recidivism, for after he is freed for a period of time, Reed can’t help but reoffend, whether it is in self-defense or through the temptations of vice. He calls himself a “haunted convict” and that haunting emanates from being made to feel inferior and then criminal from a very young age, perhaps even before he was born.

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His subjectivity has been pummeled into a ghost-like consistency, which makes rehabilitation nearly impossible. Fanaka didn’t find the term Blaxploitation exploitative, though he is upfront about the appetite for the kind of shock-value and escapism that those kinds of films provided. As he said an interview, “I think that at one time it [blaxploitation] may have had a negative connotation, but that has all been turned around. We (blacks) have reclaimed it.” In his mind, there was always a deeper sociopolitical context in which these films operated. As one of the founding members of the L.A. Rebellion group of filmmakers (also known as the “Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers”), he felt an ideological imperative to make black cinema that provided an alternative to typical Hollywood fare. As Dean Brandum writes of this group: in terms of an aesthetic principle, the group’s chief ambition was to rewrite the standard cinematic language of cuts, fades, frame composition, and camera movement in order to present their own ‘non-standard’ vision of black people and culture … the political dogma of the L.A. Rebellion never adhered to a single political ideology, with the strands of cultural, revolutionary and African Marxism woven —often heatedly —through the group’s dynamic. (Brandum 2016)

Implicit in the brutality of the prison system, given visceral embodiment by the cinematography which glamorizes the violence with close-ups of wounds and the aftereffects of beatings, is a social critique that perhaps accounts for Fanaka’s racial representation. If the men are shown as beasts who attempt to claim one another’s bodies as their own, then it is crucial to note that this takes place within the prison. It’s as if being incarcerated is tantamount to being dehumanized for these men. Whoever they were on the outside, once they come into contact with a system of punishment, they regress to a near-primal state of combat and appetite, a kind of Hobbsian brutality. As Charles Hobbs writes, “forced to brutalize one another for the entertainment of the power structure, Penitentiary is a metaphor for the Black American experience” (from a 2018 review of the Blue-Ray edition of the films). Still, this reading does not account for the colorism implicit in the film, for the two protagonists who are given most of the lines in the film, Too Sweet and Eugene, are light-skinned while most of the more predatory prisoners are much darker skinned. In one sense, this shows an implicit color bias, but on the other hand, it shows that these two men are continually forced to prove their masculinity for they possess less “blackness” than the other inmates. Being light-skinned seems to mark them as easy prey for the darker men around them, which again would indicate a dubious connection of skin color with rapaciousness. Whether this was rendered intentionally or subconsciously, it is evident to today’s viewer that there’s a certain double consciousness inherent in Penitentiary. Fanaka, for all his radicalism and work toward black empowerment, acknowledges the demands of the market by catering to the view of blacks as vulgar and enraged. As Du Bois wrote, the bigotry

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of white people prompts “self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals” (Du Bois, 6) among black people, often making it impossible to create a unified and more complicated identity. Therefore, African-Americans struggle to be self-determinant and often achieve their sense of self through society’s reflection of them. In that sense, the stereotypes of mainstream culture are reflected back onto the minority consciousness creating an implicit impairment with which white Americans do not need to contend. Shame is clearly related to this, because being born into a race that has been stigmatized first as slaves and then as criminal causes an inescapable haunting impossible from which to escape. A more prosaic reason, with the exception of something like To Sir with Love (1967), which was also British-made, is that a film about an erudite black teacher or a courageous black Army general simply would not have been financed and promoted by the movie studios in the 1970s. Panning out then, to borrow a cinematic term, we can look at these two texts, separated by over 100 years in time to show how enduring the effects of racism are within the context incarceration, and similar the psychological effects are in relation to the experience of shame. Austin Reed’s memoir demonstrates that the origins of black incarceration are in the plantation system, that growing up without a father in one’s life can be devastating, and that the mechanisms of incarceration that exist today, from the use of solitary confinement to forced labor, are continuous with a long, uninterrupted history of institutionalized violence. Jamaa Fanaka’s film depicts a brutal world devoid of humanity, a prison where the only chance of escaping is by offering up one’s body in violent sport for the amusement of the white men in charge, and an institution which is indifferent to the relative guilt or innocence of black inmates. Both works show us how solidarity between African-Americans is diminished, as in prison black men are pitted against one another, internalizing the shame and self-loathing that leads them to identify with men of other races. They illustrate the abysmal conditions that exist in American prisons where the well-being of the prisoners is neither safeguarded nor considered important, and how the shame that results from this treatment is engendered in the self-destructive behavior of the individuals. Panning out even further, these texts are relevant to us today because the situation they describe is still unacceptable, and in some ways it is worse. As Joy James writes in a review of Reed’s memoir, “between 1825 and 1855, 63 percent of the children held captive in the House of Refuge were Irish” (James 2016). Today, “Black people make up nearly 40 percent of America’s incarcerated population and are more than five times as likely as whites to be behind bars” (Day et al. 2018, according to an article in Mother Jones). This is at a time when African-Americans constitute roughly 12% of the American population. As German Lopez states, the prison industrial complex has been a growth industry for over a century, as “between 1811 and 1979, state and federal governments built 711 prisons in the US. Between 1980 and

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2004, they built 936” (Lopez 2014 from Vox Magazine). During the era of Blaxploitation films in the 1970s, “161 U.S. residents were incarcerated in prisons and jails per 100,000 population; by 2007, that rate had more than quintupled to a peak of 767 per 100,000” (The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, 2014).

Tracking Forward Fanaka and Reed present a view of incarcerated life that, when viewed through the prism of shame, illuminates certain sociological trends that still persist today. The haunted legacy of Austin Reed lives on in someone like Kalief Browder, who was arrested at the age of 16 in 2010 for allegedly stealing a backpack, even though there was no evidence of the crime. Because he could not afford the bail necessary for his freedom, he was imprisoned without trial for over three years at the notorious Rikers Island in New York, during which time he was beaten, starved and put into solitary confinement for over 400 days. Three years after his arrest, he was released and had his charges dismissed due to lack of evidence; however, the time he spent in prison was deeply traumatic and he ended up committing suicide two years later at the age of 22. As his brother said in an interview after his death, “There was nothing wrong with [Kalief] mentally or physically or emotionally … before he left. When he left and came back, it was a 180, a total difference. Besides in physicality, his mentality was totally messed up because of what he learned and experienced and was forced to do while he was there” (Browder 2018 from The Daily Mail). The testimony of Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict demonstrates this form of disciplinary abuse has a long institutional history. Paralyzed by the shame of being born into institutionalized racism and the American legacy of slavery, which has still yet to be untangled, men of color have a particular relationship to incarceration with which we are only now reckoning. The value of a film like Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary is that it literalizes the violence that exists in prison and as sensationalized as its depictions might be, there is real sociological value in exposing this form of sadism to a wide audience. Both Reed’s and Fanaka’s work are also connected through Kundera’s idea of shame as “the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter.” Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict and Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary portray characters who haven’t been given a choice and who are as consigned to their fates as they are to their own biology. Given the contemporary situation of African-Americans and other people of color in the American criminal justice system, it is troubling to consider what little has changed over the last 150 years. Thankfully, we have these representations of both the reality and the fantasy of what exists in prison to call upon as we grapple with altering the course of American history and unraveling the personal and collective shame that has continued to endure for the last few centuries.

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References Alexander, M. 2012. The New Jim Crow. New Press. Brandum, Dean. 2016. Fear of a Black Phallus: Jamaa Fanaka’s Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975). Senses of Cinema. http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/ american-extreme/fear-of-a-black-phallus/. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP. April 5, 2015. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/. Day, Eli, Nathalie Baptiste, Adam Federman, and Ali Breland. “The Race Gap in US Prisons Is Glaring, and Poverty Is Making It Worse.” Mother Jones, February 2, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/02/the-race-gap-in-u-s-prisons-is-glaring-and-poverty-is-making-itworse/. Du Bois W. E. B. 2015. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. Fanaka, Jamaa. 2010. Welcome Home, Brother: The Jamaa Fanaka Interview. https:// nerdtorious.com/2010/11/30/welcome-home-brother-jamaa-fanaka-interview/. Foucault, Michel. 2009. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. S.l.: Vintage. Howard, Josia, and Jamaa Fanaka. 2018. “Jamaa Fanaka: Portrait of an L.A. Rebel.” The Grindhouse Cinema Database. April 4, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Jamaa_Fanaka:_Portrait_of_an_ L.A._Rebel. James, Joy. 2016. “The Roots of Black Incarceration.” Boston Review, October 24, 2016. Accessed December 14, 2018. http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/ joy-james-austin-reed-life-adventures-haunted-convict. Kenigsberg, Ben. 2017. “Film Series in NYC This Week.” The New York Times, September 21, 2017. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.nytimes. com/2017/09/21/movies/film-series-in-nyc-this-week.html. Kundera, Milan. 1999. Immortality. New York: Harper Perennial. “Lamenting the Greater Fall: 19th Century Prison Reform and the Women’s Prison Association Records.” Nypl.org. 2010. Accessed December 14, 2018. https:// www.nypl.org/blog/beta/2010/05/21/womens-prison-association-records. Lopez. 2014. “Watch the Number of US Prisons Skyrocket.” Vox.com. July 14, 2014. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898267/ prison-America-mass-incarceration-map-gif. “Now on Blu-ray: Jamaa Fanaka Philosophizes Prison Pugilists in PENITENTIARY & PENITENTIARY II.” ScreenAnarchy. April 24, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://screenanarchy.com/2018/04/now-on-blu-ray-jamaa-fanaka-philosophizes-prison-pugilists-in-penitentiary-penitentiary-ii-gallery.html. Penitentiary. Directed by Jamaa Fanaka. Performed by Leon Isaac Kennedy, Wilbur ‘Hi-Fi’ White, Thomas M. Pollard. USA, 1979. DVD. Reed, Austin, and Caleb Smith. 2017. The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict. New York: Modern Library, an Imprint of Random House. Tangney, June P., Jeffrey Stuewig, Debra Mashek, and Mark Hastings. 2011. “Assessing Jail Inmates’ Proneness to Shame and Guilt.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 38, no. 7: 710–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854811405762. “Three Years Ago Kalief Browder Hanged Himself After 33 Month Rikers Imprisonment Without a Trial.” Daily Mail Online, June 6, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5810107/Three-years-ago-KaliefBrowder-hanged-33-month-Rikers-imprisonment-without-trial.html.

Taxonomy of Genre: Prison Memoirs by American Men of Color Ravi Shankar

From Outrage to Epiphany: A Categorization of Response Though it could be argued by the very premise of colonialism that the American criminal justice system has always been racially skewed, that disparity only accelerated with the passage of the 13th amendment, which paradoxically was what abolished slavery. However, a loophole was preserved in its verbiage: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” What the framers of the Constitution likely would not have foreseen is how this meant that in the antebellum South those newly freedmen could be arrested on charges of vagrancy or not having a job. They would be fined, and being unable to pay, they would be forced to work off the money they owed by working in jails and on the very plantations on which they were once enslaved, coerced by armed guards. This helped beget the American prison industrial complex, which is a relatively modern phenomenon. As Historian Adam J. Hirsch has written, the utilization of incarceration as a form of criminal punishment is a “comparatively recent episode in Anglo-American jurisprudence,1” for in colonial America, jails were used as non-punitive detention facilities that primarily housed defendants before trial and sentencing. Punishment during that period was public spectacle, from brandings, maiming and hangings, with an idea that such shaming was a crucial component in preventing deviance from the colony’s laws. However, in the R. Shankar (*)  University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_8

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era of Andrew Jackson’s presidency in the early nineteenth century, penal servitude started to become common practice for many people indicted of a crime and by the Civil War era, foreign-born immigrants and freed slaves began to be imprisoned in disproportionate numbers. These racial injustices persist to this very day, as according to the Pew Research Center: “Another way of considering racial and ethnic differences in the nation’s prison population is by looking at the imprisonment rate, which tallies the number of prisoners per 100,000 people. In 2017, there were 1549 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults—nearly six times the imprisonment rate for whites (272 per 100,000) and nearly double the rate for Hispanics (823 per 100,000).2” The concomitant result of this shift from punishment as public spectacle to the private disciplining of someone in the hidden carceral space is that what transpires is secretive, and many of the mechanisms inherent therein, such as sexual abuse and solitary confinement, are meant to rebuke the very sense of rehabilitation. As Michel Foucault writes, “disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time, it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility.3” In prison, guards have the right of absolute surveillance over the prisoners, thereby reifying them to the ontological state of their criminality in what Foucault calls a “ceremony of this objectification.” The move, then, from a public punishment to a prison cell does not inherently reduce the brutality or thirst for vengeance, social impulses that are antithetical to the “rehabilitative strategies to successfully reintegrate offenders into our communities4” that are so often touted by entities like the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Therefore, it is crucial that the public can see what happens in these hidden spaces, and the genre of the prison memoir allows us just such privileged access. There have been a number of memoirs written by men of color about their experiences in prison. Surveying these books as a whole, we can glean a sense, not just of these men’s own personal story and the conditions of their imprisonment, but of the overarching social structures that have been put in place to preserve the status quo and to perpetuate what sociologist and legal scholar Michelle Alexander has called “the new Jim Crow.” Though there have been memoirs about life in prison written by women and by nonminority men, we will focus our attention on those nonfiction books ­written by American men of color, which largely fall into one of three categories: books that use the experience of imprisonment as a tool for redemption and personal growth; those that focus on the unfairness, bias and brutality in prisons, including the stories of those who have been wrongfully imprisoned; and finally, those more unclassifiable books that either glamorize incarceration or formally enact the trauma that the author has survived and that have no apparent polemical intention save the ethnographic prerogative to record the internal and external changes manifest by incarceration.

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American Self-Reliance: The Curse and Gift of Coercive and Corrosive Time Perhaps the most culturally impactful memoir in the first category is The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) as told to Alex Haley. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 best and most influential nonfiction books written in English since 1923, this memoir has sold over ten million copies worldwide. Describing Malcolm X’s rise from the drugged out criminal underworld in Harlem to the center of the civil rights movement, this book is noteworthy in part for its description of his time in prison on the charge of burglary. As he writes, “I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man’s society when–soon now, in prison–I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life.” In February 1946, at the age of 20, Malcolm X, then Malcolm Little, began serving his sentence in Charlestown State Prison in Boston, Massachusetts. “Behind bars,” Malcolm X writes, “a man never reforms.” He goes on to describe the conditions of his incarceration in a “dirty, cramped” cell without running water, where the men are forced to urinate and defecate in a bucket leading to the vilest odor imaginable. Malcolm X would come to learn that he had been sentenced, as many black men were, to nearly five times that of a white man accused of a similar crime. However, there’s no equivocation or protestations of innocence in what he tells us; Malcolm X confesses to being guilty of the crime with which he has been charged, plus many more besides; indeed, in those days, he lived primarily as a hustler and armed robber. For Malcolm X, even though he recognizes the essentially unfairness of the American carceral system, its institutionalized racism and what he calls the work of the “devil white man,” nonetheless he looks at this chapter as fundamental in his own education. As he writes, “many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or who have read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.” The twisted paradox of being a man of color in America during that time was that living on the streets was less conducive to personal growth than doing time; however, the stigma that would come with that meant that only the truly extraordinary individual, like Malcolm X, could use that time which was meant to devastate him for productive purpose. It’s important to note that what he calls his “prison studies” is selfactualized, not due to any rehabilitative mechanisms that exist in prison. In fact, one could say that he educated himself in spite of the encouragement given him in prison, in part because he was incarcerated at a time when a prison-like Charlestown and particularly the experimental prison at Norfolk to which he would be transferred had an extensive library. In time, and as is attested to time and time again, those libraries would be gutted and in some cases eliminated altogether. Malcolm X describes his auto-­didacticism as meticulously copying out every page of a dictionary until he had a mastery

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of the English language, at which point he read voraciously. He read everyone from Herodotus to W. E. B. Du Bois, from Nietzsche to Gandhi. As he writes in his autobiography, “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in my prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. … My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America.” Something else happens when Malcolm X is in prison; he discovered the Nation of Islam and begins a correspondence with Elijah Muhammad that were fundamental in his transformation and growth and ultimately his untimely demise. Malcolm X was particularly drawn to the alternative history of black people offered by Islam and began to understand that world history was a story of white men “pillaging and raping and bleeding and draining the whole world’s nonwhite people.” Though he did not desire to be incarcerated nor did he find it to be an effective means of adjudicating criminality, Malcolm X largely nonetheless credited the time he spent in prison as fundamental in his growth. Another prison memoir that follows an arc of redemption through incarceration is Shaka Senghor’s Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison (2013). The title of the book situates us in the kind of spaces this book plans to investigate. The child of a broken home in the inner city (in one of the more vivid lines of the book, he writes, “my parents’ marriage deteriorated piece by piece like an arthritic knee”), Senghor turned to a life of drug dealing to survive, eventually being shot and then killing a man himself during a botched drug deal at the age of 19. He ended up serving 19 years in incarceration, including seven years in solitary confinement. Senghor’s narrative cuts from his time in prison to his time on the streets of Detroit, moving backward and forward in time. The non-linearity highlights the fact that in both environments, he felt constrained of choice; seeing little way out of the projects, Senghor began to sell crack, which led to him using it. Tragically, though perhaps predictably, he would be shot at and then in turn would shoot and take another’s man life. He looks back at that time dispassionately, describing both the violence of the world he came from in inner city Detroit to the one he ended up at in various prisons as endemic. Even in reflection, it’s hard for him to fully fathom his trajectory; he writes, “all I knew I was hurting inside and didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died.” Like Malcolm X, in prison Senghor drew upon his inner resources to survive and slowly grow. He discovers literature, meditation and community, and ultimately it’s the bibliotherapy of reading and writing that allows him to confront his rage and transform it into something redemptive. Having killed a man, Senghor is able to gain the forgiveness of his family, and in turn, he is able to forgive the people in his own life he was let down by. Even in its temporal dislocations and its incisive criticism of the system of corrections, the narrative follows a familiar arc, one that ends in a vision of cautious optimism.

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“Even amid the pain, fear and destruction I had experienced and inflicted in these streets, there was still hope.” Jimmy Santiago Baca’s A Place to Stand (2001) occupies an intermediate space between these memoirs of self-actualization and those of critique, in part because he is a poet. His lyricism adds a layer of pathos to the confessions of his crimes, which primarily consisted of selling large quantities of pot for a Mexican gangster. A Chicano-American, Santiago Baca deals with similar yet distinctive ordeals of African-Americans in the inner city; instead of the sprawl of the concrete jungle, he grows up impoverished in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His father is an alcoholic, and his mother abandons his family to live with another man. Santiago Baca ends up in a detention home at the age of 13, and his life on the streets turns to a life of petty crime. Eventually, when he begins to sell greater and greater quantities of marijuana, he becomes a target of the DEA and in an FBI sting gone awry, an officer of the law is shot, though not by Santiago Baca. Nonetheless, penniless and alone, he decides to turn himself in and then to take the public defender’s council to plead guilty of the charges levied against him. As he writes, “I didn’t understand what he was saying. I was ignorant of court proceedings and intimidated by legal jargon. The truth was I was more panicked by having rights than by losing them.” He is sentenced to a mandatory no-parole five to ten years in a maximum security prison. Santiago Baca describes his life in prison replete with beatings and brutality by guard and prisoner alike. Yet the time he has in his cell allows him to begin to read and then slowly write his first poems. As he recollects, he thought of his childhood, the arroyo, the tumbleweeds and his grandfather, and it is in these moments of poignant recollection that he starts to transcend the bars that keep him jailed. As he writes, “But if prison was the place of my downfall, a place where my humanity was cloaked by the rough fabric of the most primitive manhood, it was also the place of my ascent. I became a different man, not because prison was good for me, but in spite of its destructive forces. In prison I learned to believe in myself and to dream for a better life.” As with Malcolm X and Shaka Senghor, language is what begins to transform Santiago Baca, who was functionally illiterate when he entered prison and who was publishing poems in prominent journals by the time he was released. “Language gave me a way,” he writes, “to keep the chaos of prison at bay and prevent it from devouring me; it was a resource that allowed me to confront and understand my past, even to wring from it some compelling truths, and it opened the way toward a future that was based not on fear or bitterness or apathy but on compassionate involvement and a belief that I belonged.” That sentence, with its complex orchestration of clauses, testifies to how far he has come as a writer; it also reveals an important thread between these many of these memoirs: the necessity of belonging and the ramifications of the systematic failures—such as those which break up the families of people of color through disproportionate incarceration practices— that prevent such belonging from happening in the first place.

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Along a similar trajectory and penned by a Puerto Rican-Cuban, Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets (1967) documents his childhood growing up in Harlem and navigating the turf wars between the Italians and the blacks when he was Afro-Cuban and dark-skinned while his siblings were lighter-skinned and preserved the illusion of being white. Along with his father’s alcoholism and violence and the perpetual poverty, this unequal racial dynamic plays itself out in the narrator’s mind, making him feel unloved and allowing him to identify with African-Americans rather than his own people. “Jose,” he tells his brother, “that’s what the white man’s been telling the Negro all along, that ‘cause he’s white he’s different from the Negro; that he’s better’n the Negro or anyone that’s not white.” His brother insists that Piri is not white, but has a little “Indian blood” in him, which is how any supposed racial impurity is euphemistically explained away. Thomas leaves his family and descends into drug addiction, his life consisting of hustles and stickups to support his habit of getting high; he neither glamorizes nor underplays what he did. Recounting one scam he ran with his friends, where they would buy a used car and then he would go into rob the dealer of the cash, he describes beating the office manager senseless. As he leaves him bleeding out on the floor, he feels a momentary pang of regret that he suppresses. “I felt sorry for the old cat and I wanted to help him, but hatings of things I couldn’t name wouldn’t let me.” Lack of language and lack of belonging again doom the narrator and he ultimately ends up shooting a cop and is shot himself, getting sentenced to seven years in prison. “I couldn’t get used to it,” Thomas writes about his time at Sing Sing, a notorious maximum security correctional facility in New York, “no matter how hard I tried. It kept pounding on me. It came to me every morning and every evening and sat heavily, like death on living tissue. I hated the evenings, because a whole night in prison lay before me, and I hated the mornings because I felt like Dracula returning to his crypt.” Thomas describes the physical and sexual violence that exists, especially the brutality of the white guards against the imprisoned population of color, but he also describes what effect access to even the most rudimentary education had on him. In a vernacular mix of street slang and authentic retrospection, Piri writes, “learning made me painfully aware of life and me. I began to dig what was inside of me. What had I been? How had I become that way? What could I be? How could I make it? I got hold of some books on psychology. Man, did we scuffle.” Those existential questions, if asked before the reflexive mechanisms of anger and greed—natural enough responses to the pernicious and persistent inequality masquerading as democratic progress—condemn a man to a life of crime, could have large social implications, but Thomas’ memoir, like so many of the others, makes it abundantly clear that the luxury of such hopes is lost on the streets where it’s a hustle to survive. One final memoir that bridges the distance between the aforementioned categories, moving from a tale of growth and change to a critique of the sadism and squalor of prison, is Wilbert Rideau’s In the Place of Justice (2010).

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Rideau, an African-American from Lake Charles, Louisiana, was convicted in 1961 of the first-degree murder of a bank teller during the course of a robbery and sentenced to death. In 1972, after 12 years on death row, the Louisiana Supreme Court amended his sentence to life in prison, and he would eventually serve 44 years in Angola Prison. During that time, he would become an award-winning journalist and longtime editor of The Angolite, a magazine written and published by the prisoners and winner of the George Polk Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for its reporting. Rideau’s example offers a sharp critique of the purpose of the American criminal justice system: Is it to rehabilitate or is it to punish and to further stigmatize? Again, as with the other prison memoirs surveyed thus far, there’s no question as to the narrator’s guilt, but there’s also no question as to the ineffectualness of his counsel and the preordained judgment of both judge and jury. He’s found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to the death penalty in Angola, which like some of the other maximum security prisons in America (like Alcatraz, Rikers Island, Folsom, Attica, Sing Sing and San Quentin) have acquired the status of pop-cultural myth, which further points to the fetishization and strange fascination that houses of corrections continue to exert on the American collective imagination. “It’s name [Angola’s] conjures up a cacophony of horrors,” Rideau writes, “It was called ‘the Alcatraz of the South’ in 1939 by a New Orleans Sunday Item-Tribune reporter; its history, which has been written in the blood of those locked within its bowels, earned it infamy throughout the mid-twentieth century as the most intimidating prison in America. When deputies shackled me and put me in a car for the trip there on April 11, 1962, I feared the prison far more than my death sentence.” This passage is indicative of Rideau’s methodology and his difference in style and tone than the other memoirists. He sees himself primarily as a reporter and investigative journalist and attempts to bring to his own prose such scrupulous and exacting attention to detail, making a full record of his time in Angola. Rideau’s had his death sentence overturned when the US Supreme Court found that the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary manner in 1972. That allowed him to enter the general prison population and take on the job as the editor of The Angolan, which clearly provided his life with the meaning lacking for so many other inmates. Part of what he reports were practices hidden from public consciousness, like the practice of “turning out” new inmates to make them into another convict’s slave, sexual and otherwise. As Rideau writes about the process, it was “the brutal rape symbolically stripping the inmate of his manhood and redefining his role as female. A prisoner targeted for turn-out had to defeat his assailant; otherwise the rape forever him as property.” This practice is reinforced by the guards who are fully aware of what is happening. Rideau clearly takes his longtime work as editor of The Angolan very seriously for much of the book is about the politics of trying to run a magazine with objective journalistic standards from a prison,

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sometimes exposing aspects of prison life that the administrators don’t want to see revealed. As he writes, “In preparing my columns, I found facts and statistics to expose racial and class inequities in the criminal justice system - from the staffing of prisons to disparities in sentences, clemencies and executions. I wrote about the problems of being black in a white-ruled prison. The administration was sometimes embarrassed by things I reported - lack of soap in a prison that produced it, little old ladies delivered cases of toilet tissue to the prison gate in response to my reported shortage of it.” In time, Rideau would show himself to be thoroughly rehabilitated, even earning the title of the “most rehabilitated prisoner in America” in Time magazine. Yet in spite of that, his lengthy sentence stood until 2000, when a federal appeals court granted him a new trial because blacks had been excluded from the original grand jury that indicted him in 1961. These examples, as disparate as they are, embody a line from American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” Emerson counseled that we should think independently, embrace our individuality and pursue our goals with unwavering confidence and bravery, for our opinions may prove to be unpopular. The prison memoirist is an extreme example of this philosophy, for who is more of a nonconformist than the man cast out of society for what has been perceived as his criminality? What inner resources must such a man possess to make out of his most unfortunate circumstances a resonant testimonial and a lasting work of art?

The Politics of Resistance from Mumia Abu-Jamal to Leonard Peltier Rideau doesn’t dwell overly much on the circumstances of his crime, rather reflecting on the unfairness of the judicial and correctional practices that have been put in place to punish people like him, and it is in a similar vein that Jarvis Jay Masters writes in his memoir That Bird Has My Wings (2009). A Buddhist on death row for a crime of which he claims to be innocent, Masters’ wrote a book that shares certain thematic similarities with others in this genre, even while his lyrical and meditative tone is all his own. As he writes about his parents, “my mother Cynthia and my stepfather Otis were the biggest heroin users and dealers in Long Beach, California.” Masters literally grew up in a dope house, filthy and ragged until discovered by Social Services, whose intervention to his life, as with many government agencies, is intrusive and upsetting. Masters is separated from his siblings and put in a foster home, first with an elderly couple who love him unconditionally and then with a foster family who adopts for the money and who are cruel, vicious people. His new foster mother nearly forces his baseball player’s hand into the garbage disposal once, and his childhood will consist of running away from foster homes and houses of detention, until he is eventually arrested for

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a series of armed robberies. During his incarceration, a prison guard is killed and Masters is framed for the murder. Already doing hard time in prison, he doesn’t realize what is happening when he is sentenced to death by lethal injection. As he writes the book, he is still on death row. Masters ends his story by discussing his faith, which like language, for many of these writers, has proven to be what has helped keep him alive. He becomes a Buddhist and even takes his bodhisattva vows through the visiting room glass in San Quentin with a Tibetan lama. This monk Chagdud Rinpoche reminds him that whether he was, “in prison or in a mansion by the sea, each moment provides an opportunity to practice these three commitments, which are ways of breaking out of the cycle of karma–causes and conditions … Rinpoche instructed me that thoughts - like everything else come and go like clouds, but they seem so real that we’re not able to see the essence of our mind, which is open and brilliant like the sun.” The central metaphor for Masters’ book becomes a seagull in the prison yard that another inmate is trying to kill by hurling a basketball at it; Masters, believing in the sanctity of all life, blocks the ball much to the consternation of the inmates who are looking for mindless, even destructive, entertainment. When confronted with why he stopped their fun, Masters blurts in a phrase that becomes the title of the memoir, “that bird has my wings, that’s why!” The subtitle of Masters’ book, “the autobiography of an innocent man on death row,” brings us into the second category of prison memoir, which is written by men who proclaim their innocence and who make their critique of the criminal justice system the focus of their literary projects. At the forefront of these books are two written by arguably the most famous political prisoners in America, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. Jamal is an AfricanAmerican journalist who was convicted of the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer and sentenced to death row, until after numerous appeals his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment without parole. Peltier is a Native American activist of Lakota and Dakota descent and a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Both men have never wavered from their plea of innocence and have in time become symbols of the kind of dissent that elements in the United States would rather keep suppressed. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Live from Death Row (1995) is a seminal text, even more polarizing given that Abu-Jamal has become tokenized by both the left and right wing of American politics. Like Wilbert Rideau, Abu-Jamal was a journalist who in 1968 became affiliated with the Black Panther Party. He would go on to become a radio journalist and serve as the president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. While some ballistic evidence suggests that Abu-Jamal was involved in the shooting of Daniel Faulkner, his trial has also been criticized for its constitutional failings and has served as flashpoint for public opinion. Labor unions, the NAACP and human rights

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groups such as Amnesty International have supported his efforts to get a new trial, while several politicians, the City of Philadelphia and organizations like the Fraternal Order of Police have called to boycott any individuals or organizations that support Abu-Jamal. As much as it has to do with justice, the passion inflamed on both sides clearly also pertains to his eloquence and trenchant political commentary that persists in pointing out those festering social inequities that exist inside and outside of prison. “Don’t tell me about the valley of the shadow of death,” the Preface to Abu-Jamal’s bestselling Live from Death Row begins, “I live there. In south-central Pennsylvania’s Huntingdon County a one-hundred-year-old prison stands, its Gothic towers projecting an air of foreboding, evoking a gloomy doom of the Dark Ages. I and some seventy-eight other men spend about twenty-two hours a day in six- by ten-foot cells. The additional two hours may be spent outdoors, in a chainlink-fenced box, ringed by concertina razor wire, under the gaze of gun turrets. Welcome to Pennsylvania’s death row.” In this brief paragraph, Abu-Jamal establishes his own literary method, one that combines journalistic precision with a historical consciousness that alludes to the ironically to the Bible and evokes, ultimately, an emotional response from those who read it, which must be part of the reason he continues to engender such support and such resistance. Time and space are constrained in measurable ways, and it’s part of Abu-Jamal’s ethnographic project to provide us those details, making a clear parallel to the barbaric time period of the Middle Ages. Also, by using the contrasting techniques of zoomorphism, or comparing humans to animals as the chicken coop box does, with personification in the giving the gun-turrets a gaze, Abu-Jamal reveals the calculus of worth in this place; the prisoners are treated as less than human, and the objects of their punishment and degradation are idolized. Abu-Jamal’s Live from Death Row presents short vignettes of different aspects of prison life, deconstructing the arcane institutional rituals and racist practice that constitute the criminal justice system while recounting in colorful vernacular emblematic episodes from a life of incarceration. The statistics he offers about inmates on death row echoes the kind of disparities we see elsewhere in the prison system: “Africans, just over 11 percent of the nation’s total, grow into 40 percent of America’s national death row. More often than not, capital punishment in America carries a black, brown, or red face.” Once a charismatic radio personality, Abu-Jamal retains ability to inspire and to enlighten. “The ultimate effect of noncontact visits,” he writes about another practice that restricts inmates from encountering visitors except through a glassed off partition, “is to weaken and finally to sever, family ties. Through this policy and practice the state skillfully and intentionally denies those it condemns a fundamental element and expression of humanity - that of touch and physical contact - and thereby slowly erodes family ties already made tenuous by the distance between home and prison. Thus prisoners are as isolated psychologically as they are temporally and spatially. By state action, they become ‘dead’ to those who know and love them, and therefore dead

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to themselves. For who are people, but for their relations and their relationships?” In the face of this irreversible social process of dehumanization, which is exacerbated by the social stigma that those convicted of a crime carry, the emotional toll of the breaking up of crucial relationships and the fact that former prisoners continue to be on supervisory control and become disenfranchised during that time, is it any wonder that the rate of recidivism is so high? In addition to being highly educated in case law, Abu-Jamal is a streetwise philosopher of the inner life of a prisoner, and he speaks to the consciousness of a nation founded on principles of life and liberty yet still dedicated to the atavistic practice of capital punishment. “Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul,” he writes, “a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days…Encased with a psychic cocoon of negativity, the bad get worse and feed on evil’s offal. Those who are harmed become further damaged, and the merely warped are twisted. Empty unproductive hours morph into years of nothingness. This is the furrowed face of ‘corrections’ in this age, where none are corrected, where none emerge better than when they came in.” If there’s a more damning assessment on the failures of the American system of criminal justice and the spirit death that is mandated by prison policy, I have yet to read it. The other figure who occupies similarly hallowed ground in the genre of prison memoir as Abu-Jamal is Leonard Peltier. His book Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance (1999) resembles Live from Death Row in its fragmentation; rather than presenting the reader with an overarching narrative, Peltier offers chapters that are interspersed with poems and that move forward and backward in time. Like Abu-Jamal, he has always steadfastly professed his innocence of the crime that will see him spend his last breaths in prison; unlike Abu-Jamal, his story is of the colonization and suppression of the country’s native peoples, an effort that has arguably been more effective than the enslavement and subsequent impoverishment of African-Americans. Like those members of the Black Panther Party who were monitored by the FBI and by local authorities, Peltier was a member of a group called American Indian Movement (AIM) which was an advocacy group organized to protest civil rights violations and to address tribal issues regarding native sovereignty and therefore was on the radar of the federal authorities. The group’s work on behalf of improving the living and working conditions of Native Americans was seen as subversive, and they were subject to harassment and surveillance, which is what Peltier accuses the agents of doing during that fateful day at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Peltier has testified in court and persists in asserting that he had nothing to do with causing the deaths of the FBI agents with whose murders he has been convicted; even the US Parole Commission which denied Peltier parole has stated that “it recognizes that the prosecution has conceded the lack of any direct evidence that [Peltier] personally participated in the executions of the two FBI agents.” Nonetheless, Peltier continues to serve his two consecutive life sentences.

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The Sun Dance, the ritual ceremony performed by some indigenous peoples, becomes in Peltier’s writing a metaphor for his own ancient, native wisdom which allows him to countenance the injustice and inhumane conditions he finds himself in. “A man who has Sun Danced has a special compact with Pain. And he’ll be hard to break,” Peltier writes, “Sun Dance makes me strong. Sun Dance takes place inside of me, not outside of me. I pierce the flesh of my being. I offer my flesh to the Great Spirit, to the Great Mystery.” The transmission of visceral knowledge is hinted at throughout his memoir, though Peltier is hesitant to reveal too much as there’s an interdiction of taking what happens inside the sun dance outside the intimate circle and a sense of the insufficiency of language to convey such ancient wisdom in any case. Peltier grew up in North Dakota, the son of a Chippewa (Ojibway) and a Dakota Sioux, on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, working as migratory potato farmers and eking out a hard-scrabble existence. He describes a conflicted, bicultural childhood, attending pow wows and listening to rock and roll, when the Eisenhower administration forced his people to resettle their reservations so that their lands could be leased out to mining companies or annexed by the US government. Such forced dislocation would lead to the formation of groups like AIM which attempt to advocate for Native American rights; however, they never had the wealth or clout of a corporate lobby, and the indigenous peoples of the United States, the original stewards of the land, have had their rights and their voices slowly and systematically eroded. Peltier’s description of jail resonates with the myriad descriptions we have heard so far. He describes solitary confinement as being thrown “into a small cage constructed inside a larger cage, for what you do and for you don’t do.” This theme of the arbitrariness of justice inside a prison is reflective of a number of the memoirs, and we see this absurdity described in no uncertain terms in Peltier’s book, just as we are given a rare transcendent glimpse into the sweat lodges that the Native men are allowed to practice in prison. This intercession in the monotony of his life is formally enacted by the lyric poems that punctuate the prose passages. When Peltier writes, “Let us love not just our sameness / but our unsameness. // In our difference is our strength/ Let us not be for ourselves alone / but also for that Other //who is our deepest self,” he could be Rumi asking “why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. The entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.” Abu-Jamal and Peltier are unflinching, revolutionary voices, perhaps made more strident by the near certainty that neither will ever leave prison during their lifetimes. One person who harbored similar fears that his life would be lost is Albert Woodfox, who holds the distinction of being the prisoner in US history who served the longest time in solitary confinement. Woodfox was held in isolation at Angola Prison in Louisiana nearly continuously for 43 years, following the 1972 murder of a prison guard for which he has continually professed his innocence. He offers evidence in his book Solitary of the virtual impossibility of him having committed the murder and how key

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evidence that would have exonerated him was suppressed during his trial, in part because of his involvement with the Black Panther Party and his outspoken activism with other inmates which threatened the administration. If Rideau offered us a journalistic account of Angola, complete with statistics and citations, Woodfox’s description is much more visceral and to the point: “The horror of the prison in 1965 cannot be exaggerated. Angola looked like a slave plantation, which it once was. The prisoner population was segregated; most prisoners were black. African-American prisoners did 99 percent of the fieldwork by hand, usually without gloves and proper footwear. White guards on horseback rode up and down the lines of working prisoners, holding shotguns across their laps and constantly yelling at the men who were working, saying, ‘Work faster, old thing’ or, ‘Nigger.’” Woodfox’s harrowing account is an exposé in its own right, for he illuminates the corruption and racism in the actions of judges, wardens and prosecutors. He describes what happens regularly in Angola, how “it wasn’t just clothing that prison officials stole. High-ranking officials would steal food and toothpaste, soap and toilet paper, anything they wanted that was meant for the prisoners. If they didn’t use the merchandise, they sold it on the side.” Woodfox describes how sexual slavery was a part of prison culture, as was the constant threat of violence and how there was a systematic suppression of education and literacy for fear that it will lead to more objections to the inhumane conditions of the place. His stories corroborate much of what Rideau would report on in The Angolan. Like many of the other memoirists, Woodfox does not sugarcoat his past even as he professes his innocence for the act that would keep him in solitary confinement for over four decades. As he confesses, “writing about this time in my life is very difficult. I robbed people, scared them, threatened them, intimidated them. I stole from people who had almost nothing. My people. Black people. I broke into their homes and took possessions they worked hard for; took their wallets out of their pockets. I beat people up. I was a chauvinist pig. I took advantage of people, manipulated people. I never thought about the pain I caused.” That’s a frank admission and, coming as it does at the beginning of the book, creates a contract between the reader and the narrator, lending greater credence to what he will later reveal to us about the conditions in prison. During his time in Angola, he wins minor victories for the humanity of the men around him, helping restrict the strip searches intended to humiliate prisoners and the shakedowns in which contraband is planted and a man’s possessions upended. Woodfox cites Stuart Grassian, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, whose work on the impact of even brief periods of solitary confinement shows that it is deeply traumatic, characterized by “panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations, hypersensitivity, and difficulty remembering, concentrating and thinking.” The fact that Woodfox is able to retain and deepen his own humanity after enduring solitary for over four decades is extraordinary, and his prose provokes outrage in such elements as the

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descriptions of the Louisiana Department of Corrections, the overt racism of the judicial system and in the vengeful, hypocritical application of justice by those sworn to uphold it. The inclusion of elements like excerpts from an affidavit, sworn testimonies and the transcript of a deposition provide a level of material authenticity to his own description of a practice considered so harmful a punishment that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has condemned its usage. However, the United States continues the practice, even though scientific studies have shown that solitary confinement exacerbates existing mental illness and can lead to a greater risk of violence and suicide.5

Embodying Trauma in Innovative Forms The tools of solitary confinement and the other blunt instruments of corrections have been shown elsewhere to have serious problems of efficacy, which leads us into the third and final category of prison memoir, which I would define as unclassifiable in any traditional sense. Unlike those books that show a development and evolution of self in prison, a debt to society paid off and forgiveness achieved, or those books that are polemical in their witnessing of the horrors of incarceration that are meant, at root to exploit and re-stigmatize the men they are supposed to be helping, these last books have no obvious ax to grind. They are on the edge of literary and formal innovation that proves that constraint and deprivation, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn smuggling out notes from a Soviet prison, can create works that push the possibility of the genre forward. The first book to mention in this capacity is Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land (1965). A work of literary naturalism, the memoir documents Brown’s Harlem childhood, his abusive father and his descent into a world of voice including doing sex and drugs before the age of 13. Inevitably, this means brushes with the law early and often, which point at another of the deficiencies of a criminal justice system without any educational component; all that monotonous time only leads criminals to devise ways to become better criminals. As Brown writes of one of the places he goes as a juvenile offender, “Nobody at Wiltwyck was there for murder, and they didn’t have any cats up there who knew how to steal a car without the keys. But it seemed like just about everybody at Warwick not only knew how to pick locks but knew how to cross wires in cars and get them started without keys. Just about everybody knew how to pick pockets and roll reefers and a lot of cats knew how to cut drugs. They knew how much sugar to put with heroin to make a cap or a bag. There was so much to learn.” The inclusion of that last sentence in the paragraph shows the enthusiastic mindset of an impressionable young kid put in a reformatory at such a young age. He wants to learn, and in the absence of any skill, trade or subject, he puts his energy into learning how to survive better on the streets, how to hustle and pimp, beginning a vicious cycle that will only end up with his likely re-incarceration.

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There’s an unapologetic swagger in Brown’s prose, and he manages to get his digs in writing, “it seemed as though over the next few years, say from 1955 to 1959, just about everybody who came out of jail came out a Muslim.” Brown appreciates some of the ethos and purpose the faith gives to junkies particularly, but he’s also naturally suspicious of anything that seems like a fad. The one aspect he does extol is the pressure by the Harlem Muslims for those African-Americans in New York City neighborhoods to buy products from black-owned businesses. This idea of self-determination and rising up through economic growth was still possible in that time before the rise of the megalithic corporations. The narrator’s early education came from Harlem’s streets and the prisons that shaped his early experience, but in finding written expression, he is able to transcend that sense of self. In that way, Claude Brown’s memoir is a kind of dark mirror to James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, for both books are Bildungsroman or novels dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education. Brown had to leave Harlem in order to write about it, which in turn will give him even more time, space, distance and permission to write about it further. A book that both implicitly and explicitly takes a cue from Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land is Iceberg Slim’s Pimp (1969), a book that has attained the status of a cult classic. Slim’s (whose real name was Robert Beck) book has become the inspiration for multiple movies and gangsta rappers like Ice-T and Snoop Dogg, creating the archetype of the modern pimp. He does not intend to glamorize what is a misogynistic and violent way of life; as Robin D. G. Kelly writes, “to be fair, ‘Pimp’ is not responsible for glamorizing pimps. The figure of the pimp has been revered and reviled in African-American culture for more than a century, often through tales, ‘toasts’ (bawdy oral poetry), and song. What Beck did was take the cartoon image of the pimp projected in urban rhymes and strutting street characters and give him flesh, history, and dimension, exposing the dehumanizing brutality of ‘the game.’ And he did so when ghettoes were in revolt and black Americans had become an object of worldwide fascination.”6 Still Iceberg Slim presents us with a disturbing, vivid portrait of life in the ghetto, and his accounts, if sensationalized, were akin to the successful phenomena of Blaxploitation films in urban neighborhoods. Thousands of people bought Slim’s books for the gratuitous sex and violence, but due to creative accounting from his publishing company, he saw very little of the royalties due to him, and in this way, he was another in a long line of AfricanAmerican artists and musicians who have been taken advantage of by executives and businesspeople. Slim’s description of jail tally with numerous other ones in that the spaces are disgusting and dehumanizing. As he writes, “the screw took me to a row of tiny, filthy cells on the flag. My first detention cell was on the other side of the cell house…I looked around my new home. It was a tight box designed to crush and torture the human spirit. I raised my arms above me. My fingertips touched the cold steel ceiling…The mattress cover was stained and

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stinking from old puke and crap. The toilet and washbowls were encrusted in greenish-brown crud.” Like Leonard Peltier and Jarvis Jay Masters, when Iceberg Slim is in prison he recounted that the iron grip of vice around his heart loosens and he begins to feel his spirit, the part of himself that exists outside of the bars to which his body is constrained. This realization has led to his externalization of his experiences in the process of writing a memoir, which he hopes is “the prelude to a still mauled, but constructive new life.” That phrase is the best hope of rehabilitation, for it is clear that the scars these men experience in prison will never heal, the cruelty with which they are treated will only calcify into an odium that will glaze over the eyes unconsciously and unexpectedly, the way that men home from war will see flashbacks of bombed-out villages behind their eyelids when they are trying to sleep. Eldridge Cleaver’s memoir Soul on Ice (1968) is a contemporary of Iceberg Slim’s memoir Pimp and possesses a similar élan vital, or we might say more crudely, an equivalent I-don’t-give-a-fuck-factor. His book presents himself unrepentantly as a rapist and a racist against white people. “In Soledad state prison,” he writes, “I fell in with a group of young blacks who, like myself, were in vociferous rebellion against what we perceived as a continuation of slavery on a higher plane. We cursed everything American–including baseball and hot dogs.” He later goes on to speak about his crimes, writing shockingly that “rape is an insurrectionary act. I delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women–and this point, I believe was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt like I was getting revenge.” Eldridge Cleaver’s frank admission is connected to his self-examination, which connects his memoir to some in the first category we looked at. “After I returned to prison,” he writes, “I took a long look at myself and, for the first time in my life, admitted that I was wrong, that I had gone astray…That is why I started to write. To save myself. I realized that no one could save me but myself. The prison authorities were both uninterested and unable to help me….I was very familiar with the Eldridge who came to prison, but that Eldridge no longer exists. And the one I am now is in some ways a stranger to me. You may find this difficult to understand but it is very easy for one in prison to lose his sense of self.” We see here the effects of bibliotherapy, the need to write as a form of catharsis and therapy; we also see the insufficiency and apathy in the resources any prison devotes to such self-actualization; finally, Knight is really a poet-philosopher who unwittingly echoes French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, when he writes, “je est un autre” (I is somebody else). In his experience, the inner-self is something undefinable and foreign to our appetites and desires. The dissolution of the self that he describes is not intentional, but in book after book in this genre of prison memoir, shown to be institutionally mandated and reinforced from everyone from legislators and judges

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to wardens and prison guards, all the way down until the community of the incarcerated themselves begins to reflect the disdain with which they are being treated. As Knight writes further on, “a convict’s paranoia is as thick as the prison wall–and just as necessary. Why should we have faith in anyone?” That sad, rhetorical question reflects the innermost truth of an inmate’s life, regardless of the answer he might muster before a parole board. Knight’s prose—searing, maddening, contradictory and brilliant—raises prescient concerns about the relationship between African-Americans and police brutality, which is itself metonymic of American foreign policy and military strength, as well as gender and race relations. His prose is not sanitized and at times expresses a misogyny that verges on the deeply disturbing, yet what he reveals is like the raw truth of Richard Wright’s Notes from a Native Son in which he describes the stunted, distorted version of life that African-Americans are forced to live, saying that it should come as no surprise that the laws flowing from such institutions are biased and the response awash in hate and criminality. Truly, American prisons, as described in so many of these memoirs, are an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more men of color are imprisoned, the greater the chance that their offspring will grow up in a broken home and also turn to a life of crime in order to survive. Though there are doubtlessly others, the final memoir we will look at is also one of the most commercially successful ones. Lil’ Wayne’s Gone ‘Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island was written after he was already a platinum-selling and Grammy-nominated hip hop artist convicted of the criminal possession of a loaded weapon in 2010 and sentenced to spend eight months on Riker’s island. During that time, he kept a journal and given that he has sold millions of records, his publishers decided to publish the book as is, without any revision or excessive editing. As a result, the book that emerged is both typographically and in terms of format like the composition book that he kept as a diary during his time. Of all the prison memoirs on this list, Lil’ Wayne’s is the flattest in terms of tone and analysis. We see little to no mention of the crime for which he has been incarcerated, nor are the dehumanizing mechanisms of corrections revealed to us. Instead, we have a recitation of his days, which becomes an inadvertent testimonial of boredom and existential anguish. Lil’ Wayne plays cards and basketball, listens to sports on the radio, calls his lawyer, reads his fan letters, eats burritos made out of Doritos and gets visits from celebrities. While he is incarcerated, Forbes magazine reveals that he has made over $20 million while in prison, showing the paradoxical side of his stint in jail. In some ways, for a rapper, being incarcerated legitimizes the sense of being dangerous and out-of-control, creating a biography that authenticates the lyrics. While there are some poignant moments, like Lil’ Wayne hearing his infant son’s first words over the telephone in jail, the majority of the book is fragmentary and full of such obvious insights as “more frustration! I just

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want out!” and “rhymes, push-ups. prayers, Bible, snacks, ESPN, zzzzz.” However, in that description of monotony, Lil’ Wayne reveals an important part of the soul-numbing routine of incarceration, where there is little chance for growth and rehabilitation. Even for someone like this famous rapper, who is treated differently by inmate and prison guard alike, even while he feigns ignorance of any special treatment, jail consists of temporality devoid of meaning and an assault on his senses, particularly those of noise and odor. In one of the more graphic passages of the book, Lil’ Wayne is consigned to the Segregated Housing Unit, or the “hole,” for illegally possessing an MP3 player loaded with music. “I think the two dudes in who are in wheelchairs have Aids or HIV. And it’s not their fault that they have scabs from bedsores and other types of shit like that, but when you go take a shower, you have to let the shower run for a minute to clear all that shit up. There are times when I have to literally step over their shit. And when I say ‘blood,’ I mean big-ass puddles of blood. You have to stand by the door while the water runs so it won’t get on you.” That lack of basic hygiene and the way that filth and disease are implicitly encouraged by the administration to further dehumanize the inmates is a commonality in many of these memoirs. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you are a Grammy-winning musician or a black man on death row, for the conditions of and opportunities available for rehabilitation in prison are equally abysmal.

The Macroscopic View of Prison State Growth This collection of memoirs by current and formerly imprisoned American men of color encompasses a few centuries of writing and a range of ethnicities as diverse as Afro-Cuban, Dakota Sioux and African-American. Each story is one of a brown, black or red man in America, and each has its own unique relationship to the circumstances that might have gotten these men in trouble with the law and what their experience in prison ultimately might have taught them. It’s important to keep in mind that being able to articulate one’s story in this way is a rarity, and that for every Malcolm X who emerges enlightened during the course of a prison sentence, there are hundreds of thousands more who languish in hidden, barbed, subterranean spaces where they are blocked off from sunlight where their physical activities are severely constrained and where their mentality and ability to reintegrate into society devolves. According to a 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2.2 million adults were imprisoned at the end of 2016 and over 7 million under some form of correctional control, be it probation, parole or prison. It costs the United States over $80 billion dollars a year to keep so many criminals locked up. When taxpayers find out what is being done with that staggering amount of money, they should be outraged for nearly 70% of prisoners were rearrested within three years according to a survey in 2012. Overlay those statistics with those that show the much higher rates of incarceration

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for members of minority communities, and the public should be out in the streets protesting such blatant, divisive racism. The fact that this great dark American secret, the true legacy of slavery, with untold human costs in the lives of its citizens, has been one of the least reported phenomena until recent times is proof of the way that hegemonic power can hide within the very constructs and appendages of the judicial system. What the prison memoir does is expose what actually happens within the confines of a correctional space, smuggling out those secrets that even while fascinated by, the public would rather not hear about in too much detail. It is easier to fetishize jail than to consider its grim reality; it’s easier to minister to prisoners, to pity them or to demonize them and say that they are getting what they deserve for being found guilty of a crime, than to think critically and compassionately about the design and purpose of houses of correction. As many of these memoirs make clear, guilt is relative and depends on such factors as the racial composition of a jury, the mood of a judge and the relationship between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. Another characteristic that these memoirs share is their love for language as a tool for catharsis, and the sense that without the ability to articulate their experience, which they largely gained on their own, they would likely have succumbed to utter despair and even possible suicide. This admission points at the paucity of educational resources available in the inner cities and to communities of color; it also points out to the deleterious effect that mass incarceration has had on the family units of African and Latin Americans across the country. Finally, these memoirs all share some semblance of hope in spite of the most base and brutal human impulses. In prison, some men turn primeval, violent and sexually predatory; some guards delight in forms of sadistic control; some wardens look the other way or are so concerned with their idea of religion that they can’t see the widespread suffering among their fellow human beings. “In the twilight of the twentieth century,” H. Bruce Franklin writes in his Introduction to Prison Writing in 20th Century America (1998), “the United States, birthplace of the modern prison two centuries earlier, has transformed the prison into a central institution of society, unprecedented in scale and influence. Out of this transformation has come another kind of writing, far more bleak and desperate than the prison literature of any earlier period. And yet even those works, rising like their forerunners from the depths of degradation, reveal the creativity and strength of humanity.7” We might endeavor to group all of these books into one of three categories, but ultimately the stories of these men, once a son, perhaps still a father, are irreducible for they are a personal response to a unique set of circumstances. Panning out from these individuals, we can see in stark relief the crisis of mass incarceration, which has only become exacerbated in a market economy. As John L. Campbell of Dartmouth College has written, private prisons in the United States have become a “lucrative business8” and a source of

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low-wage labor for corporate interests. But as a society, are the costs worth it? Whatever side of that question we might find ourselves on, one thing is clear; prison memoirs are crucial and revelatory texts that keep the public informed and that allow for intensive self-transformation to occur. These memoirs by men of color also do some added work in pointing out the glaring racial and economic inequalities that exist along every rung of governmental agency, from social services to the police department, from judges and attorneys to the parole board. It’s a disturbing paradox that the “land of the free and the home of the brave” imprisons more people more arbitrarily than almost every other nation on earth. As critic and activist Angela Davis has written, “the prison serves as an institution that consolidates the state’s inability and refusal to address the most pressing social problems of this era.9” It’s the job of the prison memoirist, then, to educate about these practices, in which every American is complicit and gradually, hopefully, begin to shift things in a more compassionate, humane and pragmatic direction that demonstrates our social, economic and spiritual progress as a civilization.

Notes 1.  Hirsch, A. J. (1982). From Pillory to Penitentiary: The Rise of Criminal Incarceration in Early Massachusetts. Michigan Law Review 80, no. 6: 1179. https://doi.org/10.2307/1288577. 2.  Gramlich, J., and Gramlich, J. (2019, April 30). The Gap Between the Number of Blacks and Whites in Prison Is Shrinking. Retrieved from https:// www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-gap-betweennumber-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/. 3. Foucault, M. (2011). Discipline and Punish the Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. 4. Webmaster, O. O. (n.d.). Gavin Newsom. Retrieved from https://www.cdcr. ca.gov/About_CDCR/vision-mission-values.html. 5. Katznelson, G. (2018, January 15). Solitary Confinement: Torture, Pure and Simple. Retrieved June 3, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/ blog/almost-addicted/201801/solitary-confinement-torture-pure-and-simple. 6. Kelley, R. D., and Kelley, R. D. (2017, June 19). The Fires That Forged Iceberg Slim. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/thefires-that-forged-iceberg-slim. 7. Franklin, H. B. (1998). Prison Writing in 20th Century America. New York: Penguin Books. 8.  Campbell, J. L. (n.d.). Neoliberalism’s Penal and Debtor States. Retrieved from https://sociology.dartmouth.edu/sites/sociology.dartmouth.edu/files/ Neoliberalism.pdf. 9. Davis, A. Y. (2010). Are Prisons Obsolete? An Open Media Book. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Constructions of Prisons and Prisoners: Media and Fictions

“Within These Walls”: The History and Themes of Prison-Themed Television Series Kenneth Dowler

Crime and justice are prominent on television as many shows feature criminality, investigations, and court proceedings. Leading characters are police, prosecuting attorneys, defense lawyers, private investigators, judges, vigilantes, and criminals. Yet the “back-end” of the criminal justice system is largely absent from popular culture narratives. Relatively few television series feature the custodial environment as the primary setting although the incarcerated still capture the public imagination in both fictional and nonfictional settings and some have been major television successes, as outlined in other chapters in this collection. Narratives can center on common misconceptions and oversimplifications of incarceration, while inmates and their keepers are stereotyped and disparaged. As such, the purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to provide a history of prison-themed series on television, including series that made original contributions to themes and genres and those that were derivatives of influential originals. In doing so, it will trace the emergence of conventions and preoccupations, intersections between criminal justice policy and fictional iterations of prison, as well as the changes in frequency and clustering, as in some eras prison-based drama proliferates and in others is only occasionally in the schedules. Second, it will discuss common narratives that are routinely used within the various genres of prison-themed television programs.

K. Dowler (*)  Wilfrid Laurier University Brantford Campus, Brantford, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_9

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Punishment in Public Historically, punishment has been a public spectacle. Incarceration existed in both ancient and medieval cultures, yet the purpose of incarceration was not to punish but to hold those awaiting trial or enactment of their sentences. Punishment was ritualistic, theatrical, and ceremonial and could involve public torture, execution, and symbolic acts of shaming and humiliation. Punishment became more humane, and the concept of incarceration became the dominant form of punishment, in the eighteenth century. Although punishment therefore moved within an enclosed world, incarceration periodically remained within the public gaze. Asylums for the mentally ill allowed for public viewing, while chain gangs prominently displayed the incarcerated (Morris and Rothman 1995; Colvin 1997; Miron 2011). At present, the most representative form of the carceral spectacle is the use of the media, in both print and visual formats. Images of incarceration have a long history in popular culture. In nonfictional media, prison escapes and riots are newsworthy, as are negative stories about correctional policy. News cycles revolve around the release of high-risk offenders, and lenient or country club conditions (Surette 2014; Cecil 2015). These stories capture the public imagination and become fodder for politically right pundits, who push the “law and order” perspective that drives the prison–industrial complex. These stories can leave a lasting mark on public perceptions about the incarcerated and their experience, especially, since it is rare for news stories to highlight poor conditions, brutality, and corruption within a correctional institution (Mason 2006; Cecil 2015). In fictional representations, the novel was the forerunner to more modern popular cultural depictions on television and film. Works by authors Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas highlighted injustice, redemption, and escape. Dickens was a noted social reformer who wrote about social injustice and criticized incarceration as a form of punishment. In 1842, he made his grand tour of the United States, which included a visit to the Eastern Prison, outside Philadelphia. In his travelogue, American Notes for General Circulation, he wrote a scathing indictment of solitary confinement, comparing it to being “buried alive” (Johnston 2006). The prison escape was a central feature in both Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) and The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas). Interestingly, the escape remains a common theme in contemporary popular culture depictions, while themes of reform are sporadic, especially in film and television representations (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). Although the notion of there being a “prison film genre” is contestable, the prison site and experiences have inspired critically and commercially successful films, garnering significant academic attention. The prison genre is not uniform but multidimensional with stories that run the gamut of the incarceration experience. Academic debate surrounds the definition of the prison film, as well as the typologies that have been developed to categorize

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the films. Nonetheless, much of the academic literature focuses on themes and underlying messages that are depicted in these movies. In the United States, Hollywood depictions are plentiful, especially from the so-called golden era of prison films of the 1930s, when over sixty films were produced. Conversely, the British prison film does not enjoy such a high profile (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). In their book, Images of Incarceration, Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004) provide a valuable history of British prison films, outlining distinct eras, trends, and backgrounds. They further critique the work of Nicole Rafter (2000) by arguing that the overall prison genre has diversified, with unique and distinct subgenres. These subgenres have moved away from the reform-minded films, where ultimately justice is restored, to films with unhappy endings that depict brutal conditions with graphic violence, rape, and humiliation. Rather than being a form of escapist entertainment, these films reflect the era in which the movie was produced. For instance, describing the work of Cheatwood (1998), Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004) argue that so-called stock characters have taken on different traits or nuances in various eras based on correctional philosophies. Ultimately, even in “feel good” prison films, where the protagonist is awarded justice, correctional tyranny is reinstated over the “rightfully” incarcerated. Similarly, Cox (2009) contends that despite themes of systemic injustice and brutality, the ultimate message is that prisons are a social necessity, and the genre tends to normalize incapacitation as a punishment philosophy. Compared to film, the incarcerated have received less visibility on the small screen. Since the advent of television as a mass medium in the late 1940s, there have been relatively few television series using correctional institution as a sustained setting. Early crime-based television programs would often feature the incarcerated as part of their storylines, but only as guest characters, often “on the run” as escaped fugitives. American police shows in the 1950s, for example, Dragnet, Highway Patrol, and M-Squad, featured an episode with an escaped “con,” caught by the protagonists. Even the comedy The Andy Griffith Show featured several episodes in which escaped convicts are captured in the town of Mayberry. The 1960s also featured The Fugitive which was based on the premise of an escaped prisoner who was innocent. The show was both a critical and commercial success, later spawning a 1993 movie starring Harrison Ford and a short-lived reboot in 2000. The latter part of the 1960s introduced audiences to Hogan’s Heroes (1965–1971, CBS) and the British spy-thriller The Prisoner (1967–1968, ITV). Hogan’s Heroes was a sitcom that revolved around the antics of prisoners of war during World War II. The comedy featured memorable characters, such as Colonel Klink, and Sergeant Schultz, but was genuinely a “bad take” on the experiences of prisoners of war (Brooks and Marsh 2009). There have also been a handful of P.O.W. dramas that have appeared on British television, including Colditz (1972–1974, BBC 1), Tenko (1981–1985, BBC 1), and P.O.W. (2003, ITV). Although the lead characters are held captive, the scope and nature of these

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types of P.O.W. shows is inherently different from the modern carceral environment, in which persons are convicted of a criminal offense and are punished with incarceration. The surreal yet highly acclaimed The Prisoner (discussed elsewhere in this collection) featured Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan), the lead character who was held captive in a small community called The Village. The series was not based on a “real” institution and was a blend of science-fiction, spythriller, and psychological drama. Likewise, a few other science-fiction-based series have incarceration-related themes, such as The Vanishing Man (1997 ITV) and Alcatraz (2012 FOX). Nonetheless, these shows generally eschew attempting to show the reality of incarceration, or any reality for that matter, and will not be included in the discussion of incarceration-based series.

Shining Light into Darkness: The Launch of IncarcerationThemed Television Series, the 1970s The 1970s featured a notable shift in emphasis and focus with the first television programs that dealt with actual incarceration of criminal offenders, with the inmates, guards, and correctional administrators appearing as lead and supporting characters. The series that debuted on British, American, and Australian television in the 1970s included Porridge (1973–1977, BBC 1), Within These Walls (1974–1978, ITV), On the Rocks (1975–1976, ABC), The Bluestone Boys (1976, Network 10), and Prisoner: Cell Block H (1979–1986, Network 10). Within These Walls premiered on January 4, 1974, on the British network ITV, becoming the first regularly scheduled drama set within a correctional institution.1 Within These Walls chronicled the lives of those incarcerated in Stone Park, a fictional women’s prison. The series ran for five seasons with fifty-two episodes, long enough to necessitate the services of three different prison governesses. The series was a pioneering effort. It was the first show that focused on the administration of a correctional institution and the institutional life of the incarcerated. It also featured a women’s institution, a true precursor to more contemporary and well-known series such as Bad Girls, Wentworth, and Orange Is the New Black. Within These Walls attracted controversy and criticism for its sensitive content but was praised for its realism. Topics included violence and bullying among the incarcerated, the loneliness and despair of separation from partners and children, as well as same-sex relationships and racism. The drama was not limited to the incarcerated women, and this early example of the prison series traversed the experiences of both inmates and staff, as well as the tension between correctional policies that were initiated by the various governesses. For instance, Faye Boswell, the Governor at the beginning of the series, brought an “enlightened” or progressive policy approach to the institution. This approach caused strain with senior officers, who believed in a more robust approach, with a guiding philosophy that the incarcerated

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cannot be coddled or trusted. Naturally, the idealistic approach did not work, something that we will discuss later in the chapter (Jewkes 2006). Men’s imprisonment became a mainstream part of television following the pilot episode for Porridge, which debuted on April 1, 1973, inaugurating the first television sitcom that was set within a penal institution. After the pilot aired, the series ran from October 1974 to March 1977, with twenty-one episodes. This series starred Ronnie Barker as Norman Fletcher an experienced convict and unsuccessful thief who was given a five-year sentence to be served at HMP Slade, although the sentence was only the latest of several stretches. “Fletch” was cocky, cynical, and pessimistic, with a natural wit expressed in one-liners and quips. The series was well received by critics and became a favorite with audiences, including actual prisoners. The series spawned Christmas specials, a sequel entitled Going Straight (1978), and two films, Porridge (1979) and Life Beyond the Box: Norman Stanley Fletcher (2003). The series was rebooted in 2016, this time with the nephew of Fletcher, Nigel (played by Kevin Bishop) being incarcerated at Wakely Prison. Within These Walls was serious drama; Porridge takes us into a different genre yet a curiosity of its production and reception is the resonance it found with actual prisoners, despite the scripting and scenario demands of the sitcom that removes it from any attempt to evoke reality. During its original run, prison staff ensured that the show was played, with fear that inmates would revolt if they missed their favorite program. Erwin James, a columnist who was formerly incarcerated, claims “When I was inside, Porridge was a staple of our TV diet. In one high-security prison, a video orderly would be dispatched to tape the programme each week. If they missed it, they were in trouble” (as cited in Marsh 2009, 373). There is a debate over Porridge’s cultural impact on public perceptions of incarceration. Some feel that the series is simply entertainment with no insight into the lives of the incarcerated. As a comedy, the gloominess, pain, and anguish of incarceration are avoided, with real issues such as suicide, depression, solitary confinement, and drug abuse being absent (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004; Jewkes 2006). Yet Porridge does offer lessons about institutional life and is considered by many, including the formerly incarcerated, as a fair representation of the prison (Marsh 2009). As a studio-based comedy, the show has obvious and inherent limits in realism. However, it is unlikely that a completely realistic depiction of incarceration would be palatable with audiences. Prison is boring, with a daily routine that is both drab and predictable. The vast majority of time is spent waiting, dealing with institutional bureaucracy and sleeping. Porridge provided audiences with a glimpse of some real issues, with episodes that dealt with monotony, racism, contraband, the possibility of sexual violence, mentoring of younger inmates and competing punishment philosophies. For example, in the episode A Night In, Fletch’s young cellmate, first-timer Lennie Godber (Richard Beckinsale), is finding it difficult to adjust to prison life, lamenting that it is “so unnatural…men in cages.” He is agitated that he cannot go out and finds

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the lock-in at night the most demanding. Despite his cynical nature, Fletcher provides some comfort for Godber by having him imagine that he is just having a “quiet night in.” The episode provides a sense of humanity for the characters, with the two cellmates discussing relationships, sex, and religion. By the next morning, Godber is notably more confident and relaxed. Some characters were written and performed as openly gay, although the absence of other minorities is now one of the more striking ways Porridge departs from the reality of modern prisons. Considering the time period, the series has few characters from visible minorities, with the exception of McClaren (Tony Osoba) who was mixed race (Scottish-Black). McClaren was heavily featured in the episode Ways and Means. McClaren was introduced to the audience as an angry and violent inmate, who was being punished for “spoiling the soup,” after shoving a warden’s head into a pot of soup. McClaren was upset that he was called a “black bastard.” After an altercation, Fletcher befriends McClaren and provides valuable advice, based on his own long carceral experience, to help him cope by “turning the other cheek.” The consequences of racism, stigma, and anger were mildly explored in this episode, albeit with comedic overtones. However, the lack of diversity is a weakness in the series, especially in light of the overrepresentation of minorities and structural racism within the criminal justice system. In the 1970s, a handful of successful British sitcoms was adapted by American television networks, including Steptoe and Son (Sanford and Son), Till Death Do Us Part (All in the Family), and Man About the House (Three’s Company). Porridge was also adapted for American television, with the shortlived On the Rocks (1975–1976, ABC). The ABC network aired the series after police sitcom Barney Miller, with the tagline “funny cops, funny robbers” (Brooks and Marsh 2009, 1017). On the Rocks was set in the fictional Alamesa minimum-security prison, with a comedic clash between the inmates and the administration. The characters resembled their British progeny, with the main character Hector Fuentes (Jose Perez) filling the role of the experienced Fletcher, while young naïve first-timer character, Nicky Palik (Bobby Sandler), was analogous to the Godber role. The guards were also close models, with Tom Poston playing Mr. Sullivan, an imitation of Barrowclough, the downtrodden and overly softhearted correctional officer while Mel Stewart played Mr. Gibson, the clone of the authoritarian Mr. Mackay. The series even featured similar storylines as Porridge, with episodes involving the theft of pineapple chunks, love letters being written to girlfriends/wives, and gambling. However, there were marked differences between the versions. First, the series did not have Ronnie Barker’s comic timing and charisma. However, unlike the largely monocultural British series the American iteration employed a multiethnic cast, with a Hispanic lead and African-Americans in both inmate and guard roles. Finally, although set in a prison, the sitcom did not have a dark undercurrent, something that Porridge did have, despite being a comedy. Porridge had dry British humor, which is often absent from

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American versions. On the Rocks illustrates this difference, as the American version had more formulaic, juvenile humor, in a more American tradition. Moreover, the British sitcom has much shorter seasons; for instance, Porridge had only six or seven episodes per season, while American shows typically conclude after twenty-four episodes. As a result, American sitcoms can be burdened by the lack of novel ideas and can become “tired” after a few seasons (Steemers 2011). Porridge was also imitated in Australia, with the little-known comedy, The Bluestone Boys (1976). Set in a men’s correctional institution, The Bluestone Boys was a sitcom developed by Crawford Productions. Albert Moran (1993, 83) the author of The Guide to Australian TV Series states, “the boys in question were male prisoners supervised by a mixture of idiot trustees headed by Nazi-like Chuck Faulkner [Warder Sharpley].” Moran further argues that “the comedy of the male group outsmarting its supervisors should have been funnier” given the writing talents of the Crawford writers, but the series failed to meet expectations and was canceled after only one season, and is largely forgotten by both audiences and television historians (Moran 1993, 83). In contrast to this obscurity, the landmark Australian soap opera Prisoner began on Network 10 in 1979. Dialogically, where Porridge proved impactful by inspiring remakes or close analogues on American and Australian television, Within These Walls seems a precursor to Australian television’s successful effort in making female-focussed prison drama. Set in a fictional women’s prison, the Wentworth Detention Center, Prisoner ran twice a week for 692 episodes from 1979 to 1986. Despite low production values, with notoriously shaky sets, the show became a cult classic with high viewership in Australia but was also successful in international markets, becoming internationally syndicated. Despite the soap opera format with many standard clichés and tropes, the series did explore some critical issues in relation to incarceration from a female perspective, such as alcoholism and drug abuse, assisted suicide, lesbianism, bullying and violence, molestation, and difficulty in reintegration (Moran 1993; Zalcock and Robinson 1996). Prisoner also sits in a trajectory, whereby prison-set dramas prove influential by inspiring remakes and reiterations. The most memorable characters were reimagined in Wentworth (2013–), with Bea Smith and Frankie Doyle returning to television for new audiences. Prisoner also inspired several other shows, including an unsold pilot Willow B: Women in Prison (1980), Punishment (1980); Dangerous Women (1991), and the German soap opera Hinter Gittern-Der Frauenknast (Behind Bars: Women in Prison) which ran for over 16 seasons in Germany (Sharp and Giuffre 2013; Groves 2015).

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Lock Them Up, Throw Away the Key: Unseen and Unheard, the 1980s The Reagan and Thatcher administrations encapsulate the tough on crime policies of the 1980s, which yielded the most substantial increases in the prison population. In this decade, government policy and the social and carceral impacts of policy leaked into carceral-set television programs. The prison population in the United States increased by 134% in the decade, fueled by the War on Drugs (Cunneen et al. 2016; Gottschalk 2016). Popular culture images in the 1980s, primarily police-based shows, promoted governmental policy and provided television makers with new preoccupations and characterizations, as the “tv cops” worked to get drugs off the streets and the dealers into prison. The consequences of the “War on Drugs,” which some equate to a war on visible minorities in the inner cities, were virtually ignored by the mainstream media (Gottschalk 2016). Nonetheless, there were few television depictions of incarceration in the 1980s, with most shows being short-lived and largely forgotten. Although originating, in the 1970s, the long-running Australian soap opera Prisoner was still a staple on 1980s Australian television, with a robust “cult” international market. The series inspired several shows that made their debut in the 1980s. In an attempt to capitalize on the commercial and international success of Prisoner, the Australian Network 10 aired Punishment (1981, Network 10). Unlike Prisoner, Punishment was set in a male prison and was based partly on real case histories. The series focused on both inmates and guards, with plots based on survival of a harsh and unyielding carceral system. According to contemporary reactions, the series failed because viewers found it too realistic. Both prisoners and guards were unsympathetic, uncivilized, and unfriendly. The series was taken off the air after only three episodes and later re-introduced in a non-ratings period for the remainder of the first season, then canceled after only twenty-six episodes (Moran 1993). Similarly, in the United States, Prisoner inspired a failed television pilot movie, Willow B: Women in Prison, which aired on the ABC network on June 29, 1980. This version focused on a well-off socialite, who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and incarcerated in the El Camino Women’s Detention Center. The series was not picked up and is now a pop culture obscurity. Nonetheless, American audiences were exposed to short-lived situation comedies with incarceration themes: Stir Crazy (1985–1986, CBS) and Women in Prison (1987–1988, FOX). Stir Crazy was adapted from the more famous film of the same name, which starred Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, who portrayed two innocent men who endured the pains of imprisonment, albeit inflected as comedy. The television version was less successful, lasting only nine episodes. Unlike the film, the television version was primarily post-incarceration, after the leads had escaped from a chain gang. As such, the series was not set within an institution and cannot be categorized

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as a prison-based television series. Brooks and Marsh (2009, 1310) claim the series is “more like a silly version of The Fugitive.” Conversely, debuting in 1987 on the FOX network, Women in Prison (1987–1988) was set in cell block J of the Bass Women’s prison in Wisconsin. The series centered on Dawn, a wealthy and pampered housewife who was framed by her philandering husband. While incarcerated, she met several other characters and the stereotypical guard: short and frumpy. The series aired for only thirteen episodes before it was canceled (Brooks and Marsh 2009). The series was critically panned, with Howard Rosenberg (1987), of the Los Angeles Times, writing that it was “pathetically unfunny,” writing “if you like punchless punch lines and cheap gay jokes, Women in Prison is the show for you.”

“We’re Not in Kansas Anymore”: Hyper-Violence in the Land of Oz, the 1990s In the 1990s, prison-themed television shows were rare, with only four series debuts that had settings within a carceral environment, including Dangerous Women (1991–1992, Syndication), The Governor (1995–1996, ITV), the highly acclaimed, yet intensely violent Oz (1997–2003, HBO) and the cult favorite, Bad Girls (1999–2007, ITV). The first series to debut in the 1990s was the syndicated nighttime soap opera, Dangerous Women. The series was loosely based on the Australian series, Prisoner transferring some character elements of renamed Prisoner characters. Dangerous Women began in a correctional institution, but gradually the setting moved to a lakefront inn purchased by the series lead, Faith Cronin, a former mobster’s wife. The inn became a de facto halfway house for characters who were eventually released from the institution (Brooks and Marsh 2009). The series was an American soap opera, with attractive characters, poor acting, awkward dialogue, and ridiculous storylines. Although the original Prisoner had amateurish production values, the characters were more genuine than the American attempt, which portrayed the incarcerated as both glamorous and appealing. The Governor (1995–1996) centered on Helen Hewitt, the newly appointed Governor of Barfield, a male maximum-security prison that had been nearly destroyed by a devastating riot. Hewitt was brought into reform corruption and institute procedural changes to the institution. However, she faced a lack of enthusiasm by staff, open hostility from inmates, and blatant misogyny. Despite the institutional setting, the primary focus was on Hewitt, not the prisoners. Nonetheless, the series did highlight some critical issues within the carceral environment by depicting the dreariness of incarceration and the lack of support for mental health in institutions. Critics found that the HBO produced Oz (1997–2003) made up for the overall lack of quantity of television depictions. Arguably, Oz is one of the most important prison dramas of all time in terms of its critical reception and subsequent influence. The series was created and written by Tom Fontana, an

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award-winning screenwriter best known for his work in Homicide: Life on the Streets (1993–1999). Oz was serialized drama that took place in the fictional maximum-security prison, Oswald State Penitentiary. In addition to showing life within the prison, Oz showcased penal experimentation and efforts at rehabilitation, as its setting specifically within the “Emerald City” experimental unit within the prison where prisoners’ increased freedom of movement was matched by enhanced technological surveillance. With the debut of Oz, institutional violence on the small screen reached new heights, with graphic portrayals of beatings, murder, and homosexual rape. Television audiences were exposed to complex storylines with the assistance of commentary provided by Augustus Hill (played by Harold Perrineau), an African-American who was paralyzed after being thrown off a roof by a white police officer. Hill’s observations (or rants) are poetic, surrealist, and always critical of the system. The characters illustrate the complexity of human nature and the complications of living in a racist, violent, and materialistic society, which become accentuated within the carceral environment (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004; Jarvis 2006; Yousman 2009). The series follows the attempts of unit manager, Tim McManus, to rehabilitate, as well as control inmates who come from various backgrounds. There is a cornucopia of inmate groups or gangs: African-American, Italian gangsters, Muslim Brotherhood, Bikers, Aryan Nation, Latinos, homosexuals, and Christians. One of the most significant characters was Tobias Beecher (played by Lee Tergesen), who was sentenced for fifteen years for killing a nine-year-old girl while he was driving intoxicated. His ordeal becomes a focal point, as he is quickly targeted as sexual prey by the Aryan Brotherhood. He later becomes addicted to heroin, resorts to extreme violence to humiliate his tormentor, becomes involved in a consensual love affair with inmate Chris Keller (Chris Meloni), who is working with Beecher’s nemesis, the Aryan Brotherhood leader, Vernon Schillinger (played by J. K. Simmons). The series was well received by both critics and audiences, lasting fifty-six episodes over six seasons. On British television, incarcerated women were the focus of attention with the debut of Bad Girls in 1999. Following in the footsteps of Within These Walls and Prisoner Cell Block H, the series introduced a large ensemble cast and a contemporary portrayal of life inside a women’s prison. The series was more graphic than its predecessors in terms of violence, language, and sexual content, reflecting shifting standards for what could be broadcast. The series addressed issues including bullying, rape, suicide, miscarriage, drug use, and violence against women. Many of the core themes revolved around adjustment to prison life, separation from families, and relationships between staff and inmates. The series also highlighted sexuality, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters presented (Jewkes 2006; Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). The series was well received by audiences, and the show generated one hundred and seven episodes over eight seasons. Bad Girls was also

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critically applauded, winning several awards. At a further level of interest, it attracted academic attention with works exploring themes of sexuality (Owen et al. 2007; Millbank 2004; Turner 2013).

Let Me “Outta” Here: “Jailbreak” Captures an Audience, the 2000s Prison-based television series fell from favor in the new millennium with only two scripted series that debuted in the decade. One of these, Buried (2003), intersected with the tradition of incarceration-based dramas in the United Kingdom. This series was set in a men’s correctional institution. Initially broadcast on Channel 4, the series was ignored by viewers, received meager ratings, and was canceled after only one season. Its ratings failure did not match its critical reception and the series received several awards, including the BAFTA for best drama in 2004. The storylines featured both staff and inmates, with plots revolving around the complex relationships that exist within the carceral setting. To recreate an authentic environment, the producers employed a criminologist, Dr. David Wilson, as a consultant (Nelson 2013). The series was gritty, dark, and disturbing, but not as violent or sensationalistic as Oz. The primary character in the series Lee Kingley (Lennie James) violently intervened in the attempted rape of his sister and was sentenced for ten years at HMP Mandrake in the North of England. With the help of his brother Tony, Kingley rises through the ranks becoming “top dog” within the institution. Although Kingley was the primary character, the series also featured the trials and tribulations of staff, as well as institutional bureaucracy. The series was shot with unique camera angles and lighting, in which viewers became intimately acquainted with the characters. The dialogue and storylines were relatively realistic, displaying both character strengths and weaknesses (Nelson 2013). While Buried (2003) felt authentic, Prison Break offered fantasy and “escapist” entertainment. Prison Break debuted on the FOX Network in August of 2005 and lasted four seasons and over one hundred episodes. The series was resurrected for a fifth season in a limited nine-episode run in 2017. The series followed the exploits of Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), a brilliant structural engineer who commits armed robbery in order to be sent to the Fox River State Penitentiary outside of Chicago, Illinois, with his crime being a pretext to help his brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) escape from prison to avoid execution. The dramatic impetus derives from Burrows being framed for the murder of the brother of Vice-President of the United States, by covert agents named “The Company.” The first season was set within the institution, with the planning and subsequent escape of the brothers, along with six other characters who become known as the Fox River Eight. The second season takes place eight hours after the escape, with the “chase” and discovery of the “Company” comprising the primary plotlines.

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The third season features the characters in a Panama prison, from where once again, they escape. The fourth season became more convoluted, with the primary characters now working for Homeland Security and breaking into the “Company’s” headquarters to steal information and end its operations. The fifth and final season was made eight years after the intended series finale, where the characters are once again revived to help Scofield escape from a prison in Yemen. The series eschewed authenticity in place of fantasy with an element of governmental conspiracy. Except for the first season, it was not set within a plausibly recreated correctional institution. The thrill of escape became the primary vehicle driving the storylines. Its contrast with the more quotidian British series is striking, as Prison Break entertained audiences, especially in the first two seasons, where it also achieved some critical praise as a “suspenseful thriller” with original content and intriguing storylines. As a prison “drama,” it though failed to offer originality and instead reiterated standard prison stereotypes and clichés (Turner 2013). Although there were landmark and successful fictional dramas, changes in genre and priorities meant they were smaller aspects of prison-based television in this decade, with program makers’ interests shifting to incarceration-based reality series, making them staples of television in the 2000s. The prison-based reality television has some longer antecedents. After the debut of Cops in 1989, there was a rush of reality-based television programs centered on crime and justice.2 The plight of the incarcerated became the subject of television documentaries with select episodes on A&E’s Investigative Reports and PBS’s Frontline. The success of these depictions led to an entire series that featured the prison, beginning with The History Channel’s The Big House in 1998 and MSNBC’s Lockup (2005). Originally appearing on MSNBC’s Investigates in 2000, Lockup (2005–2017, MSNBC) is a prison documentary series that ran for 25 seasons on MSNBC, with 237 episodes that featured various correctional institutions across the United States. The Lockup franchise also included Lockup Raw; Lockup: Extended Stay; Lockup: World Tour; Lockup Special Investigation and Life After Lockup. The creators provided audiences with a virtual tour of the prison while declaring an unflinching and unbiased examination of life in an institution. Unfortunately, the result was a highly edited version of reality. The focus was on maximum-security prisons, violent offenders, and stories about violence, gangs, and secure housing units (Cecil and Leitner 2009). The popularity of Lockup led to numerous copycats, including Lockdown (2006–2007, National Geographic Channel) and Hard Time (2009–2013). There were also more specialized series, focusing on a variety of penal conditions, such as women in prison (Women Behind Bars, 2008; Girls Incarcerated, 2018); escapes (Real Prison Breaks, 2010–2011); American jails (Jail, 2007–2013; Las Vegas: Jailhouse, 2010; Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail, 2011; Life in Jail: Hell on Earth, 2016); British prisons (Her Majesty

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Prison: Aylesbury, 2013; Her Majesty’s Prison: Norwich, 2016; Prison: First and Last 24 Hours, 2015–2016); and international correctional institutions (Locked Up: Abroad, 2007; Inside World’s Toughest Prisons, 2016). The possibility of cross-program fertilization was also apparent with chef Gordon Ramsey entered the genre with Ramsey Behind Bars (2012). The series followed Ramsey helping a group of incarcerated men start a bakery, as rehabilitation. Similarly, Beyond Scared Straight (2011–, A&E) attempts to reform juvenile offenders through deterrence. The series is a retread of earlier programs, made famous through the Scared Straight! documentary produced in 1978. Although research indicates that these programs were not necessarily effective, their approach was emulated (Petrosino et al. 2003). Talk show programs such as Montel Williams and Sally Jessy used the techniques to send young offenders or even non-criminal offenders to programs such as Scared Straight, much to the glee of the audiences (Maahs and Pratt 2017). Among the large number of derivative series among the reality television shows, some attempted originality. 60 Days In (2016–, A&E) took non-criminal offenders and placed them in a jail environment. The purpose was to have the undercover prisoners act like real inmates and spy for the staff to uncover illegal activities within the jail. The series was framed as beneficial to staff and inmates, as the producers alleged that positive changes were made to the institution. Critics of the series argue that inmates, once again, became a visual spectacle, a source of amusement for viewers. The focus of the series was on the dramatic and sensational aspects of jail. However, the series was not entirely without merit, according to critics. There were scenes in which inmates were depicted with a sense of humanity, especially in the female jails. They talked about their struggles, their past relationships, and their mistakes. Some of the undercover participants gained a unique perspective on the link between marginalization and criminality.

Reimagining Carceral Control: Reboots, Rehashes, and the Colour Orange, the 2010s After a period where few prison-based dramas appeared, incarceration-based programs experienced renewed popularity in the 2010s with the debut of scripted series including Dead Boss (2012, BBC 3); Crims (2015, BBC 3); Porridge (2016, BBC 1); Prisoners’ Wives (2012–2013, BBC One); Wentworth (2013–, SoHo, Showcase); Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019, Netflix); and Escape from Dannemora (2018, Showtime). Moreover, other series had incarceration-based themes, such as Breakout Kings (2011–2012, A&E) and The Night Of (2016, HBO). However, the primary settings/ plotlines in these series are not set within an institution. Breakout Kings was based on US marshals’ attempts to capture escaped prisoners with the help of the formerly incarcerated. The Night Of featured incarceration, with several scenes set in the historically notorious Riker’s Island. However, the

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series was primarily a mystery that focused on the trial of a young Pakistani man wrongly arrested and remanded into custody for the murder of a young woman. In the United Kingdom, the prison comedy resurfaced in this decade with Dead Boss, Crims and a remade Porridge. Their reception, however, complicates this impression as both audiences and critics proved unreceptive and the shows comprise a number of false starts. Dead Boss follows the plight of Helen Stephens, who was wrongly sentenced for the murder of her boss. Helen’s new life in Broadmarsh Prison, an obvious amalgam of two famous prisons, is challenging, with an incompetent Governor, annoying cellmate, and threats from the institution’s “top dog.” Despite the cast and writing team of comic luminaries like Jennifer Saunders, critics received it negatively with Keith Watson (2012, para 4–6) of Metro writing that it was “throttled by a cast of supporting characters cobbled together from leftover bits of Psychoville and Prisoner Cell Block H, Dead Boss boasted bonkers eccentricity by slop-out bucketload, but none of it felt remotely original…thus far Dead Boss is a bit of a dead loss.” The series was canceled after only six episodes and one season. Crims (2015) had a similar fate and was also canceled after only one season and six episodes. Similar to Dead Boss, the lead, Luke (Eli) is sentenced to two years in a Young Offender Institution after he is inadvertently implicated as a bank robber’s getaway driver. To compound his issues, his cellmate is the bank robber, who is also the brother of his girlfriend, the dimwitted Jason (Kadiff Kirwan). Finally, Porridge (2017), a sequel of the original, was developed for the BBC. As part of its landmark television programs, the original Porridge aired on the BBC garnering new attention to the series and ushering in the production of a sequel, starring Kevin Bishop as Nigel Norman Fletcher, the grandson of the original “Fletch.” The series both recreated and updated the storyline. Nigel followed his grandfather’s footsteps, sentenced to five years in prison, but for cyber-crimes, a category of crime unknown to the prisoners and viewers of the 1970s original. The newer version emulated the old in several ways, such as including a kind Officer, Mr. Braithwaite (modeled after Mr. Barrowclough), and a harsh Officer, Mr. Meekie (modeled after Mr. Mackay). Although written and developed by the original producers, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais, the series did not experience the same level of acclaim as the original. Although few of these series were successes, the 2010s also featured two of the most popular series set within an institution, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black (OITNB). There is significance here in the turn away from male incarceration and a return to the ratings successes of earlier series set in women’s prisons. The BBC also produced the drama series, Prisoners’ Wives (2012–2013, BBC) which featured the lives of four very different women and their experiences with their male partner’s incarceration. Its impact was minimal and it is eclipsed by the US and Australian series. Wentworth has powerful dramatic overtones, while OITNB is a dramedy, with elements of

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both comedy and drama. Wentworth reimagines Prisoner: Cell Block H but showcases a higher level of violence and is made with higher production values. Despite these surface differences, many of the storylines and characters were borrowed from the original and like the original, the series follows the exploits of several inmates, including lead character Bea Smith, who was being held on remand for the attempted murder of her abusive husband. Another major character is Frankie Doyle who was convicted of an assault of a reality show host. Doyle is the aspiring “top dog” of the institution. Like the original, Doyle is openly lesbian, but the character is rethought with the role essayed as an anti-hero. Despite the writers’ attempts to “feminize” the character, Frankie is still vulgar, aggressive, and violent, albeit with an inner sensitivity that she keeps well-hidden. Smith and Doyle are the main characters, but the show features an ensemble cast, with some characters’ backstories being featured in various episodes. The personal lives of the staff are included in the storylines, sometimes presenting a very unflattering view of the custodial officers. Available on Netflix, the series has been on the air for over six seasons and has a large international audience. Moreover, the plots and storyline have shifted considerably, which is typical of the soap opera genre. Nonetheless, the one constant is the setting, which remains the Wentworth Correctional Institution for Women. Like Wentworth, OITNB has been on the air for over six seasons and is an exclusive Netflix production. The series was based on the best-selling memoir; Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison (2010) by Piper Kerman who wrote about her experiences at a minimum-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. The series is centered on Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) adjusting to her new life in prison. Chapman had previously been involved in a lesbian relationship with Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) who was involved in drug smuggling. The “fish out of water” scenario, a white middle-class woman, being thrown into the harsh prison environment dominates the first season, but the long-running series features multiple storylines, a diverse cast, and background stories that humanize prisoners. The series features strong comedic elements balanced by serious storylines featuring corruption, funding cuts, overcrowding, brutality, racial discrimination, and prison privatization (Caputi 2015; Artt and Schwan 2016). The series has been the subject of numerous academic articles, many of which are highly critical of the portrayal of race relations, which they argue is unrealistic and “white-washed” (Belcher 2016; Enck and Morrissey 2015). The last incarceration-based series to debut in the decade was again based on a true story and is in the tradition of an old-fashioned prison break. The Showtime Original, Escape from Dannemora, follows the exploits of David Sweat (Paul Dano) and Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) as they break out of the infamous New York state maximum state penitentiary in June 2015. The pair manipulated, Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell (Patricia Arquette) a civilian prison worker, to aid in the escape, with the complicated relationship between the

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trio driving the plot. The seven-part series depicts the actual mechanics of the escape, which involved sledgehammering through a brick wall, cutting into and then shimmying through an 18-inch pipe. The series has received critical acclaim and continues the tradition of escape as a primary plotline in popular culture narratives of prison. These incarceration-centered television series present themes that are multidimensional. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide overview and analysis of all the narratives that exist within these programs. As such, only the major themes that are rooted in the literature will be discussed. For the sake of brevity, the four themes have been categorized as (1) the “othering” of inmates; (2) The “Smug Hack”; (3) Looking in from the Outside: Life in Prison; and (4) Prison Reform or Public Spectacle. 1. The “Othering” of the Incarcerated Stigma is a large part of the incarceration experience, which challenges not only the prospects of the incarcerated but their day-to-day existence within an institution. A key element in stigma is the so-called othering of inmates. In sociological terms, “othering” refers to any action by which an individual or group becomes mentally classified in somebody’s mind as “not one of us.” Rather than recognizing that every person is a complex packet of emotions, ideas, motivations, and priorities, it is sometimes easier to dismiss them as being less than human and less worthy of respect and dignity (Scott and Marshall 2009). Corrections amplify this notion, as degradation is an essential element of the institution, by stripping away identity and transforming a human being to a number. This process of dehumanization only serves to separate the incarcerated further from humankind (Johnson 2002). In popular culture narratives, many characters become relegated to basic tropes, which tend to reinforce the public view of inmates. Popular tropes include the young naïve inmate or first timer; the experienced or wise inmate; the “wolf” or sexual predator; gang bangers; the “top dog” or inmate who controls contraband in prison; and racial and ethnic stereotypes (Cecil 2015). These can modulate in tone and deployment according to genre. For example, the gay and lesbian trope is often played for laughs in the television comedy, while in the drama, these inmates are depicted as predators, serving to add to the illusion that new inmates will be forced to engage in homosexuality.3 In several prison films, a common narrative is the innocent or unjustly sentenced lead character. Rafter (2000, 120) labels this the “justice restored” theme, in which “good triumphs over evil.” He (2000, 130) further claims: Historically, prison films have taken for granted a clear and stable system of morality. The heroes may be criminals, but they are obviously admirable, the bad guys are abominable, and the heroes win. Based on comfortable moral verities, standard prison films raise questions about justice in particular cases but do

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not doubt that justice exists and lies within human reach. Nor do they ask hard questions about the prison system. What they do best is what they do over and over again; set up a situation in which an individual is being punished unfairly, and then develop a plotline in which the balance of justice is restored.

Television deploys a similar narrative, in that many leads are sympathetic characters, who have been unfairly incarcerated for crimes that are perceived as justifiable. For example, in the series Buried, the lead character Lee Kingley was incarcerated after he violently defended his sister from a vicious attempted rape. In Wentworth, Bea Smith was incarcerated for attempting to kill her abusive husband and eventually murdered another inmate who had her daughter killed. In Prison Break, one of the main characters (“Linc” Burrows) is innocent of his crimes, while his brother (Michael Scofield) is morally absolved from his attempted bank robbery, as he only committed the crime to save his brother from execution. Finally, in Bad Girls, Nikki Wade murdered a policeman who was attempting to rape her girlfriend. However, this “justice restored” narrative takes on a different dimension within television prison drama. Many characters (lead and supporting) are guilty, with some being guilty of severe crimes. In the television prison drama, the writers can spend more time on character development, as series are lengthier than feature films. For example, the backstories in several dramas, such as Oz and Wentworth, help to humanize “guilty” characters, by providing a glimpse into their painful backgrounds. The depiction of gender is an essential element within the incarceration-based television series. Overall, there is little doubt that gender stereotypes are prominently displayed on television shows (Cecil 2007). In the prison drama, female characters may be depicted with more humanity and sympathy than male inmates. Some scholars argue that these “paternalistic” depictions can trivialize the female inmate experience (Cecil 2007). Notwithstanding that many female-based dramas, such as OITNB, Wentworth, and Bad Girls, feature violent and sociopathic female characters, the violence in male dramas is more pronounced, with fewer characters having redeeming qualities. 2. The “Smug Hack” The portrayal of prison administration and custodial staff is important elements within popular culture images of corrections. In both television and films, the “smug hack” is common. The smug hack corrections analogy connotes a desolate, “dangerous,” and “dark” prison where the inmates are “awash” in despair, and the “keeper” or guards are the “smug hacks” (Freeman 2000, 6). The “smug hack” is brutal but incompetent, with low intelligence and indifferent to human suffering while obsessed with routine. In television portrayals, the depiction of the “smug hack” is common but the impact and type vary across genres. In comedy, there are relatively tame attempts at depicting the “smug hack,” with Porridge’s Mr. Mackay

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exemplifying an authoritarian personality who believes in strict rules and discipline, much to the chagrin of the inmates. In drama, there are several prominent examples of brutal correctional officers, such as Brad Bellick in Prison Break, Jim Fenner in Bad Girls, and Desi Piscatella, the violent head of correctional officers in OITNB. Piscatella appeared in season four and rapidly became the most contemptible villain in the series owing to his brutal treatment of the inmates. Many series feature the correctional officers as the primary villains, which supports the “smug hack” narrative. Although the depiction of the “smug hack” is common, it is not necessarily dominant within incarceration-based series. First, television depictions of incarceration tend to be serialized, in the vein of a soap opera. This format allows viewers to follow not only the work lives of guards but also their personal lives and backstories. Shows such as Wentworth and Bad Girls are useful examples. In Wentworth, we see the trials and tribulations of Officers Will Jackson and Matthew “Fletch” Fletcher, as well as the rise of the timid Vera Bennett from Deputy Governor to Governor. Likewise, in Bad Girls, principal officer Jim Fenner evolves from a philandering husband, who cares somewhat for his family, to a murderer who eventually becomes the Governor of the institution. Many of these correctional officers are villains, but television allows for multifaceted and sometimes humanistic depictions of correctional officers. For example, the first female C.O. at Oz, Diane Whittlesey (Edie Falco) is a single, divorced mother, who has suffered spousal abuse and poverty. She is taking care of her mother, who has cancer and works double shifts to make ends meet. She is fair-minded and compassionate but secretly executed an inmate after being kidnapped during a riot. Another example is Will Jackson who is a C.O. at Wentworth. His wife, Governor Meg Jackson was killed during a riot in the first episode. Despite that personal tragedy, Will is fair, compassionate and well-liked by the inmates. In Prisoner: Cell Block H Meg Jackson, was also reasonable, kind and empathetic toward the inmates. Correctional officers are prominent but often a negatively depicted presence with numerous stereotypes and mistruths about the profession (Bailey and Hale 1998; Freeman 2000). There is less academic work examining the portrayal of institutional administration, such as Governors or wardens, social workers, medical staff, and psychologists. In television, characters who occupy leadership roles (wardens or Governors) are often portrayed as villains. At the beginning of the second season of Wentworth, viewers are introduced to Joan Ferguson’s strict, manipulative, and mean-spirited personality. During her reign of terror toward both staff and inmates, she murders an inmate and is eventually incarcerated herself, complicating the character boundaries of staff and inmate and prompting questions about the scale of offending. Although Ferguson and Fenner are extreme examples, other shows also feature administrative officials as either incompetent or career-minded, who occasionally cross the boundaries of ethical conduct. For example, Joe Caputo of OITNB

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compulsively masturbates to control his urges to have sex with inmates. In Bad Girls and Wentworth, the Governors cross professional boundaries and become intimately involved with inmates. In the first season of Wentworth, Governor Erica Davidson covers up the source of drugs entering the institution (a male teacher), as she does not want to hurt her carefully crafted image. Similarly, In Oz, Tim McManus, the “idealistic” manager of Emerald City has sexual relationships with staff, is self-centered and is depicted as overtly naïve. This narrative of the naïve and idealistic prison administrator is pervasive within incarceration-based television series, something that will be discussed later in the chapter. 3. “Looking in from the Outside”: Life on the Inside The third major theme that can be adduced from incarceration-based series is “life in prison,” a theme not related to characters, but to narratives about prison life. In some cases, the narratives are based on real prison experiences and can be accurate storylines about mental health, racial discrimination, contraband, overcrowding, funding cuts, and drug/alcohol use. However, these storylines tend to be amplified to provide drama or even comedy for audiences. Life in prison is often mundane and regimented, and a truly realistic depiction of prison would provide little entertainment to entice viewers. In scripted series, the most common narratives about life in prison revolve around sex and violence. Sexual relationships (both consensual and non-consensual) are widespread. Several female-based series feature consensual relationships between inmates, such as OITNB, Wentworth, and Bad Girls. In the male drama, consensual relationships between inmates are rare, with Oz being the exception. In Oz, Tobias Beecher and Chris Keller engage in a consensual homosexual relationship. However, the relationship is a ruse, because Keller is working with the Aryan Nation to seek revenge on Beecher. In most male prison dramas, sex is equated with rape and is predatory in nature. There are gender differences in the portrayal of these sexual relationships, which cross ethical and moral boundaries. Many male staff members use their position of authority to seduce inmates with promises of favors and protection from other inmates, or male staff members rape female inmates. In some female-based dramas, the administration engages in sexual relations with openly lesbian inmates. In Wentworth, the relationship between Erika Davidson and Frankie Doyle does not go beyond a kiss, but the pursuit of Erica by Frankie becomes a minor storyline, which damages the reputation of the new Governor. In contrast, the relationship between Governor Helen Stewart and Nikki Wade in Bad Girls becomes a significant storyline, in which the relationship is eventually consummated. Violence is a standard narrative and incarceration-based series exploit violence. Oz exemplifies this, with approximately fifty-four murders over six seasons and fifty-six episodes (Yousman 2009). Although not quantified, other

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more recent series such as Wentworth and OITNB also feature high levels of violence. Naturally, the violence is less graphic and depicted as more “realistic” as it is in documentary form. Nonetheless, the documentary or reality-based series is not necessarily presenting “truth.” For example, Lockup is a quasi-documentary style series in which only the most dramatic moments are presented to audiences, rather than the actual reality of incarceration. Tension and drama are elevated within the series, overhyping the violence with warnings of viewer discretion and menacing narration that warns of violence, danger, and chaos. The institutions are depicted as combat zones, at risk from explosions of aggression. Any sense of humanity or rehabilitation is put on the back burner, as the overwhelming threats of danger become omnipresent. In this sense, incarceration once again becomes a public spectacle, in which the inmates become akin to caged animals in the zoo, as the viewer watches this brutal, unforgiving environment in horror and disgust (Cecil and Leitner 2009; Cecil 2015). To watch an episode of Oz is to see a world filled with violence and instability; aggression, violence, and suffering permeate the entire institution. The very first scene in Bad Girls highlights the juxtaposition of “country club corrections” with the harshness of corrections Unbeknown to the viewer, the incarcerated characters are holding a fashion show, dancing and singing to a remake of the Bee Gees’ song Stayin’ Alive. As the characters are having fun performing their show, another character is in significant pain, moaning uncontrollably. The viewer soon realizes that the fashion show is in prison and the women moaning is suffering a miscarriage. The correctional officer puts a stop to the fashion show, as it has gone past the allotted time, while another correctional officer dismisses the moans of the inmate who is miscarrying as attention-seeking behavior. Bad Girls brought onto the screen the current concerns about the treatment of pregnant women, concerns revolving around the UK Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe, who had defended the shackling of pregnant female prisoners while in hospital (Marshall and Thomas 2017, 200). 4. Public Spectacle or a Call for Reform? There is vigorous academic debate about whether popular cultural narratives influence prison reform. Some academics argue that narratives can influence the public, which in turn call attention to and promote policy changes (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). Conversely, others argue that most popular culture narratives are social constructions that tend to maintain the status quo (Jewkes 2006). For instance, we must explicitly recognize that the ultimate purpose of television is not to transform society but to produce profits. The priority is to achieve high ratings to gain advertising dollars or cable subscriptions. Television shows that do not gain audiences are canceled and largely forgotten. Television producers and their sponsors are a homogeneous group

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that occupies the highest strata of society, in terms of wealth, power, and prestige. As such, television programming generally reflects their interests, values, and beliefs. Although actual prisons are overflowing with the most marginal members of society, reform is not a common concern among television executives. Although reform may be implied, ultimately, the audiences are exposed to extreme levels of violence and sociopathic characters that undermine any notion of reform, rehabilitation, or potential for improvement (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004; Jewkes 2006). An essential element of penal reform is the bad apples versus rotten barrel paradigm. In terms of institutional deviance or corruption, misconduct is the result of only a handful of individuals (bad apples) versus a more systemic problem within the penal system (rotten barrel). Popular culture narratives dictate how institutional deviance and corruption is played with audiences, promoting the “bad apple” paradigm. As discussed earlier, the stereotype of the “hack screw” can reinforce this image, that only a handful of correctional officers are blatantly violent and brutal, and do not necessarily reflect the entire system. In terms of reform, in some television series, the goals of the correctional system are openly questioned. Fletcher, the lead character in Porridge, frequently questions the purpose of incarceration. Nonetheless, the series is played for laughs. Highlighting serious issues through comedy may not advance institutional reform as the viewing public is entertained rather than thinking critically about prison reform. Porridge even invited viewers to see prison as a “fun” and inviting place, with an assortment of quirky characters and situations (Marsh 2009). In dramatic series, such as Oz and Wentworth, extreme violence overshadows thoughts of reform (Jarvis 2006; Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). In Oz, unit manager Tim McManus is idealistic and reform-minded, firmly believing in rehabilitation and prisoner improvement. As unit manager of Emerald City, McManus sets up an inmate council, promotes drug and substance counseling programs, and organizes GED programs. However, McManus is depicted as being lax in disciplining inmates and overly idealistic, which makes him seem weak and ineffective. Despite his best efforts, many inmates appear beyond reform and continually fail to make positive changes, a status counterpointed by the extreme violence that permeates the series. This “failure” of rehabilitation is widespread in the prison television genre, an impression achieved by writing and characterization. Characters with more progressive views are depicted as weak or incompetent (Cecil 2015). The best illustration is Porridge’s Mr. Barrowclough (Brian Wilde). Mr. Barrowclough has a philosophy of rehabilitation and attempts to treat the inmates with respect, friendliness, and kindness. That approach makes the timid Barrowclough an easy mark for inmates, and he is constantly being “conned” by the prisoners. In more dramatic series, such as Wentworth, Bad Girls, and

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OITNB, reform-minded “screws” or staff members, that are friendly and respectful, tend to be taken advantage of by inmates. The “idealistic” reform-minded administrator may be depicted as intelligent, qualified, and compassionate but their authority is questionable. Not only are their policies openly questioned by their subordinates, but their reform-based policies also tend to fail miserably. For example, in Within These Walls, Governor Faye Boswell established a special wing for drug addicts, who she felt should not be treated as criminals but as victims. In this wing, the inmates could decorate, live more freely, and be sheltered from violent offenders. One inmate almost kills herself after overdosing upon release, and the program is critically questioned. Similarly, The Governor opens with a prison riot, which ends in the death of an inmate and the removal of the warden in charge. The newly fired warden was reform-minded and allowed inmates to own keys to their cells. It is imperative to note that positive relationships between staff and inmates can be beneficial for rehabilitation (Johnson 2002). However, in popular cultural depictions, these types of narratives are sporadic.

Conclusion The incarceration-based television series is one smaller component of crime and justice shows that feature the police, lawyers, and private investigators. Despite the smaller number of these series, they can capture the public imagination, with such shows such as OINTB, Bad Girls, Wentworth, and Oz becoming fan favorites although that success has discursive implications. These shows tend to obscure the reality of prison, providing viewers with familiar tropes and storylines that are overtly sensationalistic and violent. Four dominant narratives emerge from television: the “othering” of inmates’; the portrayal of the smug hack; depictions of life on the inside; and the questions of reform. This chapter provides a brief survey of series that have appeared on television, with the hope that future researchers will complete a more comprehensive analysis of the themes and narratives that appear within these series.

Notes 1. Porridge debuted earlier on April 1, 1973. However, it did not regularly appear on television until October of 1974. 2. Cops is considered the beginning of the genre. However, the first crime and justice reality-based series to air was the BBC’s Police which aired for twelve episodes in 1982. The series followed the Thames Valley Police. 3. Research consistently finds that institutional rape is higher in US maximum-security prisons. However, the vast majority of inmates are not in maximum security.

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References Artt, Sarah, and Anne Schwan. 2016. “Screening Women’s Imprisonment: Agency and Exploitation in Orange Is the New Black.” Television & New Media 17, no. 6: 467–472. Bailey, Frankie Y., and Donna C. Hale. 1998. Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth. Belcher, Christina. 2016. “There Is No Such Thing as a Post-Racial Prison: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the White Savior Complex on Orange Is the New Black.” Television & New Media 17, no. 6: 491–503. Brooks, Tim, and Earle F. Marsh. 2009. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946–Present. New York: Ballantine Books. Caputi, Jane. 2015. “The Color Orange? Social Justice Issues in the First Season of Orange Is the New Black.” Journal of Popular Culture (Boston) 48, no. 6: 1130–1150. Cecil, Dawn K. 2007. “Looking Beyond Caged Heat: Media Images of Women in Prison.” Feminist Criminology 2, no. 4: 304–326. Cecil, Dawn K. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture: From The Big House to Orange Is the New Black. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Cecil, Dawn K., and Jennifer L. Leitner. 2009. “Unlocking the Gates: An Examination of MSNBC Investigates–Lockup.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 48, no. 2: 184–199. Cheatwood, Derral. 1998. “Prison Movies: Films About Adult, Male, Civilian Prisons: 1929–1995.” In Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice, 209–231. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth. Colvin, Mark. 1997. Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs: Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Springer. Cox, Stephen D. 2009. The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cunneen, Chris, Eileen Baldry, David Brown, Mark Brown, Melanie Schwartz, and Alex Steel. 2016. Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration: The Revival of the Prison. New York: Routledge. Enck, Suzanne M., and Megan E. Morrissey. 2015. “If Orange Is the New Black, I Must Be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 32, no. 5: 303–317. Freeman, Robert M. 2000. Popular Culture and Corrections. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Association. Gottschalk, Marie. 2016. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Groves, Don. 2015. “OZ TV Export Boom.” Inside Film: If 167: 14. Jarvis, Brian. 2006. “The Violence of Images: Inside the Prison TV Drama OZ.” In Captured by the Media, edited by Paul Mason, 147–163. Cullompton: Willan. Jewkes, Yvonne. 2006. “Creating a Stir? Prisons, Popular Media and the Power to Reform.” In Captured by the Media, edited by Paul Mason, 147–163. Cullompton: Willan. Johnson, Robert. 2002. Hard Time. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

162  K. DOWLER Johnston, Helen. 2006. “‘Buried Alive’: Representations of the Separate System in Victorian England.” In Captured by the Media, edited by Paul Mason, 113–131. Cullompton: Willan. Kerman, Piper. 2010. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. New York: Spiegel & Grau. Maahs, Jeff, and Travis C. Pratt. 2017. “‘I Hate These Little Turds!’: Science, Entertainment, and the Enduring Popularity of Scared Straight Programs.” Deviant Behavior 38, no. 1: 47–60. Marsh, Ian. 2009. “Representations of Prisons in the British Media: Or Are We Being Fair to Holiday Camps?” Criminal Justice Studies 22, no. 3: 367–374. Marshall, Daniel, and Terry Thomas. 2017. Privacy and Criminal Justice. Cham: Springer. Mason, Paul. 2006. “Lies, Distortion and What Doesn’t Work: Monitoring Prison Stories in the British Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 2, no. 3: 251–267. Millbank, Jenni. 2004. “It’s About This: Lesbians, Prison, Desire.” Social & Legal Studies 13, no. 2: 155–190. Miron, Janet. 2011. Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Moran, Albert. 1993. [Guide to Australian TV Series]; Moran’s Guide to Australian TV Series. Australian Film Television & Radio School. Morris, Norval, and David J. Rothman, eds. 1995. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nelson, Robin. 2013. “State of Play: Contemporary ‘High-End’ TV Drama.” Owen, A. Susan, Sarah H. Stein, Leah R. Vande Berg, and Sarah R. Stein. 2007. Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media Representations of Transgressive Women. Vol. 6. New York: Peter Lang. Petrosino, Anthony, Carolyn Turpin-Petrosino, and John Buehler. 2003. “Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review of the Randomized Experimental Evidence.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 589, no. 1: 41–62. Rafter, Nicole Hahn. 2000. Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. Oxford, USA: Oxford University Press. Rosenberg, Howard. 1987. “Tv Reviews: ‘The Bretts Move In On ‘Masterpiece’.” Los Angeles Times, October 10. Scott, John, and Gordon Marshall, eds. 2009. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford, USA: Oxford University Press. Sharp, Luke, and Liz Giuffre. 2013. “Prisoner Reborn with Wentworth.” Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine 178: 24. Steemers, Jeanette. 2011. “British Television in the American.” In American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and Mistranslations, 1. Lanham: Lexington. Surette, Ray. 2014. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. Toronto, Canada: Nelson Education. Turner, Jennifer. 2013. “The Politics of Carceral Spectacle: Televising Prison Life.” In Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention, 219–237. Farnham: Ashgate. Watson, Keith. 2012. “Dead Boss Gave Us a Sick Joke That Was Nowhere Near Sick Enough.” Metro, June 14, 2012. Accessed February 17, 2019. https://metro. co.uk/2012/06/14/dead-boss-series-1-episode-1-tv-review-467103/.

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Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside. Yousman, Bill. 2009. Prime Time Prisons on US TV: Representation of Incarceration. Vol. 10. New York: Peter Lang. Zalcock, Beverley, and Jocelyn Robinson. 1996. “Inside Cell Block H: Hard Steel and Soft Soap.” Continuum 9, no. 1: 88–97.

Prison on Screen in 1970s Britain Marcus Harmes, Meredith Harmes and Barbara Harmes

HMP Slade, which housed Fletcher and Godber in Porridge, may be the best-known fictional prison from British popular culture in the 1970s, but visions of incarceration permeated 1970s British film and television. Among the many evocations of prison that occurred in the 1970s, some include Minder which began in 1979 with the character Terry getting out of Wormwood Scrubs, and the possibility of the police putting him back there was an over present threat. Rumpole of the Bailey’s determination to plead not guilty commenced on the screen in 1978 and came with warnings of the horrors of slopping out in Parkhurst. Scum’s (1977 and 1979) account of life inside a borstal appalled viewers and Doctor Who gave a science fiction twist to incarceration on Earth and in space in several serials across the decade. Scholarship on both incarceration and incapacitation examines a range of options for the containment of actual prisoners, moving from the imprisonment of people to a variety of chemical and electronic measures intended to limit felons’ capacity to act criminally after serving their sentences. Putting people in prison and incapacitating them after prison form part of the “penal imaginary,” showing how a wider population can imagine prisoners, their punishments, and their interactions with the public (Simon 2014, 22).

M. Harmes (*) · M. Harmes · B. Harmes  Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] B. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_10

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The penal imaginary by its nature points to the imaginative potential that surrounds incarceration and the way the quotidian realities of serving a prison sentence can become a richly imaginative and speculative space for considering imprisonment and punishment. Porridge’s sanitized portrayal of prison life, for instance the generally amiable atmosphere inside and the absence of brutality from staff to inmates (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 43), has been rightly described by Wilson and O’Sullivan as at odds with the unsettled prisons of the 1970s. However, considering a program set in a prison in terms of its reality or lack of reality is a curious undertaking for the 1970s drama in particular. If Porridge is sanitized, it is on a continuum of prison-set films and televisions that travel from the sanitized, to the grindingly realistic (notably Scum) to the excursions of telefantasy and dystopian dramas in both film and television, including A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Who and 1990. In actuality, the 1970s was an important but also a challenging decade for prisons, as practices changed, old certainties of faith rehabilitation were lost, the supermax appeared as a possible solution and seemed to change the face of incarceration, and in Britain, prison governors struggled with problem prisoners such as members of the IRA and members of ethnic minorities. Works that may not be sanitized but equally were not grounded in a particularly authoritative reality as was Scum, nevertheless had space in them to discuss the effectiveness or otherwise of incarceration. This chapter examines where the flights of fancy in British telefantasy and drama channeled actual anxieties about the carceral. The concerning appearance of the “new broom” in Ministry of the Interior in A Clockwork Orange, the necessity of experiments on prisoners in Doctor Who and Doomwatch, and the dystopian prisons in 1990 (that influenced the delineation of the Larkhill Centre in V for Vendetta) are mediated visions of a decade which may have been the most defining for carceral theory and practice in the twentieth century. The dramas this chapter brings together are considered in terms of the dystopian vision they present, not only of incarceration, but also of the surrounding society, by the questions they raise about the future of incarceration and they span the 1970s. Although this chapter examines dystopian fictions, a useful starting point is Porridge (1974–1977). The program is rarely thought of as realistic, but was reportedly popular with actual prisoners when broadcast. The program also showcases debates about the purpose and future of incarceration when characters interact and express opinions. The most authoritative figure in HMP Slade is the senior warden Mr. McKay, who works with a gentler and more diffident warden, Mr. Barraclough, and whose authority is more direct and potent than the dithering prison governor. In the 1975 episode Disturbing the Peace, McKay is temporarily replaced by the yet more severe Mr. Wainwright, whose arrival in the prison prompts a brief debate between him and the kindlier Barraclough on the role and intention of incarceration. In Barraclough’s view “we’re here to help them.

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To encourage them in a program of self-improvement and rehabilitation. It is our role to prepare them for returning to society.” In Wainwright’s opinion however, “We’re here to keep them away from society! Our role is to keep these scheming bastards locked in!” The short exchange demonstrates the polarized expectations about what a prison sentence was for and notably places the case for rehabilitation in the mouth of the more ineffective warden, who is shouted down by the authoritarian officer. The characters in Porridge were drawn with broad strokes, such as lovable rogues and dour Scotsmen. Among the archetypes in prison-set film and television in the 1970s but also earlier was the Governor character, often appearing as harried and ineffective. The governor of HMP Slade aligns with this archetype. The archetype appears elsewhere across the decade. Just as the decade was about to start, The Italian Job (1969) brought the harried governor, as played by John le Mesurier, onto the screen. The governor in The Italian Job was tasked with running the prison which housed Mr. Coker, a master criminal who masterminds the robbery in Turin from within the English prison. As played by le Mesurier with his usual effete ineffectiveness, the character of the governor established patterns of behavior seen across several years to come. The governor of HMP Stangmoor in the Doctor Who serial The Mind of Evil (1971) was duped by a scientific fraud and a master criminal and is fatally shot in a riot. Slade is run by the ineffectual governor, played by Michael Barrington, as both exasperated and overwhelmed by his responsibilities. The governor of the prison housing Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) is no more effective and indeed confides in Alex about his concerns about a “new broom” at the ministry who may make the prison system and the governor irrelevant. Apart from Porridge, the 1970s most notable prison-set program was Scum, but whereas Porridge was a success, the 1977 drama Scum never received broadcast. The content was abrasive and confrontational, leading the BBC to shelve its broadcast from the Play for Today drama strand. The 1977 television version of Scum (rather than the 1979 film version, which overshadowed the original) has left behind a paradox for understanding how film and television over the decade mediated visions of prisons. Play for Today and before it The Wednesday Play traversed genres and types but frequently foregrounded drama raising social concerns. Most famously Cathy Come Home from The Wednesday Play and a host of scripts and productions from Play for Today including works by Ken Loach and Dennis Potter maintained the drama strand’s reputation for commissioning radical and controversial scripts (Cooke 2015, 100). Both iterations of Scum sit within the “social problem” and “social realism” tradition of these television plays (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 44). This team’s intention for Scum was to critique the borstal system, especially to show the beatings, the vicious racism, and rapes to be inherent (Wilson and O’Sullivan, 129). Porridge may have been sanitized, but it was Scum, despite being well researched and grounded in a powerful sociological

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authenticity, which attracted criticism for being unrealistic. Like close contemporaries such as McVicar, Scum drew inspiration from autobiographical and firsthand accounts of life in prison (Mayr and Machin 2011, 188). Before the BBC’s failure of nerve and cancelation of the broadcast, Television Today announced the 1977 broadcast with considerable fanfare and quoted producer Margaret Matheson’s pride in it being “wholly truthful” (Stage and Television Today, September 1, 1977, 14). Thereafter, Scum, in both its television and film incarnations, endured a controversial trajectory through British broadcasting. The actions of the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s director general relating to Channel 4’s screening of the film version remained controversial by the mid-1980s (Stage and Television Today, May 10, 1984, p. 14). According to its makers, what concerned television executives about the 1977 version was that it was too realistic and would confuse viewers who were expecting a drama but might think that they were watching a documentary. If Scum was so realistic as to be unreal, it is contextualized by dramas on the small and big screens that were in no danger of being mistaken for documentaries. In Doctor Who, a British prison was a site of mind experiments on the inmates, as was the prison in A Clockwork Orange. In the dystopian thriller series 1990 (1977–1978), the prisons had become the means for a socialist regime to maintain political control, pre-empting the conflation of the prison with the unethical research establishment in ways that influenced the delineation of the Larkhill Centre in V for Vendetta, the 1982 graphic novel. These works each had the means in them to foreground and question the effectiveness or otherwise of incarceration; the conversation between Alex and the prison governor on the “new broom” in the Ministry of the Interior, the perceived necessity of the Keller Experiments in Doctor Who, the contempt shown by both staff and inmates for rehabilitation in Scum or the containment of the brain drain in 1990. These, rather than Porridge, were too realistic in the way their search for alternatives indicated the failure of current practice.

Prisons of the Past and the Future The depiction of prisons on 1970s television is marked by diversity in period, setting and tone. There is however a recurring preoccupation with failures in carceral planning and security. These anxieties about incarceration registered in drama portraying the past, present (for the 1970s), and the future. In terms of the past, the dramatization of Jacques Futrelle’s 1905 mystery story “The Problem of Cell 13” as an episode of the anthology The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1973) brought onto the screen the ingenious escape of Professor Van Dusen from Grangemoor Prison. The prison, purportedly an expertly run high-security center from which escape was impossible, proved a challenge to the so-called thinking machine, as the analytical reasoner Professor Van Dusen is known. The episode pits logic against the solid

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stone walls and formidable security procedures of Grangemoor, including the wardens’ policy of spreading risk by ensuring no one warden has more than two keys at a time to the seven gates between the cells and the outside wall. Needless to say, Professor Van Dusen’s analytical reasoning devises a means to escape, showing that the prison is not escape-proof and, separately, he uncovers corruption among the prison guards. The dramatization of Futrelle’s story said little about the intentions or effectiveness of incarceration, beyond puncturing the boasts of the prison governor, chief warden and prison architect that their establishment was escape-proof. Drama that in chronological terms moved in the other direction, into the future, spoke to similar concerns about the effectiveness of prisons as places of detention but moved to a deeper commentary on their effectiveness as places of rehabilitation. One way that drama called prisons into question was by projecting into the future and showing their metamorphosis from places to contain and reform to sites of repression and sinister experimentation. In actuality, prisoner rights movements recognized and highlighted failures in due process during the decade (Easton 2011, 27), concerns amplified in drama showing prisoners as vulnerable to scientific attention. One suggested and speculative future is where rehabilitation becomes unnecessary. A creative and dramatic source for these science-fiction visions comes from A Clockwork Orange, both the 1962 novel and the 1971 film. The latter was faithfully adapted from the American version of the source text (a final and more positively redemptive chapter was omitted from the US edition of the novel) and therefore brought onto the screen the prolonged intellectual speculation about the philosophies underpinning corrections (Lichtenberg et al. 2004, 430), carceral theory and rehabilitation and where characters debate different purposes for imprisonment and different understandings of crime. Burgess recorded that part of his motivation in writing his novel was the concerns he held about American plans for behavior modification treatments in prisons and the possibility that Britain could follow suit (Newman 1991, 63). Based on the novel, the film builds an entire fictional world of corrective institutions and theorists. In the novel, the writer Mr. Alexander is interrupted by a home invasion from a manuscript he is typing (entitled “A Clockwork Orange”) railing against attempts to impose “conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation” on the incarcerated. In the book and film, Mr. Deltoid, whose job title is Post-Corrective Advisor, warns Alex of the possibility of severe treatments in youth and adult correction, but also wonders about the origin of criminal impulses and suggests that society, as represented in the film, has generated a significant body of criminological thought on the issue: “We’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies.” The Minister of the Interior, anxious to gain electoral popularity and create room in overcrowded jails, dismisses “outmoded penological theories” that have led to the prisons filling up with common killers and robbers when he needs the space

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for political prisoners. The prison governor in turn also ponders incarceration and treatments and is powerless to stop the state implementing “these new ridiculous ideas” based on cure rather than punishment. Both film and book also distill the routine of prison and the film in particular the ambience of the prison. The lengthy reception scene after Alex has been tried and convicted for murder brings onto the screen the routine demanded by the Home Office’s actual Prison Rules, including bathing the prison on reception (King and McDermott 1989, 115). One important distinction is apparent. In both novel and film, the “Ludovico Technique” was extrinsic to prisons. Alex left prison for a scientific research establishment, where if he did not exactly have his liberty, he clearly passed out of the control of the prison system. Many other iterations of future imprisonment elide this distinction. The prison itself is the site of both containment and mental experimentation. The change is significant. A Clockwork Orange suggested the importance of the different sites. The Ludovico Technique had become necessary to remove the common or garden murderers and thieves from the prison system to create room for political prisoners. In other speculative accounts of imprisonment, the prison combines multiple functions; altering a person’s mind therefore becomes part of the carceral system. The suggestion that prison was not merely a place to contain bodies but a place to alter people’s minds and thoughts became increasingly familiar across the decade in British science fiction. An early instance is provided by the science-fiction series Doctor Who. In the 1971 serial The Mind of Evil, set at an unspecified point in the near future, HMP Stangmoor has become the site of ethically troubling scientific experiments on prisoners’ brains. There are resemblances between the narrative and the treatment meted out in A Clockwork Orange. Production of The Mind of Evil in fact began in October 1970, before the film’s release. If comparison to the film may be coincidental, Anthony Burgess’s novel had been in print since 1962. But as noted above, the experimentation is intrinsic to the incarceration not separate from it. Indeed, the experiments on prisoners’ brains become ritualized as a form of execution, commencing with the prison governor visiting the condemned cell to orally deliver the sentence, although in an important change in ritual, the prison chaplain who would have attended on the condemned man has been replaced by the scientist. Further borrowings from the rituals of execution in both actual prison and prison-set drama include the clamorous response from other inmates as the condemned man walks past the cells and the dimming lights as the machinery passing sentence is powered up. The treatment of prisoners and incarceration in Doctor Who participates in a wider science-fiction narrative. The technology called the Keller treatment, used to drain violent impulses from prisoners’ minds, is revealed as an alien mind parasite used by an alien criminal, the Master. But he is doing so in a world that lets him get away with it. The version of England shown in this

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era of Doctor Who is curiously nasty. The government of this slightly future version of England has let mind-altering technology loose on the inmates of Stangmoor Prison. The Mind of Evil places the criminal Master in a timely scenario. After all it is one where a scientist at Stangmoor Prison justifies the use of the Keller Machine by saying that after his medical treatment by the Keller Machine the criminal will “take his place as a useful, if lowly, member of society.” The line is positively chilling and more than immediately reminiscent of Anthony Burgess’s descriptions of the far-right government in A Clockwork Orange, shown also in the film, which is sanctioning experiments on prisoners and the far-left government in 1990 doing the same. The themes have an affinity with further cinema depictions of prisons as sites of experiments. In Brian de Palma’s 1974 musical horror film Phantom of the Paradise, Sing Sing prison is performing medical experiments on the prisoners, including replacing their teeth with metal stumps to see if the rate of infection inside the prison falls. Here, the medical experimentation serves no carceral intention beyond the daily running of the prison and, for the purposes of the on-screen horror, to make the prisoners appear more freakish while also emphasizing how powerless they are. Another BBC science-fiction series Doomwatch delivered similar ideas. Hair Trigger (1972) brought members of the Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work to the Weatheroak Hall Maximum Security Medical Research Unit. The establishment shared thematic similarities with the prison in Doctor Who, holding violently psychopathic criminals but subjecting them to scientific experiments to limit their violent impulses. There are also distinctions. The true nature of the science of the Keller process was extra-terrestrial, whereas the computer controlling the brains of violent criminals in Doomwatch was not. In Doctor Who, the castle prison was a conventional prison, into which the scientific apparatus and experiments intruded. In Doomwatch, the science fiction proposed that the treatment of the violent and criminally insane progressed to a point whereby the secure scientific establishment was the more appropriate place to house and treat the criminal. The near future, including carceral policy, continued to be a source of inspiration in 1970s science fiction and the series 1990 delineated the causes of a British dystopia and the imprisonment of political prisoners by a repressive socialist state. The dystopia comes through bit by bit in the remorselessly gray mise-en-scène and via conversation, including details such as the abolition of the House of Lords and the sale of the Crown Jewels, the collapse of the economy and the creation of the Home Office’s Public Control Department (PCD) to control political dissent. Television historians consider 1990 as a “paranoid middle class nightmare.” Its creative crucible was the economic and social challenges of the Wilson and Callaghan governments leading up to the “Winter of Discontent” (Shepherd 2016, 16). The location footage places the characters in an unremittingly bleak and gray world.

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A few exceptions are scenes filmed in and around country mansions; in keeping with the presentation of a left-wing government, these have been appropriated from their aristocratic owners and converted into treatment centers. 1990 anticipated a repressive state which surveilled the entire population. Incarceration is central to the series and the nightmare world it delineated, as is the justice system leading to incarceration. In an early episode of the series, the central character, campaigning journalist Jim Kyle, insists that there is a still a “rule of law” prevailing in the UK. While that may be officially true, the series insists on the subversion of due process and the rule of law. In keeping with the characterization of the government as proletarian and socialist, the law courts have become the quotidian People’s Ombudsman, where the former wearing of wigs and gowns by the judges and barristers is derided as “fancy dress” but where the presiding tribunal steadfastly suppresses even legitimate complaints. One character refers to the whole of Britain as an “island prison” and another to a “sceptred isle surrounded by barbed wire.” Emigration is forbidden to stop a brain drain of doctors, scientists, and engineers and the PCD possesses extensive powers to imprison. Again there are resemblances to Ludovico in A Clockwork Orange, but with points of difference. The experiments in A Clockwork Orange were not for political prisoners, but simply to clear the prisons to make room for the political prisoners. Incarceration in 1990 hides behind a euphemism of the Adult Rehabilitation Centres (ARCs). Within the ARCs, the use of electroconvulsive therapy reduces politically difficult inmates to a biddably vegetative state. Other politically awkward inmates receive seemingly benign treatments such as being fed meat. However, one inmate is vegetarian owing to a strong allergy and rapidly dies. The medical experiments in 1990 served no end beyond immediate expediency; they caused permanent brain damage to the state’s political enemies and left them in a vegetative state. As a carceral act, they were the ultimate in incapacitation. The experiments on the residents of Larkhill, a scientific establishment-cum-prison in V for Vendetta (in both the 1980s graphic novel and the 2006 film), were more ambitious, including developing chemical warfare through experimentation on the bodies of political prisoners. In the much further future, the dystopian series Blake’s 7 (1978–1981) presented a society in which the carceral permeated society. On Earth, in a setting many centuries in the future, a totalitarian society led by the Federation keeps order by tranquilizing politically troublesome members of the population. In the series’ second episode, Spacefall, the titular character Roj Blake has been the victim of a show trial and of false accusations of child abuse and angrily recalls the “tranquilized dreams” that previously controlled him. In the series’ third episode, Cygnus Alpha, the program reveals more of the Federation’s carceral designs and takes the characters to a prison planet. The creator of Blake’s 7, Terry Nation, had already found dramatic potential in off-world prison planets and his 1965 Doctor Who story The Daleks’ Master Plan included the

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off-world planet Kembel. A bleak and inhospitable environment from which there was no return, the off-world prison planet gave a science fiction reinterpretation of the centuries-old practice of off-shore transportation to the Caribbean, North America, and Botany Bay. The off-world prison planets in both Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 are of a particular type, being brutal, dangerous environments but which do not require wardens, guards, or infrastructure. Doctor Who had presented other visions of prisons of the future. In the 1973 story Frontier in Space, a moon-based prison contained primarily political prisoners. The story pre-empted several themes in Blake’s 7’s delineation of the future, including an overarching and repressive worldwide-authority sending politically inconvenient figures to an inter-planetary prison. The incapacity was intended to be permanent although some political prisoners naively believed their sentences would eventually be discharged.

Penal Rationales The programs discussed in the preceding section fulfilled a number of purposes, from entertainment to exploitation. Each also yielded understanding of a particular penal rationale, meaning the reason that a state or its agents sent people to prison and its expectations of what the prison sentence would achieve. Collectively, these 1970s evocations of imprisonment in the past, present, and future eschew rehabilitation. The Victorian prison Grangemoor had a clear ontology: It existed to keep people in. The prisons of the near and far future shared that purpose of containment but eschewed rehabilitation in place of incapacitation. Changes in penal policy, a failure of confidence in past practice, and changes in approach that were not in all cases actually underpinned by criminological research shaped evolutions in incarceration first in the United States and then in the UK. Simon (2014, 22) isolates changes in thought and practice that took place as prison populations began an inexorable rise. In addition to other social institutions from churches to parliaments, prisons entered what Robert Adams noted as a “crisis of legitimacy,” especially following disorders and riots (Adams 2016, 25). Prison disorders occur in every decade; however, some in the 1970s especially challenged confidence in the prison system. In August 1972 inmates at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight rioted and their actions seemed then and have seemed since to have been a “turning point” on several levels, including staff-inmate relations, and also how prison disorders were conducted. The riot lasted several days and received widespread coverage for its attention-grabbing nature. Prisoners set fire to bedding, occupied the prison roof, and forced prison staff to lock inmates in their cells for three days in a row, for “we dare not let them out,” according to one contemporary report quoting a prison officer (Birmingham Post, August 28, 1972, 1). The Home Office, the government department then responsible for the Prison Service, studied the events and found the prisoners’ collective actions

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differed from “the previous pattern of passive and mostly orderly demonstrations.” More alarmingly, the events in Albany suggested that somehow prisons and prisoners throughout England were attuned with each other in expressing their violence against the system and its infrastructure as further unrest occurred in prisons in Chelmsford, Camp Hill, Dartmoor, Maidstone, Cardiff, Liverpool, and Peterhead (cited in Adams 2016, 128). Matthews places the Albany riots on a trajectory with prison disturbances in Britain and major riots in the United States at Folsom and Attica as being crises associated with the decline of the rehabilitative ideal (Matthews 2016, 70). Albany faced further disturbances in 1976 when IRA prisoners engaged with guards in a “cell block battle” (Press and Journal, September 18, 1976, 1). Later in the decade, the Prison Service confronted a large-scale riot in Hull Prison in August 1976. The Daily Mirror narrated the riot as an “orgy of fury” by IRA members, child molesters and other high-security prisoners (July 15, 1977, 9), who climbed onto prison roofs (Coventry Evening Telegraph, September 1, 1976, 1). The consequences were long term, including the trial of twelve officers and the assistant governor at York Crown Court for conspiring to beat up prisoners (Daily Mirror, January 17, 1979, 7). Eight were eventually found guilty (Birmingham Post, April 6, 1979, 5). Following the riot, the prison reform organization, the Howard League called for a large-scale and independent inquiry, which included the bottled up grievances of long-term prisoners (Press and Journal, September 4, 1978, 9). The aftermath also included an inquiry and public report by the Chief Inspector of the Prison Service, Gordon Fowler, whose report, unusually, would not only be public but was instructed to be written as “suitable for publication” (Zellick 1978, 75 cited in Taylor). Determinate rather than indeterminate sentences, coupled with a loss of faith intellectually in rehabilitation, fueled an understanding of incarceration that sending people to prison was itself a deterrence (Frase 2013, 5). Incapacitation therefore was not simply a post-sentencing action such as electronic monitoring or chemical castration; it was also a long sentence that would keep dangerous people away for as long as possible (2013, 23). Popular culture registered changes in approach and attitude. The controversial but popular film Death Wish (1974) showed the courts and the prisons bypassed entirely by middle-class vigilante justice. The film dates from the year of Richard Nixon’s resignation over Watergate and the declining faith in public institutions (McShane and Williams 2004, 356). Converging changes to sentencing, resourcing and treatment reintroduced conservative approaches to incarceration that moved away from more radically innovative approaches based on rehabilitation. Rehabilitative approaches had by necessity weakened authoritarianism in prisons but had also depended on the prison authorities being given reasonable degrees of latitude and discretion to carry out rehabilitation (Frase 2013, 5).

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These changes registered in complex ways through imagined prisons and their passage through popular culture. The “penal imaginary” itself is the account of prisons and incarceration that exists in the minds of public, especially the governmental and intellectual elites who have the ability to shape penal strategies (Simon 2014, 22). The prisons on the small screen sit below these levels, as speculative fictions for public consumption. They do however participate in shaping the way a prison’s purpose can be imagined. The prisons and scientific establishments of 1990, Doctor Who, Doomwatch, and other speculative dramas evoke the incapacitating impulse in actual incarceration. These fictional prisons intend to render their inmates harmless during and after their period of incarceration. They are also distillations, intentional or otherwise, of changing carceral approaches from what Simon considers an earlier “dignified effort to defend society against crime” to the strategy of total incapacitation (Simon 2014, 11).

Conclusions: Science Fiction and the Supermax The supermax is an American phenomenon that seemed both startling and beguiling to British prison officials, who have as Ryan and Ward point out, a “penchant for importing American innovations” in penal practice (1989, 7). A single prison that could house more inmates than multiple British or European prisons together (Wacquant 2002, 372) and that especially associated with California, the supermax offered visions not only of scale but of total security (Simon 2014, 19). The emphasis of the supermax on not only total confinement but also solitary confinement is pinpointed to different origins by different scholars, from the creation of the concentration principle at Alcatraz in 1934 to the drastic security measures put in place, first temporarily and then permanently, at FCI Marion after 1983 (Johnson et al. 2016, 63; Rhodes 2004, 239). In comparison with the Victorian infrastructures still in commission in 1970s Britain, which were overcrowded with double celling (King and McDermott 1989, 113), the supermaxes also evoked a degree of sciencefiction wonder, “made of clean steel and smooth concrete, with technologically advanced central control rooms from which officers can open and close cell doors at the push of a button” (Reiter 2012, 106). Gleaming modernity and high technology appeared on the small screen in science fictions for British prisons rather than in actuality. The sinister potential of the futuristic prison did however resonate with the concerns that manifested about putative treatment in the 1970s. As Rhodes explains of the fears and suspicions of American inmates, “administrative exigencies and punishment” were cloaked and disguised as treatments (2004, 139). The possibility that inside a gleaming prison and masked by the label of treatment were more punitive or sinister impulses registered as an actual concern among 1970s American inmates, while it provided rich fantasies for British science fictions.

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References Adams, Robert. 2016. Prison Riots in Britain and the USA. 2nd ed. Chichester: Springer. Cooke, Lez. 2015. British Television Drama: A History. London: Bloomsbury. Easton, Susan. 2011. Prisoners’ Rights: Principles and Practice. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. Frase, Richard S. 2013. Just Sentencing: Principles and Procedures for a Workable System. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, R., A. M. Rocheleau, and A. B. Martin. 2016. Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison. Hoboken: Wiley. King, Roy D., and Kathleen McDermott. 1989. “British Prisons 1970–1987: The Ever Deepening Crisis.” The British Journal of Criminology 29, no. 2: 107–128. Lichtenberg, Illya, Howard Lune, Patrick McManimon. 2004. “‘Darker Than Any Prison, Hotter Than Any Human Flame”: Punishment, Choice, and Culpability in A Clockwork Orange’.” Journal of Criminal Justice Education 15, no. 2: 429–449. Matthews, Roger. 2016. Doing Time: An Introduction to the Sociology of Imprisonment. London: Springer. Mayr, Andrea, and Machin David. 2011. The Language of Crime and Deviance: An Introduction to Critical Linguistic Analysis in Media and Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury. McShane, Marilyn D., and Frank P. Williams. 2004. Encyclopedia of American Prisons. Abingdon: Routledge. Newman, Bobby. 1991. “A Clockwork Orange: Burgess and Behavioral Interventions.” Behavior and Social Issues 1, no. 2: 61–70. Reiter, Keramet Ann. 2012. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. Edited by Austin Sarat. Emerald Group Publishing. Rhodes, L. A. 2004. Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ryan, Mick, and Tony Ward. 1989. “Privatization and the Penal System: Britain Misinterprets the American Experience.” Criminal Justice Review 14, no. 1: 1–12. Shepherd, John. 2016. Crisis? What Crisis? The Callaghan Government and the British ‘Winter of Discontent’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simon, Jonathan. 2014. Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. New York: New Press. Wacquant, Loic. 2002. “The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Ethnography 3, no. 4: 371–397. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press.

The 1980s Behind Bars: The Punitive System in Prison (1987) and Lock Up (1989) Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Juan Juvé

Popular culture is a meaningful forum to channel the societal anxieties of a given culture and historical time. Films are perfect vehicles to comment on and/or negotiate with these cultural anxieties, whatever they may be. In this chapter, we investigate two films that share many elements in common, including their time frame, the late 1980s, and scenes of the penitentiary system. Even if belonging to two different genres (one horror and the other labeled a thriller), both films are meaningful case studies that allow us to delineate a description of real issues surrounding the penalty system through the 1980s. Chief among these concerns were issues of overpopulation, racial prejudice, and the haunting return of the death penalty. Prison (directed by Renny Harlin, 1987) takes place in an old and dilapidated Wyoming prison, re-opened due overpopulation in modern state penitentiaries. The now-promoted warden Eaton Sharpe was there already 40 years ago, when an innocent man was put to death after an unfair trial. Sharpe is displeased with the prospects of more new humanitarian-oriented approaches to incarceration, ambiguously preferring “the old ways.” To the prison come Burke (played by Viggo Mortensen), a man incarcerated for minor crimes, and new inmates will fall victims of the vengeance of the unjustly executed man’s spirit, awakened through the discovery of an electric chair. The cruel ways of the warden, the prison filled with Latino characters, and the central presence of the electric chair as a gothic evocation of darker pasts frame the film within a discussion on capital punishment and rehabilitation. F. G. Pagnoni Berns (*) · J. Juvé  Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_11

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Two years later, Lock Up (directed by John Flynn, 1989) was released. It tells the story of Frank Leone (played by Sylvester Stallone), model inmate in a low-security prison and who has weeks to serve. During one night, and out of the blue, Leone is roughly transferred to the maximum-security Gateway Prison without any explanation. Soon he learns that Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) is the man responsible for his transfer. Drumgoole, a man displeased with the prospects of new humanitarian-oriented approaches to incarceration, wants revenge on past humiliations, with Leone subjected to a sadistic treatment. As in the previous film, the brutal behavior of the warden, the prison filled with Latino and black characters, and the central presence of the electric chair as a gothic frame the film within a discussion on potential reforms on prison life. These preoccupations regarding cruel treatment, the death penalty, and violence illustrated in the films are not circumstantial. Both films, in fact, answer the zeitgeist of the era. Indeed, the late years of the 1980s saw a renowned interest in incarceration and crime, as the possibility of “fatal miscarriages” of justice could condemn innocent men and women to prison and capital punishment (Haines 1996, 87). The whole system of justice was depicted as “error-prone” (Zimring 2003, 158) and, together with increasingly greater concerns about crime in the streets, overcrowded prisons (Hallett 2006, 56), reemergence of political abolitionism and racial inequality (Guevara Urbina and Espinoza Álvarez 2018, 290), shaped new preoccupations about the punitive systems and the state of prisons in the 1980s. The urgent need to reformulate the penal system in a bold way is, in both films, metaphorized through narratives of suspense and shock that legitimate or subvert the social discourses of the era. In this chapter, we will argue that both Prison and Lock Up tap into these social concerns through stories in which dyads such as old and new ways and death penalty or reform are renegotiated through popular culture.

The Penal System During the 1980s: Capital Punishment, Overpopulation, and Racism After years lacking political direction and national purpose, America in the 1980s yielded a “Reagan revolution” (Hudson and Davies 2008, 1) featuring the beginning of a prosperous era, the second longest after World War II. However, the decade also saw the beginning of neoliberal practices, the increasing importance of the role of the market and the rise of the New Right, reformulating traditional conservative values. This retreat into conservatism in the 1980s affected all spheres of public life, including justice and the penal system. The treatment of offenders was underpinned by “conservative values and ideologically-driven policies” while completely ignoring “the thousands of studies in the psychological punishment psychology literature” (Taylor 2008, 59). With conservative values dominating political responses

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to crime, the personal histories of the offenders were mostly disregarded: A criminal way of life was a lifestyle of choice, and in consequence, crime should be attacked with harder sentences and “no frills” prisons. When crack cocaine abuse spread in the United States in the 1980s, a strong war on crime ensued, creating mass incarceration and tougher laws (Goddard and Myers 2017) such as “lengthy periods of incarceration even for first-time drug law violators with no histories of violence” (Lynch and Verma 2018, 9). The penal system was not oblivious to new reformist ideas through the decade. Some of these ideas were focused on the human rights of the inmates while others were occupied in increasing the “hardness” of prison life. Fitting within this second paradigm, there came new reformulations, being in prison itself as the first prison comprising entirely of Special Housing Units (solitary confinement) in the United States opened in Illinois in the 1980s (Bosworth 2005, 913), or regarding the penal system, as the return of the death penalty. The death penalty became constitutionally allowable again in 1976, after four years of abolition (on June 29, 1972). However, and even if judges could again sentence people to die, “executions were slow in starting” because of “Supreme Court justices’ intention to reinvent capital punishment” (Haines 1996, 71) and the “growing power of the moratorium momentum” (Yost 2008, 53). As consequence, those charged with capital cases were beneficiaries of processes with an increase in advantages on their trials, so reaching the death penalty became an arduous procedure for anyone involved. As the decade progressed, however, the number of people sentenced to death increased, going from 618 inmates in 1980 to 2250 in 1989 (Haines 1996, 4). Since 1983, the removal of different procedural impediments increased the rate of executions by electrocution or lethal injections. Further, public opinion mostly supported this resurgence in legal executions: The general support for the death penalty was high through the 1980s and first years of the 1990s. The presence of Rudolph William Giuliani and his proposed improvements in New York City’s quality of life through his use of the “broken windows theory,” or the idea that tolerating minor physical and social disorder in a neighborhood (such as graffiti paintings or litter) encourages violent crime (Greene 2007, 112), put felony at the spotlight. Many believed that violent crime was rising as never before when actually it fell from its 1981 peak (Zawitz et al. 1993). By 1981, the Lawrence Journal-World published the news that “U.S Prison’s death row census reaches record high.” The same article mentions that “the number of Hispanics under the death sentence rose from 26 to 39 during 1980” (2). This increase in the number of death sentences came with its counter-narrative, an increase in both the visibility and the number of the anti-death penalty movement. Abolitionists’ activities included being at the places of the executions to bear witness and offer company and finding attorneys and legal assistance to manage the appeals of inmates facing execution dates (Haines 1996, 60). Declaring the death penalty a barbaric practice, activists requested

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more trials that took into account the history of life of those doomed to capital punishment. Further, they argued for a remodeling of the penal systems that included not only the cessation of legal killings but also alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, leaving prison cells to violent offenders. Still, the 1980s were mostly “dark days for death penalty abolitionists” (Yost 2008, 53) as there was a strong public support for capital punishment. Even minor concessions were seen as being “soft” on delinquency: “By the 1980s, efforts by incarcerated people and the agencies that provided services to them would be devastated by charges that they were ‘radical chic’ or ‘limousine liberalism’, with rehabilitation made to look like an elaborate con” (Bernstein 2010, 179). Navigating between this climate of an extreme anticrime movement that found in the death penalty some kind of solution, and the overriding importance of bringing an end to judicial killings, Prison and Lock Up opened, navigating between the cruelties of a system that ultimately abolished human rights and a future promising a more humanitarian position. The decade was coming to a close with problems such as overcrowded prisons and warnings about racial prejudice; the future, however, was far from being clear, as the United States debated (as did the films) how to reform life in prison. The moral panics framing the 1980s concerning youth violence, drugs, and street gangs resulted in more punitive policies and overcrowded prisons. The overpopulation in prisons increased in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. As the war on drugs deepened through the Unites States, prisons were filled with drug dealers serving short sentences while there was an increase in the numbers of offenders who were waiting for a sentence. Further, the “get tough on crime” policies downplayed the rights of juvenile delinquents (Barringer and Bruster 2014, 193). By the mid-1980s, “all but eleven states had at least one prison considered overcrowded” (Kelly and Ekland-Olson 1997, 183). As the inmate population exploded, some prisons became dangerously overcrowded to the point that officers and inmates feared for their lives. In order to alleviate the problem, taxpayers financed the construction of new maximum-security prisons. Another type of answer to this situation was the adaptation of tight management policies that emphasized total control over the prison population at all times, including an increase in inmates kept in solitary confinement. The situation made life within prison tougher than ever for the different inmates. There was an urgent third problem asking for revision together with the death penalty and overpopulation: racism. Not only were racist attitudes found in many American prison guards (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 175) and between inmates (Jewkes and Bennet 2008, 25), but politics of racial prejudice were felt at the moment of sending Afro-Americans and Latinos to prisons. “All 37 states showed higher incarceration rates for African American men than for European American men” (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 32). The war on drugs, for some, “led to a re-securing of the conditions of existence of racism” as the 1980s “produced

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a new wave of intolerance” (Bair 2008, 124) that dismantled civil rights while increasing racist attitudes. The fourth problem was brought about by the privatization of prisons. One priority of the conservative leadership was the reduction of money to be expended. Prisons were not insulated from this crusade to reduce costs. As many citizens increasingly refused to approve new financing for prison construction, privatization flourished through the decade. “The primary ways private prisons sustain their profits, including low pay, limited staff training, and other cost-cutting measures, can lead to unmet inmates’ needs and security issues” (Krisberg et al. 2015, 347). The advantages were cost efficiency, service quality, and reduction of overpopulation, but many found the real reasons behind privatization closer to profit rather than humanitarian concerns. The decade ended with more debates on the prison system. During his 1988 presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush “portrayed himself as a big backer of the death penalty, while Dukakis equivocated. Bush played the crime card and won the election” (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 30), showing that Americans were adamant in their defense of the capital punishment even if, as the years progressed, the abolitionist ethos made its voice heard louder. In this scenario of preoccupation about the penal system, American prisons and social violence, two films revisited some of the problematic issues that permeated the 1980s and 1990s. These films, with many issues in common, worked as manifestations of the real American prisons in the late 1980s, in which the problems affecting the American system of imprisonment reached a new kind of visibility. The 1980s discussed how to create a better system of punishment and how to improve the prison system as it was. Since the importance of the prison as a locus of the ideological paradigm that dominates daily life has been noted (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 30), life in prisons as represented in the films here analyzed works as an extension of the contradictory politics of an America through changing models.

Cultural Representation in Prison and Lock Up The first similarity shared by both, Prison and Lock Up, is the fact that the stories of the two films are constructed around the passage of one paradigm to another. The first one is coded as highly repressive and dehumanized. The inmates are not imprisoned for their reeducation but for their severe punishment. There is no belief in potential reformation, as the inmates are characterized as brutes and evil, at least, from the jailers’ point of view. The other paradigm, in turn, is characterized by the possibility of reformation; prisons are places for rehabilitation rather than sites for cruel punishment. These oppositions frame both films already from the opening scenes. Prison opens with a subjective point of view in which the camera takes the gaze of the innocent man who is lead to the electric chair. The subjective camera’s movements through the corridors as the man is led to his encounter

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with death create a participatory effect for audiences, as both the inmate and viewers share the same feeling of entrapment and anguish. The length of this opening backs the whole introduction of the title credits, making the whole process, intersected with bureaucratic stops to sign papers, excruciatingly slow and painful. The chair itself is a grotesque, antique monstrosity made with wood and rough leather rather than a modern-looking contraption. When the man (who, thanks to the subjective point of view, remains invisible for audiences) sits at the chair, audiences sit with him, sharing the horror of the last moments of life. The film abandons the subjective point of view only when a mask is strapped on the man’s face. The man is killed, his body agonizingly twitching amidst smoke and sparks. The horrors of this opening face viewers—who may have supported capital punishment as the majority of the Americans did through the 1980s—with some recreation of the reality of death penalty. The fictional and supernatural horrors to come, in fact, are derivations from this primal scene of man killing man. Right up to this point, viewers ignore the fact that the man is innocent. The lengthy scene, however, does not lose any of its impact. Innocent or guilty is of little matter: The horror comes from the dehumanized treatment and detachment of the whole system regarding human life. The opening cuts to a meeting board where politicians discus imprisonment policies. There is a lack of details, but the situation strongly parallels real concerns framing the 1980s. There is a shortage of prisons, causing many to be overpopulated. The construction of new prisons will demand many millions, and as the Mayor wants re-election, he is unwilling to charge this outlay on the citizens. The solution is simple: reopening the former Wyoming State Penitentiary, an old, dilapidated facility closed in 1968, to be led by Eaton Sharpe. The election of the year, 1968, does not seems circumstantial; that particular year crusaded for a moratorium on capital punishment in America (Haines 1996, 32), presenting zero executions for the first time in the twentieth century (Haines 1996, 12). It is revealed later than the wronged execution was celebrated by Sharpe in 1964, the year in which politicians discovered that “law and order was the ideal theme upon which to base an election campaign” (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 29). “Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater argued in the 1964 election campaign that welfare programs are an important cause of increased lawlessness and crime” (Beckett 2001, 43). The culture of welfare was identified as an important cause of social maladies such as youth crime and drug addiction. It was one of the first times that measures to tough up to crime were mentioned. In the film, Katherine Walker (Chelsea Field) shows some truths about Sharpe reading a 1964 newspaper with a picture of both the warden and the wrongly executed man on the first page; at the bottom of the same page, the headline is clearly visible: “Goldwater wins Illinois.” Only the sole female board member, Katherine, presents objections after calling Sharpe “a dinosaur.” She states that the man shows little interest in

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the inmates’ welfare, preferring rather punishment, forced work, and armed jailers. Katherine voices concern about the living conditions in the prisons when she mentions that, with inversion, the state could start the building of humanitarian, efficient, and secure installations, viable not just for the inmates, but also for the community as a whole. While she stands for a reformist point of view, the board clearly represents the more conservative, cost-reduction point of view which through the 1980s pushed toward privatized prisons: The board decides to reopen the Wyoming State Penitentiary even if the building is not at operative standard. Katherine decides to supervise the prison’s reopening and visits the place. Her first sight of the building is framed by archetypical gothic tropes: Crows’ ominous cries back her venture into the abandoned prison, the doors squeak, everything seems to overtaken by nature and decay while spiderwebs lazily hang over the corridors and arcades. Prison is gothic in a twofold way. First, the past is still haunting the present, a conventional gothic trope (Davis 2016, 73); the reopening of the Wyoming Penitentiary is a reminder of the antediluvian nature of some legal systems. Second, because law and justice, rather than being “hard,” universal, and a-historical notions that exceed the human are, in fact, capricious and ephemeral. Justice is inextricably linked to (human) laws which, in turn, operate through death and error. The killing of an innocent man adds further ambiguity as the applications of human laws cannot guarantee justice in the future: “new information is perpetually arising that demands a constant, careful revision of how justice can emerge at some future period” (Chaplin 2007, 130). What was denominated “justice” in a given historical time can be deemed “barbarism” in the future, thus turning justice into something always in a state of becoming. The meeting board decided to get back to the past, the rusted, creepy abandoned prison a material manifestation of supposedly surpassed forms of imprisonment still surviving in the present. As with death penalty, old ways of exerting justice can always be brought back. The gothic prison in ruins is a metaphor of a law system in ruins. Justice is always resting on the threshold of two paradigms: one leading to humanitarian reform and one leading to the past; the recurrent discussions on the prison system, as those sustained through the 1980s and the fictional meeting board, find its nucleus at the crossroads of both paradigms. Lock Up is not a gothic tale, at least, not in the conventional way; there is no abundance of ruins, decay, and nocturnal supernatural manifestations. The film, however, also finds its heart in its fascination with the past and, with it, notions of imprisonment believed surpassed. The film opens with Frank Leone (Stallone) getting ready to begin a new life, as his imprisonment term is coming to an end. The film reworks themes revolving around penal reformation, as Leone seems to be the perfect embodiment of criminal reformation and prisons as spaces for reeducation. Leone is a man imprisoned in a minimum-security prison from where he goes out each weekend to visit

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his girlfriend and work in his car workshop. He is warmly welcomed by the guards, and his cell is spacious, lighted by a table lamp, the clean walls decorated with posters and framed pictures. The prison itself, clean and bright, marks a contrast with the gothic architecture of the Wyoming Penitentiary. As the camera pans through the building, there are glimpses of inmates talking through telephones, marking a fluid connection with the external world. This minimum-security prison and the advantages enjoyed by Leone were essayed in the 1980s, a decade where probation and parole were slowly becoming the norm for some inmates while groups operating for more humanitarian solutions to penal problems struggle on reducing prisoner numbers, deeming the prison as a space for rehabilitation. There were “innovations that seem to satisfy important needs better than previous practices. The gradual spread of day fines, community service, and prosecutorial fines offers examples. Day fines were essayed in the 1980s” (Tonry 2001, 11). However, “beginning in the late 1980s supermaximum prisons revived some of the most discredited strategies of earlier prison regimes” (Roth 2006, xxix). This navigation between one paradigm and another is illustrated when, through the night, Frank Leone is transferred to the maximum-security Gateway Prison as ordered by Warden Drumgoole (Sutherland), the man who looked bad when Frank escaped from his prison. Now the warden is looking for vengeance, his plan involving turning Leone’s last three weeks in prison into a living hell. Unlike his previous cell, the new one is dark and dirty. His mattress is thin and tattered, and the only light is provided by a little window. After passing his first night in the new prison, Frank is led by two cruel jailers to the execution chamber, where an electric chair sits. It is in this room that Leone faces Warden Drumgoole for the first time in the film (they had met before offscreen). Regarding the place and the electric chair, the warden’s monologue is very telling: “In the old days, the warden would’ve come down that private passageway to this execution chamber to witness the putting to death of a criminal (…). Beautiful, isn’t it? When I came here, it was falling apart. I restored it put it back into working order to remind me of how things ought to be.” The phrase “how things ought to be” should resound heavily in the minds of viewers of Lock Up, as they were probably conscious of the many discussions regarding prison life. A similar exchange of words takes place in Prison: As Katherine visits the now reopened penitentiary, she talks with Warden Sharpe, who mentions that his priority is “punishment.” Further, he states that everything else, “therapy sessions, trade skills…so much window dressing.” Punishment, however, is the real “window dressing” for Katherine, thus illustrating the main two opposite points of view of the era. These fictional wardens aspiring for tough punishment stand for the conservative penal system that claimed more rough conditions of imprisonment in contrast with the “soft” ways illustrated at the beginning of Lock Up.

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In Flynn’s film, as in Prison, a conservative, cruel man chooses not only to raise a dilapidated building again—a building which represents the ancient mind—but to return to old-fashioned methods of punishment and surveillance. The intrusive presence of electric chairs in both films is not by chance: Prison opens with electrocution and the supernatural horrors only start to unfold after a wall is demolished revealing the existence of an ominous execution chamber which was walled up decades ago. An electric chair occupies the chamber. It is the discovery of the ancient chair that unleashes the ghostly horrors and the bloodshed within the prison, as the spirit starts killing the inmates one by one. The revelation of the execution chamber, deeply buried within the bowels of the building, triggers the return of the repressed: People kill people as a way of teaching that killing is morally wrong. The film’s climax involves a final confrontation between the evil warden and the ghost of the unjustly executed man, the latter appearing at the middle of the road leading out from the prison. The horribly burned corpse is still attached to his electric chair, electrical beams coming out from his uncanny body. The ghostly final vengeance involves the supernatural electrocution of the corrupt warden. The electric chair also figures prominently in Lock Up. As mentioned, it is in the execution chamber room where Leone and Warden Drumgoole face each other for the first time in the film and it is the place where the warden tells his plans to his victim. The film’s climax, as in Prison, highlights the electric chair as a form of execution, as an abused Leone decides to take revenge by tying Warden Drumgoole in the chair and threatening him with electrocution. Minutes later, Leone backs away, showing a more humanitarian sense of justice. The presence of the electric chair as a gothic object inextricably linked to the past and antique forms of punishment symbolizes an historical momentum oscillating between two opposite poles. The lethal injection, invented in the 1980s, was considered as “a symbol of scientific progress in the service of modern capital punishment” (Zimring 2003, 50), in contrast to more rudimentary forms of execution such as electrocution. The forms of imprisonment of both films, however, are always undergoing a form of devolution to previous stages. At the core of modernized prisons, the electric chair lies, a reminder of the fluidity of the purposes of imprisonment, “a link to earlier times rather than a fitting symbol of a modern policy” (Zimring 2003, 64). The struggles about the reformation of capital punishment were not the only problematic topic mirrored by the films. Racial prejudice that put many Hispanics and Afro-Americans in jails is subtle illustrated by both Prison and Lock Up. The brief scenes shot at the modern penitentiary at the beginning of Lock Up before Leone’s transfer show that many of the inmates are clearly Latino. Even if not explicitly addressed, racial prejudice also informs the maximum prison; besides the main characters, a vast majority of the inmates who form the background are either Latino or black, including actor Danny

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Trejo in a secondary role. In fact, the whites seem to be the minority every time the camera shots show populated scenes. For the sake of realism, Lock Up was shot on location in a real-life prison called East Jersey State Prison located in Rahway, New Jersey. Many of the inmates of the film were real prisoners acting as extras, so it can be argued that the population presented by the film reflected the reality of life in prison in the 1980s (at least, in one prison). Like Lock Up, the population depicted in Prison comprises a large number of Latinos and Afro-Americans, including important roles such as Tiny (Tom “Tiny” Lister, Jr.), the deeply religious Sandor (André De Shields) and Cresus (Lincoln Kilpatrick), Burke’s cellmate. The first two victims of the supernatural presence are black men, one of them having his hand maimed after encountering the execution chamber, the other dying horribly after his cell burst into flames. Italians, also marked by racial difference, are a significant number of the multiethnic population of the prisons; within the walls of the prisons, the best friends of both Frank and Burke are Italians: Third Base (Larry Romano) and Lasagna (Ivan Kane), respectively. In Prison, the first victims of the supernatural entity are the prisoners who were previously transferred to solitary confinement as a form of punishment. These first victims are completely innocent and are wronged by the executions committed in the past, so the bloodshed seems as if the uncanny vengeance exerted upon them is an extension of the power exerted by the authorities. Their bodies are marked by punishment, their predestinated fate death, even if capital punishment was not in the mind of Warden Sharpe. It is their vulnerability as victims within the prisons rather than perpetrators of violence that turns them sacrificial beings. Power is always ready to be abused, whether from the state or from the sphere of the supernatural. Cruel punishment, like burning the prisoner’s mattresses, making them stand semi-naked all through the night, and brutal repression (Prison) or verbal humiliation and sleep deprivation (Lock Up) obliges audiences to sympathize with the inmates. As audiences have no acknowledgment from the jailers and the wardens are evil, the only characters to follow are the prisoners. In this sense, the lack of “evil prisoners” is noticeable with the exceptions of minor characters or Dallas (Tom Sizemore) who, even if one of Leone’s best friends, eventually turns him over to the authorities. Using prisoners as accomplices was another common practice: “guards exploited ‘snitches’ as a main control mechanism, causing a violent and dangerous rift between a group of inmates who, for favors, would rat on others and the remainder of the inmate population” (Musick and Gunsaulus-Musick 2017, 179). Both films present innocent men or perpetrators of minor crimes as main heroes. Leone, unjustly incarcerated to begin with, was denied the right to visit an old friend of his who was dying; so he went ahead and escaped so he could say his last good-bye to his friend. He was caught again and given more years for this crime. Burke, who may be the material reincarnation of Forsythe, the man wrongly executed decades before (the film is vague about

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this issue), is a master lock-picker who feels a genuine interest for the welfare of the other inmates. The crimes of both men do not deserve the punishment or the prisons that they suffer through the films, so audiences sympathize with them. Allegedly, making them good people is a necessary move to “sell” them as heroes, but also serves to denounce the many pitfalls of the prison’s system. Thus, it can be argued that the fictional prisons embodied many of the real issues in real America through the late 1980s. Turning the prison into either a place for reformation or a hole which pushes outcasts and Latinos, Afro-Americans, and homeless out of sight was not far from the real thinking about reforms of the prison system. Ultimately, the films mark the beginning of an ideological convergence between left and right in the realization that cultural transformation came with a cost. The visual and narrative elements are the temporal signposts that facilitate the ability of the film to juxtapose the neoconservative thinking of 1980s America, symbolized by the utopia of prison’s reforms, against the decay of these old buildings which still incarnate capital punishment. At the end, both films and fictional prisons revolve around social anxieties about the future of the penal system within America. Even the most evil characters within the films have the achievement of social order as their main purpose. As the wardens say in both films, they are there to create an ordered society.

References Bair, Asatar. 2008. Prison Labor in the United States: An Economic Analysis. New York: Routledge. Barringer, Tony, and Belinda Bruster. 2014. “The Juvenile justice System: An Analysis of Discretion and Minority Overrepresentations.” In Color Behind Bars: Racism in the U.S. Prison System, edited by Scott Bowman, 191–206. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Beckett, Katherine. 2001. “Political Preoccupation with Crime Leads, Not Follows, Public Opinion.” In Penal Reform in Overcrowded Times, edited by Michael Tonry, 40–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernstein, Lee. 2010. America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Bosworth, Mary, ed. 2005. Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities. London: Sage. Chaplin, Sue. 2007. The Gothic and the Rule of the Law, 1764–1820. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Davis, Ann. 2016. Contemporary Spanish Gothic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Goddard, Tim, and Randy Myers. 2017. Youth, Community and the Struggle for Social Justice. New York: Routledge. Greene, Jack, ed. 2007. Encyclopedia of Police Science. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge.

188  F. G. PAGNONI BERNS AND J. JUVÉ Guevara Urbina, Martín, and Sofía Espinoza Álvarez. 2018. Hispanics in the U.S Criminal Justice System: Ethnicity, Ideology, and Social Control. Springfield: Charles C Thomas. Haines, Herbert. 1996. Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-death Penalty Movement in America, 1972–1994. New York: Oxford University Press. Hallett, Michael. 2006. Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Hudson, Cheryl, and Gareth Davies. 2008. “Introduction: Reagan and the 1980s.” In Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies, edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies, 1–15. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jewkes, Yvonne, and Jamie Bennet, eds. 2008. Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Kelly, William, and Sheldon Ekland-Olson. 1997. “The Response of the Criminal Justice System to Prison Overcrowding: Recidivism Patterns Among Four Successive Parolee Cohorts.” In The Philosophy and Practice of Corrections, edited by Marilyn McShane and Frank Williams III, 183–202. New York: Routledge. Krisberg, Barry, Susan Marchionna, and Christopher Hartney. 2015. American Corrections: Concepts and Controversies. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Lynch, Mona, and Anjuli Verma. 2018. “The Imprisonment Boom of the Late Twentieth Century: Past, Present and Future.” The Oxford Handbook of Prisons and Imprisonment, edited by John Wooldredge and Paula Smith, 3–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Musick, David, and Kristine Gunsaulus-Musick. 2017. American Prisons: Their Past, Present and Future. New York: Routledge. Roth, Mitchel. 2006. Prisons and Prison Systems: A Global Encyclopedia. London: Greenwood Press. Taylor, Antony. 2008. The Prison System and Its Effects: Wherefrom, Whereto, and Why? New York: Nova. Tonry, Michael. 2001. “Introduction: Penal Policies at the Beginning of the TwentyFirst Century.” In Penal Reform in Overcrowded Times, edited by Michael Tonry, 3–16. Oxford. Oxford University Press. “U.S Prison’s Death Row Census Reaches Record High.” 1981. Lawrence JournalWorld, August, 10. Yost, Benjamin. 2008. “Rule of the Law Abolitionism.” In Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. Vol. 42. Special Issue: Is the Death Penalty Dying? edited by Austin Sarat, 53–89. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Zawitz, Marianne W., Patsy A. Klaus, Ronet Bachman, Lisa D. Bastian, Marshall M. DeBerry, Jr., Michael R. Rand, and Bruce M. Taylor. 1993. Highlights from 20 Years of Surveying Crime Victims: The National Crime Victimization Survey, 1973– 92. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Zimring, Franklin. 2003. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford University Press.

“So Neglect Becomes Our Ally”: Strategy and Tactics in the Chateau D’If in Kevin Reynolds’ The Count of Monte Cristo Kwasu David Tembo

“Then I Shall Become a Count”: Introduction Barring The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1846; hereafter The Count) is arguably Alexandre Dumas’ best well-known work of fiction. Set against the historical backdrop of 1815–1839, the narrative takes place in France, Italy, and the Mediterranean islands. Dumas’ framing of the narrative during the Bourbon Restoration, and the period known as the Hundred Days in which Napoleon Bonaparte reclaimed power following his first exile, is of extreme importance. It is the text’s protagonist, Edmond Dantes’ (played by Jim Caviezel in Reynolds’ adaptation) interactions with Napoleon on the island of Elba that catalyse the entirety of the narrative that follows. In this pseudo-historical milieu, Dumas infuses his tale of high adventure with numerous themes and concepts ranging from love, forgiveness, hope, justice, knowledge, to value, and most concertedly, vengeance. The story follows Dantes, a young 19-year-old French sailor, who has been wrongfully incarcerated at the then thought inescapable Chateau d’If, an island-fortress-prison situated off the French coast. In prison, Dantes befriends and is mentored by Abbe Faria (played by Richard Harris in Reynolds’ adaption). A former priest and scholar (and soldier in the film) Faria offers to teach Dantes everything he knows in exchange for his help

K. D. Tembo (*)  Independent Researcher, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_12

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in attempting to escape. This primarily involves digging a tunnel from their respective cells to the Chateau’s outer wall facing the sea. During his combined course of digging and learning, Faria dies. Before he takes his final breath, he imparts to Dantes a map to the inexhaustible treasure of a famously wealthy count named Enrique Spada. Substituting himself for Faria’s corpse in the latter’s burial sack, Dantes uses his tactical presence of mind to seize the unexpected albeit unfortunate chance to escape when his wardens and turnkeys cast what they believe to be Faria’s corpse into the Chateau’s “graveyard”, namely the sea. Dantes subsequently becomes a pirate and a smuggler in the crew of Luigi Vampa (played by JB Blanc in Reynolds’ adaptation), a famous Italian bandit. After returning to France, Dantes endeavours to employ Spada’s treasure to exact his wide-ranging revenge against those responsible for his incarceration. Reynolds’ adaptation largely follows the basic premise of Dumas’ narrative, namely the primary plot points of Dantes’ false imprisonment and righteous vengeance. However, the nature of the relationships between the text’s primary characters, including the outright removal of some major figures such as Ali and Haidee, and the film’s ending, diverges from the text. Many of the changes to the narrative can be regarded as omissions, simplifications, or additions, for example of action sequences, that serve to streamline the narrative, and provide a clearer focus on the theme of the ethics of revenge, central to both text and film. In the film, Fernand’s (Guy Pearce) jealousy of Dantes (Jim Caviezel) and his mutual affection for Mercedes (Dagmara Dominczyk) play a far more prominent role in the narrative, allowing the story to be more personal from the onset. In the text, there are no duels between Dantes and Fernand before the Gendarmes escort Dantes to the Chateau. However, in the film, having Fernand reveal his betrayal to Dantes after besting him in a short duel at his estate serves to heighten the tragedy of Dantes’ betrayal, as well as the subsequent pathos and catharsis of his revenge. Similarly, Abbe Faria does not teach Dantes the sword in the book. Differences in the portrayal of Feria also include the fact that while both text and film versions of the character are undersecretaries to Count Spada, Feria is exclusively a priest and sage in the text, but was a soldier before taking holy orders in the film. Similarly, and contrary to the text, Edmond attempts suicide in the film but is too (physically) weak to see it done while he limits suicide to contemplation in the text. In terms of differences between text and screen, perhaps most important to note is that Dantes is illiterate in the film, but not in the text. Dumas describes him as having mastered basic reading and writing, but as not having an extensive education beyond the aforesaid principles. In terms of what it is Edmond gets out of his incarceration, education is of paramount importance making this divergence between the text and the film crucial, as I shall discuss later. In terms of scholarship, critical commentary on both the text and the film, let alone theorizations of the narrative, is scarce. Using Dantes’ time of

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incarceration in the Chateau as presented in both the text and the film as a case study, the close reading in this chapter investigates the idea that some carceral strategies, specifically the dungeon, necessarily engender their own tactical undoing. To do so, I will refer to Michel Foucault’s panoptic theory and commentary in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) and Michel de Certeau’s theory and discussion of strategy and tactics in The Practice of Everyday Living (1984).

“Hide, Enclose, and Deprive of Light”: The Chateau D’If as a Carceral Strategy Before laying out the theoretical ideas underpinning my examination of Dantes’ period of incarceration, let me first briefly say something about the Chateau itself. The Chateau was first a fortress and subsequently a prison. The structure is located on the smallest of the Frioul archipelago islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The distance between the Chateau and the Bay of Marseille is approximately 1.5 kilometres. It is less the nature of the structure than its location that was thought to make the Chateau particularly well-suited as a prison. The hazardous strength of the offshore currents surrounding the Chateau, not unlike Alcatraz, Rikers, Robben, and Devil’s Island, made it all but escape-proof. During the nineteenth century, the prison typically housed political and religious enemies of the state, including over 3500 French Calvinists, and Gaston Cremieux of the Paris Commune. Not unlike Newgate Prison in the eighteenth century, inmates of higher sociopolitical and economic classes could procure higher quality cells or “berths” than those less well off. Twenty or more of the poorest inmates of the Chateau were typically confined to subterranean windowless cells sequestered in dungeons below the Chateau itself. Above them in private cells, wealthier inmates enjoyed the use of a fireplace, garderobe, and windows. In chapter “Taxonomy of Genre: Prison Memoirs by American Men of Color” of The Count, Dumas describes Dantes’ arrival at the Chateau in a way that emphasizes its ominous inevitability: “Dantes rose and looked forward, when he saw rise within a hundred yards of him the black and frowning rock on which stands the Chateau d’If. This gloomy fortress, which has for more than three hundred years furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to Dantes like a scaffold to a malefactor” (Dumas 1844/1998, 44).1 One of his escorts drives home the point, stating that at the Chateau, “‘there are only,’ said the gendarme, ‘a governor, a garrison, turnkeys, and good thick walls’” (29). Dumas describes the prison as disheartening because it hides its surroundings: Dumas notes that on the approach to the Chateau, Dantes “did not even see the ocean, that terrible barrier against freedom, which the prisoners look upon with utter despair” (29). Here, the strategy of the Chateau is to invert symbols associated with freedom, the sea, into barriers against freedom. Dantes notes this precisely when speaking to the

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inspector-general of prisons who tours the Chateau alongside its governor, stating “‘seventeen months captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited’” (46). This effect is further compounded in Dantes’ description of his dungeon cell itself: He looked around; he was in a court surrounded by high walls; he heard the measured tread of sentinels, and as they passed before the light he saw the barrels of their muskets shine […] [Dantes] followed his guide, who led him into a room almost under ground, whose bare and reeking walls seemed as though impregnated with tears; a lamp placed on a stool illumined the apartment faintly, and showed Dantes the features of his conductor, an under-jailer, ill-clothed, and of sullen appearance. ‘Here is your chamber for to-night,’ said he. ‘It is late, and the governor is asleep. To-morrow, perhaps, he may change you. In the meantime, there is bread, water, and fresh straw; and that is all a prisoner can wish for. Goodnight.’ And before Dantes could open his mouth—before he had noticed where the jailer placed his bread or the water— before he had glanced towards the corner where the straw was, the jailer disappeared, taking with him the lamp and closing the door, leaving stamped upon the prisoner’s mind the dim reflection of the dripping walls of his dungeon.2 (29)

There are three terms that will do much work in this chapter namely, “carceral”, “strategy”, and “tactics”, with the term “dungeoneering” being attached to tactics as a term to designate a multiform tactical praxis. In this chapter, the carceral refers to the architectural and praxiological strategies of incarceration, discipline, and punishment. Michel Foucault’s examination of carcerality helps illuminate the manner in which the structuring and control of space(s) is achieved, as well as how the combination of disciplinary, punitive, and architectural activities coalesces in state institutions from schools to psychiatric wards and hospitals, and prisons. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault details the development of the institutionalized praxis of behavioural control. He refers to the sum of the various praxes, institutions of behavioural control, apparatuses of conditioning, and correction collectively as the carceral system. The carceral is defined as any and all activities “related to the act of incarceration and to institutions that discipline the body” (Foucault 2001, 1636).3 For Foucault, Mettray, a French prison farm for juvenile criminals founded in 1840, represents the most robust model of modern disciplinary techniques and methods of behavioural control (1636). Mettray is significant to the theorist because it was a space in which various methods of disciplining and controlling the space of the body were centralized and institutionalized. In this way, Mettray, and the concept of the prison more broadly, represents the refinement, recalibration, and employment of all apparatuses for the purpose of controlling the bodily space. Foucault writes that Mettray represents the praxis of discipline in its most acute form in that it is the most extreme concentration of all coercive technologies of behaviour (1637). While Foucault’s discussion of Mettray

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focusses primarily on the organizational strategies of discipline and punishment, his discussion of the Panopticon focusses on the combination of disciplinary and punitive organizational strategies and the architectural aspects that facilitate them. The Panopticon, conceived by English social theorist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century, allows a single watchman to observe all inmates of the building from a central tower without being observed in turn. The mechanism behind the concept is deceptively simple. The primary function of the design of the building is to render visibility itself into a trap or enclosure, which subsequently sustains particular power relations between the seen and the unseen. The underlying principle is distilled in the following two excerpts from Foucault: Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. Another primary effect of the design of the Panopticon is that the inmates themselves are unable to tell whether or not they are being observed at any given time.4 (1991, 201)

and, the arrangement of [an inmate’s] room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences […] The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised. (1991, 202)

Without the aid of external means of recording and surveillance technology such as cameras, it would be physically impossible for a single supervisor to simultaneously observe all inmates in every cell at any given time. However, as the inmates cannot definitively know whether or when they are being observed, all inmates behave as if they are being watched at all times, effectively surveilling and controlling their own behaviour constantly. Bentham describes this as the idea of the inspection principle, stating that the Panopticon is an engine or mechanism for producing “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind” that automatizes and disindividualizes power; or as Foucault asserts:

194  K. D. TEMBO the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.5 (202)

According to Foucault, fundamental to the design of the Panopticon is the structure’s emphasis on a dialectic between visibility and invisibility. Thus, the Panopticon reverses the principle and three primary functions of the dungeon, namely to hide, enclose, and deprive of light (200). It is significant that the strategic efficacy of surveillance in the Panopticon depends primarily on the visibility of its charges. From within the tower, a single observer is able to watch the inmates who are assigned to individual cells arranged around the perimeter. In a dungeon, however, the panoptic principle fails because the activities of its inmates remain unknown until an observer, typically a warden or turnkey, physically inspects each inmate in her/his individual cell. There is a blind spot produced by the period of observational indeterminacy whereby neither the inmates nor the guards can observe one another. As the design of dungeons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were subterranean, their inherent design facilitated topographical, architectural, and praxiological blind spots that a tenacious inmate could tactically exploit. My use of the term “strategy” is based on the work of French theorist Michel de Certeau. In response to the strategic carcerality of the dungeon in The Count, Dantes’ exploitation of the Chateau’s blind spots represents what de Certeau describes as tactics in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). According to de Certeau, like carcerality, strategy is always primarily concerned with power. He describes strategy as: the calculation (or manipulation) or power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed. As in management, every “strategic” rationalization seeks first of all to distinguish its “own” place, that is, the place of its own power and will, from an “environment”.6 (1988, xix)

Strategy is therefore self-segregating, in the same way as apparatuses of administration and management, ostensibly creating a dialectic of inside/ outside, visible/invisible, criminal/free citizen. In The Count, the Chateau represents a state strategy of keeping criminals from being afforded full sociopolitical, economic, cultural, physical, and societal status. In this way, the

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Chateau, a dungeon, hides, encloses, and deprives of light those sequestered within its walls, separated in this way, deprived of advantages and privileges in its space of disciplinary and punitive action. Under the disciplinary and punitive strategy of the Chateau, Dantes and Feria are abject or invalid objects isolated, delimited, and managed within its walls. In this sense, strategy also describes a mastery of places […] The division of space makes possible a panoptic practice proceeding from a place whence the eye can transform foreign forces into objects that can be observed and measured, and thus control and “include” them within its scope of vision. (36)

However, as the dungeon is the inverse of the Panopticon as described by Foucault, blind spots are necessarily inherent to its design. Therefore, while the order resulting from strategic praxes—which in the case of the Chateau also necessarily involve its remote location—may seem insuperable, strategy can be tactically countermanded. As Dumas shows, through a combination of knowledge and neglect, both Dantes and Feria (but more fully with the former) are able to circumvent the primary disciplinary and punitive strategy of the Chateau (hide, enclose, and deprive of light). They are able to manoeuver in the blind spots that emerge in the interstices of carceral strategies. In de Certeau’s term, such counter-strategic activities are described as tactical. In contrast to strategy, de Certeau characterizes tactics as the purview of the non-powerful and, further, as an adaptation to the environment that results from the strategies of the powerful. Tactics comprise a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power. It does not have the means to keep to itself, at a distance, in a position of withdrawal, foresight, and self-collection: it is a maneuver “within the enemy’s field of vision,” as von Bülow put it, and within enemy territory. It does not, therefore, have the options of planning general strategy and viewing the adversary as a whole within a district, visible, and objectifiable space. It operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. It takes advantage of “opportunities” and depends on them, being without any base where it could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position, and plan raids. What it wins it cannot keep. This nowhere gives a tactic mobility, to be sure, but a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of the moment, and seize on the wing the possibilities that offer themselves at any given moment. It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse. In short, a tactic is an art of the weak. (37)

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Tactics are effective due to their adaptability, fluidity, play, drift, creativity, unpredictability, combination, and openness. While strategy presumes staticity and isolation as exemplified by the Chateau, a remote island prison, tactics move towards flux, and a type of onto-existential agility through awareness of chance opportunities. Even within the seemingly negligible space of play afforded Dantes and Faria in the walls of the Chateau, their tactics transform them from prisoners into “a [joint] locus in which an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of such relational determinations interact” (xi). In this way, the warden, much like the architect, is a strategist, while the inmate or dungeoneer is a tactician. Here, unpredictability undermines strategy while simultaneously empowering tactics or the-art-of-being-in between. While the Chateau, and indeed the very concept of the dungeon would suggest that spatial dynamics are, in the last instance, governed, limited, and controlled at every level, Dantes and Faria succeed in countermanding its disciplinary and punitive control by exploiting the spaces that do not fall under the direct jurisdiction of the strategy of the dungeon. In The Count, these tactical blind spots are represented literally and figuratively as the inner space of the mind and of the cell.

The Order of the Golden Fly: Knowledge, Tactics, and Dungeoneering in the Chateau In view of Dumas’ various descriptions of Feria’s physical appearance and mental acuity, I suggest that an accurate symbol for Faria is that of a golden fly. I elect to describe him this way because he is, relative to Dantes, an abject treasure. Faria is described numerous times in the chapters in which he appears, by a variety of characters ranging from Dantes himself to the inspector-general of prisons, to be extremely, almost preternaturally intelligent. It is important to note that this intelligence is hidden, not eradicated, in the secrecy of the dungeon. Unlike the constant surveillance of the Panopticon, which, as the seeing/being seen dyad is always in effect, eradicates all chance for spontaneity, for unseen development, for the unseen in general, the dungeon acts as a veritable petri dish for the unforeseen. While less effective than the Panopticon in terms of its surveilling ability, the strategies of the dungeon are effective in their own blunt way. This registers clearly in the psychological and emotional effects of isolation, enclosure, and light deprivation on Dantes. Dumas describes him as having “so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked upon himself as dead” (45). It is clear, moreover, that it is these psychological and emotional aspects of the strategy of the dungeon upon which the largely disinterested jailers rely in the control of the Chateau and its charges. After being imprisoned for nearly a year, Dantes is visited by the inspector-general of prisons and the governor of the Chateau. The governor remarks that “the dangerous and mad prisoners are in the dungeons…the prisoners sometimes, through mere uneasiness of life,

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and in order to be sentenced to death, commit acts of useless violence” (45). In conditions which Dumas describes as “so foul, so humid, so dark, as to be loathsome to sight, smell, and respiration”, sheer physical, psychical, and emotional oppression is essential to the success of the strategy of the dungeon (48). This is apparent in Dumas’ description of the changes in Dantes’ psychological and emotional states, precipitated and exacerbated by dungeon incarceration: Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor’s belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance. (48)

By keeping its space separate, and furthermore separating the spaces within its space, the strategy of the dungeon relies on seclusion, enclosure, and darkness to stand as surety against any tactical attempt to escape, in a sense, to turn the inmate against himself. Dumas renders this disheartening effect of dungeon strategy clearly in the following passage: The jailer went out, and returned in an instant with a corporal and four soldiers. ‘By the governor’s orders,’ said he, ‘conduct the prisoner to the tier beneath.’ ‘To the dungeon, then,’ said the corporal. ‘Yes; we must put the madman with the madmen.’ The soldiers seized Dantes, who followed passively. He descended fifteen steps, and the door of a dungeon was opened, and he was thrust in. The door closed, and Dantes advanced with outstretched hands until he touched the wall; he then sat down in the corner until his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. The Jailer was right; Dantes wanted but little of being utterly mad. (30)

It is clear, therefore, that the disciplinary and punitive strategy of a dungeon like the Chateau greatly relies on the onset of madness and a suicidal will engendered in confinement, rough conditions, and darkness to break, and therefore subdue the prisoner. The first hint Dumas provides the reader that the strategy of the dungeon permits something other than psychical, psychical, or and/or emotional despair comes veiled in the first description/mention of Faria himself. During their tour of the Chateau, the governor says to the inspector, “we have in a dungeon about twenty feet distant, and to which you descend by another stair, an abbe, formerly leader of a party in Italy, who has been here since 1811, and in 1813 he went mad, and the change is astonishing. He used to weep, he now laughs; he grew thin, he now grows fat. You had better see him, for his madness is amusing” (45). While the overseers of the Chateau take Faria’s behaviour as little more than dungeon hysteria,

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Dumas expertly foreshadows the concept that while the dungeon is ostensibly a space of staticity, latent within its spatial and temporal stillness is the opportunity to change. Consider the notion that God does not want to know what the Devil does in Hell. God only cares that he is there and trapped there with the preponderance of his might. There is an assumption here that Hell is so terrible that absolutely nothing but despair can exist within its borne. However, I contend that like the Devil in Hell, what Faria lacks in seething hatred, abandonment, and jealousy, he makes up for in impotent power, that is, knowledge which cannot effect his release, and the location of an almost unimaginably vast treasure, which itself also cannot succeed in purchasing his liberty. At any and all mentions of his treasure in the text, his interlocutor thinks him mad. In the context of incarceration, strategic oppression, and tactical counter-strategy, the appearance and actuality of any condition or ailment, particularly madness, is of paramount importance. This can be seen most clearly in Dumas’ commentary on the nature of the seen/unseen dyad in relation to incarceration: it has always been against the policy of despotic governments to suffer the victims of their persecutions to reappear. As the Inquisition rarely allowed its victims to be seen with their limbs distorted and their flesh lacerated by torture, so madness is always concealed in its cell, from whence, should it depart, it is conveyed to some gloomy hospital, where the doctor has no thought for man or mind in the mutilated being the jailer delivers to him. The very madness of the Abbe Faria, gone mad in prison, condemned him to perpetual captivity. (47)

In the Panopticon, constant observation can determine, to extreme degrees of accuracy, each inmate’s true psychological, physical, and emotional condition. Such data accuracy is precisely part of its very design. Therefore, in the panoptic space, madness cannot be feigned by those being observed all the time. Any lapse in the performance of madness will be detected and the prisoner punished. The reverse is true in the dungeon. One can be as sane as a psychiatrist, but by dint of being a dungeoneer, assumed mad, whether mad or not, one can appear mad within the observational limits in which there is direct contact between warden and inmate, strategy and tactics. Therefore, while the dungeon offers the opportunity for tactical freedoms, through unseen interactions, learning and so forth, it is also, and indeed paradoxically, both bound and liberated by the assumption of madness as much as it is bound by brick and darkness. The assumption of the condition of the dungeoneer is that he is infirm in body and mind, perilously and consistently on the verge of madness and/or death. However, being that strategic knowledge of the dungeon is intermittent, limited to the schedule of inspection, the truth of a prisoner’s condition remains unknown to the jailer who predominantly relies on appearance and assumption to make such determinations. A smart dungeoneer, having

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mastered isolation, confinement, abuse, torments psychological, physical, and emotional, can use appearance and assumption to his advantage. For example, Faria employs what we could accurately call a tactic of madness to dungeoneer some respite for himself in his incarceration: “the reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a small quantity of wine” (61). In this sense, Faria’s “madness” can be described as a sort of bliss of abjection, the freedom provided him by the ignorance of his jailers, or as Dumas states, “there is a sort of consolation at the contemplation of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lie darkness and obscurity” (48). Therefore, both the strategy of the dungeon and its tactical overturning rely on ignorance. As Faria notes when first introduced to Dantes in chapter “Mediated Representations of Prisoner Experience and Public Empathy”, “‘let us first see,’ said he, ‘whether it is possible to remove the traces of my entrance here – our future tranquility depends upon our jailers being entirely ignorant of it’” (53). In chapter “How do American Prisons Handle Disorder? An Examination of the Relevance of Disorder Theories and a Comparison with Popular Media Portrayals”, Dumas reveals that the key to successful anti-strategic tactics is knowledge. Due to his age and lack of experience and education, this initially puts Dantes at a tactical disadvantage as Dumas notes: then gloom settled heavily upon him. Dantes was a man of great simplicity of thought, and without education; he could not, therefore, in the solitude of his dungeon, traverse in mental vision of the history of ages, bring to life the nations that had perished, and rebuild the ancient cities so vast and stupendous in the light of the imagination, and that pass before the eye glowing with celestial colors in Martib’s Babylonian pictures. He could not do this, he whose past life was so short, whose present so melancholy, and his future so doubtful. Nineteen years of light to reflect upon in eternal darkness!” (48)

In Reynolds’ adaptation, the question of what the condemned do with their time and solitude in a dungeon is inadvertently raised by Armand Dorleac (Michael Wincott), warden of the Chateau, who shows Dantes his cell for the first time, reading an inscription carved into the wall by its previous occupant: “‘God will give me justice.’ People are always trying to motivate themselves. Or they keep calendars. But soon, they lose interest. Or they die and all I’m left with is a rather unsightly wall, I’m afraid”.7 Faria’s subsequent introduction underscores this question when he accidentally digs a tunnel into Edmond’s cell and not to a breach in the Chateau’s outer wall: “I was under the impression that I was digging toward the outer wall […] I am Abbe Faria. I have been a prisoner in Chateau d’If for eleven years, five of which I have spent digging this tunnel” (Wolpert 2002). Dantes answers that he has spent his time skirting madness and despair, symbolized in the

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aimless counting of the stones in his walls: “There are 72, 519 stones in my walls. I’ve counted them many times” to which Faria expresses gallows humour in his wry response “But have you named them yet?” (Wolpert). In terms of the purpose of escape, Faria, with his savant brilliance for mental arithmetic and computation, illustrates that dungeon time and the activities that fill it are large in scale. Of the enterprise of escape, Faria says to Dantes, “there are only two possibilities of reaching the outer wall…I simply…I simply chose the wrong one. Now, of course, with two of us, we could dig in the opposite direction. And with both of us together, then, of course, we could possibly do it in, um…oh, eight years” (Wolpert). Dantes scoffs, disbelieving, to which Faria responds “Oh, does something else demand your time? Some pressing appointment, perhaps?” The exchange that follows is truly the crux of what I have described as dungeoneering or the tactics of dungeoneering. Faria states, “In return for your help, I offer something priceless”, to which Dantes responds: “My freedom?” Faria corrects him, stating “No, freedom can be taken away, as you well know. I offer knowledge, everything I have learned. I will teach you, oh, economics, mathematics…philosophy, science”. Astonished, Dantes inquires “to read and write?” to which Faria warmly confirms “Of course” (Wolpert). Reynolds blocks this scene in a way that emphasizes Dantes gently caressing and clutching a book on Faria’s desk as if it were a precious substance. This foreshadowing indicates to the viewer that while the treasure of Spada will be crucial in capitalizing Dantes’ revenge, it is the knowledge that he acquires that affords him a double treasure: first, of knowledge that becomes as tactically important as his wealth in successfully effecting his revenge and, second, of knowledge that affords him to regain his freedom. In terms of the double nature of the anti-strategic tactics he brings to bear in both his vengeance and escape, for Dantes, knowledge is as much a dungeon key as it is an alley dagger. Reynolds highlights this dialectic with certain aesthetic choices. For example, one of the books Dantes is shown to read first is The Prince (1532) by Niccolo Machiavelli which itself could be read as both a strategic and tactical manual, one that can be both used to consolidate and countermand institutional power. He is also shown to be partway through reading The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith. Edmond’s education is not purely theoretical which, again, can be read as a strategic and tactical manual concerning the control and manipulation of capital, an area of pragmatic knowledge essential to Dantes’ revenge. Aside from time itself, another essential aspect of dungeoneering pertains to said time being undisturbed. In view of the fact that the guards of the Chateau only enter its dungeons twice a day, Faria and Dantes have almost twenty-four full hours of uninterrupted time to learn, plan, dig, and comfort one another. In this sense, unminded sequestration, an essential feature of the dungeon’s strategy of discipline and punishment, is key to its tactical countermanding. Faria sums up its importance in a scene where the viewer sees

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Dantes read alone unaided for the first time, thereby underscoring the importance of that which he reads: “So neglect becomes our ally” (Wolpert 2002). With a combination of neglect and time, the tactical advances Dantes makes in terms of his learning are exaggerated in the film for effect. This comes across most clearly in the radically increased mental aptitude Dantes is shown to gain under Faria’s tutelage. Faria demands Dantes to “compute this. Of rock and dust a day…” to which Dantes responds, “…for three hundred and sixty-five days. Equals three-and-a-half metres a year…twelve feet, a foot a month. Three inches a week”. For added difficulty, Faria demands he repeat the calculation and its results “in Italian” (Wolpert 2002). The implication here is that with a source of knowledge, motivation, effective tutelage, and uninterrupted time, an individual can attain near superhuman levels of intelligence. But just what, aside from prosecuting a successful escape, can a dungeoneer actually tactically achieve relative to the strategic conditions of his imprisonment? In chapter “Separating Popular Myth from Empirical Reality: The White-Collar Prison Experience” of the text, the list of successes Faria has dungeoneered for himself in this regard is as remarkable as it is inventive. It is revealed that though uneducated, Dantes can read, as he scans over Faria’s great work on the Italian monarchy written on his linen, partially in soot-wine ink, partially in his own blood. He is allotted no books, no pens, and no candles. He makes nibs, pens, a penknife, a cleaver, rope ladder, candles, needles, thread, matches, and digging tools from fish bones, fat, sulphur, sheet hems, and old iron candlesticks. In Reynolds’s adaptation, Faria, while industrious, has certain advantages over his textual counterpart, the chiefest of these being access to books, which in tactical terms is access to knowledge that will serve following a successful escape. Faria inverts his dungeon cell into a private study, workshop, library, archive, studio, and laboratory (Dumas, 55). Having difficulty believing or imagining this level of dungeon ingenuity (dungeoneering), Faria says to the doubtful Dantes, “‘when you pay me a visit in my cell, my young friend,’ said he, ‘I will show you an entire work, the fruits of the thoughts and reflections of my whole life; many of them meditated over in the shades of the Colosseum at Rome, at the foot of St. Mark’s column at Venice, and on the border of the Arno at Florence, little imaging at the time that they would be arranged in order within the walls of the Chateau d’If’” (55). The implication here is that the greatest gift afforded a prisoner is the time to think. Tactically, therefore, the dungeon is a focussed space, unseen perhaps, but internally focussed as opposed to externally focussed as it is with the Panopticon. While such a focus can lead to madness, depression, suicidal thoughts in ultimate despair, it can also focus the mind and the will. This comes across in a key exchange between the dungeoneers. As Faria notes after Dantes asks “‘I was reflecting, in the first place,’ replied Dantes, ‘upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have

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employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained. What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?’” to which Faria responds, Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced – from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination. (Dumas, 58)

One of the tactical questions raised in The Count and specifically pertaining to Faria is a question of tactical exchange between practising tacticians. One can think of this exchange as potluck: it is as much about what you bring as much as it is what you take from it. Dumas makes it clear that Faria is a savant. He prepares chemical solutions that allow him to write on his shirts as smoothly and evenly as if they were parchment, a trick he picked up from his association with noted chemists Lavoisier and Cabanis (56). He goes on to clarify to Dantes, who inquires about his reserve of knowledge, his archive, which the Abbe reveals is his own mind: I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and studying these one hundred and fifty volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart; so that since I have been imprisoned, a very slight effort of memory has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though the pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.

He goes on to reveal that he speaks five then modern languages (in the historical context of the nineteenth century) including German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, and Greek. “‘By the aid of ancient Greek”, notes Faria, “I learned modern Greek – I don’t speak it so well as I could wish, but I am still trying to improve myself’”. It is therefore clear that in terms of both theoretical and practical knowledge, Dantes has the advantage in his exchange of skills with Faria. This is not to say that Faria receives nothing tactical from Dantes in turn. Aside from the comfort of company, of someone to teach and pass on both his monetary and epistemological wealth, someone to love as a son, Faria finds in Dantes an opportunity for vicarious redemption. Through Dantes’ escape and revenge, Faria too, as arguably the most instrumental factor in such an enterprise, sees justice served through Dantes’ vengeance. In relation to Dantes’ comparative ignorance, the combination of a learned tutor in the form of a fellow dungeoneer as well as the time and seclusion afforded

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to each by the dungeon itself, the dungeon for Dantes becomes a lyceum, a tactical space of self improvement which is only able to exist in view of the punitive strategy of the dungeon itself: conceal and obfuscate.

With Difficulty and with Pleasure: Conclusion Perhaps the most valuable thing Dantes receives from Faria is not hope or instruction, important as those two things surely are. It is the fact that Faria uses the strategic darkness and physical enclosure of the dungeon to bring tactical illumination and mental freedom to Dantes’ situation. While much of what Dantes learns is theoretical in the text and as such could be considered supernumerary to the ultimate goal of escape, he also receives instruction with practical applications and consequences. The chiefest of these is imparting onto Dantes the logical faculties required in order to unravel the mystery of his imprisonment, those involved, their motives, means, methods, and goals. In this sense, Faria provides Dantes with a trial and a defence where none were afforded him by the corrupt state. Moreover, Faria delivers a complete and accurate list to Dantes of the targets of his just revenge. The dungeon is therefore shown to be, in an idealized way, a heterotopic space that functions in ways it was not designed to, as a space of relief in despair, of knowledge in confinement. As such, the tactical exchange between Faria and Dantes favours the latter. In the former, the latter finds not only a father in the dungeon, but also a sage, a scholar, a tactician, and councillor of rare mental disposition. As Dumas notes The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful and important hints as well as sound information; but it was never egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows. Dantes listened with admiring attention to all he said. (Dumas, 61)

Faria teaches Dantes mathematics, physics, history, Spanish, English, German, and philosophy in the space of 2 years. What Dantes receives is basically private tutelage from an expert, undisturbed. So much so that Dumas describes Dantes as a new man after only a year of intensive study (Dumas, 61). In this way, Dantes is inducted into a secret society of two, the order of the golden fly, so to speak. The imprisonment and the escape are of less consequence than the learning of the dungeon. Without it, Dantes would not have changed had he not been charged in principium or had escaped alone without the assistance of Faria in any form. The importance of his education is clearly noted in chapter “The Queen Without Kingdom: Vulnerability, Martyrization, Monolingualism and Injury Towards a Quechua Speaking Woman Imprisoned in Argentina” following Faria’s third stroke. After Dantes is given the map to the treasure of Spada, but having their original tunnel barred by the guards, Dantes declares to the dying man

204  K. D. TEMBO The treasure will be no more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the sombre rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them—this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds. (68)

In essence, while the strategy of the dungeon seeks to undo Dantes as not only a man but as a human being, whose goal is to reduce his Being to a number, his tactical association with Faria fundamentally makes him a better man. As Dumas notes, The abbe was a man of the world, and had, moreover, mixed in the first society of the day; he wore an air of melancholy dignity which Dantes, thanks to the imitative powers bestowed on him by nature, easily acquired, as well as that outward polish and politeness he had before been wanting in, and which is seldom possessed except by those who have been placed in constant intercourse with persons of high birth and breeding. (62)

In the last instance, the tactical countermanding of the disciplinary and punitive strategy of the dungeon through knowledge produces the seemingly magical effect of being ex nihilo. From the pit of the despairing dungeon floor comes, in secret, illumination, expansion of mind, refinement of manner, focus of telos, and something beyond hope, namely knowledge. As Dumas notes, the key to dungeoneering Faria “taught his youthful companion [is that of] the patient and sublime duty of a prisoner, who learns to make something from nothing” (68).

Notes 1. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (1844; Project Gutenberg, 1998), 29, http://archive.org/stream/thecountofmontec01184gut/crsto12.txt. 2. Italics mine. 3.  Michel Foucault, “The Carceral,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. V. B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 1636. 4. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin New Edition, 1991), 201. 5. See Bentham, Jeremy, The Panopticon Writings. “Preface,” ed. Miran Bozovic (London: Verso, 1995), 29–95; Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 202. 6.  Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (London: University of California Press, 1988), xix. 7. The Count of Monte Cristo, written by Jay Wolpert (2002; Los Angeles, CA: Touchstone Pictures, 2002), DVD.

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References de Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. London: University of California Press. Dumas, Alexandre. 1998. The Count of Monte Cristo. Project Guttenberg. http:// archive.org/stream/thecountofmontec01184gut/crsto12.txt. Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin New Edition. Foucault, Michel. 2001. “The Carceral.” In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by V. B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton. Wolpert, J. 2002. The Count of Monte Cristo. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Pictures.

“You’re in Trouble Mate”: Prison and Screen Practice Lewis Fitz-Gerald

Do you find yourself drawn towards bookshelves when first invited to someone’s home? Is it conscious, or do books and stories possess a kind of gravitational pull? Perhaps, like me, you sometimes find visitors tipping their heads a little sideways, the better to read the cracked spines on your shelves. I organise books by subject as best I can. Or by theme. On my bookshelves, one section sees most visitors straighten their necks promptly. Some take an involuntary step backwards, lest the ground give way; some shoot me a questioning glance, for I have far too many books on hanging. Cracked spines indeed. There are books by hangmen, by their apprentices, by politicians on both sides of the capital punishment debate, and by historians, journalists, and priests. It is a macabre collection, and dusty, since little has been added to the oeuvre in Australia since 1967, when Ronald Ryan hanged, and none to my shelves since 1992, when I made my first film as director, a documentary featuring those who witnessed Ryan’s execution. But I keep the books and find myself watching guests’ reactions. I’m frequently rewarded, since there is inevitably a physical response, before a quizzical one. A poker player’s tell. In those reactions lie the power of story. I am by training an actor, later a director of drama and documentary, and more recently an academic, given to reflection on the carriage of story, and the nature of creative practice, which among its many forms, invites a practitioner’s recollection. When I think of

L. Fitz-Gerald (*)  University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_13

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the forces that drive makers towards particular stories, I wonder sometimes whether we choose them, or they us; whether a fatalist’s pre-disposition to melancholy suited me to a series of roles I played, or films I made, in and around gaols and justice, as prisoner, lawyer, or detective; as actor, writer, or director. Two stand out as my first experiences of distinct creative responsibilities: my first film as an actor, Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980); and my first as writer-director, The Last Man Hanged (Fitz-Gerald 1992). Both works are based on powerful national narratives of crime and punishment; both disrupt comforting notions of guilt and innocence; and both confirm lingering preoccupations with Australia’s colonial origins, and the mythos of the island prison. A third, earlier story, predating film itself, anticipates both; the outlaw Ned Kelly seems their essential, shared progenitor. There is no notice in the Old Melbourne Gaol alerting the faint of heart to avert their gaze from sight of the carefully preserved gallows there, or from the palely glowing plaster of Ned Kelly’s death mask. I first laid eyes on Ned’s cold face as a schoolboy on a unique excursion: a visit to the death house. That year I’d read Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1970), and ploughed through A Tale of Two Cities, so justice, swift and merciless, was on the syllabus. The set texts and wider reading had their effect, but my experience of those hours in the gaol was visceral. Standing in front of Ned, I remember the sound my breath made in the loud quiet, and drawn closer, the warmth of it fogging the glass display cabinet. As a representation of justice in media, nothing seems so intimate or so blunt as that death mask cast in clay, the medium after all, to which each of us returns. But as disquieting as the mask remains, it is an imagined image, not of the mask, but of the means of its production, its manufacture, that is the more disturbing, at least to me. It is my mental image of the waxworks owner Maximilian Kreitmayer’s hands, applying the plaster to Kelly’s so-recently warm face. Much analysis was predicated on Kreitmayer’s brittle representation of Kelly. Archibald Hamilton would use it to make pronouncements on Kelly’s criminality, via the “science” of phrenology, the long-discredited idea that skull shapes could be used to determine personality, intelligence, and criminal pre-disposition (Roginski 2015). In 1885, this pale representation of Australia’s most famous outlaw was, in its accuracy of depiction, thought to offer not just the granular detail of skin and hair (Kelly’s head and beard were shaved post-mortem, but his brows remained), but deep insights into character. Science, Hamilton insisted, would reveal the man himself. Hamilton’s uncontested eminence in his field confirmed the righteousness of the outlaw’s execution. Kelly was found guilty twice: in court, of the crimes he committed, and by the phrenologist Hamilton, of a pre-destined criminality, the unhappy consequence of his birth. There is a lesson in Hamilton’s employment of the most faithful physical representation of Kelly we have, to construct the least reliable assessment of him.

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Discussing Neil Rattigan’s schema of Australian heroic archetypes, Theodore Sheckels suggests that “to a distanced observer, it seems as if Australia is struggling to find a hero who embodies a national identity it can embrace proudly” (1998, 30). In at least its masculine expression, it is a struggle embodied in the characters of Ned Kelly, Harry Morant, and Ronald Ryan. They shared appealing qualities, of courage and daring, of defiance of authority, of romance, of faith or its lack. They seem figures best remembered in songs, art, and poetry, whose essential contradictions defy easy characterisation, whose criminality seems subsumed by the national interest. That the prototypical Australian hero should emerge from a convict heritage seems only logical, since from the first hoisting of a flag in Sydney Cove, convicts outnumbered their gaolers. Remembered as “the father of our courage, and the heart of our literature” (Clow, in Jones 1968, 75), if an un-asked for baton was passed from Kelly to Morant, and in turn to Ryan, at least it ensured their immortality. Both would die “as game as Ned Kelly”. I knew nothing of the story of Harry Morant when cast as the junior officer Lt. George Witton in Breaker Morant, and less about screen performance. I’m sure Bruce Beresford saw my naiveté (on both subjects), as an asset that would suit the character. But I’d graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art only months before, had read Stanislavsky, and was keenly interested in “building a character”. I was determined to learn as much about Morant’s life and the Boer War as I could. When production was delayed while Beresford re-wrote the script, I travelled to Canberra, and the Australian War Memorial (AWM). Beresford and I, it turns out, were on opposite sides of the world, doing much the same thing. He conducted his research in London. I found myself once again standing in front of glass cabinets, preserving uniformed mannequins and battlefield dioramas. Their accuracy of depiction was meticulous, genuine uniforms, actual weapons, and so forth, but I was as yet unmoved. I made my way to the AWM library and was approached there by a library assistant, who asked me what I was looking for. I explained I was to be in a film about the Boer War and would play an idealistic young officer, a volunteer now wholly disillusioned, bewildered, and confused. To my surprise, the library assistant began to cry. “That’s me”, he said. “I’m your man”. Steve was a Vietnam veteran, not ten years older than me. Over the next several days, he pulled books from shelves, arranged film screenings, and talked, and talked. I soon had more detail on Harry Morant and the Boer War than I could possibly use, but better, in front of me was a man whose feelings I recognised, whose feelings I could represent, someone upon whom I could base a character from lived experience. Steve saved the most powerful moment for our last meeting. He led me into a basement collections room and opened a drawer holding the personal effects of Harry Morant and Peter Handcock. It was a visit that recalled Ned Kelly and the Melbourne gaol, for there, Steve handed me tangible, physical connections to the men

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themselves. I ran a gloved finger over Morant’s campaign ribbons, stripped during his court martial. Faded, they appeared to me to still carry the dust of the Transvaal. I hefted Morant’s own .455 calibre Webley revolver, and most movingly, held Peter Handcock’s last letter. In the film, Beresford has Bryan Brown pen it in ink. Perhaps a little too eagerly, I explained it was written in HB pencil. “That won’t do”, Bruce said. “The tears won’t show up. Ink runs”. I bit my tongue. I’d held the original. Handcock’s tears marked the pencilled paper still. I was still to learn that beyond what I believed to be true (say, Steve’s feelings) or real (Peter Handcock’s letter), lay a greater obligation, to story. I found that making the case for the authentic often as powerfully made the case for the inauthentic. For example, among those pursuing verisimilitude, wardrobe designer Anna Senior had a head start. Military costumes for Breaker Morant were provided by famed costumiers Bermans and Nathans of London, a company whose storied history was older than film itself. Bermans and Nathans had long been Naval and Army tailors. With the advent of film, they became renowned for their authenticity and attention to detail. Their uniforms for Richard Attenborough’s Young Winston (1972) were pulled out of storage, shipped to Australia, and did double duty on Breaker Morant. My fitting was straightforward enough. With little alteration, I wore Simon Ward’s costume, his name still stitched into the collar. During the course of the Boer War, the British Army swapped their historic redcoats for khaki. Boers were fine shots and were in the habit of targeting officers in particular, whose braid and brass made them easy targets. The Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC) wore little in the way of insignia, but their brass initials BVC (on a single bar and pinned at the shoulder) had been painstakingly recreated in plastic and painted a gleaming brass colour. As Anna held her facsimile to my shoulder in her cramped quarters in the converted cinema that was the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) studio on Norwood Parade, I murmured that the insignia was not right. Quite rightly, Anna was not about to take lip from an upstart, but as she admonished me, Beresford walked past. “What’s not right?” “The insignia”, I mumbled. “The men painted them khaki to stop them glinting in the sun. The BVC painted all their brass. First unit to do so”. “Paint ‘em Anna”, said Beresford and strode off. Hours more work for the wardrobe department, but paint them she did. Authenticity. Our period perfect jodhpurs, however, were not approved. Beresford felt we looked ridiculous. We swapped them for straight trousers and donned slouch hats too. This was inauthentic. The BVC wore whatever they liked on their heads. In photographs I’d seen in the AWM library, Morant favoured a seafarer’s style cap. But in a film later noted for its anti-colonial sentiment, employing the emblematic slouch hat drew a more evident line between “these Australians” and the British high command. In these and other ways, historic detail gave way to the representative demands of story.

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Some would later compare Breaker Morant to one or other of several films featuring the implacability of military justice. I’d seen Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957), Stanley Kramer’s Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), and Joseph Losey’s For King and Country (1964) and sought out The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) for Martin Sheen’s fine performance, but I felt less connection to those powerful films than I did to say, Sunday Too Far Away (1975), made in South Australia by the SAFC, which I’d wagged school to see a few years before. Here something else about the nature of representation became important: an Australian vernacular. In pursuit of it, on the first day of photography, Bruce tried to be reassuring. “Don’t worry Lewis, even if you can’t act, you’ll look right! If I were you, I’d watch Bryan [Brown]”. I did watch Bryan, but learnt as much from other Australians, including Bud Tingwell, who’d worked with Edward Woodward on Emergency Ward 10 (1957–1967), and of more significance to me, with Peter Finch on The Shiralee (Leslie Norman, 1957). Vincent Ball too had worked with Finch, on A Town Like Alice (Jack Lee, 1956). There had been precious little Australian cinema since, but in these relationships, I saw a continuity of Australian representation in cinema from before I was born—threads of which Beresford pulled together in Breaker Morant. Casting Edward Woodward as the English-born Morant was itself a response to representation. A rare photograph of Morant in a slouch hat looked a lot like Edward had in the British drama series Callan (1967–1972), a likeness to which Bruce responded. Casting the Australians, however, was less straightforward. Bryan Brown was not initially in the film. Instead, Jack Thompson was to play Peter Handcock, the late John Hargreaves Major Thomas, and Sam Neill was to play intelligence officer Captain Taylor. But when production was delayed while Bruce worked on the script, Hargreaves and Neill had to withdraw due to other commitments. Jack Thompson, to whom much of the finance was attached, abandoned the Handcock role and held out to play Major Thomas. As a result, Bruce was forced to recast three major roles quite late. Jack got to play Major Thomas, John Waters came in for Sam Neill, and only then was Bryan Brown (who had tested unsuccessfully for Major Thomas) cast as Handcock. The alternative casting can only be imagined (including the first offer of Witton to Mel Gibson, who declined), but serves to remind that finally, casting a film, much like politics, becomes the art of the possible. While Jack Thompson picked up the award for his portrayal of Major Thomas at the Cannes Film Festival, in my experience it is the laconic Bryan Brown, who replaced Jack as Handcock, whose performance is best remembered. Bruce Beresford was formidably organised, but possessed a great capacity for improvisation. At times, it bordered on the reckless. He dashed to an abandoned camera position as thirty horses galloped over the top of it and completed a shot of the retreating Boers; he slalomed his car to a muddy stop alongside the camera truck at end of day to grab a camera and shoot a glorious sunset; and ad-libbed a line of dialogue during the execution of Visser

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(Michael Procanin) “you’re in trouble mate”, that somehow expressed both a macabre Australian humour, and empathy for the condemned. The phrase seems a powerfully reductive expression of the film’s high stakes, in a voice weary of war’s moral confusion. Yet Bruce just as freely admitted when he lacked an idea. In the scene where Witton is sentenced to death (a sentence moments later commuted to life in prison), Bruce’s direction was honest and blunt: “I’ve got no clue what it must be like to be sentenced to death, and you don’t either, so what do you say we just shoot it?” So we did. In the first take, for a moment I closed my eyes. Bruce’s response was succinct. “Alright. Again. Don’t close your eyes”. I was reassured by the certainty (and brevity) of such direction. That this would be the chosen representation. Cut, print, move on. I learnt a great deal from small moments such as these—first and foremost, that every decision you make is your friend, since deciding liberates you to make a thousand more choices. English stalwart of Australian film Chris Haywood, who played Cpl. Sharp with parade ground bravura, expressed the screen actor’s job this way: “you can only be true in the moment you’re in”. Be here now, and assert this is how I believe life to be. For all I’d learnt about Morant, Handcock, and Witton’s history, what mattered most was story, and the steady accretion of firm decisions large and small, such as “don’t close your eyes” ultimately constituted the version of the story, the particular representation of their lives and fates, that was the film. The experience of representation may last a lifetime. Breaker Morant was well received. So well, that at the Australian Film Institute awards of 1980, it won ten of fourteen nominations. On the steps outside the event, former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam approached me. “Keep making films like that one comrade”, he intoned. We spoke for a few moments. “What you might not know”, he continued, “is that their deaths directly brought about…” I dared to interrupt him. “The Defence Act of 1903?” Gough smiled broadly, and together, we recited the relevant section from memory: no member of the Defence Force shall be sentenced to death by any court martial except for four offences: mutiny; desertion to the enemy; or traitorously delivering up to the enemy any garrison, fortress, post, guard, or ship, vessel, or boat, or aircraft; or traitorous correspondence with the enemy. (Australian Government 2019)

Significantly, the Defence Act stated that a sentence of death could not be carried out until confirmed by the Governor-General. None have ever been called upon to do so. “Indeed”, Gough smiled, “a Governor-General could not be put to much better use”. Years later, Gough sent me a photograph of him and Margaret at the site of Morant’s and Handcock’s graves in Pretoria; his presence there a powerful reminder of their legislative legacy. The film prompted considerable re-investigation of the Morant story. Some advocated for the re-dedication of memorials. The Boer War memorial on the corner of North Terrace and King William streets in Adelaide was

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at various times suggested to have been modelled on Morant, and numerous efforts have since been made to re-dedicate the statue. More substantive actions are underway to have the men exonerated. In 2018, surviving members of the Witton family extended an invitation to me to attend the Parliamentary gallery in Canberra in the hope a longed-for pardon would be granted. Alternative views, new slants, and re-investigations have challenged the film’s representation of the accused men, and noted among other things, the general absence of women, and an alternate Boer perspective. Yet much criticism of film seems to me to concern itself with what a film is not, rather than what it is. After all, Breaker Morant made no claim to the men’s innocence; rather, it invited consideration of collective, societal guilt, and responsibility, in a stinging rebuke of war itself. Forms of representation deserve appraisal in their many contexts. Breaker Morant was made during what Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka describe as “the AFC period” (1988), a time of a particular kind of cultural nation building. Among the first bricks laid in that effort was the establishment of the Australian Film and Television School (now AFTRS) a scant six years earlier. Whitlam’s remark “keep making films like that one comrade” demonstrates representation’s political dimension, and the relation of film to perceptions of national identity. But representation is also reception, as Barthes would insist. Breaker Morant met different responses in different markets. It did poorly in Britain, where its anti-colonial sentiment was coolly received (Sinyard, 2015). In the United States, it was seen by some as an allegory of a particular American trauma, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. In China, as the first Australian film screened there, it was welcomed as anti-imperialist. None of these potential responses were concerns of mine during production. Indeed, Haywood’s admonition, to be “true in the moment you’re in”, all but forbade conjecture on reception. Reflecting on my experience now, I understand it as one of immersion, first in the received facts, then in the experiences of the veteran I was so fortunate to meet, then in filmmaking’s reductive processes. Soon after Breaker Morant, I made another research pilgrimage to Old Melbourne Gaol. This time I stood in front of Ned at the invitation of producer Ian Jones. I had been cast as Kelly’s cousin Tom Lloyd in Jones’ production of The Last Outlaw (1980), made to mark the centenary of his death. Executive Producer Ian Jones, by then an established Kelly historian, would later publish Ned Kelly: A Short Life (2008), a work of prodigious scholarship which remains the foremost biography of Kelly, and which in print does what neither Kelly’s death mask nor Jones’ mini-series did half so well, in conveying a detailed sense of his character. If in the lesser figures of Morant and Ryan there is a sense of a generational torch being passed from one misunderstood anti-hero to the next, there is also a torch passed between generations of writers, filmmakers, and actors. Kelly’s ultimately unresolvable nature suggests him as an Australian Hamlet, complete with soliloquies long

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and short, political and pithy, from the Jerilderie Letter to “such is life”. Since Australian film and television’s renaissance, Kelly has tested and bested Mick Jagger, John Waters, John Jarratt, and Heath Ledger (an incomplete list), as each lent increasingly muscular shoulders to the cultural project of the revision, if not refinement, of the essential Australian hero. Justin Kurzel’s film version of Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) will soon offer another interpretation. Yet if box office success is a measure, Kelly has so far eluded each of them, since none have seized the public imagination (or purse) as well as did Kelly himself. If Kelly was Quixotic, so perhaps are those who dare take a tilt at his story. In Memoirs of a Public Executioner, Syd Dernley, who decided to become an executioner when just eleven years old, writes that “it is a curious thought that in early Victorian times there were probably very few people who had not seen an execution. Now, a mere hundred years later, there were very few people who had” (1989, 83). My late uncle Keith Willey was among those few. He witnessed the execution of Ronald Ryan as a journalist for Sydney newspaper The Sun in 1967. We spoke of it when I stayed with him in Canberra while researching Breaker Morant in early 1979. Once or twice in later years, he would return to the impact of that experience. In particular, he spoke of Ryan’s courage as he faced death. It was clear Ryan had had a profound effect on him. Willey told me he invoked the memory of Ryan’s stoic courage several times, when himself in grave danger, under fire as a war correspondent in Vietnam and the Middle East. Powerful though it was, Willey’s piece was not published by his tabloid, since it did not wish to be seen to profit from something “to which it was absolutely opposed” (Willey 1977, 38). Willey’s fine piece of prose was eventually published in a book of his essays, Tales of the Big Country (1977). Following my uncle’s death, those conversations became the basis for my 1992 film, which I had first imagined as a feature. I wanted to tell a story about the impact of the execution on the men who witnessed it. I was not entirely sure how to do this, since it would put the climax—the execution— at the start. I soon abandoned the feature idea, and with it, an early collaboration with a writer and director. Instead, I wrote a short film of brief monologues to camera, in which unnamed men recall the morning of an unnamed event, revealed only at the end to have been an execution. I liked this approach and pitched it to producer Bill Bennett. If we possessed a documentary record of the feelings of the witnesses to the hanging of Ned Kelly I reasoned, it might now be a national treasure, more valuable even, than the remaining fragments of the world’s first feature drama, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), held tightly in the vaults of the National Film and Sound Archive. Among those feelings, of compassion perhaps, of revulsion, or of stern approval, among hopes for “freedom” or the rule of law, might have been found first glimpses of the nation we were still decades from becoming. Might not the testimony of those who watched Ryan die, be one day just as

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important? I thought so. Along the way, the particular story I wanted to tell decided its form and the nature of its representation. It would be neither a feature nor a short, neither a drama, nor a documentary. It would be both, and would teach me a little of the ways in which documentary and drama instruct and inform one another, revealing their debts to story and genre, to form and format. I wrote in The Last Man Hanged that “the Australian story is inextricably linked with the grim history of the rope”. By the time of the film’s production, so was my own. I’d already seen Kelly swing in The Last Outlaw, I’d played a ferry captain accused of attempted murder in The Dean Case (Bell 1983) and had spent too long in dank cells on film sets vicariously contemplating mortality. I had been absently tying the hangman’s noose for years and had done so in Breaker Morant. Reasoning that a condemned man might well contemplate the means of his demise, in one scene Lt. Witton idly fidgets with a miniature noose I’d tied with twine. Bruce didn’t notice the knot around my finger; it was not scripted, or particularly significant, except to me. However incidental my little noose in Breaker Morant (in which, after all, there was no rope, rather the rifles of twenty Cameron Highlanders), it loomed large in The Last Man Hanged. In my nightmare vision for the film, the rope always had the starring role and takes centre stage during the film’s title sequence. I made what I hope will be my last visit to the Old Melbourne Gaol when contemplating this chapter. Standing again beside the gallows there, I studied an exhibit in an adjacent cell. Ryan died in Pentridge, but there, carefully arranged, was displayed the “actual rope” placed around Ryan’s neck. There is no elaborate knot, carefully tied. The exhibit placard states that by the time of Ryan’s execution, the hangman’s knot had been replaced by a more efficient metal eyelet. The last metre or so of rope is sheathed in oiled leather lest the prisoner’s skin be ruptured. The “actual rope” and associated equipment is on loan from the Sherriff’s department; there is therefore no reason to doubt that this simpler, more effective loop did the job on Ryan. Yet Evan Whitton describes how the hangman “wrenched it tight with three sharp tugs (and) got the knot under Ryan’s left jaw” (Whitton 1967). Willey too describes “the knot pressed under the left side of the jaw” (Willey 1977, 55). The journalists seem agreed on this point. On others, they are less sure. Descriptions of the hangman for instance varied wildly. I was intrigued that professional journalists, whose livelihoods depended on the accuracy of their reportage, could disagree on something as fundamental as the colour of the hangman’s clothes. I decided that in these and other ways, “memory is strange. We manufacture what we wish we remembered, and obliterate what we need to forget”. Willey’s impression was that the hangman “wore a light fawn suit, but others said green or grey, and one even called it navy-blue” (1977, 54). I dearly wanted to shoot these different recollections and intercut them, the better to illustrate the journalists’ individual experiences of that surreal morning. I gathered different costumes

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for Ron Graham, who played The Hangman, but lacked the time to use them, and was again reminded that filmmaking is the art of the possible. It is an over simplification, but in production terms, picture is expensive, and sound is cheap. Since I lacked the conflicting studio recreations I’d hoped for, editor Dany Cooper and I instead interwove conflicting interview testimony. Overlapping interviewees’ voices produced the effect of them appearing to finish each other’s sentences, sometimes chorusing agreement, at other times contradicting one another. At times, this felt especially eerie, since the interviewees were never gathered together in one place, never engaged in conversation. They were shot on different days, in different locations, in a deliberate effort to preserve the particularity of their recollection. On one point, all seemed agreed. The crash of the trap was terrifying. During the sound mix for the film, I implored mixer Gethin Creagh to make the crash of the trap louder and the creak of the rope louder still. Veteran sound editor Andrew Plain gently explained I already had the meters in the red, the audio clipping, the noise thunderous; but on playback it was clear that the television experience, the “living room” experience, would get nowhere near the awful theatre of the death room. That would have required at least a cinema, and speakers that would shake your insides and rattle your bones. The interviews were shot via a partial mirror screen, enabling the sense of a direct to camera address, when, in fact, each interviewee was speaking directly to me. The method requires the director to sit at ninety degrees to the subject. Conversation continues as it otherwise would, but via a hooded mirror placed at forty-five degrees to the lens. Smoke and mirrors. The cloaked mirror seemed an apt method of capture, since much of what was said and done had been cloaked in secrecy for years. Obliquely, the method also lent form to the style of the studio recreations. The decision to recreate the hanging (and other scenes) owed much to the short film version I had pitched initially. The way in which to shoot them was decided by the quite different recollections captured in interview. Beresford’s film drama employed an easy naturalism of performance; split field diopters used in courtroom scenes preserved deep focus more akin to human vision (a semi-circle of convex glass covers half the lens, making it “near-sighted”; the uncovered half remains “long-sighted”, forming the impression of deep focus); and eschewed a musical score in favour of the diegetic music of the brass band in the town square. My documentary drew upon “an un-naturalness in the killing of Ryan” (Willey, 57) to justify heightened performance, stark lighting, and a soundtrack which dripped Catholicism. I hoped this highly stylised, theatrical approach to the re-enactments of what took place inside the prison would complement interviews that often seemed more like dissociative fugue states, throttled recollections, in choking voices. Tape on the floor sufficed instead of sets and marked the outlines of an office, a cell, or hotel room. Actors moved in spaces defined by the frame of a door, the arrangement of one or two pieces of furniture, and pools of light which, at the edge of vision,

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plunged into darkness. Rear projected photographs loomed overhead, lending both context, and a further sense of unreality. The last element, a cold blue light, was the work of Director of Photography Jeffrey Malouf. Jeffrey won an award for his cinematography; his blue lighting was applauded by critics. Yet we had disagreed about employing it earlier, when shooting the Peter Walker interview which opens the film. Peter Walker, who had gone over the wall with Ryan at Pentridge, and who killed the tow truck driver Henderson while on the run, had not spoken publicly since Ryan’s execution. Despite Walker’s crimes, I was anxious that each interview be benign. Neutral. I saw the interviews as a call, to which the re-enactments were the response. This meant that the interview camera positions, lighting, and so forth should be non-judgmental. I hadn’t read either at the time, but David Mamet, citing Sergei Eisenstein, explains the principle well. “The best image is an uninflected image. A shot of a teacup. A shot of a spoon. A shot of a fork” (1991, 2), to which I would add, a shot of a man or woman. Interviewees therefore chose what they wanted to wear, where they wanted to sit, and so on. The camera position (and accompanying mirror) was built around their choices. The results were not always what Jeffrey, I, or a production designer might have chosen in other circumstances, but the approach ensured the best and most comfortable interview, and an even-handedness which respected all contributors. Walker had been difficult to track down, but eventually welcomed us into his home. While setting up the lights, Jeff murmured to me that he’d added some blue gels, since Walker was a convicted murderer. I was quick to ask him to take them out. Walker, I explained, had completed his sentence, much of it in solitary confinement, and would get no further judgement from me. I left Jeff to re-adjust the lighting, turned my attention once more to Walker, and the interview soon began. It was only later that the rushes revealed Jeff had not in fact removed the blue gels. The unwanted effect was to lend the Walker interview a gloomier and more sinister air. Many months later, the film locked off, Jeff returned for the colour grade. Seeing the finished film, and the Walker interview in context, Jeff apologised, head in hands. He spent hours re-grading the Walker segments, restoring the ruddy glow I remembered, to Peter’s cheeks. Jeff’s lighting in the re-enactments, the cooler spectrum draining colour from faces, often backgrounded by over-scaled black and white stills, seemed like the magic of synaesthesia to me. During pre-production, researcher Lesley Holden and I were granted access to Pentridge and trailed in the wake of a bull of a warder as he gave us the Cooks tour. Today, Her Majesty’s Prison Pentridge is no longer functional. It has been re-developed as apartments. But that day we were ushered into D Division, where Ryan died, and into H Division, where Ryan, and Walker, spent long months in solitary confinement. As we walked into H Division, a party of warders at one end of the wide, grim corridor were (I search for the right word) encouraging a prisoner

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to leave his cell. A prisoner in solitary is not permitted to see another prisoner or person, but for warders. Their movement, from cell to yard for obligatory exercise, is carefully controlled. Our un-scheduled arrival was inopportune. Our warder’s solution was to immediately direct Lesley and me into an empty cell and lock us in. The twenty minutes or so we remained there dragged like none I’ve known. Beyond the door, angry shouts, of the prisoner or his gaolers, echoed resoundingly and then ceased. The cell stank, but not of filth. It was an acrid, antiseptic stench. Lesley and I said little. The cell spoke louder to us than we to one another. After a time, the warder returned and we were released. We stepped out onto a floor now glistening wet. While we’d been inside, the entire cell block had been hosed. And that smell. Lysol maybe. Carbolic. Jeffrey’s lighting, I later thought, smelt like that. Admonishing his students to consider the work of Freud, Bettelheim, and Jung, David Mamet contends that “all film is, finally, a dream sequence”, all “make believe” (1991, 7). Insisting that “the great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream”, Mamet suggests that films and dreams are “basically the same. The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question”. I was not advantaged by these observations when I worked on Breaker Morant as a young actor. Mamet had yet to write his book. Nor was I aware of it when I directed The Last Man Hanged, just a year after his slim volume’s publication. Yet both films are as dreams to me, and dreams themselves, fractured by flashback and by the terror of the present moment. Their “juxtaposition of images” serves to answer much the same question. Both amply demonstrate that an execution is a political act. Both ask us to remember, that those whose duty it is to witness state-sanctioned killing on our behalf, may be forever changed by the experience. Watching Ryan hang, radio reporter Brian Morley broke down as he admitted “I closed my eyes… I just couldn’t…” If ever this might have been a shameful admission, something that betrayed the muscularity of his profession and the tough journalists of his day, it was not by 1992. By then, it was the frank admission of a man whose nightmare it had been for years, grateful for the opportunity at last, to get it off his chest. Years later, the actor David Wenham asked whether he might use the Brian Morley interview extract as a teaching aid. He had been invited to speak to members of the New Zealand Directors Guild on how to direct performance. This is not an unusual lecture. It is often given, by actors to directors, by directors to students. It is a fixture in the syllabus of film schools the world over, since performance remains the essential problem of representation, an elusive theorem, repeatedly attempted, never entirely solved. David wanted to use the Morley interview as an exemplar of emotion as it is experienced, in order that his audience of directors might better understand their obligation to faithfully represent it on screen. Actors (and critics) have a word to describe poor emotional performance; it is disparaged as “mugging”. In such

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work, the actor’s effort is all too clear; there is a sense of both the actor’s struggle, to produce a tear for example, and his self-satisfaction at having accomplished it. David Wenham knows, as do each of us, that emotion arrives uninvited, unwished for and without effort. Tears of joy or sorrow arrive with no fanfare, often to one’s surprise, shame, or annoyance. Makeup artists understand this better, or at least as much, as experienced directors. They stand ready to apply a drop of glycerine, or to blow menthol vapour into the corner of an eye. The irritation produces, not emotion, but its essential signifier, the painted tear. Best the actor do nothing, and let other artists do their work. The result may be closer to the “truth”. Even before production began, the voices of Brian Morley’s fellow witnesses to the Ryan execution had begun to fall silent. My uncle was gone, so too Ron Saw, a giant of the Sydney press, who by the time cameras rolled was too ill to take part. He died in 1992. Journalist Evan Whitton, whose interview was so important to the film, suffered a heart attack during production. He too now is gone, along with Father John Brosnan, Justice John Starke, Dr. Phil Opas, Tom Prior, and more besides. Investigating public memory, and “the half-life” of capital punishment, Carolyn Strange describes The Last Man Hanged as “incantatory” (2001, 90). Certainly, I set out to record the asymptotic murmur of public voices, and still value a letter from the daughter of prison governor Ian Grindlay, who died soon after the film went to air. Returning from his funeral service, her tearful young son ran straight to the television. He played and replayed his grandfather’s interview throughout the remainder of the day. In it, Grindlay speaks movingly of his faith, and of the futility of capital punishment. In the gaze of his grandson, I see the power of representation, the enduring value of story, and sense a baton passed. In 1999, Sir Henry Bolte, whose personal mission it was to see Ryan hanged, was among several long-serving Victorian premiers honoured with statues by another of their number, Premier Jeff Kennett. At the installation of the works in the forecourt of 1 Treasury Place, Victoria’s seat of executive government, strong public feeling was still evident. The working men who lowered Bolte’s statue into place, hanged him, in the public square. His statue was “suspended mid-air dangling by the neck from a crane, a macabre irony for the political executioner of Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia” (Strangio and Costar 2006, 1). On my recent visit, I sought out Bolte’s statue for what I’ve resolved will be the only time. Standing there, Bolte’s bronze effigy warmed by the sun, and burnished in places by instinctive human touch, I remembered Kelly, his face of cold clay behind glass, beyond touch, and remembered Ryan, for whom no statue is raised, no mask left, to remind a guilty public of the exercise of power by those who represent them. As a wintry sun lengthened Bolte’s shadow on the wall behind, I conjured another shadow rising with it in lockstep. Ever at Bolte’s shoulder, Ryan climbs one last wall. A penumbral wraith. Bolte’s Banquo.

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References Australian Government. 2019. “Act No. 20 of 1903. Defence Act.” Administered by: Attorney-General’s; Defence; Veterans’ Affairs; Prime Minister and Cabinet. Date of assent 22 October 1903. Viewed on-line March 1, 2019. https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C1903A00020. Bell, Brian. 1983. The Dean Case. Telemovie. Directed by Kevin Dobson. Lewis FitzGerald, and Celia de Burgh. Sydney: ABC Television. Beresford, Bruce. 1980. Breaker Morant. Film. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson, and Bryan Brown. Adelaide: South Australian Film Corporation. Bierce, Ambrose. 1970. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” In Spectrum One, edited by Bennett, Cowan, and Hay, 31–38. Croydon, VIC: Longman. Carey, Peter. 2000. True History of the Kelly Gang. St. Lucia: Queensland University Press. Dermody, Susan, and Elizabeth Jacka. 1987–1988. The Screening of Australia. Sydney: Currency Press. Dernley, Syd, and Newman David. 1989. The Hangman’s Tale: Memoirs of a Public Executioner. London: Pan Books. Diamond, Tessa. 1957–1967. Emergency Ward 10. Television series. Directed by Rex Firkin and Geoffrey Stephenson et al. Jill Browne, Charles (Bud) Tingwell and Frederick Barton, London: ITV. Dingwall, John. 1975. Sunday Too Far Away. Film. Directed by Ken Hannam. Jack Thompson and Max Cullen. Adelaide: Roadshow (Australia). Fitz-Gerald, Lewis. 1992. The Last Man Hanged. Dramatised documentary. Directed by Lewis Fitz-Gerald. Colin Friels, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, and Angie Milliken. Sydney: ABC Television. Jones, Evan. 1964. King and Country. Film. Directed by Joseph Losey. Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay. London: Warner-Pathé. Jones, Ian. 1968. “Kelly—The Folk Hero.” In Ned Kelly Man and Myth. North Melbourne, VIC: Cassell Australia. Jones, Ian. 2008. Ned Kelly: A Short Life. Rev. ed. Rydalmere, NSW: Hachette Australia. Jones, Ian, and Bronwyn Binns. 1980. The Last Outlaw. Television mini-series. Directed by George Miller and Kevin Dobson. John Jarratt, Stephen Bisley, and Elaine Cusick. Melbourne: Seven Network. Johnson, Lamont, William Bradford Huie, William Link, and Robert Levinson. 1974. The Execution of Private Slovik. Telemovie. Directed by Lamont Johnson. Martin Sheen, Ned Beatty, and Gary Busey. Los Angeles: NBC. Kubrick, Stanley, Humphrey Cobb, Jim Thompson, and Calder Willingham. 1957. Paths of Glory. Film. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, and Adolphe Manjou. Los Angeles: United Artists. Lipscom, W. B., and Richard Mason. 1956. A Town Like Alice. Film. Directed by Jack Lee. Peter Finch and Virginia McKenna. London: The Rank Organisation. Mamet, David. 1991. On Directing Film. New York: Penguin Books. Mann, Abby. 1961. Judgement at Nuremberg. Film. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Spencer Tracy Burt Lancaster and Maximilian Schell. Los Angeles: United Artists. Mitchell, James. 1967–1972. Callan. Television series. Directed by Peter Duguid et al. Edward Woodward and Russell Hunter. London: ITV.

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Norman, Leslie, and Neil Paterson. 1957. The Shiralee. Film. Directed by Leslie Norman. Peter Finch and Dana Wilson. London: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roginski, Alexandra. 2015. The Hanged Man and the Body Thief: Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing. Website. https:// www.portrait.gov.au/magazines/51/getting-a-head. Accessed March 1, 2019. Sheckels, Theodore F. 1998. “‘New Wave’ Cinema’s Redefinition of Australian Heroism.” In Antipodes 12, no. 1: 29–36. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Website. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41958833?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Accessed March 1, 2019. Strangio, Paul, and Brian J. Costar. 2006. The Victorian Premiers, 1856–2006. Annandale, NSW: Federation Press. Strange, Carolyn. 2001. “The Half-Life of the Death Penalty: Public Memory in Australia and Canada.” Australian Canadian Studies 19, no. 2: 81–99. Viewed on line, March 1, 2019. http://www.acsanz.org.au/archives/acs19-2-2001.pdf. Sinyard, Neil. 2015. “Breaker Morant: Scapegoats of Empire.” In The Criterion Collection. Viewed on-line March 1, 2019. https://www.criterion.com/current/ posts/3713-breaker-morant-scapegoats-of-empire. Tait, Charles, Millard Johnson, and W. A. Gibson. 1906. The Story of the Kelly Gang. Film. Directed by Charles Tait. Melbourne: J. & N. Nevin Tait. Whitton, Evan. 1967. “The Necking of Ronald Ryan.” In Amazing Scenes, Adventures of a Reptile. Of the Press. Website. http://netk.net.au/Whitton/ Amazing19.asp. Accessed March 1, 2019. Willey, Keith. 1977. “The Hanging of Ronald Ryan.” In Tales of the Big Country. Adelaide: Rigby Limited.

How Does the Design of the Prison in Paddington 2 (2017) Convey Character, Story and Visual Concept? Jane Barnwell

Introduction This chapter explores the role of the prison in the representation of ­character and narrative in the film Paddington 2 (2017). The prison is a key setting in the film, which playfully stitches together popular notions of the real and imagined prison and turns into a community where friendship, food and flowers blossom. It effectively forms a transition space linking Paddington’s journey away from home and back again. The Brown’s home, Paddington’s family home, is established as a warm and welcoming environment, which Paddington is forcibly removed from when he is wrongly sent to prison. On arrival, the prison appears to be a classic harsh and hostile place of incarceration where Paddington is intimidated and alone. However, Paddington’s presence is slowly seen to transform the space into a warm and inviting world full of friendship and hope. The design is crucial in conveying key themes in the script that reflect Paddington’s character and the positive impact he has on people’s lives. The changes we observe in the prison are metaphors that convey the Visual Concept at the heart of the film design. Traditional ideas and images of the prison are turned on their head as the place of incarceration becomes a candy pink-striped world of high teas and bunting. The environment reflects the camaraderie between Paddington and

J. Barnwell (*)  University of Westminster, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_14

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the people he befriends inside. They form an escape plan and Paddington eventually closes the narrative circle by returning home. Order appears to have been restored as thespian antagonist, Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant) is sent to prison in his place. However, not only has the prison remained a cozy reflection of Paddington’s character it now incorporates the high camp theatricality of its new inhabitant, complete with a closing musical number that sees Buchanan singing and performing to rapturous applause from the inmates. The design functions to reflect these changes physically while also visualizing the underpinning concepts at work in the narrative. This chapter considers how the design conveys these ideas using a methodology I have developed for the analysis of production design, called Visual Concept Analysis. The approach works through the five key ways a script is visualized by a production designer: Space, In and out, Light, Color and Set decoration. Using this case study, I will illustrate how decisions about the five elements are linked and return to the logic of the central Visual Concept driving the design.1

Film Synopsis Paddington bear lives with the Brown family at 32 Windsor Gardens, where he is a popular member of the community. He wishes to find a special present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday and sets his sights on a pop-up book in Mr. Gruber’s Antique shop. Paddington takes on a series of jobs to save money to buy the book but it is stolen from the shop and Paddington is falsely accused of the theft and sent to prison. The family set about finding the real thief, their thespian neighbor Phoenix Buchanan. In spite of making friends in prison, Paddington escapes in a bid to clear his name. Buchanan is eventually charged, Paddington is pardoned and Aunt Lucy is brought to London for her birthday. The narrative structure of the film follows a classic pattern of the prison film—confinement, overcoming of obstacles and release.

The Prison on Screen Prison architecture reflects the intensity of ideas and emotions concerned with crime and punishment, the discourse surrounding them being inescapable in physical form. The relative levels of mental health and humanity of the times can be measured by the degree to which inequality and fear have inflected the design and build; buildings always speak of the period and purpose of their making. Cinematic representation extends these notions by repeating and perpetuating them in popular culture. There is something about the medium of film that enables it to implant images in the mind that are more real than the real world; to stage-manage our perception of the facts of everyday life. Southern Plantation houses look like Tara; airports look like the last scene in Casablanca; motels look like the Bates motel. (Sylvester 2000, 45)

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And prisons look like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Porridge, Midnight Express, Cool Hand Luke and Escape from Alcatraz, particularly as the invisible nature of real prison interiors allows room for speculation. As production designer (PD) Stuart Craig says, the designer’s job is to distill, simplify and make the meaning of a setting absolutely clear (Author interview, 2000). Designers are not concerned with producing museum-like accuracy but rather with the creation of an emotional truth in support of character, narrative and genre. Screen representations provide the audience with access to an environment that is not open to the public and as such becomes an imaginary rather than a real place. Thus, despite Foucault’s genealogical account of the disappearance of the ancient regime’s spectacle of punishment, of gallows and guillotine, visual spectacle persists in cinematic representations of crime and punishment. Cinematic space plays on the ways attics, basements and bedrooms hold different roles in our daily imaginary lives. The physical realm and abstract notions of space cannot be disconnected from our memories, dreams, fears, desires and everyday existence (Jacobs 2013, 10). These notions are amplified when it comes to a limited use of settings or a confined space such as the prison. Prisons, like hotels, museums, theaters and public transport for example, are transitional and contain a diverse milieu. Notions of confinement are exaggerated through the use of small spaces and fragmented geography of space, while also promoting the alienation and intimidation of the environment through lofty ceilings and extended walkways. Often presented as a stark, frightening, unstable world with the threat of violence and psychological torment, the confined setting creates a physical and symbolic boundary between inside and out where themes of resistance to authority are often played out by individuals who have lost their liberty and access to physical space. The prison setting often amplifies a correlation between violence and masculinity, employing aspects such as fights, torture and intimidation as central to the narrative and character development. Films featuring prisons often include an intense sense of identification and empathy between viewer and the person in prison (Kehrwald 2017, 4). The genre-defining film The Big House (1930) established key innovations including particular character types, iconic settings and situations such as riots and escape attempts—consistently portraying the prisoner as victim to powerful external forces beyond their control. These conventions hold true in Paddington 2, where the audience is in no doubt that he is innocent (a popular theme in prison narratives) and that a gross injustice has been committed.2

The Visual Concept I will be using a methodology I have personally developed called Visual Concept Analysis to investigate the design of the prison in the film Paddington 2. The Visual Concept enhances the narrative of a film and is

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usually established collaboratively by the production designer and director through close scrutiny of the script and related research. Once the Visual Concept is established the production designer constructs a visual contrast to ensure the concept is made clear, this will then transform through the course of the film often reflecting the protagonist’s journey. Visual Concept Analysis explores the five key ways the script is visualized by the PD: (i) Space (ii) In and Out (iii) Light (iv) Color (v) Set Decoration Ben McCann says, décor is never a silent shell detached from the action and makes the point that design speaks to the audience and paraphrases the narrative’s concerns by architecturally reflecting the emotions and mental states of the individuals inhabiting them (McCann 2004, 375). My work extends this notion by categorizing the visual metaphors that convey the Visual Concept in the film. Through my reading of the film and insights gleaned from published interviews with the film’s director and production designer, I have concluded that the Visual Concept in Paddington 2 is home. This Visual Concept is realized through the kindness and warmth exuded by Paddington, transforming whichever environment he inhabits. As seen in Windsor Gardens and subsequently the prison where he is incarcerated, Paddington’s personality is transformative in terms of the characters and the environments he is in close contact with. This operates on a narrative level and is reflected and enhanced through the design. The home is a significant setting in film. PD Richard Sylbert (1989, 22) highlights the importance of returning home in narrative structure. ‘There is something satisfying about getting back home. It satisfies the mind and it closes the circle.’ The interior of the Brown family home is a three-story house built on a set in Elstree Studios, with exteriors shot on a street in Primrose Hill. The filmmakers wanted to be true to the era Paddington was written in (A Bear Called Paddington was first published in 1956), while making a contemporary film. Thus, the home includes vintage items of furniture and dressing that nod to the 50s, combined with up-to-date features creating an eclectic lived in feel that exudes a welcoming warmth. ‘The aim was to create a heightened reality,’ says production designer Gary Williamson, ‘a place where a talking bear would feel right at home but also one that felt new and exciting. We are looking through Paddington’s eyes’ (Drummond 2015) (Fig. 1). The notion of home is particularly poignant in a wider sense, as Paddington can be understood as an outsider story, having migrated from

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Fig. 1  The Brown family home exterior in Windsor Gardens

Peru and made London his home, while also being an anthropomorphic bear interacting with humans. The film contains messages of tolerance toward difference and diversity, particularly in that Paddington’s marginal status is foregrounded and his differences identified as strengths through the course of the narrative.3 Paddington’s positive influence in Windsor Gardens is made clear prior to his prison sentence, thus leaving a tangible absence when he is gone as the world he has created in Windsor Gardens disintegrates into a negative, less hopeful place. Meanwhile, inside prison Paddington the outsider becomes an insider finding friendship and camaraderie among an unlikely bunch of characters. He and his marmalade help create cohesion that is reflected in the design of the prison interior. Although Paddington is desperate to return home, his presence succeeds in transforming the prison into a more attractive and homely environment. Thus, the notion of home is cultivated to the extent that a sign saying ‘Prison Sweet Prison’ becomes a feature of the communal space. The Visual Concept enhances themes in the original books, that wherever Paddington goes he spreads love, warmth and good manners. Often the transformation of setting operates to reflect changes in the protagonist but in this instance, the transition is a reflection of the entire prison population. Rather than Paddington changing while in prison, he effects change in others, which is visualized in the design transformation of the shared spaces. The transition taking place is effective due to the popular conception of prison as a brutal and archaic system. The stereotype of a cold unforgiving environment is used to visualize and convey the dramatic shift that occurs. For this to work, the prison is established initially through the use of design that conjures notions of enclosure, punishment and abandonment when Paddington first arrives. The Victorian architecture underpins a sense of severity—the loss of hope attached to being banished to a place out of sight and forgotten by society. This is a key idea that is returned to several times in the narrative, whereby Paddington insists the Browns will not forget him

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in his absence. The other people in prison warn him that slowly the visitors become less frequent until they will eventually stop. Paddington 2 is a comedy and as such takes great pleasure in playing with and subverting popular perceptions of prisons and the cinematic representation of people in prison. For the comedy to work, the familiar image of a prison and the stereotypes that conjures must be established on the screen in order for the turnaround transformation to function effectively. Thus, the design of the prison is deliberately familiar using the conventions an audience expects to see—the prison of the imagination and of popular representation is cold, brutal, intimidating and alienating comprised of unyielding metals and lacking any soft textures or materials. Redemption is a popular trope for prison and this process is heightened in the transformation of the people in prison and the environment that subsequently takes place. The reform of character stands in contrast to the abandonment notion, prison as the instrument of positive change enabling a return to society. Thus, the film references ideological discourse around crime, punishment and the role of incarceration in society. Cultural myths around prison are incorporated in the design and assist in the narrative and character development of the film. Paddington arrives to a classic display of stereotypical masculinity, where he is initially threatened and intimidated by archetypal tough characters that rebuff his attempts to make friends. The sense of physical violence breaking out is later referred to in the dining hall scene, when Paddington confronts Nuckles the cook and the prison guard radios first for medical assistance in preparation for imminent violence and then the priest in preparation for death. The use of parody identifies the tensions in the representation of masculinity, both recycling and problematizing them. Paddington is initially lost in this all male environment having been brought up by his Aunt Lucy in Peru and now nurtured by the Brown family, which includes three influential feisty women, Mrs. Brown, Judy Brown and Mrs. Bird the housekeeper. Paddington reverses the usual representation of hierarchy in prison— his power doesn’t come from any of the conventional channels, for example where violence results in status. Instead, his strength lies in the ability to encourage the potential for bonding and camaraderie among the inhabitants of the prison—a disparate group thrown together regardless of background, class and culture. Nurturing the hidden or forgotten talents of his fellow prisoners Paddington uses food to bring people together emotionally. The preparation and sharing of recipes motivate the engagement and enjoyment of the other characters to collaborate, creating a positive psychological environment. The emotional impact of which is realized in the design, through the transformation of the shared spaces—for example, the sparse dining hall becomes the attractive and inviting Aunt Lucy’s Tearoom.

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Paddington’s presence assists in modernizing representations of masculinity by using food preparation and baking specifically, to create a new and more positive sense of identity and community in the prison. Later, this notion is extended further with the arrival of Phoenix Buchanan, whose presence transforms the prison into a theatrical space, reinforcing a hopeful message of the potential to reform the people inside. Ultimately, Paddington himself is the catalyst for the transformation and reformation of the environment. I will now consider the five design elements that reflect the emotional and psychological shift. (i) Space The architecture of space conjures the classic model of the Victorian prison, which exaggerates notions of confinement. Lofty intimidating ceilings, long alienating walkways and cramped individual cells all work to convey the stereotype of the prison environment. When Paddington first enters the prison, it seems stuck in the past, forgotten, with an imposing scale and ornate gatehouses representing the power and authority of the state. This is exaggerated from Paddington’s perspective, as he is smaller than the humans in prison everything is amplified from his point of view. The vertical hierarchy and levels within the space reflect the expectations of power and authority imposed in a prison environment. The scale dwarfs its inhabitants and suggests the insignificance of the individual in the face of a large dehumanizing building with an equally alienating underpinning ideological structure. The collision of private and public space that engenders a prison setting sets up a tension. Private space is limited to the functional cubicle-like cells, overshadowed in scale by the communal spaces, reinforcing the idea of loss of individuality and liberty and the sense that once inside everyone becomes part of the prison machine. Loss of liberty can be seen in the limiting and control of individual space in this way (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2  The scale model of the prison furnishes the audience with a privileged access to view the whole interior in one frame

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Fig. 3  The simultaneous action in each of the four cells as the escape is initiated

Although prison is necessarily a closed architecture, the building is seen in full through the use of a scale model in the warden’s office that replicates its geography in miniature. This is later referenced as a slice through, which is opened up and used as a technique to show the four prisoners simultaneously escaping from their uniform cells. The cut through slice of the building echoes that of the Brown’s family home and reminds the audience of the universal nature of people wherever they are. This technique allows us to view the whole of the interior space of the building, including the individual cells, the warden’s office and the communal areas in one frame. This operates on several levels—providing a privileged view of the whole building and increasing the sense of magnitude of the escape plan from such a complex and imposing construction (Fig. 3). (ii) In and Out The nature of a prison is crucially defined by the border between the interior and exterior and the lack of liberty to move between these. Windows and doors articulate the boundary between interior and exterior worlds and this is all the more poignant in Paddington 2. The windows and doorways do not offer views of the outside world, they deliberately contain, us the audience, within the prison. The main portcullis doorway is only seen once, when Paddington first enters. The scale of the vertical hierarchy, signaling the power of authority and pressure to conform, is exaggerated further by the framing from above. The exterior is glimpsed when Paddington first arrives but is seen again only once more until his escape. Paddington climbs up to his small, arched prison cell window to write a letter to his Aunt Lucy and it is at this point that the vast and intimidating exterior is revealed—a gothic nightmare fortress that reinforces his isolation from the outside world (Figs. 4 and 5). The arched window in his cell echoes the round window of his attic bedroom in 32 Windsor Gardens, connecting Paddington to his home and

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Fig. 4  When Paddington first enters the prison, the intimidating scale of the structure is exaggerated through the use of a bird’s-eye view shot

Fig. 5  The prison exterior—a gothic nightmare fortress

accentuating the contrast between the cozy comfort there and the austerity of his current setting. The prison warden’s office doesn’t provide a view outside, behind his desk is a huge clock face emphasizing classic notions attached to prison and serving or doing time (Figs. 6 and 7). Prison is a liminal space; an in between where prisoners wait until the point where they can be released and return to society. The term ‘inside’ that is often used as a popular euphemism for prison makes this sense quite clear. The separation between the prison and the rest of society is crucial in the design and the notion of escape ties into this. Windows have the characteristic prison bars on them, reinforcing the disconnection from the outside world and the prisoners’ absence, invisibility and insignificance. This is a self-contained space, hidden, concealing and separating the people within from the exterior, which supports one of the themes of the film—once inside

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Fig. 6  Paddington writes to Aunt Lucy at his bedroom window in 32 Windsor Gardens

Fig. 7  Paddington writes to Aunt Lucy at his prison cell window

people will be forgotten by the outside world. The cramped visiting c­ ubicle further accentuates the notion of spatial confinement and isolation, with Paddington firmly positioned on the inside and the Browns on the other side of the glass partition (Fig. 8). Within the prison, three levels of walkways transport prisoners from individual cells to inhospitable communal areas. Corridors are used by designers to extend physically and prolong visually the transition from one place to another, and emphasize a journey, a pause or punctuation between two places. Details of distance, width, material and so forth alter our perception of where the character is traveling and what they might find on arrival. Corridors can build suspense and play with notions of time and space (Barnwell 2017, 114).

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Fig. 8  Paddington is lead to his cell up the stairs through the main communal area

The doorways to the individual cells are closed as might be expected in a prison; however, communication takes place through the plumbing in the walls without the need to be face to face. This hints at the way space may be manipulated in unconventional ways as illustrated in the escape scene. The escape scene does not just involve corridors and staircases but extensive machinery that features cogs that require Paddington to squeeze himself through impossibly tight spaces. This transition is a physically difficult enterprise that accentuates the drama and tension involved in the escape. The length of the clock tower and the machinery within it extend the possibility of the exit point. Not using the traditional exit of doorways or even windows makes this a ‘great escape’ as they transcend architectural boundaries moving through space inventively to achieve their freedom.4 This speaks of their empowerment physically and mentally as they occupy space unintended for them and manipulate the architectural structure to enable their emancipation. Having been spatially confined by the prison structure, this makes their transgression all the more thrilling. The notion of time is physically and metaphorically extended through the use of the clock mechanism. The transition through the clock takes time to undertake and it is achieved through a timekeeping device. The psychological passage from imprisonment to freedom is unconventional and daring. Time and space are crucial elements of any design and in this instance have resonance with key notions entwined with prison. Time is something the characters have forfeited while incarcerated but are able to adapt their punishment into an instrument of escape (Fig. 9). The tunnels and tight spaces they have to navigate to reach the roof intensify the tension, enclosure and confinement to a claustrophobic level. The condensed space of the clock tower eventually brings them out on the rooftop with its expansive city skyline, from where their makeshift hot air balloon can lift off. The escapees have made the clock tower an action

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Fig. 9  Paddington maneuvers his way through the cogs of the clock mechanism as part of the escape plan

Fig. 10  The daring escape features expansive cityscapes that intensify the sense of liberation

space; a device that enables the movement of character through the décor (McCann 2004, 375) (Fig. 10). (iii) Light Although characters are very much boxed into their private cells, there is abundant light that comes from arched windows in the two communal prison spaces; the atrium and the dining hall. There is lots of natural daylight provided from these windows, which interestingly creates a positive ambience, intentionally bucking the archetypal notions of prison design. Ultimately, the film is a comedy and although there is a need to create a sense of threat and

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Fig. 11  Darkness in the dining hall before the marmalade making

Fig. 12  The warden’s office interior

isolation the edges are softened by key design choices such as this use of natural daylight. Once the prison has been transformed by Paddington’s arrival additional lighting appears in the form of paper lanterns and strings of hanging lights, creating a cozy inviting environment that echoes the lighting in Paddington’s attic bedroom in Windsor Gardens. There is very little shade in the film. When Paddington first goes to help Nuckles McGinty in the kitchen, it is dark but gradually as the marmalade making progresses day breaks and the kitchen is flooded with natural daylight. Significantly, when Paddington thinks he has been forgotten by the Browns because they miss a visiting day, his world becomes darker and he succumbs to despair. It is at this low point that he agrees to join the escape group (Fig. 11). The warden’s office is bathed in light that emanates from the clock face positioned behind his desk. This light has an opaque quality as the clock connects the interior and exterior, while also featuring artificial lighting (Fig. 12).

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(iv) Color Although a very useful way of communicating the Visual Concept, many filmmakers prefer to use color subtly and with caution as PD Stuart Craig says: ‘The safest thing is to eliminate colour, the more limited the palette the more effective. It allows the lighting to work. The colours that are used should be motivated by the psychology of the scene’ (Author interview, 2000). The selection and combination of colors are carefully considered and help lead us into the aesthetic world of the film. The color palette in Paddington 2 is designed to highlight the color red, which is significant in relation to Paddington’s character reflected in his red hat. He is strongly linked to Mrs. Brown through her costume choices and the decoration of the family home which both feature prominent use of red. The color red is bold and is sometimes used to connote fear, death and disease. However, in this instance the red is a joyful one bursting with warmth and connects the Browns as a family. Red also stands out and can be used to indicate subversion and lack of conformity, challenging the status quo (Bellantoni 2005).5 There is initially an absence of the color red in the prison environment. The key colors are cold gray, blue, green and white in the first instance. One red sock initiates the change in color palette in the prison, which is responsible for turning the uniform of the entire population from grey and whitestripes to pink and brown. The next stage involves a confrontation with Nuckles the cook when Paddington squirts red ketchup across his white apron. This action results in Paddington and Nuckles joining forces to make marmalade for the breakfast. Once tasted, the previously hostile prison population softens and becomes involved making other tasty treats. It is through this sharing of food that the place transforms to reflect an inviting and nurturing environment reminiscent of an opulent tea room such as the Ritz.6 During the transformation pastel colors gradually fill the kitchen and dining hall and eventually bright red bunches of chilies adorn the kitchen (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13  The kitchen has become a colorful therapeutic space of making and baking

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Fig. 14  The ‘prison sweet prison’ banner replaces the phrase ‘home sweet home’ playfully connecting prison to the positive connotations of the home

Fig. 15  The once monotone walkways have been injected with color

The changes are evident outside of the kitchen and dining hall too; the once sterile grey walkways are now populated with vibrant flower boxes, strings of bunting, fairy lights and a large hand-stitched banner proclaiming ‘Prison Sweet Prison’ in bright red font. Meanwhile Windsor Gardens seems a colder, more hostile place; the color sapped out of it, without Paddington’s charming vibrancy (Figs. 14 and 15). The use of color reflects the impact Paddington has on the prison, which he infects with his warmth and kindness that gradually radiates through the communal spaces. The color in Paddington’s individual cell remains cold, as a reflection of his inner-sadness and wish to return home to the Browns. (v) Set Decoration Initially, a design contrast is established between the comfort and warmth of eclectic clutter that fills the Brown’s home and the cold sparse prison fixtures.

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‘The house is a reflection of the characters in it. My job is to try and bring that out with the sets,’ says production designer Gary Williamson. ‘Artwork features prominently throughout the Brown’s home (Mrs. Brown’s character is an artist) and much of the art used was borrowed from artist friends, or created for the film. Some of it is hung at deliberately kooky angles to drive home the idea of family and fun’ (Drummond 2015). Inside each prison cell are identical, metal-framed single beds, a desk and chair. The two key communal spaces of the atrium and the dining hall consist of entirely functional items. In the dining hall, a symmetrical arrangement of long rectangular tables and bench seats flank each side of the room (Fig. 16). The scene references many cinematic prison canteens where row upon row of uniform people lose their individuality and are objectified as prisoners without distinction. The experience is dehumanizing as all individual characteristics are replaced with a homogenous body of criminals—part of the machine. However, in this instance it is on a smaller scale, which hints at the possible makeover to come. The creativity of the kitchen becomes redemptive in this example. Once the cake making is in operation the dining hall benches are replaced with round tables covered in gingham-checked tablecloths in pink, green and blue, while the bench seats are replaced with individual chairs. Bunting is strung up and above the doorway a sign is painted in pink ‘Welcome to Aunt Lucy’s tea rooms.’ Potted plants and tea trolleys stacked with cakes and sweet goodies decorate the hall. Meanwhile, the walkways of the main atrium are lined with flower-filled window boxes, bunting, strings of lanterns and a banner that reads ‘Prison Sweet Prison’ (Fig. 17). A hopeful and redemptive quality is indicated by the fact that when Paddington is freed the prison doesn’t return to the way it looked before his arrival. Instead, the positive changes actually continue with a theatrical makeover reflecting the new resident, actor Phoenix Buchanan. The trajectory of change continues to foreground the strong community and friendship that was forged through the preparation and sharing of food and now

Fig. 16  The symmetrical prison dining hall prior to the makeover

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Fig. 17  The dining hall transformed into Aunt Lucy’s tea room

Fig. 18  Phoenix Buchanan continues the transformation initiated by Paddington, adding theatrical lighting and costume adjustments

through music and dance. For example, the prison uniforms are still pink and have been customized to add flared trousers and waistcoats. Phoenix’s name appears in lights in the atrium accompanied by spotlights, and pastel-colored umbrellas as props for an extravagant musical show stopper (Fig. 18).

Conclusions Paddington changes the uniform, the attitudes, the diet, the environment and the futures of the other prison inhabitants. The design helps tell that story through the vocabulary of the Visual Concept. This chapter analyzes the design of the prison in Paddington 2 using the Visual Concept approach, which can usefully be applied to a production as an analytical tool and

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support a greater appreciation of the filmmaking process. Rooted in the practice itself through a consideration of the designer’s vocabulary for visualizing a story, a deeper understanding of design elements can be achieved. Through the discussion, I have indicated the ways in which the characters, narrative and themes of a script may be enhanced through the deliberate use of Space, In and out, Light, Color and Set decoration. The boundary between interior and exterior is reinforced through the design, accentuating the division between the prison space and the outside world. The prison setting forms a linking device between Paddington leaving and returning home. This enables the importance of his home to be reiterated and re-established; he belongs there in spite of having come from somewhere else (Peru). Windsor Gardens is now his home and he is a welcome and valued member of the community. As Foucault asserts, the prison’s mechanism of control derives from the routinisation of time, space and activity with the aim of producing docile bodies (Foucault 1975). The prison does not appear to hold any potential for rehabilitation—when Paddington arrives it is a liminal space of incarceration and deprivation.7 It is Paddington who introduces a reformative element to the environment, which as we have seen improves the physical setting, reflecting the positive psychological impact of his presence. During the end credits, we see that his co-escapees have all gone on to turn their lives around to the benefit of themselves and society. In Paddington 2, the prison characters become energized, having been institutionalized they begin to regenerate. Paddington dissents from the narrative expectations of the prison environment he is placed in. This is reflective of some modern approaches to prison design that attempt to create calmer atmospheres and employ art and cooking therapeutically as forms of rejuvenation, fostering a sense of community.8 The unconventional use of space, in order to escape, breaks the rules of spatial navigation and subverts the intended function of the clock into a way out of captivity. Paddington uses the prison of popular myth as a vehicle for change, his unconventional outsider status enables him to transgress physical and psychological boundaries and to reinterpret and revise space to more closely reflect his belief systems. The contrast that is initially established between Windsor Gardens and the prison is reversed when the prison evolves to reflect Paddington’s interior landscape. Helping others is a key to Paddington’s character; we witness the effect his absence in Windsor Gardens has on the residents there. One by one, their lives are shown to be less sweet—grumpy, selfish, sad elements creep into their characters. This provides contrast to the positive effect Paddington is having on the prison population and environment. Paddington does eventually return home to Windsor Gardens, closing the circle that Richard Sylbert refers to, his home interior has not changed since he left it, signifying a return to safety and security. The reassuringly static

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setting highlights the importance of his journey and a sense of relief that he is now safe and sound is well deserved. Paddington wakes up snug in his own little bed surrounded by the Browns in a scene that echoes Dorothy’s return in The Wizard of Oz—reminding us ‘there’s no place like home.’

Notes 1.  The Visual Concept is covered in more depth in the book, Barnwell, J. Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television. London, 2017. 2. Paddington’s sentencing may be read as the scapegoating of an outsider. As Rene Girard (1972) states, the potential violence of a community directed toward an other rather than on itself. 3. Angela Smith (2006) offers an ‘anti racist’ reading of the book A Bear Called Paddington. 4. A similarly audacious use of space can be seen in the film Die Hard, with John Maclean’s continual rupturing of space to create new exit and entry points. 5. Red is also used to signify the theatrical world of Mr. Gruber’s antique shop, the circus and Phoenix Buchanan’s secret attic. 6.  Buchanan’s agent (Joanna Lumley) goes to The Ritz to meet a Broadway producer. 7. Architectural Digest, Slade, Rachel, 30 April 2018. It just took one night inside a US jail to move Frank Gehry to run a Spring 2017 semester course at Yale exploring the design of prison facilities. He encouraged his students to rethink incarceration as an opportunity for rehabilitation rather than punishment and took them to Northern Europe and Scandinavia, where prisons look and perform more like college campuses than fortresses. 8. Samson, Lindsay, 28 March 2018, Design INDABA Each cell features long vertical windows to maximize the light that enters, and its green surroundings are easily viewed in common areas (‘the opportunity to follow seasonal changes helps to clarify the passage of time for the inmates,’ explains prison warden Are Høidal). Safety glass is utilised so that bars can be avoided; and shared living and food-preparation spaces are included to encourage cooperation between inmates. The primary goal of the space is to rehabilitate, a radical aim when the vast majority of the world’s prison systems are more focused on doling out punishment.

References Barnwell, J. 2017. Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television. Bloomsbury: London. Bellantoni, Patti. 2005. If It’s Purple Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Colour in Visual Storytelling, 5–39. Burlington: Focal Press. Drummond, Gillian. 2015. “A Style Called Paddington.” 3StoryMagazine. http://3storymagazine.com/style-tips-paddington-bear/. Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London, UK: Penguin Books.

242  J. BARNWELL Girard, Rene. 1972. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Jacobs, Steven. 2013. The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. New York: Columbia University Press. McCann, Benn. 2004. “A Discreet Character? Action Spaces and Architectural Specificity in French Poetic Realist Cinema.” Screen 45, no. 4: 375–382. Sylbert, Richard. 1989. “Production Designer Is His Title: Creating Realities Is His Job.” American Film 15, no. 3: 22–26. Smith, Angela. 2006. “Paddington Bear: A Case Study in Immigration and Otherness.” Children’s Literature in Education 37, no. 1: 35–50. Sylvester, David. 2000. Moonraker, Strangelove and Other Celluloid Dreams: The Visionary Art of Ken Adam. London: Serpentine Gallery.

Further Readings Affron, C., and M. J. Affron. 1995. Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. Barsacq, Leon. 1976. Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design. New America Library. Bentham, Jeremy. 1787. The Works of Jeremy Bentham Volume 4. Edited by John Bowring. Edinburgh: William Tait. Bergfelder, Tim, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street. 2007. Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Carrick, Edward. 1941. Designing for Moving Pictures. London: Studio Publications. Ede, Laurie. 2010. British Film Design: A History, London: I.B. Tauris. Fairweather, Leslie. 1961. “Prison Architecture in England.” The British Journal of Criminology 1, no. 4: 339–361. Freud, Sigmund. 1955. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press. Neumann, Dietrich. 1997. Film Architecture from Metropolis to Blade Runner. Munich: Prestel. Rafter, N. 2006. Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkinson, Tom. 2018. “Typology: Prison.” The Architectural Review, June issue on Power and Justice. Wollen, Peter. 2002. Architecture and Film: Places and Non Places in ‘Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film’. London: Verso.

How Do American Prisons Handle Disorder? An Examination of the Relevance of Disorder Theories and a Comparison with Popular Media Portrayals Rodger C. Benefiel

Introduction This chapter explores the incongruity between the reality of prisons in the United States and popular media portrayals. The chapter begins with a violent incident that occurred in a US federal prison and details how the administration responded to it. The response shows that all the prominent theories of disorder (deprivation, importation, administrative control) have a part to play in how prisons are run, with the common thread being the salience of prison management. Unfortunately, the media depicts prison life differently. This is demonstrated through a brief historical explanation of how views regarding prisons and punishment have changed in the United States over the past 90 years, how academic study has approached the problem, and how the media’s treatment of prisons is a reflection of prevailing public opinion. As the views about prison and punishment changed in society, so did the media’s portrayals. Unfortunately, while the media’s methods have changed, the editorializing has not—prisons continue to be presented through the eyes of the inmates and their experiences, often stereotyping prison management in a way that has impacted public opinion regarding how prisons work and their purpose in a civilized society. R. C. Benefiel (*)  Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_15

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A Homicide in a US Prison On a Tuesday morning in late December 2002, around 7:30 a.m., a homicide occurred in a high-security US Federal Penitentiary. There was no big build-up to this event, no signs of tension or disorder, no way to predict a seminal event was about to occur. It began as a simple argument in the Bakery around 5:30 a.m., when a middle-aged white inmate used one of the “good” sheet pans to cook some stolen eggs in the oven, which offended an older black inmate from the District of Columbia (DC). The two inmates fought, and the black inmate received a broken nose. Fights in prison are relatively common, but for several reasons this became a serious incident in the convict world at this prison, not just because it involved inmates from different races, but more importantly because the inmate that started the fight got the upper hand. In other words, the black inmate was disrespected, and that fact had serious ramifications.

Formation of Inmate Group Subcultures The inmate culture is based on a conceptualization of respect that permeates virtually every aspect of their lives (Ohlin 1956; Grosser 1960; Sykes and Messinger 1960; Carroll 1974; Jacobs 1977; Akers et al. 1977; Innes 1997; Anderson 1999). Since the black inmate was from the DC, one possible reaction could have been for the DC inmates to retaliate against white inmates in general; indeed, there are several documented instances where racial tensions have led to large-scale disturbances (Useem and Kimball 1991; Useem et al. 1996; Schwartz and Barry 2005). The experiences of inmates in a US Federal Penitentiary, however, are that large-scale altercations will often result in negative consequences for the entire population (Fleisher 1989) that may outweigh the temporary satisfaction of a disturbance; therefore, inmates often find other ways to restore respect and stay within the norms and values of the inmate culture. In US federal prisons, inmates divide themselves into distinct groups that can be based on race, security threat group affiliation, geographic area, or a combination thereof. Inmate groups have long been documented in US prisons (Clemmer 1958), but the influx of gangs beginning in the 1950s (Skarbek 2014) created a new dynamic. Inmates (both gang and non-gang members) tend to interact with each other based on the group they belong to. Groups can be formed based on location (inmates from Kansas City or St. Louis), religion (Muslim, Christian, Jewish), ideology (such as white supremacist), or by gang. Further, membership in these groups is often fluid. If there are several inmates from Kansas City, they will form what is known in federal prison as a “car.” If there are not that many from Kansas City, the “car” may expand to include inmates from Missouri, Oklahoma, or Nebraska, in order to form a group large enough to command respect among the other inmates.

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It is these groups that interact with each other and is one of the main reasons gangs have not had the influence in federal prisons they appear to have on some State-level systems. For example, if an incident arises between an inmate who is part of the Vice Lords and an inmate who is not from a gang but is associated with a locality group, the inmates from that locality will deal as a group with the Vice Lords. When inmates divide themselves into groups, some emerge as spokespersons or leaders, who deal with the leaders of other groups to resolve differences (McCleery 1961a, b; Zald 1961). The locality groups take on the form and function of a gang. This has serious consequences for the prison. Inmates rarely stand alone; most of them belong to some sort of group. When inmates react with each other, or when they react with staff, they have to conform to the norms of the inmate society, but they also have to conform to the norms of their group. Federal prison staff are aware these groups and leaders exist, but their presence is not necessarily the result of a need to share power with inmates to maintain order, as proffered by Sykes (1958) and Colvin (1992), nor is their existence inextricably linked to an increase in disorder, as suggested by Useem and Kimball (1991) and Reisig (1998); instead, the existence of inmate groups and leaders is accepted as a natural phenomenon to be managed (Grosser 1960; Schrag 1961).1 Staff not only tolerate groups—they use them to manage the wider inmate population. Staff do this because the inmate culture often supports the institution’s goal of reduced disorder (McCleery 1960),2 due in part to their desire to normalize prison operations and hold on to the creature comforts they have accumulated (DiIulio 1987; Sparks and Bottoms 1995; Carrabine 2005). Continuance of normal prison operations is important to inmates because when serious threats to order occur, federal prison administrations respond very quickly, often with a complete lockdown of the institution. Once lockdowns begin, they are usually accompanied by a thorough search of the prison and the inmates, called a “shakedown.” During shakedowns, inmates remain secured in their cells, which disrupts their daily routines (Bottoms 1999). Their belongings are searched, contraband is seized, and the precipitating incident is investigated. The investigation often results in the placement of the involved inmates in administration detention pending discipline. In all likelihood, several of those involved in the altercation will be transferred to other institutions, disrupting relations and disturbing power structures within and between groups. Thus, inmates in federal prisons are aware that the administration will not return to normal operations immediately upon resolving an incident but will instead take corrective actions that seriously disrupt inmate daily routines and negatively impacts their ability to acquire and maintain creature comforts.

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Using the Group Subculture to Resolve Disputes Fortunately for inmates, the values contained within the culture of conflict allow for alternative methods of resolving disputes. As Simmel (1955, 17) noted, “(When) the fight is centered in a purpose outside itself, it is qualified by the fact that, in principle, every end can be attained by more than one means.” In other words, while the inmate culture requires that something be done to restore respect, it is not necessary to engage in a full-scale disturbance if there are other ways to do it. In federal prisons, one commonly used restorative practice is to have the leaders of the respective groups determine which inmate was in the wrong, with the offending inmate being disciplined (assaulted) by members of his own group. Depending on the group and the offense, sometimes the inmate is assaulted but allowed to remain in the general population, and sometimes he is told to request protective custody (called “checking in”). However, even if an inmate is disciplined and allowed by the other inmates to remain in general population, his injuries are often discovered by staff, and he is placed in administrative detention pending investigation anyway. In investigations like these, the assaulters are usually discovered (modern prisons have a plethora of cameras and there are very few secrets in prison), with the assaulting inmates receiving formal sanctions (which can include a transfer to another prison, depending on the incident). Sometimes the assaulted inmate is transferred if it is believed his release back into general population will result in him being assaulted again, and sometimes the assaulted inmate is returned to general population if the incident has been resolved. This arrangement, where the administration uses its ability to discipline and transfer inmates to maintain order, allows for inmate groups to save face with minimal disruption to prison operations.3 However, in the case of the homicide described above, internal inmate discipline was not imposed against the white inmate that disrespected the DC inmate. Instead, the leader of the white inmates in that cell block proposed to the DC inmate leader that the two inmates fight again, which was acceptable to the DC leader. On the surface, this appeared to be a commonsense solution to the problem, as do-over fights are common. Besides, the white leader knew the offending inmate to be a thief and junkie and reasoned he should have to fight his way out of his own problems.4 It is important to remember how quickly these events were occurring. The fight in the bakery happened sometime around 5:00 a.m. The inmates returned to their inmates after breakfast, around 7:00 a.m. The inmates reported the incident to their respective leaders, the leaders met, and a do-over fight was proposed and accepted. By the time the fight began around 7:30 a.m., only about two and a half hours had elapsed. Lookouts were posted and the two inmates were directed to fight a second time in the back TV room of their housing unit. (This room was chosen because it was the farthest from the officer’s station and was often left dark for TV watching, thus minimizing the chance of staff observing.)

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However, it quickly became apparent that neither inmate wanted to fight again. The DC inmates, who needed this fight to restore their sense of respect, reacted by pulling their inmate from the fight and replacing him with his nephew, who was quite a bit younger but much smaller than the white inmate. The nephew did some shadow-boxing and swung a plastic chair a few times, but once again it appeared a satisfactory fight was not going to happen. It was at that time that a young DC inmate, who was guarding the door to the TV room, pulled a seven-inch homemade weapon (a “shank”) out of his pocket on his own volition and began brutally stabbing the white inmate (28 times total). The victim fell to his knees at first but managed to stumble out of the TV room as the observing inmates scattered to their cells. The sound and movement of the inmates returning to their cells alerted staff, who sounded a general alarm when they observed the bleeding victim staggering toward the center of the unit. He died in the institution hospital a few minutes later. Strange as it may seem, homicides do not often occur in federal prisons. There were only three murders in federal prisons in 2002 (a rate of 2.1 per 100,000 inmates), and the homicide rate for all State prisons at the time was only 4.0 per 100,000 inmates. By way of comparison, the homicide rate for all US citizens was 6.0 per 100,000; Noonan 2012). While rare, when they occur they stand out as shining examples of disorder and can be used as a reliable source for testing theories of why disorder occurs in prison (Reisig 2002).5

Using Theories of Disorder to Explain the Example Deprivation Theory. The first disorder theory that can be used to explain why the homicide occurred is deprivation (Clemmer 1958; Sykes 1958; Cloward 1960; Goffman 1961a, b; Colvin 1992). Deprivation theory posits that the collective experience of being held in a restrictive and coercive environment produces a specific set of values that dictate how inmates relate to each other and to prison staff (Clemmer 1958; Sykes 1958; Sykes and Messinger 1960). Additionally, the socialization of inmates into prison results in a sense of powerlessness and depersonalization that drives inmates to attempt to regain control of their environment through the accumulation of amenities. In fact, material possessions become so important to inmates that “to be stripped of them is to be attacked at the deepest layers of personality” (Sykes 1958, 69). In the homicide discussed here, the effect of deprivation is apparent: Two inmates got into a fight over the misuse of a sheet pan to cook eggs, and the reaction of the inmate community resulted in a violent death. The reason the pan was important enough to fight over was because the bakers only used it to make sweet rolls, which were very popular for weekend brunches (federal prisons don’t serve a full breakfast on weekends; they have a morning coffee hour). Cooking eggs on the pan would leave permanent grease marks, which the black inmate saw as extremely disrespectful. To the white

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inmate, however, being told he could not use the pan was disrespectful. After all, it belonged to the prison and, to him, any chance to get over was worth taking, since he had no regard for anything or anyone associated with the prison (McCorkle and Korn 1954; Goffman 1961a). Deprivation theory can help explain why the initial fight occurred and can be used to account for the existence of cultural values that demanded the restoration of respect with a second fight but it cannot fully explain the homicidal act. For that, we need the subcultural values of the murderer. Importation Theory. Importation theory (Irwin and Cressey 1962; Irwin 1980; Leger and Barnes 1986; Cao et al. 1997), counters deprivation theory by asserting it is impossible to completely separate the inmate from the experiences and social ties he had prior to entering prison. Importation does not seek to dismiss deprivation theory, but rather to show that the degree of conformity to prison values depends on prior experiences that have a dramatic effect on how inmates perceive situations. According to importation theory, psychological and demographic factors, such as age (Ellis et al. 1974), race (Harer and Steffensmeier 1996), and criminality (Toch et al. 1987; Poole and Regoli 1983; Camp et al. 2003) condition how an inmate copes with the experiences of being in prison (Irwin 1980). In this incident, the inmate who committed the murder was black, and research has suggested the experiences of minorities in the criminal justice system influence cultural adaptations that equate violence with self-respect (Anderson 1999). Leger and Barnes (1986) demonstrated that for black inmates, the more contact they had with the criminal justice system the more likely they were to feel as if they were being discriminated against, which led to a stronger adherence to the inmate culture. In fact, Innes (1997) asserted that under importation theory, the same individual factors used to predict criminal behavior in general can be used to predict inmate misconduct. Importation theory provides a salient explanation for the homicide itself. While the idea of having the inmates fight a second time is consistent with early sociological observations that the inmate culture places a premium on interpersonal violence (Ohlin 1956), importation theory helps explain the over-development of those values by showing that the hyper-masculinity present in prison (where aggression, violence, and respect are intertwined) is the product of the interaction between pre-prison experiences and the inmate subculture. This is apparent in the inmate who committed the murder, a 23-year-old black offender from the DC serving a long sentence for a violent crime. The murderer had no direct connection to the victim other than the fact that he lived in the same housing unit, was from the same geographic location as the older black inmate involved in the original fight, and was chosen to guard the door during the second fight. It is possible he was driven by impulsivity and low self-control (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990), but it can also be argued that his actions were due to being part of a pre-prison culture that (1) permitted the use of violence to gain respect (which is prized as a form of social capital; see Anderson 1999), and (2) has politicized criminal

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behavior as being the result of “political and economic deprivation of Black America by the Anglo-American State” (Chrisman 1971, 45, 46). Administrative Control Theory. Advocates of administrative control theory (DiIulio 1987; Useem and Kimball 1991; Useem et al. 1996; Useem and Reisig 1999) would counter that the key factors in this homicide were not “the organization of the inmates but the disorganization of the state” (Useem and Kimball 1991, 215). Administrative control theory suggests that the consistent and equitable application of formal rules and sanctions mitigates disorder (DiIulio 1987), to which administrative breakdown theory adds that the absence of responsible management contributes to disorder.6 According to Useem and Kimball (1991), there are several indicators that demonstrate extreme lapses in security, which result in (1) the inmates developing the impression that deprivation surpasses legitimate bounds, and (2) the systematic erosion of available security systems to control inmate behavior. A review of the incidents leading up to the homicide revealed several occurrences that support the notion that lax security protocols contributed to the chain of events culminating in the homicide. How did a fight in the bakery go unnoticed by staff? How did an inmate with a bloody nose manage to walk back to his housing unit from food service (in this prison, past three checkpoints) unnoticed? How were the inmates able to congregate outside a dark TV room at 7:30 a.m. without staff intervention? Why was the TV room routinely left dark? Why was metal available to the inmates, and how did someone manage to make a weapon without being caught? How did someone manage to smuggle a weapon inside past several walk-through metal detectors and into the housing unit? All of these questions suggest a failure of leadership, what Boin and Rattray (2004, 52) called, “a continuous violation of precautionary measures which could prevent the disaster from happening.” Clearly, there were breakdowns in the administrative control of the prison that, had they not occurred, might have prevented the homicide from occurring at that time. On the other hand, after the inter-racial homicide occurred, there was no riot. In fact, there was no retaliation at all once the institution returned to normal operations. Why not? Part of it could possibly be explained by the values of an inmate culture that allowed the second fight to occur in order to settle a disrespect issue (Simmel 1955), but then again not retaliating after a cross-racial homicide without provocation was something else altogether. In this case, the eventual transition from crisis to normal operations without further violence was due to how the prison reacted, which could only have been accomplished through a close working relationship between management and line staff. Once the alarm was sounded, the initial reaction followed a standard protocol. Responding staff immediately tended to the victim as other staff began securing inmates in their cells, followed by visual searches of every inmate in the unit. During the initial lockdown, one staff member noticed a blood trail leading from the back TV room (where the homicide occurred) to a specific cell and another staff member noticed there were water spots on

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the floor between that cell and an upstairs TV room. An officer followed the trail of water and found the rinsed-off murder weapon under a pillow on a chair. The inmate whose cell the blood trail led to was placed in administrative detention (along with a few others found with blood on their clothes). As this was occurring, the victim was rushed to the institution hospital where staff initiated emergency life-saving measures. At the same time, the shift lieutenant made the decision to secure the entire institution and conduct an emergency count, which reduced the likelihood of impromptu reactions by non-involved inmates and ensured no one used the incident as an opportunity to attempt an escape. It is important to understand that all of these activities are occurring more or less simultaneously. In US prisons, managers and staff have learned through trial-and-error how to respond to critical incidents and minimize the possibility of continued disruption (Schwartz and Barry 2005). When the homicide occurred, there were approximately 140 staff in the institution, ranging from correctional officers to administrators to clerical/support employees and maintenance workers. Once the general alarm was sounded, they all responded in some manner to resolve the incident; some intuitively and experientially knew what to do, and others were given specific tasks to accomplish by the shift lieutenant.7 After the emergency count cleared, investigative staff began processing evidence with the help of an FBI agent who was called in to assist (all crimes occurring in US federal prisons are under FBI jurisdiction). As this was occurring, the warden met with his executive staff to organize the institution’s long-term response. In addition to the immediate reaction to the homicide, the warden had to account for the continued safety of staff and inmates by addressing the existence of any additional weapons, and he had to take steps to prevent the possibility of retaliatory actions once the institution was restored to normal operations. The warden decided to temporarily remove all 400 DC inmates in the institution from general population and place them in administrative detention. Under the direction of the chief correctional supervisor, once all the inmates were secured in their cells and counted to ensure no one had escaped, over the next ten hours all staff in the institution worked together to systematically lock up 400 DC inmates, which included opening up an unused unit, outfitting it (distributing linen and mattresses to the cells, making sure each cell had working plumbing and electricity, etc.), and thoroughly searching every inmate and his property as they were moved. After all the DC inmates were secured, the institution left the remaining inmates in lockdown and began a methodical search of every inmate, every cell, and every common area in the institution. Searching a prison with over 1800 high-security inmates takes time to accomplish, so procedures were established to manage a protracted lockdown. Arrangements were made to feed the inmates in their cells, allow them to shop commissary, and exchange their laundry and bedding. Escort teams were set up to move them to the showers. The executive staff were highly visible throughout this process, making

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daily rounds throughout the institution, and additional staff were assigned to the housing units to allow for closer supervision. General staff meetings were held twice daily to make sure everyone was kept aware of what was going on. The lockdown continued until every inmate was searched and mass interviews were completed. During these interviews, investigative staff conducted targeted interviews, solicited memoranda from responding staff, and reviewed video surveillance in order to (1) determine what caused the homicide and (2) gauge how the inmates would react once the institution returned to normal operations. After the shakedown was completed, the warden turned his attention to re-integrating the DC inmates back into general population (he knew from experience the inmates would accept being secured temporarily, but if it took too long to return them the move would appear punitive and they would begin to be disruptive). The strategy he used was to release the older and more respected DC inmates first, so they could re-establish a rapport with the other inmate groups. Additional DC inmates were returned to population each day, based on age and incident report history, until only a few troublesome inmates remained. Those few were administratively transferred to other prisons (even though they were not directly involved in the original incident), and when the entire institution was back together it functioned as if no homicide had occurred. The institution had been made safer because several weapons and numerous items of contraband had been confiscated, and enough evidence was gathered to charge the offending inmate, who eventually pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received an additional ten-year sentence. Moreover, the warden implemented additional security procedures designed to reduce the likelihood of weapons being manufactured and smuggled into the housing units, and he eliminated the possibility of the back TV room being used for assaults and fights by removing a wall and making it a well-lit alcove with full staff visibility. Beyond the physical response, the administration undertook several relationship-based actions. Prior to letting the DC inmates back into population, the warden took the unusual step of directly addressing the DC inmate leaders in a small-group setting, listening to their concerns. He then met with the inmate leaders of the other groups and allowed them to voice their issues. He did not share power with the inmates, but he allowed them to freely express themselves while making his position known. All of this was possible because the staff had a good working knowledge of the inmates and a professional relationship with the inmates. They were able to gain additional knowledge during interviews about how sub-groups within the DC inmates interacted as well as how the DC inmates interacted with other groups. This information was extremely important when devising an exit strategy in this case, and it helped the institution respond more effectively to future instances of misconduct involving DC inmates. Even though there were several breakdowns that contributed to the homicide taking place, the institution’s imperforate response prevented a riot

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(Boin and Van Duin 1995). Of course, not all prisons respond to homicides in the exact way this one did, but many do respond similarly. The issue for prisons and their public perception, however, is that this type of management—one based on positive administrative control (Benefiel 2018) and combines sophisticated control techniques with relationship building based on social exchange (Emerson 1976) is not often portrayed in the media or in academia. The disconnect between what the public sees and what actually happens is a factor in the negative perception many people have of prisons and prison work.

Media and Societal Perceptions of Prison Over Time: Rehabilitation and the Medical Model In the period prior to the mid-1950s, American society’s overarching paradigm regarding crime, punishment and prison was one of penal welfarism (Garland 2001). Under penal welfarism, the rehabilitative ideal was most influential. Central to the rehabilitative ideal was the medical model, or the idea that an offender was “sick” (mentally, psychologically, socially, or physiologically), and that society had the ability to both identify what was wrong with the individual and design an individualized treatment program to help the offender reintegrate back into society (Task Force on Corrections 1967; MacNamara 1977). As the medical model grew in popularity, it became a euphemism for a larger rehabilitative ideal (Cullen 2005), which was characterized by wide discretion for the judiciary, broad paroling authority, and extensive commutation and pardoning powers. For individual inmate, there should be an ample variety of treatment alternatives available (both in the institution and in the community) along with considerable social support designed to help the offender reintegrate back into society (MacNamara 1977). The emphasis on programming and treatment was central to this organizational model, since the goal was to rehabilitate the offender and help him or her successfully transition into a productive member of society upon release (Cullen and Gilbert 2012; Andrews et al. 1990; Cullen and Gendreau 2000; Cullen 2007). Prison research at the time was primarily sociological in nature and concentrated on how prisoners adapted to the social world of the prison. Clemmer’s (1958) The Prison Community, for example, was the result of years of observations Donald Clemmer made while working as a sociologist in the Illinois State prison system. Clemmer proffered that inmates and staff together form a type of community, with its own norms and values. New inmates must socialize into this world, a process he called prisonization. Clemmer believed there were two structural aspects to prison that had the greatest influence on their attitudes about incarceration: the cleavage between staff and inmates and the formation of primary and secondary groups among the inmates. To Clemmer, prison society was largely unstructured, and while inmates were in constant conflict with staff, they were also in conflict with each other.

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Several movies at the time grew out of perceptions about how conflict in prison worked and how argot roles influenced it. Up the River, a 1930 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy, was one such movie (Ford 1930). The film is not specifically about the structure of prison or the experiences of inmates; it’s a love story set in a prison. The story revolves around the relationship between Steve Jordan (Bogart) and a female inmate in an attached female prison (Clair Luce). However, the conflict between inmates, the roles inmates play, and the conflict between inmates and staff are all present in the movie. There is one scene where a new inmate is being accosted by a bully (Ward Bond). The conflict escalates when Steve intervenes on behalf of the new inmate, and soon afterward the bully is accosted by Spencer Tracy’s character (Saint Louis). In this movie, the prison is portrayed in a manner fairly consistent with the extant literature—even though the story is about the inmates and the prison officers are portrayed as aggressive, short-tempered enforcers. Just like in the literature, the role management plays in prison is minimized. The real story, according to academics and the media, is the inmates.

Changing Views of Inmates Eventually, as society became frustrated with penal welfarism and the system endured ideological attacks from both the political left and the political right (Garland 2001), our views on crime and punishment changed. By the 1960s, criminals were no longer being viewed as pathological (the pathology follows from the idea that criminal thinking must be symptomatic of a deeper problem, most likely caused by social conditions and marginalization). Instead, criminal/deviant behavior began to be viewed as a normal response to conditions in society (Garland 1990). There is a scene in the 1962 film The Birdman of Alcatraz where inmate Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) is speaking with Warden Harvey Shoemaker (Karl Malden). In this particular scene, inmate Stroud has just finished his biopic/indictment of the federal prison system, based on his experiences and wants to know what the warden thought of his book. Warden Shoemaker takes offense to inmate Stroud’s criticisms of the system, and inmate Stroud responds by saying the warden is not really trying to improve the lives of the inmates. He is only trying to control them, to conform them to a societal standard of acceptable behavior: Do you consider that part of your job, Harvey? To give a man back the dignity he once had? Your only interest is in how he behaves. You told me that once a long time ago, and I’ll never forget it. ‘You’ll conform to our ideas of how you should behave.’ And you haven’t retreated from that stand one inch in 35 years. You want your prisoners to dance out the gates like puppets on a string, with rubber-stamp values impressed by you, with your sense of conformity, your sense of behavior, even your sense of morality. That’s why you’re a failure, Harvey. You and the whole science of penology. (Frankenheimer 1962)

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What is important about this exchange (beyond the obvious fallacies between how Robert Stroud is portrayed in the movie versus his actual behavior in prison and the homicides he committed) is the tone of the dialogue. The inmate is portrayed as the victim, the unwitting participant in a system that uses punishment to force conformity to a societal ideal.

Reflecting Societal Views A shift has occurred in how society is viewing prison and how the media is reflecting it. The people behind The Birdman of Alcatraz did not invent these ideals; they were mirroring the feelings of many in society at the time. Wider American society was moving away from the modernist view of government inherent in penal welfarism (Garland 2001), and distrust of government agencies was readily apparent in the critiques of prisons. At issue was the contradiction inherent in authoritarian prison operations. The early sociological studies highlighted these problems and generally came to the conclusion that tight controls and restrictions on staff-inmate interactions rendered prison administrations incapable of managing inmates effectively (Clemmer 1958; Sykes 1958; Cressey 1958, 1959; Cloward 1960; Goffman 1961a, b). Because the early studies concentrated on inmates experiences in primarily single-site studies, the perspective of prison managers was not often considered. When it was the studies tended to conclude that prisons who managed least managed best. Since the experiences of inmates were the goal, in the movies management was used as a foil to represent the harshness and brutality of prison.8 A useful example of how prison movies were using staff/inmate conflict to highlight and celebrate the indomitable spirit of inmates fighting a repressive system is the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. In one famous scene, Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is being returned from his first escape attempt when he makes a remark to the Captain (Strother Martin). The Captain strikes Luke, causing him to fall to the ground. The Captain then tells the observing inmates: What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So, we get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. So, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men. (Rosenberg 1967)

The movie is using the relationship between Luke and the prison to comment on larger issues in society. Luke represents freethinking. As such, he is a threat to the status quo. So, society (the prison) responds with a mix of physically and emotionally tortuous punishments to break his spirit and to demonstrate to others the futility of rebelling against the system. Luke, of course, never loses his desire to escape and live freely and ultimately loses his life in the struggle. To be fair, the movie is less about prison than it is about society in the 1960s, but using prison as a backdrop works because the media has accepted the idea that prisons are by nature repressive places where inmates are routinely abused in the name of discipline and order.

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The Relationship Between Mass Media and Prisons There is not a lot of literature focusing specifically on the relationship between prisons and the media. The literature understandably concentrates on the larger issue of how crime and punishment is perceived in the media. Television, for example, has been offered as a driving force behind America’s fear of crime (Cohen 2011; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009), as well as fomenting moral panics that have driven politicians to pass laws and enact policies that have short-term advantages for assuaging fear of crime but have long-term consequences on society (Garland 2001). In the brief examples provided in this chapter, we are seeing that television is reflecting existing attitudes in society and is highlighting both the staff/inmate conflict in prison and elevating the experiences of inmates while denigrating the role of staff in running a prison. The media did not create the idea that prisons were repressive places or that prison administrations were archaic, heavy-handed, and unwilling to change. What the media did was take these ideas and use them in a format that reaches an entire society. So, the stereotypes presented eventually they work their way into society’s collective conscious regarding prisons, even though they may not be accurate. A good example of how practitioners actually viewed their job (which is not often reflected in the media or in academia) is the work of James V. Bennett, who was the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 1937 to 1964. In the early 1950s, following a series of riots that impacted prisons across the United States, Bennett responded to the academic suggestions that the riots were the direct result of overly harsh or overly lax discipline. Bennett (1952) did not agree that harsh conditions and inconsistent discipline were the causative factors, but he acknowledged conditions were bad in some prisons and discipline was not always consistent. Bennett’s argument was that these facts are symptoms of a larger problem—poorly paid and untrained staff were dealing with inmates harboring a deep sense of injustice toward the system that put them in prison. Bennett (1952) believed the first order of business was safely and securely housing inmates; once that was established, capable prison leadership must ensure prison conditions are humane, livable, free from coercion, and that treatment programs are offered to those who would take them.9 This disconnect between how administrators viewed their job, how academics viewed prisons, and how the media propagated stereotypes about prison was not new, but it is important to remember that television is not motivated by presenting factual accounts—it is first and foremost an instrument of entertainment. Even the news, when played on television, has an element of entertainment to it. It is also capable of reaching millions of people instantly. So, when the United States, again changed its views regarding crime and punishment in the 1980s, the coverage of prisons on television and other forms of mass media changed.

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Contemporary Portrayals of Prisons in Mass Media In American society, the paradigm of penal welfarism began to collapse in the early 1970s. By 1975 or so, it ceased to occupy a prominent place in attitudes toward crime and punishment. In its place was a more conservative, reactionary response to crime that was more about addressing the impact of crime, or the fear of crime, than it was about addressing the problem of crime (Garland 1990, 2001). As a result, American crime policies became more punitive than ever and incarceration rates rose rapidly. Incarceration in the United States rose from 329,800 at the end of 1980 to 1,506,800 at the end of 2016, an increase of 358% (Kalish 1981; Carson 2018). Along with this drastic increase in prison populations was a substantive attitudinal change in the United States regarding offenders. Criminological thought was adjusting. Authors such as James Q. Wilson were arguing that evil people do exist (Wilson 2013), and criminological theories were promulgated that assumed a constant in society: the motivated, rational, calculated offender who needed to be controlled. Additionally, since everyone is a potential victim, society needs to take measures to make people less likely to become victims (Cohen and Felson 1979). This represented a dynamic shift in criminological thought. Criminals were no longer pathological in the sense that crime was pathological, nor was crime considered a normal (if not deviant) response to a classist and racist society. Now, society’s thoughts turned to protecting society by punishing the offender. Where were these incorrigible people going to go to be punished? What must it be like in these places, where thieves, killers, and rapists comingle under a singular authority?

Backstage Behavior Answering these questions took the form of what Goffman (1978) called backstage behavior. Here, authority figures, politicians, members of the public (including public institutions) were shown in revealing ways, as television went behind the curtains to expose what really goes on in our society. For prisons, this meant the creation of a type of reality show where documentary-style programs sought to give the public a glimpse of what prisons were really like. There are many such programs currently on television. One of the more recent series on National Geographic is called Hard Time (National Geographic 2019). The show advertises as having unprecedented access to life behind bars and includes interviews with inmates, officers, and wardens. The series highlights the conflicts between administrations and inmates. The idea is that there are two set of rules—one for staff, one for inmates, and life in prison is a struggle for power. The show is neither scientific nor empirical in its approach to the problem of managing a prison. It is anecdotal, and the

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show’s producers appear to be driven by the need to be both informative and entertaining. That being said, there is the possibility that the show is fairly accurate in its representation of prison life. After all, the show moves from State to State, and in the United States there are separate prison systems for each State and the Federal Government. There is going to be variance in how each State approaches the issue of maintaining control of its prisons.

Problems with Backstage Reality Shows The problem with behind-the-scenes documentaries is that they tend to concentrate on the conflicts between staff and inmates (much like earlier television shows and movies did). As has been shown, however, even in maximum security penitentiaries the relationships between staff and inmates are often much more cooperative. I remember a time when I was standing outside the main dining hall at a federal penitentiary and a high-ranking leader of a national gang approached me. I have had many conversations with this inmate, and we had built a relationship—we knew our boundaries, but we were respectful of each other. In this particular instance, the inmate told me there was going to be an assault later that day. He went on to say that there was no way I could stop it, that it was an internal discipline issue, and that they would only “touch him up” (not hurt him badly). This inmate then said that he understood I needed to solve the crime, so after the assault occurred the victim would report to the lieutenant’s office to request protection, and the inmate who did the assault would then report to the lieutenant’s office and admit to the crime. Why would the inmate do this? What kind of relationship did the administration have to have with inmates in order for an inmate even consider pre-reporting an assault? The answer lies in the example given at the beginning of the chapter. Inmates know how administrations will handle disruptive incidents, and they have learned to live in a system where the administration understands it cannot prevent all violence but is still going to react to incidents in a way the inmates do not like. So, the unofficial compromise is for the inmates to partially cooperate with prison administrators. This way, the gang gets its internal discipline and the administration solves the crime without having to resort to disruptive corrective measures. This conversation just described is not typical. It took a long time to build the relationship needed for a national gang leader and a prison investigator to speak like this. But it shows that an exchange relationship does exist in prison (Benefiel 2018) and it demonstrates that the struggle for power in a prison is much more nuanced than a reality-based television show can reveal. Prison is a place where conflict does happen, where violence can be brutal and life can be challenging. It is also a place where staff and inmates regularly and closely interact. Sometimes those interactions are negative, and sometimes they are cooperative.

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Mirroring Attitudes Popular media characterizes prisons in a manner consistent with the prevailing attitudes about prison in society. Attitudes toward prison have changed over time and how the media has presented prison life has changed, but one aspect of media renderings has remained consistent—the focus on the inmate and his/her adaptations to prison. Popular mass media does not consistently show nor does it in all likelihood understand how integral management is for the running of a prison. The reasons for this are varied and are related to a postmodern view of society that is distrustful of public institutions (Lyotard 1994). Regardless of how prisons are shown to the world, the reality is that prisons are more than just the experiences of the inmates because those experiences are directly tied to how the prison is run. Opinions on the efficacy of prisons and their place in a civilized society often come up when discussing prison management. This chapter is not designed to dissuade those conversations, but rather to point out that prisons have become part of the fabric of Western society (particularly in the United States). Prison administrators should be part of any serious discussion about the direction and purpose of prisons moving forward, understanding that they bring with them concerns about the running of a prison that often contradict the aspirations of policy makers (Ohlin 1956; Cressey 1959; Garland 2001). It is possible, though, that the reason prison management is not currently a part of these discussions is due to how it remains an afterthought in academic and media portrayals. This is unfortunate, because the truth is that prison management, for all its problems and challenges, is much more important for the quality of life inside a prison than how it is characterized in the media.

Notes 1. Prison managers have learned to manage groups of inmates, not just individual inmates. Inmates, in turn, must learn the norms and values of the group in addition to those of the prison itself. Interactions between management and inmate are thus defined by both group and individual expectations (Benefiel 2018). 2. The difference between this arrangement and the corruption of authority that Sykes (1958) and Colvin (1992) observed is that no special considerations, power, or privileges are given to inmate leaders; indeed, they are often the first to be locked up during a disturbance. Federal prison authorities simply recognize that both they and the inmates have a mutual interest in maintaining order, so prison managers use the organization of the inmate culture to reduce violence, and the inmate culture uses the administration to manage troublesome inmates. 3. The inmate groups are staying within the values of a violent subculture, but they are using the administration to remove inmates that cause problems between groups. The administration also benefits because the troublesome inmates are identified and removed before they cause bigger problems. The leaders benefit because by avoiding bigger conflicts the prison continues to run normally.

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4. Note that the fight began over the use of a sheet pan to cook eggs, but has since evolved to a question of restoring respect between black and white inmates in this highly symbolic world. 5. For discussion purposes, the three major theories compared are deprivation, importation, and administrative control. A possible fourth theory, Coping and Maladaptation (Toch et al. 1989) is very interesting in that it focuses on how some inmates maladapt to the depriving conditions of prison, but it is not often used by researchers when comparing theories of disorder. 6. There are no set definitions for disorder in the extant literature. DiIulio (1987) defines order as the absence of individual or group misconduct that threatens the safety of others. This study defines disorder as the overall amount of misconduct present, making misconduct the acts that contribute to disorder. Rates of misconduct (the dependent variable in this study) would then be a measure of institutional disorder. 7. Having everyone respond to a request for assistance is part of the culture of the Federal Prison System—every employee is considered a correctional worker first and is trained in basic correctional techniques. 8. Many could argue (and rightly so) that prisons are inherently harmful and are repressive. That argument is beyond the scope of this paper. Here, the point is to show how the media is stereotyping prison managers in toto as noxious, corrupt people. 9. Note that this is 35 years before the publication of DiIulio’s (1987) Governing Prisons, regarded by many as the starting point for a theory of inmate disorder where management occupies a central role.

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Empathy and Injustice Framed in the Media

Mediated Representations of Prisoner Experience and Public Empathy Katrina Clifford and Rob White

Introduction Prisons have historically been presented in mainstream media as either being “too soft” or “too hard”. Austere interiors, grey walls, bars, over-crowded cells and environments that are too hot and too cold are contrasted with images of recreational spaces that are filled with televisions, pool tables, gymnasiums, libraries and nutritious food. The framing of prisoners within media discourse has similarly involved categorisations that, on the one hand, portray inmates as justifiably objects of punishment, the civil dead, who deserve whatever they encounter while inside and, on the other hand, as subjects with a humanity of their own, who experience mental and physical strains, who are victims in their own right and who deserve the chance to make good (Clifford and White 2017). The “reality” is much more complicated and variable, as are local conditions and facilities. Responses to what occurs within prisons reveal significant ambivalence over the institution and the people who live and work inside it. This may be because it is not only the controversies over prison conditions that reinforce the otherness of the imprisoned; it is also the invisibility of their daily travails and the depressing nature of the institutional regime itself. The normal rhythms and routines of imprisonment have generally not been considered K. Clifford (*)  Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. White  University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_16

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newsworthy while unusual events, such as prison riots and prisoner escapes, constitute the staple of much media attention. Even where routine practices within prison are clearly aberrant and abnormal relative to life outside prison, these are rarely treated as of substantive media interest—unless, for instance, prisoners die in circumstances that warrant particular interest. Sustained analysis of mediated representations of prisons indicates that these constructions contribute to popular misunderstandings about the nature of the prison as an institution and also underpin continued public support for an institution that demonstrably fails to either rehabilitate or deter (Mason 2005; White and Graham 2010). In some jurisdictions, such as the USA and UK, solitary confinement is “the bedrock of that system” (Pendergrass 2015). As Cross and Jewkes (2019) observe, anyone who has experienced or witnessed solitary confinement conditions could not fail to be alarmed. Solitary confinement can have significantly detrimental impacts on an incarcerated person’s physical health, resulting in symptoms such as the deterioration of eyesight, sleep disturbances, fatigue, impaired memory and concentration, and cardiovascular problems (Shalev 2008). Harassment by guards, substandard food quality and poor sanitation are frequently reported (Wener 2012). Self-harm and suicide are also more common in solitary units than in less-restrictive prison environments (Raemisch 2017). Then, there are the longerterm costs associated with the ongoing mental health problems and social exclusion experienced by people after their release from prison. Critics of the practice have long argued that the negative effects of solitary confinement run counter to the primary goals of imprisonment—namely rehabilitation and social reintegration—and that the deprivations inherent to solitary confinement contravene the human rights of prisoners, constituting a form of torture (Shalev 2008). This also reflects the notion that imprisonment itself is the punishment, rather than prisons being a place for punishment. The United Nations has condemned the practice, as has the European Court of Human Rights. Organisations like Solitary Watch—a non-profit organisation that investigates, documents and disseminates information on the use of solitary confinements in US prisons—have labelled the use of solitary confinement an expensive practice that increases recidivism rates and fails to reduce violence (Heiss 2015). Estimates have it that it costs US taxpayers $75,000 to house a single person in solitary confinement for one year (bearing in mind that many people find themselves in segregation for years on end). This equates to around three times the average cost of incarceration of individuals within the general prison population (Casella and Rodriguez 2016; Reiter 2016). Estimates have it that, in the USA alone, around 80,000–100,000 people are in solitary confinement (Nolan and Amico 2017; Amnesty International 2014). The fact that prisons are generally “closed” institutions means, however, that most people have little direct knowledge of what goes on inside the prison walls, and many will have never visited a prison themselves. From the point of view of mainstream media, this means that the “…mass-produced

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symbols and meanings take on even greater importance when they pertain to situated experiences which most of us do not experience, such as incarceration” (Jewkes 2007, 447). In other words, media frames play a major part in determining “what counts” in terms of public perceptions of punishment and the emotions that accompany these perceptions (Clifford and White 2017). On the whole, significant silences exist in terms of prisoners whose stories do not get told and whose lives are not considered newsworthy (see Jewkes 2011). Towards the end of Barack Obama’s presidency (2016), the practice of solitary confinement in US prisons emerged as one of these “silences” to experience a surge in mediated visibility, in part due to the issue’s prominence on the political agenda and a nationwide push in the USA to rethink the “carceral compulsion to isolate people” (Heiss 2019). Journalists who were at the time experimenting with innovative storytelling tools—the use of virtual reality (VR) and 360º video in news production—recognised the newsworthiness of the push for penal reform and sought to develop immersive experiences that focused on the practice of solitary confinement. Over a twoyear period, a string of productions emerged, including RYOT’s Confinement (2015), The Guardian’s 6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement (2016), and PBS Frontline’s After Solitary (2017). Each one sought to shed light on the psychological deterioration and sensory deprivation that segregated prisoners experience by virtually placing users inside a US solitary confinement prison cell and giving voice to the stories of former inmates as part of the soundscapes of virtual experiences. This chapter examines how such stories of human suffering have lent themselves as ideal “test subjects” for this burgeoning style of reporting, known as immersive journalism—“the production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situation described in news stories” (de la Peña et al. 2010, 291). Through the lens of media criminology, the chapter evaluates the role of VR storytelling within professional journalistic practices, as well as its contribution to enhancing public understandings of the harsher realities of prison life. In doing so, we examine the framing effects associated with enabling media audiences to “step inside” a news story. By far, one of the most prevailing and vigorously debated of these has been VR’s capacity to create empathy among users, helping us—so the argument goes—to become better-informed, more understanding people and thereby contributing to the creation of a more compassionate and cohesive society. Empathy has long been extolled as one of the central tenets of VR, but especially since 2015 when filmmaker and digital artist Chris Milk referred to the technology as the “ultimate empathy machine” (a phrase likely borrowed from the late Roger Ebert) in his now-infamous TED talk. Since then, a number of VR projects “have legitimated themselves in these terms” (Bollmer 2017, 66). Increasingly, however, practitioners have started to question whether VR has turned out to be the moral game-changer that it was originally heralded to be.

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Critics rightfully point out that the “rhetoric of the empathy machine” has asked us to endorse the technology “without questioning the politics of its construction or who profits from it” (Yang 2017). This is quite aside from the numerous other documented applications and benefits of VR, including its capacity to hone one’s personal performance, improve learning and communication skills, assist with traumatic recovery and even prepare inmates for their release from prison and their transition back into local communities (see Dolven and Fidel 2017). It is also in spite of the fact that studies analysing how users respond to and make meaning from VR experiences remain limited (Jones 2017), as does research on the practice of immersive journalism, and the place of empathy-creation in relation to journalism’s normative ideals of objectivity and the more recent turn towards the affective in news media (see Wahl-Jorgensen 2019). In a nutshell, while apparently revolutionary and progressive, the evidence in regard to VR and associated emerging media trends is rather thin. Basic assumptions about VR’s use therefore require closer scrutiny. In this spirit, this chapter asks why it is that the empathy-creation proposition has been given such primacy in discussions about the virtues of VR and what this means for VR storytelling and ethics in a journalistic context. By way of a case study analysis of RYOT’s Confinement, The Guardian’s 6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement, and PBS Frontline’s After Solitary, we examine whether VR has really been able to live up to its reputation as the “ultimate empathy machine” when it comes to highly contentious issues, such as solitary confinement. The chapter furthermore questions whether the focus on VR’s virtues has obscured its potential shortcomings, particularly in the application of the technology to the production of law and order news.

Solitary Confinement: A Punishment for “the Specific Purpose of Breaking a Prisoner” Documenting what she calls the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons, Lisa Guenther (2013) observes: “There are many ways to destroy a person, but one of the simplest and most devastating is through prolonged solitary confinement” (xi). Prisoners in solitary confinement are often held for up to 23 hours a day for at least 15 consecutive days, with one hour sometimes provided daily for outdoor exercise. Some inmates may end up in solitary confinement for years, even decades. Confined to a small, sparsely furnished cell no bigger than a parking space with little to no natural light or views of the outside world, people in solitary confinement are socially isolated and rendered almost completely dependent on prison staff for their basic needs (Shalev 2008). Meals are provided through a slot in a solid steel door, as is most communication with prison staff. Human contact is limited, and every element of a prisoner’s environment is controlled.

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Solitary confinement, segregation, isolation, separation or the SHU, the hole, the box as it is variously known may be imposed on incarcerated people for their own protective custody or, more commonly, as a short-term punishment for prison offences. Double-cell “solitary” (the practice of putting two prisoners in a solitary confinement cell originally built for one) has also been used as a remedy to the problem of mass incarceration and overcrowding in state penitentiaries in the USA, resulting in a powder keg environment that has led in some instances to deadly consequences (Thompson and Shapiro 2016). While there are obviously occasions where corrections staff have no choice but to segregate violent inmates from the general prison population, the concern is that the practice of solitary confinement has globally been overused and misused and not applied fairly or subjected to reasonable constraints. Research has shown what common sense tells us: solitary confinement can have profoundly negative effects and long-lasting harmful outcomes for the mental health and wellbeing of prisoners subjected to the practice (Shalev 2008; Wener 2012). People report experiencing both auditory and visual hallucinations while in segregation as well as paranoid episodes and a hypersensitivity to sounds and smells. Five Omar Mualimmak spent several years of his sentence in New York prisons in “the box”. In an opinion piece for The Guardian, he wrote that while in solitary confinement, he started to hallucinate words coming out of the wind, like whispers, and smelled the paint on the walls (Mualimmak 2013). Until his release from Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola Prison) in February 2016, Albert Woodfox was one of America’s longest-standing solitary confinement prisoners, having spent the better part of 43 years in an isolation cell (Pilkington 2016; Woodfox 2019). He described the experience as “a punishment for the specific purpose of breaking a prisoner” where the only way to survive is “by adapting to the painfulness” (Woodfox 2019). Former prisoners who have spent prolonged periods in solitary confinement “have testified to experiencing difficulties in social situations long after their release” from prison (Shalev 2008, 22). The ways in which the experience of solitary confinement can undercut a prisoner’s second chance at life outside prison were noted by then-US President, Barack Obama, in a 2016 op-ed for The Washington Post. He acknowledged that a rethink on solitary confinement was required, given that those who make it out “often have trouble holding down jobs, reuniting with family and becoming productive members of society” (Obama 2016). At the time, litigation efforts were underway to challenge the constitutionality of solitary confinement in Canada and Brazil (Weil et al. 2016). Only months earlier, the UN General Assembly had resolved to adopt the Nelson Mandela Rules, prohibiting the prolonged or indefinite use of segregation, making the practice one of “last resort” to be “used only in exceptional cases” and for “as short a time as possible” (United Nations General Assembly 2016, 17). In the USA, solitary confinement had become a widely acknowledged “national

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problem” with hunger strikes, class action lawsuits, Senate hearings and forward-thinking corrections leaders placing the issue at the forefront of public, political and academic discourse. Opinion pieces on the practice of solitary confinement, including the lived experiences of former inmates, became more noticeable within mainstream media such as The Guardian, The Atlantic and The Huffington Post. Since then, a growing body of criminological research has further recognised that there is rehabilitative value in more empathetic penal architecture and design, which moves away from seeing prison spaces as “generative of only negative meanings, anchoring the ‘prisoner’ in discourses of otherness and punitive punishment” (Jewkes 2018, 323; see also Gleeds and Contributors 2016). The widespread publication of these sentiments and the strong critiques of the practice of solitary confinement reveal several things: firstly, that the traditional mystique around penal practices such as solitary confinement has diminished as a consequence of growing media interest in the issue and the increasingly unprecedented visual access granted to some of America’s harshest correctional facilities in the name of long-form investigative j­ournalism and social documentaries (see Louis Theroux: Behind Bars, Hard Time: Hustle & Prey and Stories from the Inside). Televised docudramas such as Netflix’s hugely popular series Orange is the New Black have similarly served to elevate the visibility of criminal justice and prison-related issues within the discourse of not only politicians, academics, activists and journalists, but publics too—and from the perspective of individuals who are trying to survive the criminal justice system rather than those who run it (Blake 2016). Furthermore, the widespread publication of these sentiments tells us that the framing of people in prison and prison life is not entirely unchanging and immutable (Clifford and White 2017). While there are negative framing effects from mediated representations of prisons, there is also the potential for positive framing effects, including those that can influence both penal policy and the substantive outcomes of that policy, including corrections reforms, as well as public attitudes towards offenders and punishment. For the early adopters, this was one of the envisaged benefits of using immersive journalism to engage traditional news audiences with controversial and sensitive issues. The premise is that, rather than telling audiences a story, immersive journalism places them inside the story. This is achieved through the use of VR (which produces a virtual world via computer-generated imagery) or 360° video, also known as spherical filmmaking, which records a real-world scene in which users can look up, down and around (Kijilian 2017). Participants can enter the story in one of several possible forms: as oneself (as an avatar), a visitor gaining first-hand access to a virtual version of the location where the story is occurring or through the perspective of one of the subjects in the narrative (de la Peña et al. 2010). As Kovach and Rosentiel (2001) explain: “Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. That purpose is to provide people with information they need to understand the world” (141).

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The first challenge, they argue, is finding the information while the second challenge is making it “meaningful, relevant and engaging” (Kovach and Rosentiel 2001, 189). The technological possibilities afforded by VR offer new opportunities to respond to the latter of these challenges by narrowing “the distance between audiences and news events” (Van Damme et al. 2019, 6). VR does this by offering a new form of embodiment that users can temporarily identify as their own. According to Google News Lab (2017), “[t]his ability to induce a sensation of embodiment in VR has a profound effect on expanding perspective” (11). It also has the potential, some claim, to “fundamentally change journalism” (Milk 2015)—as well as the ways in which media audiences see and participate in the world.

Immersive Journalism as an Emerging Mode of Storytelling Since 2015, legacy news brands, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC and more recently Al Jazeera, have sought to embrace immersive technologies, including VR and 360° video, as fresh and innovative narrative forms with the potential to diversify audiences in what Jones (2017) aptly describes as “a challenging news ecology” (171). In some cases, significant staff labour, finances and technical resources have been directed towards producing VR content (Archer and Finger 2018). The New York Times and The Guardian, for example, have created their own branded content and distribution platforms—apps respectively known as “NYT VR” and “The Guardian VR”—while other media organisations have either established their own immersive storytelling studios (as in the case of Al Jazeera’s “Contrast VR”) or acquired them (e.g. Verizon Media’s purchase of VR studio, RYOT). Several media organisations have sought to expand their VR expertise and experimentation through partnerships with technology companies like Google and Samsung. Often credited with leading the charge is The New York Times, which in 2015 partnered with Google to distribute over a million free Google Cardboard headsets to its print subscribers. The pivot towards immersive storytelling marked a significant shift in the business model for one of America’s oldest newspapers. As New York Times CEO Mark Thompson told the crowd at the 2016 South by Southwest Festival: “You can’t wait for someone to jump off the cliff, you have to jump first” (cited in Cohen 2016). The New York Times’ first VR experience, The Displaced, was an 11-minute feature that focused on the stories of three children in Ukraine, South Sudan and Lebanon who had been driven from their homes by war. The project formed part of the masthead’s cover story on the global refugee crisis (a not unusual occurrence for many immersive journalism experiences—to be packaged with more traditional journalistic outputs, such as longer-form online news and feature stories). Experiences like The Displaced have since become part of the staple diet of immersive journalism experiences with first-hand views of

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war, sickness and other forms of suffering comprising the warehouse of stories generally accepted as best suited to VR. Despite the growing popularity of the technology within news circles, some media outlets remain sceptical about the prospect of VR becoming a major storytelling platform in journalism’s future (Doyle et al. 2016). The quality of experiences produced to date has been variable. Those in circulation suggest that the greater the ability to block external stimuli and be part of a scene, the more effective the story immersion experienced by users and the greater the sense of presence or “being there” (Baía Reis and Coelho 2018; Aronson-Rath et al. 2015). Media organisations that recognise this have typically been more bullish about the prospect of fully immersive VR experiences as a mainstay journalistic medium. They laud the potential of VR to immerse spectators in environments they might not have otherwise encountered, allowing media audiences to empathise and understand the lives and experiences of “distant others”. Perspectives such as these assume that VR and 360° video are able to “generate new states of empathetic consciousness through which social and political change are possible” (Hassan 2019, 11). Empathy has indeed been shown to “increase understanding and motivate prosocial behaviors” (Herrera et al. 2018, 1). As Peters (2001) contends: “To witness an event is to be responsible in some way for it” (708). Perspectivetaking of this type can result in an increased empathy towards not only specific individuals, but entire communities who are typically stigmatised and marginalised (Herrera et al. 2018). This includes convicted criminals and incarcerated people. But compelling evidence to support such claims has so far been wanting, in large part, because the VR research and experimentation that have been conducted have produced mixed results. One of the more popularly cited studies is Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience. Conducted by Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the study sought to underline the often-invisible but chronic problems of homelessness. The VR experience required users to perform tasks such as selecting objects to sell to pay the rent and riding public transport for shelter where users were exposed to the harassment endured by many homeless people (Herrera et al. 2018). In follow-up interviews, participants were asked about their feelings towards homeless people and their willingness to enact prosocial behaviours, such as signing an affordable housing petition. The study’s findings showed that those exposed to the VR experience were more compassionate towards homeless people than those who had been exposed to other forms of mediated representation, such as first-person written accounts of the experience of becoming homeless. Empathy was similarly elicited among users of these alternate mediated experiences, but the VR participants demonstrated “more positive, longer-lasting attitudes toward the homeless” than those who engaged in similar perspective-taking tasks through the other media

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(Herrera et al. 2018, 1; see also Brautović et al. 2017; Aronson-Rath et al. 2015). According to Shin (2018), this is because VR can support “incredibly complex narratives, tailored to promote complex viewer interactions. Put simply, users feel they are present in VR; they are dropped right into a scene, as if they were part of the story” (65). Subsequent studies have questioned the assumptions of causality or “media effects” inherent in such perspectives, as well as the Becoming Homeless study’s findings, suggesting the evidence is not of a magnitude to definitively conclude that VR and 360° video can lead to higher levels of audience engagement and empathy, even when experienced in the context of highly emotive subjects such as disaster news and distant suffering (Van Damme et al. 2019). Critics stop short, however, of suggesting legacy media organisations do away with VR and 360° video altogether as part of their storytelling tools, acknowledging that they “have affordances that no other news format can offer”, particularly in terms of technological appeal (Van Damme et al. 2019, 18). This has the potential to derive positive outcomes in terms of attracting new segments of the media audience. However, the “empathy” experienced by users is, they infer, “nothing other than a state of feeling related – of identification, of association” (Bollmer 2017, 66–67). It is not necessarily empathy that leads to longer-term feelings of moral responsibility, altered attitudes or political efficacy. At play here is what Hartman (1997) has previously described as “the precariousness of empathy and the uncertain line between witness and spectator” (4). Particular kinds of engagement can be gratifying for the participant, regardless of content—the attraction is related to thrill-seeking, transgression and new frontiers of experience, not necessarily the moral or ethical issues as such (see Ferrell et al. 2008). Mediated witnessing has also been variously conceptualised and popularly applied within the work of journalism and media studies scholars for some time now. Understood in this context—and, by extension, the context of media criminology—witnessing is “an intricately tangled practice”, which is never innocent of politics (Peters 2001, 707; see also Tait 2011). Scholars such as Rentschler (2004) have argued that legacy media have stifled the practice of “bearing witness”, claiming that their “stories and images of other people’s suffering do not come packaged within interpretative frameworks that mobilize collective action” (300). In other words, as Tait (2011) explains: “If empathy is elicited it is not linked to broader knowledge of why suffering takes place or how publics might intervene” (1225). This is the juxtaposition on which the virtues of immersive journalism are based; the idea that virtual experiences allow users to embody the suffering of others and thereby move beyond the act of seeing to moral obligation and, hopefully, modes of action. But as WITNESS Program Director Sam Gregory points out, empathy does not always motivate people to act or to act in the manner intended by VR content creators (cited in Archer and Finger 2018). Those in the field of immersive witnessing “point to crying spectators and increased

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donations”, but as Nash (2018) contends, “this tells us little about what is going on for spectators and nothing at all about their moral orientation towards the others whose stories they have encountered” (129). Questions about whether people’s news consumption habits will embrace immersive behaviour and whether VR storytelling can be monetised similarly remain unresolved (Doyle et al. 2016; Mabrook and Singer 2019). Many news organisations have struggled to monetise mainstream digital platforms as it is, let alone work out how to achieve such results for VR experiences or the metrics by which to measure their success at doing so (Sullivan 2018). Then, there are ongoing concerns about the ethics of VR experiences and their unintended consequences. While the question of ethics is a perennial one for all journalists, no matter what storytelling medium they work in, the need to appropriately and sensitively frame stories has seemingly taken on added resonance in the context of immersive journalism where it has become commonplace for users to be exposed to virtual experiences that can generate fear or trauma. Scenes that create user discomfort have been shown to trigger disengagement from the storytelling experience, negatively impacting on long-term memory recall and dissuading users from wanting to be involved in or act towards another’s plight (Archer and Finger 2018). The conditions, it seems, to convert the empathy created by the sensory experience of immersive journalism into the ability to recollect a news story over the long term, inspire attitudinal change or encourage prosocial behaviours such as donating or lending support to a particular cause—like the curtailment of the use of solitary confinement in US prisons—have to be just right. Still, this has not prevented the likes of The Guardian and others from taking the same measured risks as The New York Times to step up and establish themselves as frontrunners in the race to tame the technology and harness VR’s potential to (re) shape the journalism landscape.

Making Visible Invisible Suffering: Virtual Experiences of Solitary Confinement For its first foray into the world of immersive journalism, The Guardian chose to collaborate with an interactive team from creative content studio, The Mill, on a nine-minute VR experience that places the user in a solitary confinement cell. Described by Google News Lab (2017) as a “lighthouse project”, 6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement took nine months to make, launching in late April 2016. The project uses game engine technology, specifically “photorealistic rendering and powerful location audio of a segregation cell”, to enable users to experience “the reported psychological consequences of extended periods in solitary confinement” (McRoberts 2018, 103). To create the effect, the creative team behind 6x9 embraced the motion sickness and disorientation often encountered by users of VR to heighten the sense of agitation and unease for users within the virtual

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isolation cell (Addy cited in Capper 2016). Reviews on the Google Play store website show that such features became barriers to engagement with the 6x9 app for some users. But for Davies (2016), being able to exploit these characteristics of the technology is what made VR the ideal storytelling medium through which to highlight “the sensory deprivation that solitary confinement entails” and the disorientation that penal environments can cause for those who are imprisoned within them. Since its release, 6x9 has received numerous awards and travelled the international film circuit with public installations at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and the Sundance Film Festival. The full nine-minute 6x9 experience was also made available to attendees (including, most famously, Hollywood actor Robert De Niro) at the Tribeca Film Festival and was viewed upon invitation by the White House during the last flush of Barack Obama’s presidency (Stewart 2016). Obama’s senior adviser at the time, Valerie Jarrett, who experienced 6x9 described it as “profoundly disturbing”, saying it aligned with the White House’s agenda to “encourage technology that leads to informed change” (Jarrett cited in Pilkington and Spencer 2016). Earlier in the year, Obama had used his executive powers to ban the use of solitary confinement on juvenile offenders in federal prisons—a reformist approach that was subsequently unwound by the Trump administration as part of its tougher stance on juvenile crime (Pilkington 2018; see also The White House 2016; Obama 2016). As part of the virtual experience at Tribeca, users were given the opportunity to meet some of the former inmates whose voices could be heard in 6x9. The project’s appearance also coincided with the festival’s world premiere screening of Kristi Jacobson’s feature-length documentary, SOLITARY, about life inside solitary confinement at Red Onion State Prison in rural Virginia. That same year, 6x9 scooped the Gold Award in the VR/360 category at the 2016 British Arrows Craft Awards, as well as the Digital Innovation category at the British Journalism Awards (BJA). The BJA judges described the project as “[c]rusading journalism at its 21st century best, and very powerful storytelling indeed” (Press Gazette 2016), while Little Black Book labelled 6x9 “a challenging experience that reveals a transformative step forward for interactive journalism” (Capper 2016). At the outset of 6x9, several unseen narrators prepare users for the adverse impacts of solitary confinement, which are experienced via the simulation of audio and visual hallucinations. The soundscape comprises genuine prison noises as well as the simulated groans and cries of nearby segregated prisoners. “Other sounds”, writes McRoberts (2018), “including a monotonous buzz from the fluorescent lights overhead and a dripping sound from inefficient toilet plumbing add additional layers of mundane detail that further reinforce the sense of perceptual realism” (107). Audio testimonies from reallife individuals who have previously experienced segregation, as well as psychologists, accompany text-based statements which fade in and out on the

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walls of the prison cell, like graffiti, to provide context to the wider implications of solitary confinement in the USA. At one point, the message “Solitary confinement alters neural and psychological states” appears on the wall, followed shortly by: “Even short-term isolation may alter brain activity”. At another point, a former inmate tells the user: “The night is worse than the day. There is nothing to do at night” (6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement 2016). But, as Sánchez Laws (2017) points out, while these voices are heard, the user does not know to whom they belong, apart from the special thanks each individual is attributed in the credits at the conclusion of the virtual experience. To put a face and a name to each individual’s story, users instead have to rely on the accompanying traditional news features published on The Guardian website. For director Francesca Panetta, The Guardian’s production of 6x9 was always more than an opportunity to experiment with a new and creative form of journalistic storytelling. Its intent, she claims, was to “influence policy makers in Washington” (Panetta cited in Gills 2016). But, she stipulates, “I wouldn’t say this is a campaign piece. We don’t have a call to action at the end. I see it primarily as a form of journalism. We’re trying to help guide people to make their own decision while being very clear on where we stand” (Panetta cited in Gills 2016). Other productions have been less reticent about their ambitions to incite social and political action in response to the practice of solitary confinement in US prisons. In the year prior to 6x9’s release, creative studio RYOT (2015) debuted its own short VR film Confinement at the Tribeca Film Festival. The virtual experience bears similar hallmarks to its 6x9 successor, including voiceover narration about the psychological impacts of solitary confinement and accounts of the lived experiences of former inmates. In keeping with its mission to invite audiences “to be more than a witness”, the website for RYOT’s 360° video notably features a “Take Action” button, which links directly to the website of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its campaign to end solitary confinement. Here, visitors can access a range of advocacy tools and resources, including issues briefing papers and advice on “campaign dos and don’ts” for those who want to get involved, spread the word and support the cause (ACLU 2019). The year following 6x9’s release, Nonny de la Peña’s digital media company Emblematic Group released its own virtual experience about segregation entitled After Solitary (2017). The experience was produced in collaboration with PBS’s investigative series Frontline, with support from the Knight Foundation. Dubbed “the godmother of VR”, de la Peña is credited with having pioneered a new approach to immersive storytelling in journalism when she debuted what is now recognised as the first documentary produced in VR, Hunger in Los Angeles, at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. After Solitary was a Jury Award Winner at the 2017 SXSW Festival for “Best Room Scale VR”. It also won the “Excellence in Immersive Storytelling” category at the 2017 Online Journalism Awards and the top prize at the World VR

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Forum that same year. Using photogrammetry technology and volumetric video, After Solitary presents the story of former inmate Kenneth Moore who spent five and a half years in solitary confinement at Maine State Prison. The immersive experience is a complement to the longer-length documentary, Last Days of Solitary, which PBS’ Frontline reporting team produced after two-month-long stints embedded in the prison’s solitary confinement unit. After Solitary allows users to walk around a segregation cell with Moore as he recounts his experiences of solitary confinement and what happened once he was released from prison. To date, the immersive journalism experience has recorded 2.3 million views on Facebook and over 36,000 views on Frontline’s official YouTube channel. By comparison, RYOT’s Confinement has attracted 89,000 views on Facebook and 38,520 views on the studio’s YouTube channel, while 6x9 has reached 140,000 views on Facebook and over 661,000 views on The Guardian’s YouTube channel (current as at April 2019). Even without a decisive call to action, immersive storytelling projects of this ilk tend to underscore the reformist agendas of their collaborators—in 6x9’s case, Solitary Watch, and its attempts to revise the laws and regulations regarding solitary confinement to reduce its use worldwide or to at least improve the conditions for those people subjected to the practice (see Shames et al. 2015). But, as 6x9’s creative director Carl Addy concedes, “it is really hard for the general public to rally around an issue like this when criminals are involved” (cited in Stewart 2016). The question then for The Guardian and The Mill’s creative teams was how to create empathy around such a controversial and contentious issue in order to generate the attention it deserves. The answer: give people a visceral experience of solitary confinement. Addy claims this provided the means by which to “emotionally connect them to the cause…VR puts you in the cell without any of the safety one gets from the detachment of a screen. This is not like watching a documentary, you are in it” (cited in The Mill 2016). “Many people have told us that it demonstrates in nine minutes what they can’t begin to express in words”, says Panetta (cited in Sullivan 2018).

Disrupting the Normative Framing of VR as the “Ultimate Empathy Machine” To test these claims, we decided to take the temperature of public sentiment in response to The Guardian’s 6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement, RYOT’s Confinement and PBS Frontline’s After Solitary by performing a snapshot analysis of the social media comments on the official Facebook page and YouTube channel for each of the virtual experiences. This included close reading and analysis of the following: • 285 comments on The Guardian’s 6x9 Facebook page and 352 comments on its YouTube channel;

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• 199 comments on RYOT’s Confinement Facebook page and 54 comments on its YouTube channel; • 1479 comments on PBS Frontline’s After Solitary Facebook page and 52 comments on its YouTube channel. Particular attention was paid to the thematic patterns and repetition present in the discourse of the social media comments, with notes taken regarding language choice and sentiment (especially whether those posting demonstrated a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards the virtual experience and/or the issue of solitary confinement). The results reflected a confluence of conversational norms, including most prominently, reciprocity and opinion sharing. Although it was not always easy to discern who among those posting to the social networking sites had based their opinion directly on having experienced 6x9, Confinement or After Solitary, the comments show that responses to the penal practices at the heart of these virtual experiences are far more complex than proponents of the “VR is the ultimate empathy machine” thesis have suggested. Our cursory analysis found that, despite similarities between the virtual experiences, social media responses to The Guardian’s 6x9, RYOT’s Confinement and PBS Frontline’s After Solitary were highly variable, but generally revealing of people’s preconceptions about solitary confinement, the criminal justice system, and incarcerated people. These sentiments ranged from sympathetic to outwardly hostile, although comments openly calling for prison reform or suggesting that the virtual experience had changed the person’s mind about solitary confinement were rare. When they did occur, they were reminiscent of the following comments: Wow, just finished watching this documentary on solitary confinement, and it definitely changed my way of thinking on whether this is an appropriate form of punishment for every inmate. (After Solitary Facebook page) I came here to research about solitary and now…im (sic) more scared for those people. This is torture. (6x9 YouTube channel)

Responses to these comments were often favourable with a number of people “liking” or responding to the posts. One comment on the After Solitary Facebook page asked people “advocating for the continued practice of isolation and solitary confinement” who they would rather live next door to; “the person who underwent rehabilitation programming, drug treatment, psychological treatment and worked a job while serving his or her time or the prisoner who served his/her sentence in a solitary confinement cell 23 hours a day?”. The post generated 116 replies, including follow-up comments from the post’s author, and considerable debate about crime and punishment and the criminal justice system in the USA. Another comment on the 6x9 YouTube channel, “That’s as close as I ever need to be to prison, let alone solitary”, attracted 171 “likes”. However, more insouciant comments such as

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“Give me a PC with internet access and I’ll be in solitary confinement for decades” proved equally popular. Indeed, a number of people imagined what their own coping mechanisms would be if they were put into solitary confinement, with many suggesting they would be content if they could read books, practice yoga and meditate. Some users commented that their virtual experience of solitary confinement had led them to conclude that it was not as debilitating as they had previously thought. These comments were often based on stereotypical views of prison life, including misplaced assumptions about inmates being allowed access to television and video games while in segregation. Others viewed life in solitary confinement as “a lot less stressful than living in genpop” (6x9 Facebook page). A greater frequency of references to solitary confinement as “inhumane” was noted across the three YouTube channels compared to the 6x9, Confinement and After Solitary Facebook pages. More sympathetic views towards the framing of solitary confinement as “cruel and unusual punishment” for those subjected to it were generally evident where people with lived experience of the criminal justice system contributed to the conversation. This included police, probation officers, prison guards and people who either had relatives in solitary confinement or had experienced solitary confinement themselves while in prison. The following is representative of these contributions: “Solitary can’t be mimicked, it can’t be experienced virtually to gain an understanding of what it is to be confined to solitary imprisonment… Until you end up in the hole you just can’t understand what it’s like” (6x9 YouTube channel). In response, another user posted: “Thanks for sharing your experience. I imagine it may have been hard to speak about, but it’s important that people know the reality of it, especially future CO’s (sic) and policy makers” (6x9 YouTube channel). In some instances, these comments sparked debate among users with opposing viewpoints about whether prisons were for punishment or rehabilitation: It’s ridiculous. We know from SO many studies how this practice destroys those people, but we keep doing it, then expecting them to come out normal citizens. (After Solitary Facebook page) We don’t try to rehabilitate dogs that bite. These animals are no different. (After Solitary Facebook page)

Such comments also often incited discussion about alternative criminal justice approaches in places such as The Netherlands and Scandinavia. Many respondents in favour of continuing the practice assumed that those in solitary confinement had committed serious crimes, such as murder, and were therefore deserving of the severity of the punishment. This was despite virtual experiences like 6x9 informing users that people could end up in solitary confinement for remarkably minor infractions, such as the use of abusive

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language, talking back to corrections officers, having too many pencils or postage stamps, or being caught with contraband (suggesting some of the comments were made by people who had not engaged with the virtual experience itself). Other users criticised the focus on incarcerated people, asking “what about the victims?” (After Solitary Facebook page). Comments such as “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” and “it’s a punishment, not a holiday camp” were very much prevalent across each of the social networking platforms for the virtual experiences.

Where to from Here? These findings suggest, as Archer and Finger (2018) remind us, that VR is by no means a “silver bullet” for instilling empathy in news audiences. “Like any other storytelling medium”, they write, “its power lies not only in journalists’ flair for narrative, but also in audiences’ dispositional and contextual affinity for particular topics” (Archer and Finger 2018). While VR developers may “propose immersion”, users process it “based on their own preferences and needs” (Shin 2018, 69). Immersion cannot outweigh a user’s lack of interest or over-familiarity with a news subject; both of which can negatively impact their ability to engage and empathise with the VR storytelling experience (Archer and Finger 2018). Much like the criticisms directed towards traditional news media, immersive journalism experiences can also fan the flames of the echo chamber, reinforcing pre-existing views about contentious issues, such as crime and punishment (of course, an audience for PBS or The Guardian will obviously have differing worldviews to watchers of Fox News, for example). Put simply, immersion alone “is not sufficient to generate the desired feeling” of empathy towards a news story and its subjects (Shin and Biocca 2018, 2817). For VR journalism to be truly effective, this feature must be accompanied by high-quality content and stories that are socially meaningful to users. Advances in VR hardware and innovations in the levels of immersion that users can achieve from VR experiences form only part of the equation. This does not mean that VR as a storytelling medium offers little value to journalists. As Stewart (2016) observes, VR may still be “a tricky field for publishers and brands to navigate, but it is clear that when it comes to immersive journalism it can be an effective tool to help bridge the gap between the viewer and the subject matter”. Our own analysis has shown that, as much as they can serve to perpetuate stereotypes about and intolerant attitudes towards incarcerated people and life behind bars, virtual storytelling experiences also have the potential to bring visibility to once-invisible issues such as solitary confinement, to incite compassion for the experiences of “distant others” and to start conversations between seemingly disparate communities of people. The capacity of immersive journalism to provide an “uninterrupted space” (Haber cited in Kang 2017) in which users can

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be present within an issue without being distracted by the vagaries of modern life should not be underestimated. But the motivations for its use may not always be reflected in users’ experiences and the outcomes or framing effects of those experiences. Ideology can sometimes trump empathy. So too, the lauding of VR’s ostensible virtues and benefits should not lead us to be unquestioning of our own use of the technology or of its unintended negative consequences. Of course, our cursory analysis of public sentiment towards the virtual experiences analysed in this chapter is not without its limitations. For one, we cannot say definitively how many of the people who posted to the Facebook and YouTube pages actually experienced 6x9: A Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement, Confinement and After Solitary. In some respects, this acknowledgement serves to highlight one of the shortcomings of the empathy-creation thesis associated with VR that it equates immersion with the direct effect of increased empathy for others. In other words, it perpetuates the prevailing discourse of the “media effects” tradition that continues to focus on media “as something that leads public opinion and behaviour” rather than something that may instead function “as a distillation of public attitudes” (Moore 2014, 85–86). Just as we cannot say with certainty that immersion within a virtual cell did not lead users to feel greater empathy for the experiences of those subjected to solitary confinement, neither can advocates of the VR empathy-creation proposition say with certainty that all users who engaged with 6x9, Confinement and After Solitary did experience such a response— and this is the problem with the thesis. While we may be able to acknowledge that, for some, the experience will lead to enhanced understanding and compassion and prosocial behaviours, proponents of the argument that VR is the “ultimate empathy machine” consider this the outcome for all. To see the value of VR in these terms alone is limiting. Besides ignoring the context in which news audiences engage with these virtual experiences (e.g. the impact of lived experience), it obscures the fact that not every news story will be suited to being told through VR as much as not every news organisation will be motivated to create immersive journalism experiences on the basis of generating empathy and prosocial behaviours among users. Certainly, VR has not yet generated quite the same impetus for social change and policy reform as we have seen created by other innovative crime and justice-related storytelling mediums, such as podcasting (think: Serial and The Teacher’s Pet). While it is one thing to suggest that VR can provoke user empathy and compassion for the real-world experiences of others, it is another to assume that eliciting such emotions forms part of the agenda and content strategy of the news organisations that have adopted the technology. This was obviously the case for the solitary confinement virtual experiences analysed in this chapter. But by way of contrast, Watson (2017) points out that, of the 20 media professionals she interviewed for her report, VR for News: The New Reality?,

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not one mentioned empathy when asked about the kinds of stories that work in VR. For journalism, VR’s value may more centrally lie in its ability to rebuild trust between news organisations and their audiences. Such arguments are based on the perception that VR and 360° video remove many of the layers of interpretation and gatekeeping inherent in traditional journalistic storytelling (Chauls cited in Sullivan 2018). Perception, here, is the operative word as what users see and experience in VR—as in all works of journalism— is highly selective and prescribed; it is packaged for interpretation (Clifford and White 2017). “The very real sense of immersion”, writes Aronson-Rath et al. (2015), “and users’ ability to control elements of the experience” essentially mask “the editorial construct of journalism’s work” (47). In keeping with this line of thinking, critics therefore argue that what VR can offer, at most, in terms of user identification is “the illusion of empathy” (Yang 2017, emphasis added). Nonetheless, the point remains that while the claims that VR is an empathy machine have been the subject of increasing critique, the potential for VR to foster such distinctive relationships between content creators and their audiences has been lesser examined, even though this is clearly an important motivating factor for the production of immersive journalism experiences in light of the challenges of the contemporary news environment. There is therefore good reason to question the proposition that VR and 360° video can manufacture empathy, especially in terms of their application to immersive journalism where other factors more prominently dictate the motivations and decision-making that goes into determining which stories to represent. There is also reason to question the extent to which these VR experiences, created by journalists and their creative teams, can make a significant impression when other innovative technologies are elsewhere being used in prisons across the USA to further restrain the civil liberties of incarcerated people. For example, an article published by The Appeal in partnership with The Intercept recently revealed that prisoners were being asked to provide voice samples for a large-scale surveillance system that would allow prison authorities to mine call databases and biometrically identify and cross-reference the voices of people prisoners had spoken with—including former inmates— to automatically flag “suspicious” calls. The article alleged that the voiceprint capture was being conducted often without consent and on the threat of a denial of phone privileges if the incarcerated person did not comply by recording the phrases required by the voice recognition technology (Joseph and Nathan 2019). In short, we need to remember that technology is a tool, not a panacea and as such it can be used for both damaging and constructive purposes. In the case of VR technologies, the latter does not automatically equate to empathy-creation. If anything, our analysis shows that, despite being lauded for their technological appeal, immersive journalism experiences such as 6x9, Confinement and After Solitary are not that far removed from more traditional mediated representations of prison-related issues. Like their

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counterparts, VR and 360° video stories are similarly produced through processes of selection and editing and are subject to ethical considerations. They also have the potential to produce positive and negative framing effects. But ultimately, they reveal much about the complex and ambivalent response of society to crime and punishment, especially the harsher realities of prison life experienced by those within its walls.

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286  K. CLIFFORD AND R. WHITE Peters, John Durham. 2001. “Witnessing.” Media, Culture & Society 23, no. 6: 707–723. Pilkington, Ed. 2016. “43 Years in Solitary: ‘There Are Moments I Wish I Back There’.” The Guardian. 29 April. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ apr/29/albert-woodfox-43-years-solitary-confinement-wish-i-was-back. Pilkington, Ed. 2018. “Under Trump, Juveniles Are ‘Offenders’ and Aren’t ‘Healthy and Educated’. The Guardian. 4 October. https://www.theguardian.com/ us-news/2018/oct/04/trump-administration-juvenile-justice-websites. Pilkington, Ed, and Jane Spencer. 2016. “The Obama White House Hosts the First—And Last?—SXSL Technology Festival.” The Guardian. 5 October. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/04/obama-white-housesxsl-south-by-south-lawn-technology-festival. Press Gazette. 2016. “BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg Named Journalist of the Year: Full List of 2016 British Journalism Awards Winners.” Press Gazette. 6 December. https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbcs-laura-kuenssberg-named-journalist-of-theyear-full-list-of-2016-british-journalism-awards-winners/. Raemisch, Rick. 2017. “Why We Ended Long-Term Solitary Confinement in Colorado.” The New York Times. 12 October. https://www.nytimes. com/2017/10/12/opinion/solitary-confinement-colorado-prison.html?smid=twnytopinion&smtyp=cur. Reiter, Keramet. 2016. “The Social Cost of Solitary Confinement.” Time. 21 October. http://time.com/4540112/the-social-cost-of-solitary-confinement/. Rentschler, Carrie. 2004. “Witnessing: US Citizenship and the Vicarious Experience of Suffering.” Media, Culture & Society 26, no. 2: 296–304. Sánchez Laws, Ana Luisa. 2017. “Can Immersive Journalism Enhance Empathy?” Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1389286. Shalev, Sharon. 2008. A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement. London: Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science. http://solitaryconfinement.org/. Shames, Alison, Jessa Wilcox, and Ram Subramanian. 2015. Solitary Confinement: Common Misconceptions and Emerging Safe Alternatives. May. New York: VERA Institute of Justice. https://www.vera.org/publications/ solitary-confinement-common-misconceptions-and-emerging-safe-alternatives. Shin, Donghee. 2018. “Empathy and Embodied Experience in Virtual Environment: To What Extent Can Virtual Reality Stimulate Empathy and Embodied Experience?” Computers in Human Behavior 78: 64–73. Shin, Donghee, and Frank Biocca. 2018. “Exploring Immersive Experience in Journalism.” New Media & Society 20, no. 8: 2800–2823. Stewart, Rebecca. 2016. “Could You Survive Solitary? Behind the Scenes of the Guardian’s ‘6x9’ VR Experience.” The Drum. 3 June. https://www.thedrum.com/ news/2016/06/03/could-you-survive-solitary-behind-scenes-guardians-6x9-vr-experience. Sullivan, Terry. 2018. “VR Gives Journalism a New Dimension.” PCMag Australia. 6 February. https://au.pcmag.com/features/51630/vr-givesjournalism-a-new-dimension. Tait, Sue. 2011. “Bearing Witness, Journalism and Moral Responsibility.” Media, Culture & Society 33, no. 8: 1220–1235.

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Separating Popular Myth from Empirical Reality: The White-Collar Prison Experience Matt Logan and Tayte Olma

Introduction Over the past three decades, the prison population in the United States has consistently and precipitously declined. Recent estimates suggest that the total number of adults supervised by the US correctional system is currently at its lowest since 1993. In the same way, the rate of incarceration has decreased by an average of 1.2% annually since 2007 (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018). Yet the downward trend is not uniform across the offending population, and some groups have actually witnessed an increase in the likelihood of being incarcerated. Although it is not widely known, the number of incarcerated white-collar offenders has steadily increased over the past two decades in terms of both rates of imprisonment and average sentence length (Logan et al. 2017; Stadler et al. 2013). According to several reports issued by the United States Sentencing Commission (1998, 2003a, b, 2013, 2015), the rates of incarceration for various white-collar crimes have significantly risen. For example, between 1998 and 2015, the incarceration rate for fraud rose from 64.8 to 74.9. During that same period, the average sentence length for fraud more than doubled from 12.9 months in 1998 to 27 months in 2015. Public support for the prosecution and subsequent incarceration of white-collar offenders has also increased. Now more than ever, the general M. Logan (*)  California State University, San Bernardino, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. Olma  School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_17

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public views white-collar offenders as “bad guys deserving of prison” (Cullen et al. 2008; Unnever et al. 2008). Despite a shift toward more punitive attitudes regarding individuals who commit white-collar crimes, relatively little attention has been given to their experiences after the sentencing process, specifically, white-collar offenders who receive prison sentences. Importantly, much of what is understood about the experiences of white-collar inmates comes from insights provided by members of the mainstream media and portrayals of white-collar offenders in popular culture. For instance, Hollywood depictions and qualitative accounts of incarcerated white-collar offenders often portray them as especially frail or vulnerable to the vicissitudes associated with prison life, more so than other types of “street” offenders (Benson and Simpson 2015). Indeed, while members of the mainstream media and general public are becoming increasingly aware of the harm that white-collar crime causes at a societal level, there exists a prevailing thought that white-collar offenders are not “cut out” for prison. However, while far from resolute, the existing empirical research on the state of incarcerated white-collar offenders is, for the most part, at odds with these views. The goal of this chapter is to shed light on the understudied group of incarcerated white-collar offenders, whose actual experiences are often muddled by stereotypical assumptions regarding socioeconomic status and race within the criminal justice system in general. In doing so, we aim to provide balance between mainstream, public perception (replete with examples), and the empirical reality as identified within the criminological literature.

Classifications and Generalizations: Who Is the White-Collar Offender? The concept of white-collar crime has a long and controversial history. Issues regarding its defining features or characteristics have been heavily debated among criminologists, so much so that no widespread definition currently exists (Benson and Simpson 2015; Braithwaite 1985; Edelhertz 1970; Felson and Boba 2010; Geis 1988; Hirschi and Gottfredson 1987; Shapiro 1990; Sutherland 1949/1983). The difficulties associated with defining white-collar crime, in part, stem from the fact that it is conceptually different from other types of crime. Specifically, white-collar crime is not an official, legally recognized category; rather, it is a sociological construct that does not clearly delineate what actions or activities should be included in its definition (Benson et al. 2016). Some scholars, for example, argue that the defining features of white-collar crime should be based on the characteristics of the offender: in particular, those who are of high social status and respectability, and who commit crime during the course of their occupation (Reiss and Biderman 1980; Sutherland 1949/1983). Others maintain that the characteristics of the actual offenses, which are committed through non-physical means using deceit or

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guile to obtain personal or financial gain, are more useful for studying and understanding white-collar crime (Edelhertz 1970; Shapiro 1990). The measurement of white-collar crime is affected depending on which definition is used; specifically, the use of different definitions affects who is identified as a white-collar offender and what conclusions can be drawn regarding the nature of white-collar offending (Benson et al. 2016). From a conceptual standpoint, however, offender- and offense-based definitions are mutually reinforcing, as opposed to antagonistic, of one another. Indeed, both perspectives “simply emphasize different aspects of a general empirical regularity involving the characteristics or social positions of individuals and the types of offenses they tend to commit” (Benson and Simpson 2015, 15). Put differently, white-collar crime is best understood when both the status of the offender and the illegal nature of the act are considered (see also Logan et al. 2017). Recognizing the importance of both the offenders’ status and the illegal nature of the act is, for the most part, congruent with the general public’s perception of what constitutes white-collar crime. As Cullen et al. (2008) note, public sentiments toward lawlessness in the upper world indicate that people are becoming increasingly less tolerant and subsequently more punitive because of the now-understood physical and economic toll that white-collar crime exerts at a societal level, the likes of which are often committed by high-ranking members of society who go to great lengths to conceal their transgressions through their daily business operations. Indeed, a tension now exists within the public domain among those who generally support rehabilitative ideals with respect to punishment but who also recognize the harm done by those who abuse and violate the trust bestowed on them (Piquero and Steinberg 2010; Unnever et al. 2008). The belief that white-collar offenders are “bad guys deserving of prison” is also reflected in a number of Hollywood films, including perhaps the most well-known perpetrator of white-collar crime, Bernard Madoff (discussed elsewhere in this collection in Chapter 20), who in 2009 was convicted of mass fraud for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Over a 20-year period, Madoff defrauded his clients out of approximately $65 billion, for which he received a 150-year sentence in federal prison, the details of which are portrayed in the book and made-for-TV movie by the same title, The Wizard of Lies. The movie portrays Madoff as manipulative and callous toward his victims, and well deserving of a lengthy prison sentence. Similarly, the 2015 film The Big Short details the events leading up to the 2008 housing market collapse, with an explicit focus on the role of mortgage brokers (and their institutions) who engaged in predatory lending practices to prospective and vulnerable homeowners transfixed on chasing “the American Dream” at any cost. Most recently, both Netflix and Amazon released documentaries focusing on the now-infamous Fyre Festival which highlights the transgressions of American entrepreneur and promoter, Billy McFarland. In 2017,

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McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison and fined over $26 million for various counts of wire fraud, false representation, and the use of fake documents during his promotion of the Bahamian-based event that left several thousand concert-goers without food, water, shelter, or a way home for several days. Although the above cases do not necessarily typify white-collar crime, the demographic characteristics of the aforementioned offenders comport with a substantial body of empirical research. Specifically, the people who commit white-collar offenses tend to come from dramatically different social backgrounds and tend to have much less experience with the criminal justice system than the people who commit ordinary street crimes (Benson and Kerley 2000; Benson and Simpson 2015; Weisburd et al. 1991). Research by Wheeler and colleagues (1988a, b), for example, suggests that white-collar offenders are, on average, middle-aged, white males, who are better-educated and more likely to be steadily employed than other offenders. Studies have also shown that convicted white-collar offenders are less likely to have prior arrests, and tend to have criminal careers that differ from those convicted of common offenses—especially with respect to the frequency of offending (Benson and Moore 1992). In addition, research indicates that white-collar offenders do not see their actions as criminal; rather, interviews with convicted white-collar offenders suggest they go at lengths to justify or neutralize their behavior, so as to deny their “guilty mind” of a criminal identity (Benson 1985; Stadler and Benson 2012).

Punishing the White-Collar Offender: Prison as a Last Resort In light of these differences between white-collar offenders and ordinary “street offenders” (Benson and Simpson 2015), some scholars have argued that white-collar offenders may react to imprisonment in dramatically different ways. Indeed, there are those who maintain that white-collar offenders, by virtue of their background and lack of experience with the criminal justice system, should experience greater difficulty in adapting to prison life than other inmates. Known as the special sensitivity hypothesis, this perspective is based on the idea that the transition from a life of freedom and privilege to one of strict regulation and material deprivation may be particularly shocking to newly incarcerated white-collar inmates (Logan et al. 2017; Mann et al. 1979; Stadler et al. 2013). The idea that white-collar offenders might be particularly vulnerable to the pains of imprisonment is not new; indeed, the concept has existed for more than 200 years. In his now-classic writings on penal law, Bentham posited that a litany of factors, including the age, sex, and socioeconomic status of offenders, should modify the punishments meted out to them. With respect to achieving proportionality in punishment for high-status offenders

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in particular, he maintained that “[…] imprisonment would be ruin to a man of business” and that “[…] the same punishment that would brand ignominy a man of certain rank would not produce even in the slightest stain in the case the offender belonged to an inferior class” (Phillipson 1923, 205). Similar arguments have been made by federal judges, who in the past have reasoned that white-collar offenders have “more to lose” than other offenders by going to prison. They posit that the stigmatization experienced as a result of job loss, professional licenses, and reputation within the community is sufficient, and that a prison sentence would constitute undue harm (Mann et al. 1979; Pollack and Smith 1983; Renfrew 1977). As one judge explained: A white-collar criminal has more of a fear of going to jail than this syndrome we find in the street crime. And I am not saying that if you cut everyone they don’t bleed red blood. A person who commits a robbery or an assault, they don’t want to go to jail either. But the white-collar criminal has more to lose by going to jail, reputation in the community, business as well as social community, decent living conditions, just the whole business of being put in a prison with a number on his back demeans this tremendous ego that is always involved in people who are high achievers. (Mann et al. 1979, 487)

Likewise, other judges empathized with white-collar offenders when discussing the detrimental effects of prison sentences: [It] can be a major disruption for the family, for the individual. It may undermine his whole career. I can probably better understand the white-collar defendant. He is more like me and that probably—I guess I do believe that white-collar defendants are more sensitive to and more affected by the prison experience. (Mann et al. 1979, 485)

In essence, these interviews suggest that many judges believe that imprisonment has a much greater impact on white-collar offenders than other criminals, and that appropriate sentences should be informed by the environment from which the defendant came. Outside of academia, the notion that white-collar offenders experience a greater “fall from grace” relative to other offenders (Payne 2003) is equally common, including how various media outlets cover high-profile cases where the offenders are sentenced to prison. For example, the TODAY SHOW’s follow-up piece on Martha Stewart portrays her prison experience as particularly difficult, especially in comparison with other inmates. Stewart, who in 2004 was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of agency proceedings, and making false statements in connection with insider trading, went on record describing her 5-month sentence as “horrifying,” noting the tribulations she faced being separated from her family and “[…] being maligned, especially when [she did not] feel [as though she] deserve[d] such a thing.” Stewart went on to add that she was not a bad person and that the kind of indignity associated with

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a prison sentence should be reserved for “[…] murders and […] a few other categories” (Kim 2017). Similarly, in the weeks leading up to the beginning of his sentence, there was a great deal of media speculation regarding Bernard Madoff’s ability to cope in prison. For instance, some sources reported that his stress levels were so severe that he broke out into hives and experienced several other skin maladies soon after. There were also conflicting reports that he was violently victimized several times within the first week of his incarceration (New York Post 2010). The special sensitivity hypothesis has also served as the plot for several motion pictures and television series. Importantly, these portrayals tend to emphasize important sociodemographic characteristics between white-collar and non-white-collar inmates as the crux of successful prison adjustment, many of which comport with stereotypical assumptions of race and social class within the criminal justice system. Most recently, actors Will Ferrall and Kevin Hart co-starred in the 2015 comedy Get Hard, a film that follows recently convicted hedge-fund manager James (played by Ferrall), who has one month to get his affairs in order before serving a 10-year sentence for fraud in San Quentin Prison. The title is an obviously crude double entendre on the perceived prevalence of homosexual rape in prisons, especially with white men being victims. With no knowledge of the criminal justice system and fearing the worst of what his sentence will bring, James seeks out and consults Darnell (played by Hart) to help navigate him through prison life, based on the assumption that Darnell’s experiences as a black male will serve as an asset, despite the fact that Darnell had no criminal record or history with the justice system. Similarly, Netflix’s Arrested Development focuses on the Bluth family, whose dynamic is permanently changed when the household’s patriarch and CEO of the Bluth Company, George Bluth Sr. (played by Jeffery Tambor), is convicted of a variety of white-collar offenses and is subsequently sentenced to a lengthy (though unspecified) prison sentence. Similar to the plot of Get Hard, a recurring theme in the series involves George repeatedly lamenting to his family and legal counsel about the difficulties associated with prison life, especially when it comes to various strategies to ingratiate himself among the more established and hardened inmate groups, the majority of whom are from minorities. The idea that white-collar offenders face greater difficulties upon incarceration has become so widespread within the general population that some individuals have capitalized on it to create legitimate business opportunities. For example, upon receiving a 7-year prison sentence for various counts of securities fraud, Martin Shkreli, infamously referred to by the media as the “most hated man in America” for dramatically raising the price on generic HIV/ AIDS medications, hired consultants to advise him on how to handle his incarceration (Albrecht 2018). Indeed, start-up firms such as the Wall Street Prison Consultants operate on the assumption that for white-collar offenders, prison is an environment unlike anything they have ever seen before and if they are to be successful, they need to be prepared. While prices and services

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vary (anywhere from $500 to $20,000), these businesses provide inmates with in-depth analyses on how to evaluate a given situation’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Wall Street Prison Consultants 2019). Yet despite almost complete uniformity in the public’s perception of incarcerated white-collar offenders and their experiences, a paucity of empirical research exists to validate these assumptions. From an academic perspective, most of what is actually “known” about incarcerated white-collar offenders comes from anecdotal reports and a few studies with small sample sizes, the results of which give some credence to the essentialist view that white-collar offenders are not well suited to the prison environment (Payne 2003; Pollack and Smith 1983; Renfrew 1977; Wheeler et al. 1988a). However, these studies, while informative, lack the empirical rigor that has characterized the recent and precipitous shift in criminal justice toward evidence-based practice in studying offenders and various criminological outcomes (Cullen et al. 2009; Franklin et al. 2006; Guy et al. 2005). Importantly, recent and more methodologically rigorous evaluations of the white-collar prison experience do exist—the results of which run counter to widespread beliefs about incarcerated white-collar offenders. It is to this burgeoning, albeit limited, body of theory and research we now turn.

Empirical Research on Incarcerated White-Collar Offenders Contrary to popular belief and the impressions propagated by film and television, there are those who believe that the social and background characteristics of white-collar offenders may serve as an asset in prison. Proponents of this position, referred to as the special resiliency hypothesis, contend that white-collar offenders may be better-equipped with the personal and social capital necessary for the challenges and conditions of institutional life (Benson and Cullen 1988; Logan et al. 2017; Stadler et al. 2013). As previously mentioned, studies reveal a higher level of education than other inmates. They also tend to have a more established sense of identity, stronger ties to individuals outside the prison—including spouses or children—as well as a greater commitment to traditional values than regular offenders (Benson and Cullen 1988). Research also suggests that white-collar offenders might score higher on measures of emotional regulation, which includes the deliberate and conscious practice of self-efficacy and exertion of control over one’s social environment (Denzin 1983; Hochschild 1979)—the likes of which have been independently linked to prosocial prison adjustment (Sappington 1996; Wooldredge 1999). To date, however, only two empirical studies exist that rigorously examine the “white-collar prison experience.” Importantly, both challenge the idea that white-collar offenders are especially sensitive to incarceration. The first study was conducted by Stadler and colleagues (2013), who examined the experiences of 78 newly incarcerated white-collar offenders in federal facilities

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in Terra Haute, Indiana. They were then compared to 288 non-white-collar inmates across five indicators of prison adjustment: (1) general prison difficulties; (2) difficulty in sleeping; (3) concerns regarding personal safety; (4) issues with cellmates; and (5) difficulty making friends. Unlike previous studies, the authors used a variety of quantitative techniques to determine if white-collar inmates were significantly different from their non-whitecollar counterparts. Contrary to the logic of the special sensitivity hypothesis, results from their ordinary least squares and logistic regression analyses revealed that, for the most part, white-collar inmates fared no different than other inmates. Specifically, the authors observed no significant differences between white-collar and non-white-collar inmates on measures of sleeping difficulties, concerns of personal safety, and cellmate issues. Interestingly, compared to other inmates, white-collar inmates were significantly less likely to report the experience of general prison difficulties and were significantly more likely to make friends, net of sociodemographic characteristics and institutional placement. Most recently, Logan et al. (2017) used nationally representative data to examine differences in adaptation between a much larger sample of white-collar (n = 932) and non-white-collar offenders (n = 1046) housed within state and federal correctional facilities. Following the logic of Stadler et al. (2013), they examined various indicators of prison adjustment; however, they focused explicitly on outcomes regarding psychological adjustment—an assumed key difference between white-collar and non-white-collar inmates (Payne 2003). Congruent with the previous work by Stadler and colleagues, the authors found that white-collar offenders did not generally or significantly differ across most indicators of prison adjustment. Importantly, however, the authors found that in some instances white-collar offenders actually fared significantly better than other inmates: Specifically, they were less likely to exhibit signs of hopelessness during their incarceration. In brief, each study found no instance in which white-collar offenders fared worse than their non-white-collar counterparts; indeed, in some instances, they actually fared better. The results of these two studies challenge the commonly held assumptions of the general public, the mainstream media, legal practitioners, and other members of the criminal justice community that the conditions which characterize prison life are more stressful and difficult for white-collar offender (Duff 2015; Mann et al. 1979; Wheeler et al. 1988a, b). Put differently, there is a disjuncture between “common-sense” or general knowledge, including the impressions created and reinforced by film and television, and the existing empirical research regarding incarcerated white-collar offenders. We suggest that this stems, in part, from stereotypical assumptions regarding the effects of socioeconomic status in the ­criminal justice system and, more specifically, prison. In the following section, we elaborate on the findings of Stadler et al. (2013) and Logan et al. (2017) to explain why, theoretically, the concept of social class is particularly important when examining variation in prison adjustment.

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Flipping the Script on Incarcerated White-Collar Offenders: The Why and How of Successful Assimilation to Prison Why might white-collar inmates be less susceptible than other inmates to the pains of imprisonment? We maintain along with long-standing scholarship (Benson and Cullen 1988; Logan et al. 2017; Stadler et al. 2013) that variation in metrics of social status strongly correlates with (un)successful prison adjustment. There is a common, although unsubstantiated, assumption that members of the upper class who lack familiarity with the criminal justice system are more likely to experience greater difficulties upon incarceration—in large part due to the fact that individuals with these characteristics (i.e., white-collar offenders) do not comport with the image of “typical street offenders,” who may be less susceptible and better able to deal with the challenges of prison life (Benson and Simpson 2015; Mann et al. 1979). Congruent with importation theories of prison adjustment (DeLisi et al. 2011), which argue that inmate experiences are a direct extension of their social histories and behavioral patterns that precede incarceration, the empirical research thus far suggests that white-collar offenders import with them various skill sets, values, and backgrounds that facilitate prosocial prison adjustment, including higher levels of emotional regulation and an easier time making friends. Benson and Cullen (1988) note that emotional regulation varies significantly by social class, and it may be that white-collar offenders (particularly those of higher status) have a more cooperative disposition toward others, which might make for an easier time ingratiating themselves among staff members and other inmates. By virtue of their characteristics, they may, for example, make concerted efforts in showing deference to authority and the autocratic rules associated with prison life, so as to distance themselves from other, more “problematic” inmate groups. As one of the inmates interviewed by Benson and Cullen (1988) happily noted: I got a marvelous letter from the warden […] saying that I was outstanding. I did everything that was expected of me. I cooperated in every way I possibly could […] Just the opposite of guys who bucked the system. (p. 212)

Logan et al. (2017) elaborate on this by suggesting that the standardized procedures and established hierarchies that characterize correctional institutions likely provide white-collar inmates a frame of reference for orienting themselves to the prison environment, based on their individual characteristics and the lives they led outside of prison. While not specific to the prison context, the extant literature on the personality traits of white-collar offenders supports this logic. Feeley’s (2006) examination of the white-collar personality, for example, indicates that many high-status white-collar offenders can be classified as “positive extroverts”:

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talkative, manipulative, egocentric individuals with superior social skills who score high on measures of perceived social influence (see also Ragatz et al. 2012). Similarly, past research suggests that the prevalence of psychopathy is higher among high-status white-collar offenders than the general population—the diagnoses of which are contingent on a number of factors, including superficial charm, deception, and emotional callousness (Babiak et al. 2010; Mathieu et al. 2013, 2014). White-collar offenders fitting this description may therefore have an easier time navigating the difficulties associated with being incarcerated because they are able to use these traits to their advantage when interacting with others in the prison environment. Although anecdotal, the prison experience of Bernard Madoff suggests that his social status and influence played a significant role in his ability to successfully adjust to prison, as evidenced by a follow-up letter written to his family: As you can imagine, I am quite the celebrity, and am treated like a Mafia Don. I can’t walk anywhere without someone shouting their greetings or encouragement, to keep my spirit up. It’s really quite sweet, how concerned everyone is about my well-being, including the staff. It’s much safer here than the streets of New York. (Rhee and Druckerman 2011)

Likewise, former business mogul Conrad Black, who in 2007 was sentenced to 6 and a half years in prison and fined over $6 million for various counts of fraud, told Vanity Fair in 2011 interview that he saw his incarceration as a “temporary vacation,” a place where he was able to establish a number of quality relationships with different inmate groups. As Black described: I quickly developed alliances with the Mafia people, then the Cubans. I was friendly with the ‘good ol’ boys’ and the African-Americans. They all understood I had fought the system, and I do believe I earned their respect for that. Everyone got a long, except with the child molesters. (Vanity Fair 2011)

Black went on to address the notion of special sensitivity, noting that “the myth […] was that I would not hold up in prison, that I would be physically and sexually abused” but he soon realized that although “[…] it would be a little tedious, it wouldn’t be difficult to endure” (Vanity Fair 2011). Furthermore, some scholars have argued that white-collar offenders like Madoff and Black are able to shape their prison experience for the better prior to their actual incarceration. As Albonetti (1998) pointed out, high-status cases involving white-collar crime are often complex and require “conciliatory approaches” (Benson et al. 2016), whereby offenders “walk” the prosecution through the details of their offense in exchange for less punitive sentences. To the extent that this is true, many white-collar offenders may never truly experience the pains of imprisonment to which other, more disadvantaged inmates are exposed. Even if they do find themselves similarly

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situated with other inmates, it is likely that they have amounts of resources (i.e., social capital) at their disposal to assuage the negative effects that accompany a prison sentence—at least more so than other groups (Benson and Cullen 1988).

Moving Forward: The White-Collar Prison Experience and Policy Implications Similar to the views expressed by other authors (Logan et al. 2017), we believe that the implications stemming from the research on white-collar inmates and the notion of special sensitivity should be carefully considered. On the one hand, we recognize that white-collar crime as a whole poses significant economic and physical threats to society, far more so than conventional street crimes (Benson and Simpson 2015; Moore and Mills 1990). Thus, with the knowledge that white-collar offenders fare no worse (and in some instances better) than their non-white-collar counterparts, judges may have an easier time in achieving proportionality in punishment when meting out sentences, especially given that a fundamental goal of punishment is to promote general deterrence among would-be offenders. On the other hand, just because white-collar offenders are not particularly susceptible to the pains of imprisonment does not mean that they should be incarcerated with abandon. As previously mentioned, the prison population in the United States has been in steady decline over the past several decades; however, it is still the highest prison population in the world (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018). Importantly, research indicates that excessively large prison populations are invariably linked to instances of overcrowding, which in turn have negative effects on inmate populations (Steiner and Wooldredge 2009; Wooldredge 1997; Wooldredge et al. 2001). Even though the empirical research does not support the notion of special sensitivity, we are therefore not suggesting that incarceration is the most appropriate form of punishment. Many white-collar offenders, for example, do not fit the definition of high status or even high risk, and placing them in the prison context along with other high-risk offenders might create more harm than good (Harbinson et al. 2019). This is particularly true for lowrisk white-collar offenders of color, whose incarceration might serve to widen the already existing racial disparities in sentencing and incarceration (Benson and Kennedy 2019). Rather, the goal of this chapter was to draw attention to the widespread, pre-existing beliefs about incarcerated white-collar offenders, particularly as mediated through popular film and television, and the empirical realities that oppose them. We believe this is an important area of research, especially given the aforementioned size of the United States’ prison population and the necessity of embracing evidence-based practice to figure out “what works” to reduce recidivism and improve criminal justice reform (Andrews and Bonta 2010; Latessa and Smith 2011).

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Club Fed? White-Collar Incarceration in the American Imagination Colleen P. Eren

To envision life on the inside of the “total institution” of prison (Goffman 1961), for those uninitiated on the outside, necessarily involves a leap of the imagination. Even with the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1,486,000 civilians in prisons in 2017, and the ravages of mass incarceration primarily upon black communities in the United States, most Americans will never have a direct experience of prison. Yet, along with their more general fascination with crime and law enforcement, the enduring captivation of Americans with what prison life is can be inferred from the perennial popularity of movies and television shows about prison, from Bird Man of Alcatraz (1962) to The Shawshank Redemption (1994) to Oz (2003) to Orange is the New Black (2013–) and frequently sensationalized news media coverage. In the absence of direct experience or formal education, such popular depictions—often fictitious or highly unrepresentative, created for the purpose of entertainment and titillation—can become the primary sources of public “knowledge” about prison. Wilson and O’Sullivan affirm: “Representations of prison in film and TV drama are an important source of people’s implicit and commonsense understanding of prison” (2004, 8). Dowler correspondingly notes (2003, 109) “Research indicates that the majority of public knowledge about crime and justice is derived from the media.” As criminologists, sociologists, cultural studies, and media scholars have continued to marginalize the study of white-collar crime and criminality, so too have they all but completely ignored pop cultural representations of white-collar incarceration and the significance of these representations. One C. P. Eren (*)  William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_18

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of the leaders of white-collar crime scholarship, Gilbert Geis (2015), dedicated two pages of his White Collar and Corporate Crime to the topic of mass media and corporate scandals, but did not address media representations of white-collar prison life. Michael Levi, one of the most prolific scholars of white-collar crime and media (Levi 2006, 2008), did not include fictitious or fictionalized representations in his analyses except as passing references, and no focus on white-collar criminals’ life within prison has entered the discourse. This chapter lays out contour lines for a more sustained and wide-ranging study of white-collar incarceration in the US public’s collective imagination as evinced through popular culture (“a collection of the norms and values held by ordinary people [which] enables people to make sense of their lives and their world,” [Moohr 2015, 123]). It does so by first examining the hegemonic conception of white-collar prison in the United States as “Club Fed,” or “Country Club Prison,” the origins and dogged persistence of this image and its implications. It then moves to examine movies from different genres produced in the United States over the past 30 years which have included snapshots of life for white-collar offenders inside prison or dialogue about the white-collar prison experience, including Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Club Fed (1989), and Get Hard (2015). Next, it uses content analysis to investigate the media representations of the incarceration of arguably the most famous white-collar criminal of the twenty-first century: Bernard L. Madoff. Last, the construction of the incarceration experience is critically assessed. Throughout, the chapter highlights how representations both evince and reproduce but also manufacture and shape the public’s conception of white-collar incarceration. More significantly, because such artifacts as movies, magazines, newspapers, and other media are deeply culturally embedded and historically situated, they instantiate, illustrate, and sometimes distort perceptions of the criminal justice system and correctional institutions to fit preexisting ideological frameworks. Therefore, we can—and should—“read” these pop cultural representations and the complicated narratives they convey as reflective of the public’s grappling with a correctional structure that blatantly violates Americans’ entrenched mythology of a race and class-neutral system of rewards and punishments. Understanding what exists in the American imagination (however distorted) about white-collar incarceration, in other words, also tells us about realities of inequality.

Background: The Original Club Fed “Country Club” Prison The term “Club Fed” has come to occupy perhaps the most dominant position in the cynical conceptualization Americans have of the prison experience for those who have committed white-collar crimes. Indeed, the discussion of media coverage of high-profile white-collar offenders in the following section will show how “Club Fed” became the yardstick (however much it is an ideal type) by which to compare their prison experiences. “Every time another

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big one goes away—Bernie Kerik or Bernie Madoff or Dennis Kozlowski (the Tyco guy with the $6000 shower curtain) or Martha Stewart or Mickey Sherman (the once hotshot defense lawyer) or any of the Wall Street types who got busted in the recession—the inevitable questions arise: Did they go to Club Fed? To what the public perceives as ‘country club’ prisons?” as a Business Insider journalist noted (DePaulo 2013). A generic reference to any prison perceived by the public as being more lax or having more accommodations than the typical “hard knocks” maximum-security prisons, “Club Fed” is a playful and cynical take on Club Med, a global chain of upscale all-inclusive resorts catering to every whim of their clientele. While minimum-security prisons (also known as Federal Prison Camps), low security, and medium-security prisons (also known as Federal Correctional Institutions [FCIs]) can house people serving sentences for a variety of crimes, the term seems to be primarily reserved to denote the incarceration of white-collar offenders. Before it became a pejorative generic term, however, “Club Fed” was a direct reference devised by the news media in the late 1980s for Eglin Federal Prison Camp, a now defunct low-security prison in Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. It is perhaps unsurprising that “Club Fed” can be traced to this time period, in the immediate aftermath of a decade rattled by the Savings and Loan Scandals which “brought the American financial system to the brink of disaster,” and resulted in a governmental rescue bailout, at a price tag of 500 billion dollars to the American public (Calavita et al. 1999). This was also the decade which saw the takedown of notorious junk bond king Michael Milken for securities fraud, subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison. There was a heightened sensitivity to the collateral damage of white-collar crimes wrought by financial elites. A Los Angeles Times journalist, in one of the first articles to mention “Club Fed,” wrote “Federal Prison Camp Houses WhiteCollar Criminals: Powerful Among the ‘guests’ at ‘Club Fed’” in 1989. He described Eglin Federal Prison Camp with derision: Deep in the aromatic pine woods of the Florida Panhandle is a small place where some of the best known and wealthiest of men come to spend time. Occasionally…the swells arrive in fancy cars driven by uniformed chauffeurs. Among the recent visitors were the head of a famous fashion house, a federal judge and a former congressman. Even top sports figures…sometimes show up. Here these big shots may try Italian lawn-bowling or indulge themselves on the tennis courts, play a game of racquetball or take a turn on the foot trail that winds through the landscaped grounds and past a lake. In the evening guests can catch a movie on cable TV or, if they have money, visit the commissary for a cup of cappuccino and some Haagen-Dazs Macadamia Brittle, one of several flavors. (Douthat 1989)

Forbes magazine would continue to emphasize the laxity of the original “Club Fed” a decade later, describing the amenities:

308  C. P. EREN Eglin has an active music department that sponsors a number of inmate bands and also has a stash of instruments that prisoners can check out. Also of note is the camp’s strong religious studies program that even goes so far as to offer Native American practitioners a small hide tent that can be used as a sweat lodge. (“Best Prisons” 2002)

Approximately 27 minimum-security prisons including Eglin were open in the late 1980s. The language used to describe Eglin Federal Prison Camp was soon adopted in reference to others, such as Lompoc Federal Prison Camp in California, which would house Ivan Boesky, the white-collar offender upon whom the “Greed is Good” movie character in Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, was partially based (Dikerson 1993). The New York Times described Lompoc in 1990: Doctors, bankers, lawyers and real estate developers are among the 600 inmates. Prison camps like Lompoc are referred to as country club prisons or Club Fed because of the privileges that inmates receive. Prisoners can wander about freely, jog, play tennis or lawn bowl. Guards are unarmed. (“Famed Country Club Prison” 1990)

There are now approximately 80 minimum- or medium-security prisons in the United States (DePaulo 2013). How many of these would fit into the stereotypical label of a “Club Fed” arrangement would need to be operationalized and empirically validated, a task which no scholars to date have undertaken. It seems that the wholesale ascription of the “Club Fed” or “country club” label to any federal prison wherein a white-collar offender may be sent after sentencing is one of the legacies of using a term that, in an apt political and social milieu, captured Americans’ sense of the outrageousness of such arrangements given the harm caused by financial offenders. Inequality was materialized. “Club Fed” has indeed become an uncompromising image in the minds of many Americans and has even transcended the boundaries of the United States to be invoked in Canadian media coverage of white-collar prisons. For example, the William Head Institution in British Columbia and Ferndale in British Columbia were dubbed “Club Fed” in the Calgary Herald and in The Star, respectively (Pron 2007), and their “perks” detailed at length in those publications. Even some scholars, without much in the way of empirical validation, have compared the (allegedly) uniform US white-collar Club Fed “experience” with those in other countries to point out the laxity of the US system compared with others, like Japan (Gerber 1994). The initial entry of “Club Fed” into the collective imagination of Americans came through the news media. Movies of the past thirty years would largely continue to reproduce that understanding. However, some more nuanced or even contradictory representations can be found which challenge the prevailing stereotype, indicative of increasing awareness of a lack of homogeneity of the white-collar prison experience.

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Club Fed or “Minimum Security Is No Picnic”? Hollywood Takes on White-Collar Incarceration Although films (due to the scope of this chapter, I focus on fictitious or fictionalized stories and not documentaries) that include any kind of depiction or even reference to white-collar incarceration are dramatically fewer than those envisioning incarceration for other offenses, it is important to analyze this small subset. “Movies matter, both individually and as a genre, because these lessons are absorbed by the popular legal culture and ultimately influence social institutions like the criminal justice and financial systems” (2015, 139), Moohr writes in the only scholarly article to address film representations of white-collar crimes (but not incarceration per se). She examines seventeen white-collar movies and asserts that these films have done a good job of illustrating “suite crimes” but generally do not prominently feature law enforcement, lawyers, courtrooms, or judges. In other words, the prosecution of white-collar crimes is left to the imagination of the viewer. Moohr cites the work of Lawrence Friedman on law and popular culture, explaining “in order to understand how the norms and values of ordinary people influence the law, one must attend to commercial entertainment, like movies…Error, inaccuracy, and falsity can then influence the way ordinary people view lawyers, trials, judges, firms, and the law itself” (124). One can extrapolate from Friedman’s arguments that the influence of commercial entertainment on the public’s views of legal proceedings extends to the impact of films’ portrayals of the white-collar incarceration experience. Here, I focus on six movies which center around a white-collar crime but which also to various extents include depictions or dialogue about prison. Coinciding with news media’s coverage of Eglin Federal Prison Camp, the spoof comedy Club Fed was released in 1990. The film poster’s tagline: “white collar crime — doing time has never been so good” appeared above a picture of two of the inmates at “Club Fed” embracing each other joyfully on a beach. In between the words “Club” and “Fed” is a country club logo, complete with a tennis racquet. The story centers around the dim-witted, scantily clad Angelica Paziotopolous, girlfriend of a murdered mobster who was sent to minimum-security prison, deceived into taking the blame for his illegal transactions. However, the prison, actually named “Club Fed,” is like a luxury hotel, where the “inmates” arrive in expensive clothing to have the warden (wearing a tuxedo) welcome them obsequiously like a concierge and take their luggage. It’s the “The place to be for the guiltyrich!” the sentencing judge in Angelica’s case remarks, while a voice-over of a game show announcer pronounces that she is going to a “brand new, luxurious prison”…. “the very elegant and exclusive, Club Fed. That’s right, Club Fed, translated that means minimum minimum minimum security prison.” The amenities are enumerated by the voice-over…Championship golf course, windsurfing, custom-made bungalows, luxury automobiles, flown first class. “No wonder when prisoners think prison-term, they think club Fed.”

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The bulk of the movie is dedicated to parodying and imagining the excesses of a Club Fed. The “inmates” stroll around the grounds (without bars, of course) wearing Harvard sweatshirts and carrying tennis racquets. Approached as for a television ad for Disney Land, one is asked: “World’s most successful criminal, what are you doing now?” “I’m going to Club Fed!” he answers enthusiastically. An “ordinary criminal” wearing traditional prison stripes tries to break into Club Fed, and the warden tells him to get out. When told they should work, one inmate remarks “Sacrilegious! They send you to prison and then they expect you to work?” The tension/conflict in the parodic film comes when the FBI director, aptly named Hooligan, mocking the leniency of the prison, attempts to have it shut down, suspecting an inside embezzlement scheme and sends in an undercover agent. “Send those criminals behind real bars instead of on some vacation which the judge has handed them in court!” he rails. As the story unfolds, it turns out the FBI director himself is engaged in a corrupt scheme with the Club Fed warden, and so Club Fed can remain open, to the delight of the inmates. Although the portrayal of minimum-security life in Club Fed is deliberately outrageous, one can hear echoes of the actual, contemporaneous news media coverage of Eglin or Lompoc. The boundary between reality and fiction was blurring, and the “Club Fed” image of prison would lodge for decades in the imagination of Americans. Wolf of Wall Street (2013), a fictionalized account of the story of Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who scammed investors out of 100s of millions in the 1990s, was convicted of securities fraud and sent to prison, dedicated little time to the prison experience, fewer than four minutes out of the three hour run-time. Rather, the focus of the dark comedy was its depiction of the “Sodom and Gomorrah” (to use Belfort’s description) atmosphere within his firm, Stratton Oakmont, where midget-tossing competitions, prostitutes, exotic animals, and drugs became normalized (Gray 2013). The brief image of prison, presented after an even briefer courtroom scene, is one which largely accorded with the “Club Fed” model. In the film, Belfort travels by a blue prison bus while an upbeat rock cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Mrs. Robinson” plays. “When I arrived at the prison I was absolutely terrified,” he says in a voice-over, and the scene shifts from the blue bus to the blue of a tennis court. “See, for a brief, fleeting moment, I’d forgotten I was rich and I lived in a place where everything was for sale.” On the court, Belfort is wearing a white t-shirt and gray sweat pants, while fellow inmates are launching tennis balls. Several films in the 2000s and 2010s portrayed the incarceration of white-collar offenders as less salubrious, perhaps reflective of a growing awareness of the lack of uniformity of their experiences. Interestingly, most of these films were either in the comedy, dark comedy, or even romantic comedy genre such as I Love You Phillip Morris (2009), a fictionalized take on the life of Steven Russell (played by Jim Carey), convicted first of credit card fraud, check fraud, and insurance fraud to fund the lavish lifestyle he

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feels is necessary after he comes out as gay. Sent in the film to Texas State Penitentiary (we see a sign for the “Michael Unit”), where he falls in love with inmate Phillip Morris, Russell has an experience antithetical to that Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street. The majority of the action of the film takes place in the prison itself. New inmates arrive at the prison wearing yellow jumpsuits and are greeted by wolfish whistles. Russell explains to his cellmate that violence is ubiquitous (he lost teeth and cracked a vertebra) and that sexual favors act as a form of currency within the prison. The tone of this exchange and the persistent smiling of Steven Russell suggest that the audience will find it darkly humorous. The prison building itself in I Love You Phillip Morris is far from a “Club Fed.” Calls take place on payphones behind fencing. Barbed wire surrounds the prison and a watchtower guards the prison yard. Chipped paint, small bunks and cells with bars and no doors are shown. Inmates masturbate while watching a movie in the common area, globs of food are ladled out uniformly, and in an adjacent cell, a mentally ill inmate screams throughout the night. Correctional officers taze non-compliant inmates. And, more ominously, the dangerous reality of being out as a gay man in such a place is established. Homophobic slurs are hurled. Phillip Morris explains to Russell why he doesn’t go into the prison yard: “You know what happens to blondhaired blue-eyed queers.” The greatest repudiation of the “Club Fed” image in I Love You Phillip Morris comes, however, at the end of the film. After Steven Russell has escaped from prison numerous times and committed more acts of fraud in order to be with his lover, we learn before the credits roll that the “real” Russell is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement. Jokes about male sexual violence/rape in I love You Phillip Morris, conveying the degradation of federal prison even for white-collar offenders is a motif that runs through two additional films: the comedies Office Space (1999) and most prominently in Get Hard (2015). In Office Space, disgruntled office workers Peter, Michael, and Samir create a computer program to embezzle funds from the company as revenge for an immanent layoff. “Worst thing they’re gonna do is put you in a white-collar minimum security resort for a couple of months. You know they have conjugal visits there?” Peter says to Samir, trying to enlist his support in the scheme. Later, actually confronted with the possibility of going to prison for embezzlement, Michael exclaims “We’re not going to white-collar resort prison, we’re going to federal poundme-in-the-ass prison.” A lawyer-friend of the trio similarly asserts, “Minimum security prison is no picnic…trick is, kick someone’s ass the first day, or become someone’s bitch.” Get Hard is about a white, wealthy hedge fund manager James King (Will Ferrell) who is wrongfully convicted of fraud and embezzlement and sentenced to ten years in maximum-security prison at San Quentin. The very title is a double entendre that mocks prison rape. James hires an acquaintance Darnell (Kevin Hart) to toughen him up for prison, assuming that Darnell

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has been to prison himself because he is black. Jokes about rape abound as Darnell “trains” James through a series of simulated “prison” scenarios which are played out in his mansion, including being caught between rival racial gangs, trash-talking, and surviving a prison riot. The actual film time spent inside the prison, however, is under two minutes. James appears in khakis in the prison mess hall. He has adopted the belligerent attitude he’s been “trained” to assume and fights when an inmate tries to take food off of his plate, exclaiming “If you let someone fuck with your food you’re a punk fuck bitch.” Of the remaining films since 1989 which deal with white-collar crimes and incarceration, Catch me if you Can (2002), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) and Ocean’s 11 (2001), none supports the “Club Fed”/country club model of prison for these offenses, but only offer momentary glimpses of the realities of prison life, each lasting a few minutes. In Catch me if you Can, con man Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) walks through a dark, crowded prison wearing khakis, talking to his visitor through a glass partition, and Ocean’s 11 opening scene presents convicted fraudster Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) in a dark room, where he responds to a parole board hidden to the audience and wearing khakis. Ocean is followed back to his cell by correctional officers, and the camera follows his path through grim bars and cages. The next scene shows him exiting from the prison (a sign behind him reads “North Jersey State Prison”) to electronic music. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with the iconic “greed is good” character of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Its opening scene shows Gekko exiting federal prison: He is given back his possessions, including an empty money clip and a large 1980’s cell phone, hinting at the long time he has spent behind bars. A correctional officer hands him a check for his work for 50c a day in the prison minus what he has spent in commissary. He walks outside with men with tattoos, and while a limo awaits another prisoner, no one picks him up. “They took my life and when I got out, who’s waiting for me? Nobody!” he later complains. While this analysis of films can provide only a brief overview, we can draw several conclusions about white-collar incarceration in the American imagination via film. First, in general, scenes of incarceration are rare, and when they appear, they are short. The focus of white-collar crime films continues to be on the adrenaline-fueled, toxic masculinity of the lives of those committing the infractions, men who are played by attractive, heteronormative Hollywood A-list actors. The preferred genre for white-collar films that include incarceration is comedy, thus detracting from the gravity of prison and even the offenses themselves. There are competing narratives about what white-collar incarceration entails within these films. On the one hand, we have the enduring “Club Fed” and on the other, the “hard” prison—the prison where rape and loss of masculinity is a constant threat, in which the (actually white) white-collar offenders see themselves as vulnerable outsiders who will have to guard themselves from the “other,” implied black or brown prisoners. The fact that white, middle-class, and upper-class men are

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presented as such anomalies within the prison suggests a conscious or subconscious understanding among Americans about the way in which race and class intersect in the criminal justice system to ensure that this group is largely “exempt” from the consequences of illegal actions. There is a connection between the way in which stories of white-collar incarceration are depicted in movies and the narratives presented by news media of “real” stories of prison for those convicted of white-collar crime. The next section examines dominant discourses using the case study of Ponzi scheme artist Bernie Madoff. What narratives exist about his time in prison, and what does this tell us about the model of punishment that exists in the American imagination?

How the Mighty Have Fallen: Imagining Bernie Madoff in Prison I was appalled to hear that Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison and sent to a medium-security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Yet again the system has failed. White-collar criminals that perpetrate crimes like Mr. Madoff’s need to be made examples of—not sent to “Club Fed.” Why is it that impoverished youth (who could still turn their lives around) are thrown right into the general prison populations of some of America’s toughest penitentiaries where they are forced to survive with hardened, violent criminals, while Mr. Madoff, who ruined countless lives and destroyed many charitable foundations, is sent to a “correctional complex”? Let him mingle with murderers and rapists. It’s what he deserves. Mark Kolt, Letter to the Editor.

Shortly after Madoff’s sentencing in July 2009, The New York Times published the above letter to the editor, which captures not only the persistence of the “Club Fed” image of medium- and minimum-security federal prisons, but also the vitriolic desire to see the “model” of harsh American prisons extended to include white-collar crimes rather than, say, the white-collar model of prison be extended to include violent crimes. In The Crisis of Bernie Madoff: The Public Trial of Capitalism, I maintained that Madoff, arguably the most infamous fraudster of the twenty-first century with his decades-old, 17.5 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, entered popular discourse during the financial crisis of 2008 in a way that allowed for a discussion of broader issues related to the financial crisis. These issues included the use of harsh punishments for white-collar offenders, gross economic inequality between the “1%” and everyone else, and the unequal treatment of poor versus the rich in the criminal justice system. “Along with feelings of class resentment, the coverage presented narratives which elicited strong feelings of schadenfreude, of pleasure at Madoff’s dramatic fall from grace—from riches to rags, from prominence to infamy” (Eren 2017, 96). As one of my interviewees, journalist James Bone of the London Times had asserted, “The comeuppance of a rich crook is always an emotionally satisfying story” (133). My analysis

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was focused on media coverage of his case until his sentencing to 150 years in federal prison. However, many of the themes discussed in the book were reprised in subsequent coverage of his time within the medium facility prison he would occupy in Butner. Madoff’s incarceration has been, quite literally, imagined in the media. The question of what his life is like in prison has been one of fascination and speculation. Most of the coverage has highlighted and reveled in his loss of status, but has only variably emphasized (as the letter to the editor did) any perceived laxity of his incarceration. New York Magazine, which had depicted him after the exposure of his fraud in 2009 as the joker, with the headline “Bernie Madoff, Monster,” ran “Bernie Madoff, free at last” by journalist, Steve Fishman (2010). The article included two photo images (e.g., staged shoots with actors and props) which depicted what life might look like for the once-almost-billionaire-master-of-the-universe. In one, Madoff is leaning on a broom in an empty room in a sickly green cafeteria with food scattered on the floor, framed by bars, and gazes into space. In the second, Madoff reclines in khakis and sandals on a prison bunk, holding his glasses and a John Grisham novel, newspapers, and other books behind him. He again looks out through bars of the open prison door pensively. The article also included a “popup” graphic of Madoff behind bars with his “prison family,” with headshots of fellow inmates such as the former head of the Colombo crime family. “Bernard Lawrence Madoff, prisoner No. 61727-054, arrived at the softer of Butner’s two medium-security facilities in handcuffs and shackles, his overthe-collar hair shorn close, his rich man’s paunch diminished, he was a celebrity, even if his admirers were now murderers and sex offenders,” Fishman wrote. The disappearance of his “rich man’s paunch” is a metaphor for his loss of class stature, and the seemingly unthinkable juxtapositioning of a former NASDAQ chairman with “common” criminals gives the reader an almost Aesopian story of the consequences of immoral behavior. The Hollywood Reporter (2018) printed a comparable account of Bernie’s life in prison by a fellow Butner Correctional inmate. No “Club Fed” image is presented, rather the reader sees Madoff’s degradation through being forced to engage with those who would have been considered utterly “beneath” him in his former life, with dog-whistle racist and homophobic insinuations. The article read: “Fights with another prisoner, horrible novels and watching rap videos: One insider’s account of how Manhattan’s biggest fraudster passes his days behind bars” (Abramovich 2018). A cartoon-like sketch of Madoff that accompanied the article imagined him in a double prison bunk with an orange jumpsuit (the incorrect color, but one most Americans think all prisoners wear) and a grim face, a newspaper resting on the bed, the legs of a cellmate dangling from above. The piece gave titillating details of his interactions with his cellmate (a Mexican drug runner), disputes with an incarcerated Israeli spy, and his difficulties in navigating toiletry routines with transgender inmates.

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Because Butner Federal Prison does not allow visitors to bring in cameras, most of the media coverage of Madoff’s incarceration relies on descriptive writing, imaginary photo illustrations, or other artwork. From 2009 to 2017, after Madoff’s sentencing, there was a complete absence of photos or videos showing Madoff. However, in 2017, the Guardian was able to secure photos taken covertly. “The Guardian is publishing two images of Madoff in prison garb that are believed to be the only photographic public records of the grand swindler in captivity” journalist Ed Pilkington wrote (2017). Noteworthy about this description in the article is the presumption that the audience will enjoy seeing Madoff in such prison garb, but more importantly, the phrase “in captivity” is one typically reserved for discussions of exotic animals. Madoff has been made into a zoo attraction. Pilkington goes on to write, “The inmate is wearing a white T-shirt under a standard-issue khaki coat…He has his hands outstretched as though in animated conversation. In the second image he smiles broadly, enjoying a moment of levity that may irritate some of his many financial victims still left reeling by the vast deception.” The tone of the writing suggests the audience should feel outraged that within prison, Madoff, dehumanized further through the reference to “inmate,” should not be enjoying an animated conversation. Nor, the piece suggests, should he be smiling. Non-printed media largely followed that of their printed counterparts, trying to give their audience a sense of what life would be like for Madoff, comparing it to his previous existence, and rendering a sense of justice and vindication. Business Insider, for example, ran a video clip of Harvard professor Eugene Soltes, “This is what Bernie Madoff’s life is like in prison” (2017), wherein he recounts: “Life…isn’t as bad as you might expect, perhaps…one of Madoff’s jobs in prison has been running the commissary, a place where inmates go to purchase a variety of food items like ramen noodles, or to buy…a pair of flipflops to wear in the shower.” Soltes went on to describe Madoff’s voracious reading of newspapers and books, as well as continual meetings with lawyers about his case. Again, the degradation of Madoff’s being reduced to selling flipflops for the shower or ramen noodles is key. Prison is not “Club Fed” but neither is really mentioned. In contrast, CBS, prior to Madoff’s incarceration in March 2009, ran a news segment: “Prison Life for Madoff,” by journalist Armen Keteyian, which insinuated there were perils to come. “Once Madoff goes to a federal prison it’s going to be serious, it’s not going to be luxurious,” Keteyian said in a voice-over, while images of federal prisons were shown. “Instead he’ll likely go to a medium security prison, one like Otisville…not exactly a big house, but a far cry from a 7 million dollar Manhattan penthouse, a life of luxury and security.” A prison consultant was interviewed, who emphasized that medium-security prisons could be dangerous. The routine of life in federal prison was recounted as one of institutionalized routine, full of dull drudgery. “A fitting end to a life full of lies, in the cold hard truths behind bars,” Keteyian concludes.

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Two fictionalized dramas made for television of Bernie Madoff’s story, Madoff (ABC 2016) and Wizard of Lies (2017), present brief images of his incarceration. In Wizard of Lies, a sober-looking Madoff (Robert DeNiro), wearing khakis, is photographed through small circular windows in prison doors, passing through an anesthetized building to a dark, greenish room with metal chairs where he is to be interviewed. ABC’s Madoff (with Richard Dreyfus) presents his incarceration differently, with a nod to the “Club Fed,” slap-on-the-wrist model. In it, Madoff sits stoically in prison in khakis as he hears the news that his son has committed suicide, with pictures on his cell wall of his family, an exposed toilet next to him. In this scene, Madoff is reading. However, in the final scene of the mini-series, Madoff laughs broadly while playing at a poker table with other older, manifestly non-threatening inmates “for the rest of you, who want to see me suffer the rest of my days, in torment, sorry to disappoint,” he gloats. The jaded American belief that even in prison for life, offenders are “getting off easy” perseveres.

Conclusion Scholarly investigation into white-collar incarceration, be it analysis of media and culture, or empirical research on white-collar inmates, has been scarce in comparison with other categories of crime. This chapter has provided a departure point for exploring white-collar incarceration in popular culture, but has also offered a more systematic study of the lived experiences of white-collar inmates. Some conclusions can be gleaned from this chapter. First, tropes like “Club Fed” as a white-collar prison have considerable cultural longevity, persisting in some instances for decades, with little concern for the veracity of the narrative. As we saw, Club Fed at first pertained to a single prison in the 1980s, but became a generic reference to “white-collar prisons” (even though such prisons do not exist as such). Because Americans have little direct experience of those who have spent time in federal prison, no matter the level of security, these myths can persist. Second, most of what Americans know of white-collar offenders in prison comes to them through stories (fictionalized and/or sensationalized) of high-profile individuals, some of whom were celebrities to begin with. Because the mega-wealthy and celebrities are in a way “beyond” the realm of the ordinary person, so too are they presented as beyond the realm of the “ordinary” prison experience. Last, broader class inequalities are often discussed through the white-collar offender’s incarceration, and so can be read as socio-political artifacts. It is true that the ways in which white-collar offenders, especially the wealthy, encounter the criminal justice system are apprehended, processed, prosecuted, and incarcerated in a way that is vastly different from and that of the poor or those of color, who have suffered disproportionate harm on a massive scale. However, in derisively presenting federal minimum and medium-security prisons as uniformly “country club” prisons, and mocking

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incarceration experiences for white-collar offenders (as we have seen, including ample insinuations about sexual assault), there are two problems. The first is the disconnect between this caricature and the reality for most federal prisoners in such institutions, where they are subjected to the types of dehumanization also found in maximum-security prisons and which should be universally condemned. Another problem, which critical criminologists should particularly be wary of, is that in lampooning “Club Feds,” the implication is that what is desired for white-collar offenders is degradation, deprivation, and abuse, presumably because American scripts about prison and punishment require these to be as demeaning and retributive as possible, and white-collar offenders are unsympathetic characters. In an interview for Business Insider, former New York City Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik, who was sentenced to two years in federal prison for eight charges, including fraud, described: “That whole Club Fed mentality, that shit that they portray in the press, is complete nonsense…Once you arrive at prison—I was shocked by the psychological punishment. You are constantly berated, degraded, demoralized. I’ve come to realize being sentenced in the U.S. criminal justice system, for anything, is a life sentence. It’s not about the time they give you. You receive a punishment of imprisonment and then a lifelong sentence of collateral punishment.” His interviewer, Lisa DePaulo, aptly ended the article: “None of which sounds like an offering at Club Fed” (2013).

References Abramovich, Seth. 2018. “Fellow Inmates Details Bernie Madoff’s Life Behind Bars.” Hollywood Reporter, April 12. Best Prisons. September 12, 2002. Forbes. Available: https://www.forbes. com/2002/09/12/bestprisonslide.html#71704a4b713b. Calavita, Kitty, Henry Pontell, and Robert Tillman. 1999. Big Money Crime: Fraud and Politics in the American Savings and Loan Scandal. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, Etan [Director]. 2015. Get Hard [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Bros. De Felitta, Raymond. 2016 [Director]. Madoff [Television Mini-Series]. United States: American Broadcasting Company. DePaulo, Lisa. 2013. “Here’s What White Collar Prison Is Really Like for Three High-Profile Criminals.” Business Insider, December 31. Dikerson, John F. 1993. “Battling Boeskys.” Time Magazine, May 3. Douthat, S. 1989. “Federal Prison Camp Houses White-Collar Criminals: Powerful Among ‘Guests’ at ‘Club Fed.’” Los Angeles Times. Available: https://www. latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-23-mn-1771-story.html. Dowler, Kenneth. 2003. “Media Consumption and Public Attitudes Towards Crime and Justice.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 11, no. 2: 109–126. Eren, C. 2017. Bernie Madoff and the Crisis: The Public Trial of Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

318  C. P. EREN “Famed Country Club Prison is to House violent inmates.” The New York Times, July 31, 1990. Fishman, Steve. 2010. “Bernie Madoff, Free at Last.” New York Magazine, June 6. Geis, Gilbert. 2015. White Collar and Corporate Crime. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerber, Jurg. 1994. “Club Fed in Japan? Incarceration Experiences of Japanese Embezzlers.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 38, no. 2: 163–174. Gray, Geoffrey. 2013. “The Wolf of Wall Street Can’t Sleep.” New York Magazine, November 24. Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums. New York: Anchor Books. Gordon, Nat [Director]. 1990. Club Fed [Motion Picture]. United States: MGM. Judge, Mike [Director]. 1999. Office Space [Motion Picture]. United States: Twentieth Century Fox. Levi, Michael. 2006. “The Media Construction of Financial White-Collar Crimes.” British Journal of Criminology 46: 1037–1057. Levi, Michael. 2008. “White-Collar, Organized and Cyber Crimes in the Media: Some Contrasts and Similarities.” Crime, Law and Social Change 49: 365–377. Levinson, Barry [Director]. 2017. The Wizard of Lies. United States: HBO. Moohr, Geraldine. 2015. “White Collar Movies and Why They Matter.” Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law 16, no. 2: 119–140. O’Sullivan, Sean, and David Wilson. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester, UK: Waterside Press. Pilkington, Ed. 2017. “Bernie Madoff Photos Offer Rare Glimpse of Convicted Fraudster in Prison.” The Guardian, May 20. Pron, Nick. 2007. “Killer Bakes Cookies at ‘Club Fed.’” The Star, January 18. Requa, John, and Glenn Ficarra [Directors]. 2009. I Love You Phillip Morris [Motion Picture]. United States: Europa Corp. Scorsese, Martin [Director]. 2013. The Wolf of Wall Street [Motion Picture]. United States: Red Granite Pictures. Soderbergh, Steven [Director]. 2001. Ocean’s Eleven [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Spielberg, Steven [Director]. 2002. Catch Me If You Can [Motion Picture]. United States: Dreamworks. Stone, Oliver [Director]. 2010. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. United States: Twentieth Century Fox. “This is what Bernie Madoff’s Life is Like Inside Prison.” Business Insider, 8 January 2017 [video]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vRV9bl9Qs.

The Queen Without Kingdom: Vulnerability, Martyrization, Monolingualism and Injury Toward a Quechua-Speaking Woman Imprisoned in Argentina Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco

Introduction Reina Maraz, a Bolivian Quechua-speaking woman imprisoned in Argentina in November 2010, is the focus of the online narrative reportage La Reina de los Hornos (The queen of Los Hornos). In the text, Maraz encapsulates a cluster of identities within her being that present her as completely vulnerable and excluded, not only inside the prison, but in all aspects of her life. All these characteristics seem to create a non-fiction narrative where Reina’s portrayal is created by her identification with a multitude of subordinate identities which position the subject as if the lack of decision (the lack of agency) was part of her identity. Reina Maraz is a Quechua Bolivian and was arrested in 2010 in Argentina aged 22 for murder. Four years later, she was sentenced as guilty, after a trial in which she had an interpreter but had to testify in Spanish, as did her young son. The criminal justice and prison system in Argentina is relatively unfamiliar to English language readers. In this chapter, we see incarceration through the presentation offered by the reportage La Reina de los Hornos. This chapter is not so much about her case and her imprisonment, which have been narrated in the text La Reina de los Hornos but is focused on how her identity and her agency and those of her judges and prison officers are S. Rodríguez-Blanco (*)  Iberoamericana University, Mexico City, Mexico © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_19

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discursively constructed in a journalistic genre in which the author uses literary techniques and strategies to create a written non-fiction narrative. As Gardner (2004, 1) has explained, agency: “[…] concerns the nature of individual freedom in the face of social constraints, the role of socialisation in the forming of ‘persons’ and the place of particular ways of doing things in the reproduction of culture. In short, it is about the relationships between an individual human organism and everyone and everything that surrounds it.” Traditionally, in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), agency refers to the capacity of individuals for independent action and free choice (Carpentier 2017, 29). In Reina’s presentation, her subordinate identity is related to her failure to make decisions, or what Carpentier has called “the undecidedness,” that he describes as “[…] the failure of political agency, of leadership, and of politics or business itself” (Carpentier 2016, 87). In order to understand both the social and the political, we need the conceptual strength of the trinity of decidedness, undecidedness and undecidability, which would be the ontological impossibility of a discursive order to ultimately fixate reality where undecidability produces undecidedness. In discourse analysis, the role of the decision, as a temporary moment of fixation (Carpentier 2016, 96), has been related to the concept of hegemony. As Laclau and Mouffe wrote in the “Preface to the second edition” of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, “One can see hegemony as a theory of the decision taken in an undecidable domain” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, xi). Reina’s story was published by female Bolivian journalist Nathalie Iriarte Villavicencio after having interviewed Reina 15 times in prison, as well as interviews that the journalist carried out when she managed to find Reina’s family in a small Bolivian village. When Iriarte began her research in 2013, Reina had been in prison for more than three years and was embroiled in a judicial process full of irregularities that, according to this journalist,1 violated her human rights, including the fact that Reina, who was 22 years old, the mother of two children and pregnant when she entered prison, waited almost a year and a half, until December 2011, to be allowed a visit from an interpreter who could explain in her mother tongue the crime of which she was accused: the alleged murder of her husband. The story was published on March 8, 2017 (International Day of Women) by the online independent Mexican digital site Perro Crónico. Within just one year, 17,000 people had read the 2017 reportage, according to information obtained from the page. The story about her was also republished in Mexico by Animal Político,2 a prestigious independent Mexican site about politics and culture. Three years earlier, a shorter version of the story had been published in Bolivia in the book Cotidianidades. Historias reales de cronistas noveles (Cotidianities. Real Stories of Novel Narrative Journalists), where it obtained the First Honorable Mention of the Pedro Rivero Mercado National Prize of Journalistic Crónica (/Story).

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In the narrative, vulnerability is related not only to migration, but also to the linguistic and communicative inferences derived from the existence of a dominant language, in this case colonial language Spanish, and of individuals who are not completely fluent in it, as was the case for Reina. The linguistic problem is increased by racism, violence, injury and exclusion practiced by the receiving population, but also by her own community in Bolivia. Vulnerability in terms of language has been studied by Judith Butler (2015), who argues that the language of hatred puts one in a subordinate position with respect to the dominant subject. In the limits between the homo sacer (Agamben 2003) and the clandestine (Badiou 2005), both the existence of a dominant language and the variations used by those who are not completely fluent—the migrants—have perpetuated in globalization an idea that Derrida (1997) described from his own experience, having been born in Algeria when it was a French colony: Monolingualism reveals the colonial structure of all cultures: “The monolingualism imposed by others builds on that foundation, and deriving from a repressible and irrepressibly colonial sovereignty, tends to reduce the languages to the One, that is to say, to the hegemony of the homogeneous” (Derrida 1997, 58). The process of identification of Reina’s presentation relates to what Gramsci (1999) has called the “normal” exercise of hegemony, which “[…] is characterized by the combination of force and consent variously balancing one another, without force exceeding consent too much” (Gramsci 1999, 261). Based on these conceptual frameworks, this chapter analyzes how the experiential dimension of reporting of Reina’s imprisonment, content created by a journalist in a genre that “emphasizes narrative and descriptive modalities” (Hartsock 2016, 3) allows a critical rethinking of the categories on which the standardized practices of exclusion and violence are constructed. The main question is if this online narrative reportage about incarceration reproduces or criticizes the hegemonic narrative of Reina as a subordinate that locates her subject position in an eternal passivity or undecidedness, since “Hegemonic practices are an exemplary form of political articulation which involves linking together different identities into a common project” (Howarth 1998, 279). How does the reporting experience of Nathalie Iriarte Villavicencio in “The queen of Los Hornos” represent Reina’s identity during her time of incarceration? As a paradigm of vulnerability, is Reina a metaphor of how the dominant system administers the singularities of the individuals who are excluded?

Method The way in which power relations are exercised and negotiated in discourse has been the main focus of CDA, especially for analysts such as Fairclough and Wodak. For example, a CDA can show how the kinds of power relations

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involved in racism are maintained in journalism (Machin and Mayr 2012, 5). CDA focuses on social problems and especially “on the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of power abuse or domination” (van Dijk quoted by Richardson 2007, 1), so CDA can reveal ideas, absences and taken-for-granted assumptions in texts and also in images. Some texts that use linguistics strategies that appear neutral may actually be ideological. This kind of analysis has been criticized because it is said to offer an interpretation of the meaning of the text rather than quantifying textual features, so for some authors, it is considered not to be objective. However, objectivist sciences are insufficient to study human cultural productions and specifically journalism. Some have argued that journalism exists to disseminate the views of the powerful; others have said that journalism exists to entertain us. For Richardson (2007, 7), “journalism exists to enable citizens to better understand their lives and their positions in the world.” He argues that even if journalism can emphasize entertainment or can report the activities and opinions of the powerful, it stops being journalism when the primary function is not to help citizens to understand the world and their positions within it. The contemporary world, according to Richardson, is characterized by the pre-eminence of capitalism, so CDA “is an approach to language use that aims to explore and expose the roles that discourse plays in reproducing or resisting social inequalities” (2007, 7). Richardson contemplates that the analysis needs to consider the discursive practices of news discourse and that discourse analysis involves an analysis of texts as they are related to social conditions of production and consumption (2007, 40). In order to understand what discourse is and how it works, analysis needs to draw out the form and function of the text, its relation to the way it is produced and consumed and to the society in which it occurs (2007, 37). Richardson includes the “conventions of genre” (2007, 40) as a characteristic that affects the mediation that takes place between the producer and the text. The text analyzed in this article is an example of the genre “literary journalism” or “narrative journalism” (that uses the techniques of fiction and the conventions of traditional journalism), called crónica in Spanish (Angulo 2014). I will interpret the meaning of the text by using some of Richardson’s concepts for analyzing texts, such as lexical analysis, transitivity, rhetorical tropes and the way that narrative elements work.

Constructing a Narrative Experience of Vulnerability In The queen of Los Hornos, the focus, Reina Maraz, is represented and named from the beginning through a rhetorical strategy that is present in the title and that is completed by the subtitle. The title “La Reina de Los Hornos” in Spanish includes two words (reina and hornos) that are ambiguous because

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they can have two meanings: On one hand, the word “Reina” is a woman’s name but it also means “queen.” “Los Hornos” is the name of a place (the prison in Argentina where she is), but it also means “the ovens.” There would be three ways in which a Spanish speaker could understand simultaneously the meaning of this title: “Reina from Los Hornos,” “The queen of Los Hornos” or even “The queen of the ovens.” This pun is homographic, because it exploits multiple meanings of the same word (Richardson 2007). In this case, it also functions as a metonymy because it operates through a direct form of association between a name (Reina, Los Hornos) and the meaning of that name understood as a noun (queen, ovens). However, this pun works also as a metaphor (perceiving one thing in terms of another) of a woman who is the queen of a prison or, even, the queen of the ovens. From the title, the texts ironically construct the image of a woman who is a queen without a kingdom. The subtitle following the title lists six attributes of Reina, the last reinforcing her carceral status: “Woman, migrant, Bolivian, dark-skinned, Quechua speaking and imprisoned for homicide without the right to an interpreter.” The first five attributes are part of her own identity: woman, migrant, Bolivian, dark-skinned and Quechua speaking are a series of characteristics that place her as a minority and other within the Spanish-speaking community of Argentina. In this text, it is preferred to give a descriptive adjective of her dark-skinned skin color instead of using the word “indigenous,” which has political attributes and which would perhaps focus the accent of the story on racism according to skin color and not on discrimination for not speaking a language. Nevertheless, what appears as Reina’s sixth characteristic (“imprisoned for homicide without the right to an interpreter”) is not an attribute of identity, but is at the end of the enumeration as if it were also part of her identity or as if it were a consequence of it. Another way of stating the sentence might have been this: “Woman, migrant, Bolivian, darkskinned, Quechua speaking is imprisoned for homicide without the right to an interpreter.” After the title and the subtitle, the text starts with Reina’s testimony in Quechua. This beginning highlights the point of view of the story. This does not necessarily hold up as a migration story, or as the story of a mother with her daughter in prison, or as the story of the move from the countryside to the big city. This might be a strategy to generate a lack of understanding on the part of the reader (who does not understand this language), followed by the Spanish translation in parentheses, which we provide translated into English to preserve the same effect as in the original text: Mana parlayta atiqtiychus, boliviana kaptiychus chayjinata. Wisk’ay kuwarqanku nini. (Why did they lock me in? Is it because I do not know how to speak Spanish? Is it because I am Bolivian?)

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Why is this first paragraph in Quechua? In this case, the emphasis is placed not on meaning, but on the unintelligible form of it. The emphasis of the first paragraph, according to the interview by Nathalie Iriarte, is in her condition as a Quechua speaker: The beginning tells us that Reina’s story is not a migration story, even though Reina is a Bolivian migrant in Argentina. The point of view is neither the story of a mother with her daughter in jail, nor is it the story of the move from the countryside to the big city, but the story of a woman who cannot defend herself in criminal proceedings and from her incarceration because she does not understand a language. I could have started in many different ways. But I preferred to state from the beginning that she is a woman who is arrested and imprisoned without being given the opportunity to express herself, a woman who does not understand what happens around her until a year and a half after she is imprisoned. (Interview with Iriarte 2016)

The story, raised to a literary argument, would be the following: The woman condemned to be an eternal victim for not understanding what is happening around her. Not speaking Spanish becomes, as such, the denominator for all her evils. The second paragraph shows the reader what happened prior to these words in Quechua, the scene that made Reina utter this question and which, therefore, gives meaning and context to these words. It is the scene in which two Argentine policemen arrested her on Saturday, November 20, 2010. Two uniformed men handcuff her, put her in a car with red and blue lights and take her to a small, dark, windowless room. Reina Maraz Bejarano - 22 years old, with her long black braid, flushed cheeks, and smooth brown skin - does not understand anything, neither who these men are, nor why they lock her up screaming words in that white people’s language she does not understand. (Iriarte 2017)

Apart from her age, Reina is described here through the physical attributes of an indigenous woman, although the word “indigenous” is never mentioned in this part of the text: “long black braids, flushed cheeks, smooth brown skin.” The adjectives “flushed” and “smooth” have in Spanish a certain poetic charge, and they show a certain empathy of the author toward Reina. The transitivity in the phrases describes how she was arrested and shows her lack of support: Two men handcuff her, put her in the car and take her to a room described in explicitly carceral or cell-like terms that have three negative characteristics: “small, dark, windowless.” That is to say, Reina is literally dragged off without offering physical resistance, but shouting in Quechua to ask why they are doing that. Secondly, the text emphasizes that she does not understand anything about that “language of white people,” which is Spanish. It is, through a metonymy related to race, implied in the discourse that Quechua is not a “language of whites,” although the word “indigenous”

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is avoided again. After this fragment, the exact first sentence in Quechua that we read before is repeated again, but now the reader already knows what it means. This is a rhetorical strategy, the repetition of a phrase that functions as a leitmotiv, coupled with a narrative strategy, which consists in recounting the scene in chronological order inverted from the end (the moment she was stopped), to the beginning. Later, in the text, we will know what happened a few hours and a few days before they were stopped. In the rest of the text, which has more than 6000 words, the story of Reina Maraz is very complex and alternates scenes of Reina from her childhood in a small village in Bolivia until the present day in jail. The moment in which the woman journalist interviews Reina is three years into her imprisonment. Several times, when the author describes the physical appearance of Reina during the interview, the reader can see how she gradually becomes “westernized” as a survival mechanism in prison: “Her smooth 25 year old skin contrasts with her eyes tired and full of cataracts” (Iriarte 2017). In this image, we see the physical fatigue of Reina’s body, and at the same time, we see how she has replaced the clothes she used to wear in order to blend in with the landscape of the prison. As the text progresses, the author’s adjectives to describe Reina within the penitentiary are accompanied by her own interpretations to make it clear how she has to “disguise” her identity while in prison by explaining that this operation denies and hides her previous appearance: “Reina - blue jeans, pink shirt, ponytail, sneakers, all oblivious to her old ‘cholita’ look” (Iriarte 2017). “Cholita” means indigenous Bolivian woman. The descriptions of the attributes of Reina related to her physical appearance are recurrent in the text because there are some changes. The author interprets these changes as caused by racism within the prison system. This racist element is emphasized in some of Reina’s testimonies (“the other prisoners hate me”) that show the way they treat her “with insults” such as “dirty” and the Argentine expression “concha tu madre,” which means “mother fucker,” although the word “concha” means “shell” and is also a crude way to refer to the vagina. Reina – print blouse, blue jeans, slippers and ponytail - tries to look ‘westernized’ to avoid the racist look of her block mates. This lover of the polleras was losing that Andean look because of the insults received in La Plata prison like on the streets of Buenos Aires. (Iriarte 2017) The other prisoners hate me, they say: ‘all Bolivians are dirty,’ ‘Bolivian concha tu madre.’ I did not know my mother was a shell. I was told this was an insult here. (Iriarte 2017)

Nathalie Iriarte represents Reina’s speech with a very basic Spanish idiom, so the reader can interpret her lack of vocabulary as a naïve aspect of the way Reina is constructed as a part of this story.

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The scene of the text where racism is shown against Reina is clearly demonstrated by prison officials the first time Nathalie Iriarte visits the prison, as she writes in this scene as though the jail cell is a freak show or a zoo: “As if she were about to open the cage of the most visited animal in the zoo, a young, blonde jailer with a Buenos Aires accent says: ‘Reina always has visitors, people come from universities, from the press, from the NGO. She is our local star. People like the story of the Bolivian who does not know how to talk, hahaha … I’ll bring her to you now’” (Iriarte 2017). The metaphors of Reina as “the most visited animal,” the cell as a “cage” and the prison as a “zoo” are not a personification of an object, but an animalization of a persona that has to do with the accentuation of her vulnerability and cruel treatment. On the other hand, there is a contrast with the physical features of the jailer who is “young, blonde, with a Buenos Aires accent” who describes Reina as “the Bolivian who does not know how to speak.” Again it evokes the idea that by not being fluent in Spanish, Reina is mute. Iriarte describes another visit to the prison as an experience full of racism. On the one hand, the female prison guard insults Reina calling her “Indian” and “bolita boluda,” and on the other hand, one of her colleagues also calls her “Indian.” Note the contrast of the physical description of this colleague: “hair painted red, tattoos on the hand and left breast, scar on the arm”: Visit to Maraz !!! -Ahhh you’re looking for the Indian. She’s in her cell, she never comes out. -Call the boludaaa bolitaaa!!! A group of inmates are standing by the bars that open to give access to hall 4. One of them, the one who speaks the most and seems in command, says: “No one visits me, and the Indian never needs anyone to come.” The woman – with dyed red hair, tattoos on her hand and left breast, a scar on her arm - lifts a child. (Iriarte 2017)

The metaphor that Iriarte uses in the text is that Reina is a “white spot” among the other inmates, which contrasts with the attribute of dark skin to emphasize the white color of the goodness inside her. Then, the author uses for the first and only time in the text the adjective “indigenous” to refer to her features: “Her indigenous features, together with her elusive gaze, her slow walk, her head down, her low and fearful tone, set her apart from the others, who speak loudly, laugh loudly, and move like landowners, cancheras, almost powerful” (Iriarte 2017). The movements, the look and the appearance of the others indicate who has the power. The only one who has no power here in the carceral space is Reina. In the text, the vulnerability and submission of Reina appear in all areas of her life. Several paragraphs explain how Reina is excluded and discriminated against in all the circles where she lives, treated almost as an animal by her husband, by her own community, by the Argentine authorities

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and finally by the female prisoners. Reina lives what the journalist calls “a succession of misfortunes,” as if her destiny were only to suffer. To give an example, the text shows a scene that refers to the physical violence that Reina endured with her husband two months before going to prison: “Her husband Límber comes to the house drunk and gives her a beating. He drags her hair, screams, breaks the few items of furniture in the room - a bucket of bricks shared by four people - and terrifies his children Kevin and Fermin, who hide in a corner while they watch their father open the valve on the gas cylinder, bellowing that he will burn them all alive” (Iriarte 2017). Therefore, the jail is not really worse than her life beforehand. In jail, she suffers discrimination, but outside of it she suffered physical violence. The journalist decides to tell, for example, how Reina was literally given by her husband to another man to pay off an economic debt, and that he raped her. She also suffered insults from her husband and members of her Bolivian community. In the report, in a testimony of Norma, Reina’s sister, she says that Límber called Reina “whore,” “shit,” “india” (a racially charged insult). Another of the most overwhelming injustices that Reina suffers is when Límber, after having left his home in Bolivia for three years, returns and accuses Reina of having committed adultery with her cousin. The authorities of the town subject Reina to a genital inspection and several tests to determine, in the end, that she has not been with another man. The way in which this procedure is reflected in the text uses the semantic field of a trial in a metaphorical way, as if the doctor were a judge and the results were a verdict. “After a blood test and a certain amount of genital palpation, a doctor from the Potosí clinic gave her verdict: Reina had no signs of having had intercourse recently or of being pregnant” (Iriarte 2017). Up to the last scene of the text, the narrative of the story has kept Reina in the role of a victim, characterized by her lack of support, her youth, her passivity and impotence. This kind of narrative approach is very often used in media representations of the Other, especially when the author wants to represent the indigenous, the woman, the poor as a person whose identity is reduced to victimization. As Giglioli (2017) has written in his book Critique of the Victim, “the victim is the hero of our time.” Being a victim gives prestige, demands listening, promises and fosters recognition and activates a powerful generator of identity, of right and of self-esteem. The dark part of the narrative construction of someone who is a victim is that creating a victim immunizes against any criticism, guarantees innocence beyond reasonable doubt. “How could the victim be guilty, or responsible for something? The victim has not done anything, it has been done to them; they do not act, they suffer. The victim shows deficiency and vindication, weakness and pretension, desire to have and desire to be. We are not what we do, but what they have taken from us. It is a palinode of modernity, characterized by its onerous precepts: walk upright, abandon the minority of age” (Giglioli 2017).

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Reina coincides with the construction of a victim (characterized by her lack of agency) until the final scene of the story, the trial in November 2014 in which Reina for the first time can explain in Quechua her testimony with the presence of an interpreter. Here, a new and surprising feature of Reina that the author has not shown before comes out: her empowerment. Firstly, she is represented as empowered because in the trial she is permitted to speak in her mother tongue, Quechua, and this makes her strong: “Her voice in Spanish is short, dubious. Then she repeats her words in Quechua, this time strong, sure” (Iriarte 2017). And secondly, because, for the first time, she shows her indignation when her male defense lawyer says that she has a “special cultural condition” and that “her intellectual ability does not allow her to maintain such an elaborate lie for all this time.” Reina, in the text, does not agree at all with the fact that her own defense lawyer claims that she does not have enough intellectual capacity and that she is illiterate, because, as it is narrated in the reportage, she went to school and can read, but in Quechua. Then Reina expresses her indignation, almost at the end of the story: “What made me the most angry was to hear that I was dumb and illiterate. There I was very angry” (Iriarte 2017). In this scene, although Reina is found guilty again and sentenced to life imprisonment, we can see that her character presents an evolution in the way the texts describe her: Here she has become aware of her own identity. It is the only moment in the text where, in Reina’s words (not in her actions), she shows intention and refuses to accept everything with passivity. This is the passage from undecidability—as the ontological impossibility of a discursive order to ultimately fixate reality, understanding that undecidability produces undecidedness—(Carpentier 2016) to decision and its connection to power. Expressing her anger is a decision taken in a context of undecidedness, and, although this decision does not break the social hegemony of the subordinate, it does break the hegemonic journalistic narrative of the indigenous woman represented as a subservient subject that cannot take a decision as a political subject.

Conclusion The main character of the text “The Queen of Los Hornos” is presented as a woman who is named Reina (which in Spanish also means queen), but who is not (and cannot be) the queen of any kingdom, since everyone else exercises power and domination over her in the text. Reina’s presentation is based around the traumatic event of being imprisoned in Argentina as a Bolivian migrant without knowing the crime of which she is accused because no one explains to her in Quechua what she is being accused of. According to the narrative characteristics of the journalistic genre in which this story is written, she gradually transforms her visual attributes from being a woman of indigenous appearance to being westernized in prison as a defense mechanism.

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Nevertheless, on the inside, according to the text, she never ceases to be the “white point” of the prison as she is presented with an incorruptible goodness. Reina’s vulnerability is linked to her identity as a Quechua speaker. The experience that the journalist decides to represent is that vulnerability appears as a characteristic indissolubly linked to Reina’s identity, as if the character had a destiny that could not free her from the “succession of calamities” of which her life consists. This is clear in the metaphors and rhetorical figures that accompany the stories about her life, as “the most visited animal in the zoo,” and also in the insults and racist and discriminatory treatment that she receives in all areas of her life, both within the prison and in her community of origin. However, the physical violence inflicted by her own husband (who beat her and permitted another man to rape her) and her community (who subjected her to a genital inspection to verify that she had not committed adultery) is worse than the treatment she receives within institutions. Although the online literary reportage reveals the normalized exclusion of Reina, the author portrays her as so extremely good and vulnerable in all her aspects that deep down, the journalist feeds the very discourse that she intends to criticize because she presents Reina in a way that responds to the stereotype. Authorial subjectivity serves to explore the following paradox of democratic political regimes: At the same time that they normalize subjectivity (the Bolivian migrant who submits to Argentine laws), they produce forms of violence and exclusion where the non-mastery of the language produces forms of social control over individuals. However, excluding the last scene, the text does not show at any time the image of Reina as a human being with lights and shadows, but as an extremely good person to whom everything happens because of her identity, like a martyr. In a certain sense, the victim’s condition of the narrative seems to castrate her possibility of agency. What this analysis shows is that although the text is intended to highlight the experience of discrimination and vulnerability of Reina caused by her multiple minority identities, the journalist reproduces, perhaps unconsciously, the same paternalistic discourse of power that considers Reina as weak and poor. Only at the end of the text, when Reina expresses her indignation at being considered intellectually minor, does it counteract this hegemonic discourse that asks victims to remain, painfully but proudly, as eternal victims, in an imaginary or fantastical sense that avoids any possibility of change and has been reproduced infinitely in most of the journalistic narratives that involve migrants, indigenous populations, the poor and women. The imaginary of the victim has become an instrumentum regni. This story of a migrant, an indigenous and poor woman, seems to be a constant within the narrative until the final part. Although Reina is a real victim of the circumstances, at the end of the story, narratively her decision is an important change that breaks the enchantment of the hegemonic kingdom of the victim. Reina is not represented as an imaginary victim: When she expresses her anger on hearing that the lawyer who is defending her calls her illiterate, she not only becomes active, but in expressing her agency, her character becomes human.

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Notes 1. I interviewed Nathalie Iriarte in April 2016 and in June 2018. 2.  https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/03/reina-hornos-migrante-boliviana/ (Consultation date: June 26, 2019).

References Agamben, G. 2003. Homo Sacer: El Poder Soberano y la Nula Vida. Valencia: Pre-Textos. Angulo, Marίa. 2014. “Prefacio. Mirar y contar la realidad desde el periodismo narrativo.” In Crόnica y mirada, edited by Marίa Angulo, 7–36. Madrid: Libros del KO. Badiou, A. 2005. El Ser y el Acontecimiento. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Butler, J. 2015. Mecanismos Psíquicos del Poder: Teorías Sobre la Sujeción. Valencia: Cátedra. Carpentier, N. 2016. “The Trinity of Decidedness, Undecidedness and Undecidability. A Post-structuralist Exploration of the Meaning of the Decision in the Political.” In Politics, Civil Society and Participation: Media and Communications in a Transforming Environment, edited by Leif Kramp, Nico Carpentier, Andreas Hepp, Richard Kilborn, Risto Kunelius, Hannu Nieminen, Tobias Olsson, Simone Tosoni, Ilija Tomanić Trivundža, and Pille PruulmannVengerfeldt, 87–103. Bremen: edition lumière. Carpentier, N. 2017. The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang. Derrida, J. 1997. El Monolingüismo del Otro. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Gardner, A. 2004. Agency Uncovered: Archaeological Perspectives on Social Agency, Power and Being Human. London: Routledge. Giglioli, D. 2017. Crítica de la víctima. Barcelona: Herder. Gramsci, A. 1999. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hartsock, J. C. 2016. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Howarth, D. 1998. “Discourse Theory and Political Analysis.” In Research Strategies in the Social Sciences, edited by E. Scarbrough and E. Tanenbaum, 268–229. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Iriarte Villavicencio, N. 2014. La Reina de Los Hornos en VVAA (sin editor). Cotidianidades. Historias reales de cronistas noveles, 25–40. Santa Cruz: Universidad Evangélica Boliviana y Fundación Pedro y Rosa. Iriarte Villavicencio, N. 2017. “La Reina de los Hornos” published by Perro Cronico, March 8, 2017 in digital site. Accessed May 1, 2018. http://perrocronico.com/ la-reina-de-los-hornos/. Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Machin, D., and A. Mayr. 2012. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: Sage. Richardson, J. 2007. Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Palgrave.

“We Don’t Recognize Transsexuals … and We’re Not Going to Treat You”: Cruel and Unusual and the Lived Experiences of Transgender Women in US Prisons Tania Phillips, Annette Brömdal, Amy Mullens, Jessica Gildersleeve and Jeff Gow

Introduction The award-winning documentary Cruel and Unusual (Baus et al. 2006) explores the lived experiences of five transgender women while incarcerated in men’s prisons in the US. Anna, Ashley, Linda, Ophelia, and Yolanda testify to the ways in which their transgender identity was overlooked, denied, ridiculed, and violated by fellow prisoners and prison staff. Their stories reveal the ways in which the penal system and prison staff refused to recognize their transgender female identity, and denied them medically necessary T. Phillips (*) · A. Brömdal · A. Mullens · J. Gildersleeve · J. Gow  University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Brömdal e-mail: [email protected] A. Mullens e-mail: [email protected] J. Gildersleeve e-mail: [email protected] J. Gow e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_20

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continuation of hormone therapy and access to appropriate transgenderspecific health care. Prison staff are shown to have actively victimized, dehumanized, and marginalized the women and on numerous occasions to have placed them in solitary confinement for extended periods. The women also experienced rape and were forced or coerced into sexual activities by other prisoners, which prison staff failed to report. Collectively, these lived experiences provoked many of the women to engage in self-harm, such as self-mutilation, attempted suicide, and surgical self-treatment (e.g., autocastration) as a desperate attempt to cope with their untreated Gender Identity Disorder (GID).1 The title, Cruel and Unusual, implies that these experiences are direct violations of the women’s Eighth Amendment civil rights. More specifically, these mistreatments arguably breach the guarantee that “cruel and unusual punishments [shall not be] inflicted” and demonstrate that the prison system and those working within it “acted in reckless disregard of a risk of which he or she was aware” (US Congress 2017, 1717, 1767). According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2015, 47), the umbrella term transgender describes: … people whose gender identity and expression does not conform to the norms and expectations traditionally associated with their sex at birth. Transgender people include individuals who have received gender reassignment surgery, individuals who have received gender-related medical interventions other than surgery (e.g. hormone therapy) and individuals who identify as having no gender, multiple genders or alternative genders. Transgender individuals may self-identify as transgender, female, male, transwoman or transman, transsexual, hijra, kathoey, waria or one of many other transgender identities, and they may express their genders in a variety of masculine, feminine and/or androgynous ways.

Employing Alice Ristroph’s sexual punishment theory (2006) and drawing upon transgender rights scholars (Edney 2004; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006), this chapter interprets the inhumane and humiliating treatment inflicted upon these five transgender women, and the significance of such treatment often being overlooked due to “the general attitude” that this violence is in part the result of the “character and consequences of incarceration” (Ristroph 2006, 142). Ristroph argues that “for much too long, the general attitude toward prison rape was: That’s just part of the penalty; those criminals deserve whatever they get in prison” (2006, 140). However, the traumatic narratives told by these women highlight this as a “double punishment” that transgender women experience while incarcerated in men’s prisons, thus breaching the duty of care governments and incarceration settings and systems have in ensuring and providing humane care for transgender people while under their supervision (Mintz 2013). The “double punishment” argument, also known as “doubly imprisoned,” explains that transgender incarcerated people are punished “first by the pervasive discrimination in the judicial system that

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continues to fail to give due legal recognition of transgender people’s right to dignity and self-identity, and second by the often ‘cruel and unusual’ mistreatment of them in the prison” (Erni 2013, 139). This critical documentary analysis positions the mistreatment that these five transgender women experience within the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution and the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) debate (Farmer v. Brennan 1994; Edney 2004; Erni 2013; Jenness et al. 2007a, b; Lee 2008; Peek 2004; Sexton et al. 2010; Shah 2010; Tarzwell 2006). It also situates the narratives in Cruel and Unusual within broader international human rights conversations of the United Nations, World Health Organization, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Yogyakarta Principles guaranteeing the humane treatment of transgender women while incarcerated (De La Cruz-Flores v. Peru 2004b; Miguel Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru 2006; Lobel 2008; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2007; United Nations General Assembly 1982, 1990; World Health Organization [Europe] 2003; Yogyakarta Principles 2007). These critical contexts highlight the ethical and legal contraventions of the women’s experiences. This chapter also positions Cruel and Unusual within the logic and ethics of trauma theory by scholars such as Cathy Caruth (1996), Anne Cubilié (2005), Finn Daniels-Yeomans (2017), and Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992), by uncovering the ways in which trauma narratives are framed and presented within documentary films. The chapter investigates the role that constructive and responsible listening plays in illustrating these lived experiences and shows how responsible listening is manifested in an academic-advocacy perspective. It shows how these narratives of inflicted trauma have been framed by the documentary form to produce empathetic listeners who, by listening constructively, are compelled to do something with their knowledge. This analysis builds on existing research about the poor treatment transgender people experience while incarcerated and the dominant ideologies and societal structures sustaining such mistreatments, framed as “cruel and unusual” punishments and thus both inhumane and unconstitutional. Ultimately, this chapter aims to inspire prison rights scholars to appreciate the value of becoming more familiar with and sensitive to transgender rights debates within the penal system and more specifically through self-narrated transgender stories. It also hopes to encourage the active use of critical documentary analyses for framing and presenting lived transgender trauma experiences that incite productive listeners who, by “facilitating an opening-up of trauma to spectators that neither reduces nor elides its intimate violences” (Daniels-Yeomans 2017, 86), develop a sense of advocacy and empathy to the trauma inflicted. This is necessary as even fourteen years since the release of the documentary, transgender people incarcerated in US prison systems, especially transgender women, remain a “vulnerable group,” continuing to experience significant mistreatment, human rights violations, and erasure of their identity (Atabay 2009; Brömdal et al. 2019a, b; Gatherer et al. 2014;

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Lydon et al. 2015; Malkin and DeJong 2018; Markshamer and Tobin 2014; National Center for Transgender Equality 2018; US Department of Justice 2012; White Hughto et al. 2018). Furthermore, transgender women disproportionally “experienc[e] horrific violence, harm and inequalities of all sorts” while incarcerated, often known to or inflicted by prison staff (Lydon et al. 2015, 60), suggesting that despite their specific needs as a “vulnerable [prison] group,” justice systems continue to situate them in a space where prison staff treat them with “deliberate indifference” (Markshamer and Tobin 2014; National Center for Transgender Equality 2018; Peek 2004, 1231). To contextualize the conversation, the study begins by outlining the research by transgender rights scholars discussing the importance of transgender issues within the prison system. These discussions will provide a critical platform to examine the ways the traumas of transgender women in men’s prisons are experienced and told through documentary film.

Conceptualizing and Problematizing Transgender Prisoner Discourses The experience of imprisonment for a transgender person is often a terrifying one. He or she is extremely vulnerable in such an environment from sexual violence from other prisoners. In addition, he or she may be exposed to inadequate or inappropriate medical care. Consequently transgender prisoners are often denied the protection offered by rule of law. A significant reason for this treatment is the erasure of the transgender experience in informing the nature of the prison regime. In particular, the failure to give sufficient weight to gender self-identification by transgender prisoners exposes them to risks which other prisoners do not have to endure. It is suggested that the only way to reduce such harm is through the cultivation of a prison regime based upon the lives of transgender prisoners. (Edney 2004, 327)

To critically explore Cruel and Unusual (Baus et al. 2006) and the traumatic stories told by Anna, Ashley, Linda, Ophelia, and Yolanda while incarcerated in men’s prisons, it is important to appreciate the ways in which their experiences are situated within a greater criminal justice and human rights discourse (Edney 2004; Erni 2013; Lee 2008; Mintz 2013; Peek 2004; Ristroph 2006; Shah 2010; Tarzwell 2006). In 2006, when Cruel and Unusual was released, transgender prisoners were “an overrepresented minority in state prisons” where they “are punished harshly for their gender transgression” (Tarzwell 2006, 181). Courts and legal scholars in the US have established for more than 25 years that transgender women are “particularly vulnerable to sexual attack” (Peek 2004, 1231–1232) and other forms of mistreatment and victimization (denied hormone therapy, placed in solitary confinement, ridiculed, subjected to demeaning gender-checks, genital-related m ­ ocking, and physically assaulted) when incarcerated in male prisons (Farmer v. Brennan 1994; Edney 2004; Erni 2013; Jenness et al. 2007a, b; Lee 2008;

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Peek 2004; Ristroph 2006; Sexton et al. 2010; Shah 2010; Tarzwell 2006). This mistreatment in the prison system is, according to Peek (2004, 1218), based on the reality that “gender non-conforming people have consistently been among the most vulnerable members of gay communities” outside the penal system, and that “prison merely exacerbates the prejudice transgender persons already face.”

Incarcerated Transgender People’s Rights and Protections Offered by National and International Rule of Law When this documentary was released, transgender people were entitled to a number of national and international legal and human rights protections while incarcerated. These protections were developed to ensure equitable and humane treatment regarding their safety from sexual abuse and “access to gender-affirming medical care” (Tarzwell 2006, 169). On a domestic level, a number of scholars have challenged the placement of transgender women in male prisons as unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Edney 2004; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006). This is based on the premise that transgender prisoners have not been protected against “cruel and unusual punishment”; rather, prison officers have embodied a “deliberate indifference” toward their safety by turning a blind eye to the “high risk of harm” inflicted by other prisoners (Edney 2004; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006; US Congress 2017, 1717, 1767). Similarly, the act of long-term solitary confinement disguised as a measure of safety and protection from sexual violence, also known as “protective custody” or “administrative segregation” (Tarzwell 2006, 176, 180), and the damaging psychological implications of such “prolonged and even permanent forms of harsh solitary confinement” (Lobel 2008, 115) have been challenged as violations of the US Constitution on the basis of torture (Edney 2004; Lobel 2008; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006).2 The denial of essential gender-affirming medical health care is another point of contention. Prior to 2000, it was well established in psychiatric and clinical professions that appropriate gender-affirming medical (e.g., hormone therapy) and psychological health care is necessary in the treatment of GID.3 Transgender rights scholars have challenged the denial of medically necessary treatment as an act of “deliberate indifference” to serious medical and psychological needs while incarcerated (see Edney 2004; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006).4 Similarly, the 2003 PREA and the 2005 Sexual Abuse in Detention Elimination Act have also been challenged as ineffective in protecting transgender people from sexual violence in penal facilities in the US (Jenness et al. 2007a, b; Ristroph 2006). The PREA (2003, 974–975) explicitly states that the purpose of the Act is to “make the prevention of prison rape a top priority in each prison system,” support the “prevention, reduction and punishment of prison rape,” “protect the Eighth Amendment rights of Federal, State and local prisoners,” and “increase the accountability of prison officials

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who fail to detect, prevent, reduce and punish prison rape.” Despite these provisions for reducing and ultimately eliminating sexual abuse within the prison system, research by Jenness and colleagues (2007a, b) has described how the lived realities of transgender women while in men’s prisons are in contravention of these protections. More specifically, 59% of incarcerated Californian transgender participants revealed they had experienced sexual abuse while serving their sentence (Jenness et al. 2007a, b). Addressing and challenging these national legal debates in relation to the lived experiences of Anna, Ashley, Linda, Ophelia, and Yolanda will provide further insights into the logic and ethics for framing these experiences as “cruel and unusual” punishments, and ultimately as unconstitutional. The range of extreme mistreatments experienced by these women also operates within an international human rights debate. Principle nine of the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (2007, 16) specifically reserves transgender people the right “to treatment with humanity while in detention” by ensuring “that placement in detention avoids further marginalizing persons on the basis of … gender identity or subject them to risk of violence, ill treatment or physical, mental or sexual abuse.” Principle nine also holds nation states accountable for providing transgender people with “adequate access to medical care and counselling appropriate to the needs of those in custody, recognising any particular needs of persons on the basis of their … gender identity, including … access to hormonal or other therapy as well as to genderreassignment treatments when desired” (Yogyakarta Principles 2007, 16). Placement is also discussed in principle nine: prisoners should “participate in decisions regarding the place of detention appropriate to their … gender identity” (Yogyakarta Principles 2007, 16). Protective custody and administrative segregation are dissuaded.5 Rather, “protective measures” should be put “in place for all prisoners vulnerable to violence or abuse on the basis of their … gender identity or gender expression and ensure … that such protective measures involve no greater restriction of their rights than is experienced by the general prison population” (Yogyakarta Principles 2007, 16). Further, all “prison personnel … engaged in detention facilities” should be trained and have their awareness raised about international human rights principles “of equality and non-discrimination, including in relation to … gender identity” (Yogyakarta Principles 2007, 17). Yogyakarta principle ten further guarantees transgender people “the right to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” within or outside the penal system (Yogyakarta Principles 2007, 17). Protective custody, or solitary confinement, as a means to “protect” vulnerable prisoners from violence, including sexual violence, was challenged by international human rights bodies prior to the release of the documentary. Since 1988, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights

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has argued that “prolonged isolation and coercive solitary confinement are themselves cruel and inhuman treatments damaging to the person’s psychic and moral integrity and the right to respect of the dignity inherent to the human person” (Lobel 2008, 123). The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations Committee Against Torture) also suggests in a Tunisian case (1995–1996) that “solitary confinement, violation of the right to medical care and medicine” applied by a nation’s penal system against an incarcerated person “constitute[s] cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment” (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2007, 123). Similar to national legal protections safeguarding a prisoner from being deprived or denied medically necessary care (such as gender-affirming medical and psychological health care), the United Nations General Assembly adopted Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel, particularly Physicians, in the Protection of Prisoners and Detainees Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1982. Here principle one upholds that “health personnel, particularly physicians, charged with the medical care of prisoners and detainees have a duty to provide them with protection of their physical and mental health and treatment of disease of the same quality and standard as is afforded to those who are not imprisoned or detained” (United Nations General Assembly 1982). Similarly, principle nine of the United Nations General Assembly (1990) Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners maintains “prisoners shall have access to the health services available in the country without discrimination on the grounds of their legal situation.” Within this legal debate, the study is less concerned with exploring the appropriateness of these women’s sentences than with addressing and challenging the inhumane living conditions that transgender women experience in US prisons. It considers how these five distressing narratives are logically and ethically framed to produce a constructive and empathetic audience.

Method The Narrators Cruel and Unusual depicts the experiences of Anna, Ashley, Linda, Ophelia, and Yolanda, five transgender women of diverse ethnic, socio-economic, and educational backgrounds, within the prison system and/or as “free women.”6 Although the study explores issues outside the prison space, this critical analysis focuses on: (1) including references to their lived e­ xperiences as transgender women in male prisons through thematic analysis and (2) examining the representations of these narratives of trauma through trauma theory.

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Procedure This chapter uses thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) to identify and analyze themes with reference to the five transgender women’s lived experiences in male prisons. More specifically, Braun and Clarke (2006) encourage scholars conducting thematic analysis to do so with the help of their six-phased guide.7 Although the six steps were “applied flexibly” (Braun and Clarke 2006, 86), the phases were adhered to chronologically. As a result, the study established three major themes: prison policy, the prison system mentality, and transgender women’s sexual experiences in male prisons and seven secondary themes. This chapter employs trauma theory (Caruth 1996; Cubilié 2005; DanielsYeomans 2017; Felman and Laub 1992; Johnson 2016; Lindgren 2012; Walters and Rehma 2013), to analyze the logical and ethical ways in which the directors of the documentary have framed and presented these narratives: a narrative of trauma experienced by both individuals (the women featured in the film) and a collective (transgender women in prison more generally). This analysis thus explores how this presentation is consistent with broader political, legal, health, and human rights conversations, suggesting that the treatment of these women violates the US Constitution and other national and international human rights principles regarding inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment of imprisoned transgender people. The chapter also analyzes and critically reflects on how these motivations of responsible and constructive listening correlate with the readers’ logic and ethics for deconstructing these narratives of trauma, and how they align with their collective perceptions of being empathetic and advocacy-inspired academics challenging the mistreatment transgender people experience while under the care of US federal and state penal systems, and beyond.

Results and Discussion Prison Policy Lack of Prison Policies for Housing Transgender Women In 2006, when Cruel and Unusual was released, there was a paucity of transgender-specific prison policies in the US (Edney 2004; Tarzwell 2006). Tarzwell (2006) reported that out of 44 states only six were found to have publicly available transgender policies (Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota) and a seventh (Pennsylvania) with transgender-related health services directives only. In Cruel and Unusual, psychiatrist George Brown reports that in the US the predominant policy on prisoner placement is “based on their genitals not based on their gender identity.” Indeed, genital-based placement was widespread across the US in 2006 (Tarzwell 2006; Peek 2004) and still practiced more recently (Malkin and DeJong 2018;

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Mintz 2013; Shah 2010). Because transgender people transgress gender norms, this prevailing yet antiquated classification system denies and attempts to “erase” (Edney 2004, 328), the existence of their individual gender identity. Furthermore, housing transgender women in male prisons fails to protect these women against egregious treatment from other prisoners and prison officials, such as ongoing harassment; physical and psychological abuse; rape and sexual coercion (Erni 2013; Ristroph 2006; Tarzwell 2006). Brown reports that “gender is prime: it’s all about being in one camp or the other” and that transgender people are in a classification “grey zone” inside the carceral environment, as they are gender non-conforming “misfits” within a gender binary prison system. By 2006, transgender women were well established as a “vulnerable group” within the US prison system because their feminine characteristics placed them at higher risk of rape in male prisons (Edney 2004; Peek 2004; Tarzwell 2006). Consequently, the genital-based classification system “routinely forced [transgender prisoners] into dangerous placements” (Tarzwell 2006, 177). The film depicts Sheriff Ralph Froelick (Union County, New Jersey), who is adamant that “they [transgender women] should not be in a general population.” However, no specific solutions are offered beyond “adjustments should be made.” Ashley more specifically asserts: “I most definitely see myself as a woman in a men’s penitentiary … I look around my surroundings and I see all these men and I’m like, ‘what am I doing here? I’m not supposed to be here’.” Similarly, Linda states, “I should be in a women’s prison.” While Anna positions the stripping of her female identity and placement with men as “inhumane.” The views of the transgender women in Cruel and Unusual are personally valid; however, it should be noted that the documentary does not represent the broader population of transgender women in US prisons. Some transgender women prefer to be housed in male prisons (Brömdal et al. 2019a; Jenness 2009), or in transgender-only housing or units with other LGBTIQ+ individuals (Brömdal et al. 2019b, c; Dolovich 2011). The placement of transgender women is highly complex, as housing with cisgender women could incite prejudice and may violate the women’s privacy rights (Peek 2004). Transgender-only facilities may face resource challenges, and in some jurisdictions, it has been reported that transgender people are conflated with same-sex-oriented people (Peek 2004; Rosenblum 1999); while these two groups share some similarities (e.g., both are disproportionately vulnerable to marginalization and rape), they also have divergent and unique health needs. Ultimately, housing decisions should prioritize the safety and well-being of this vulnerable prison sub-population. Lack of Prison Policies for the Medical Treatment of Transgender Women The correctional institutions in Cruel and Unusual uniformly deny recognition of GID as a medical condition requiring necessary medical treatment, despite the fact that it is an internationally recognized psychiatric condition listed in the DSM-IV-TR (Brown and McDuffie 2009). In relation to the Eight Amendment, the US courts have established under the Estelle Standard

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that severe psychiatric conditions constitute a serious medical need requiring treatment and determined GID should be treated no differently than other psychiatric conditions (Tarzwell 2006). Untreated GID may result in serious medical and psychological harm such as depression, suicide, and self-mutilation, including autocastration in severe cases (Routh et al. 2017). Hence, prison officials’ deliberate indifference to the suffering endured by transgender prisoners by withholding medically necessary treatment is considered a form of torture in direct violation of the Eighth Amendment (Colopy 2012; Givens 2013; Mintz 2013; Rosenblaum 1999). However, the courts have equally, and contradictorily, upheld that “no particular treatment is constitutionally required” for GID (Tarzwell 2006, 186). The documentary recounts that both Linda and Ophelia experienced severe GID and submitted multiple formal requests for treatment to prison administrators. The official response Linda received was: “We do not recognize transsexualism as a medical condition”; “Does not constitute a medical need – hormones are considered elective.” Ophelia was issued with a memorandum from the director of the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) in 1995 stating, “People with GID are not getting treatment. There will be no treatment for GID.” Without effective prison policies for the management and medical treatment of transgender women, prison officials have total discretionary power to decide what, if any, treatment will be provided (Colopy 2012; Tarzwell 2006). Transgender women have a constitutional right under the Eighth Amendment to necessary (and appropriate) medical and psychological health care while incarcerated. This is substantiated where transgender women, such as Linda and Ophelia, have tenaciously engaged in lawsuits and won the right to have female hormone therapy and counselling in prison to treat their GID. Ophelia’s legal battle against the VDOC for her constitutional right to medical treatment commenced in 1999 (Sagar 2006). Ophelia’s case was dismissed several times; however, she appealed in 2003 and Judge Wilkins remanded the case stating: “[Ophelia’s] need for protection against continued self-mutilation was a serious medical need to which prison officials could not be seriously indifferent … alleging inadequate medical treatment to prevent self-mutilation upon withdrawal of her hormone therapy” (Sagar 2006). The case was settled in 2004, resulting in new policy development for incarcerated people presenting with GID in VDOC facilities (Sagar 2006). The 2004 Settlement Agreement mandated Ophelia has access to medical professionals for diagnostic assessment and treatment without impediment to any assigned medically necessary treatments. The Settlement Agreement (2004, 4–5) further mandated policy changes to intake assessments and early identification of GID; “treatment plans for such inmates [with GID] will be in accordance with what is determined to be medically necessary by qualified specialists”; staff training to “prohibit harassment and hostility, as regards inmates gender identification”; and case-by-case housing for prisoners diagnose with GID. While this major win is a step in providing necessary policy protections for

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transgender women in VDOC prisons (post-2004), the physical pain and suffering, and psychological trauma Ophelia endured to achieve this is inhumane and unnecessary. Cruel and Unusual presents a compelling argument for the importance of medically necessary hormone therapy for transgender women. Ashley explains, “hormones help the body match the mind. As far as appearance, it’s like becoming the new you. It’s like becoming who you’ve always dreamt of being from day one. It’s like you’re escaping that body that you hate so much, but you was born with, that you don’t identify with.” The physical and mental transformation female hormones provide allows transgender women to develop female characteristics by “keying all the cells in the body,” for example triggering the development of breasts, and more feminine facial features over time (Dianna Cicotello, transsexual educator). However, “when you’re forced to be taken off hormones… they don’t understand how drastic of a step that is for us. It’s like being forced to be somebody that you hate” and “that can cause a lot of mental trauma” (Ashley). Hormone therapy for transgender women is complex and strict medical supervision is necessary as “serious health problems [can occur] with any cessation, reduction, or irregularity of hormone treatment” (Rosenblum 1999, 546). Abrupt cessation has serious effects resulting in withdrawal symptoms such as vomiting, nausea, anxiety, depression, thoughts of and engagement in self-harm to genitals, and suicide (Givens 2013). Continuation of existing hormone therapy (including dosage levels) is essential in preventing these severe withdrawal symptoms (Colopy 2012; Givens 2013; Rosenblum 1999). Cruel and Unusual elucidates the inhumane consequences of severe hormone withdrawal ensuing from the abrupt hormone cessation that Anna was forced to endure (without medical supervision) upon entering the prison system. Anna was locked in isolation and her retelling of this traumatic experience is vivid and disturbing: When they took me off oestrogen, it became like I could just tear the skin open at top of my head and crawl outside of my skin. I just couldn’t get over the … the feeling – it’s really hard to describe. It was like, a hot flash all the time and headaches and … ah, some vomiting and a real serious, serious depression. And I was going through breast pains. And I just couldn’t stand it no more. The feeling inside was like everything was wrong, everything inside me was wrong.

The deliberate indifference by prison officials toward the avoidable pain and suffering Anna endured is considered a form of torture with no penological purpose and is in direct contravention of the Eighth Amendment under the Estelle Standard (Colopy 2012; Givens 2013; Mintz 2013; Rosenblum 1999). The dehumanization of Anna, locked in isolation to suffer alone, is a prime example of the “double punishment” experienced by transgender women and is inescapable without adequate prison policies for protection (Mintz 2013).

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The Prison System Mentality Institutional Denial of GID and Access to Gender-Affirming Medical Care Maintaining Control: The purpose of incarceration is deprivation of liberty. To regulate and control prisoners, their bodies are constantly observed; the experience is “pervasively corporal” (Ristroph 2006, 144). The stripping of transgender women’s identity and refusal to acknowledge or treat GID is an extension of this control. The mind-set of prison officials is to prevent prisoners from manipulating the system to gain any form of advantage or special treatment. The Idaho prison warden informed Linda on her third day of incarceration, “We don’t recognize transsexuals as a serious medical need and we’re not going to treat you … more than likely you’ll end up killing yourself.” Linda’s attorney explains that this domineering behavior and blatant denial of medically necessary hormone therapy is “in the prison’s mind … if we let the inmates call the shots we’ll be out of control. So we don’t want to let an inmate call a shot and the justification is, well, the next thing she’ll want is sexual reassignment surgery so we aren’t going to give her hormones.” The warden maintains control and enforces his authority by giving Linda a clear directive on how things work inside “his” correctional facility. His inhumane acknowledgment of her likely suicide is also an overt display of his ­indifference toward Linda’s gender identity, health and personal safety. For Linda, this action was demoralizing: “they took all that away from me – that was really depressing.” The deprivation and “control” of gender identity to negate the provision of health care is both an Eighth Amendment and international human rights violation (Enggist et al. 2014). Medical staff within prisons have an ethical responsibility to provide medical care and treatment to all incarcerated persons “of the same quality and standard as is afforded to those who are not imprisoned” (World Health Organization Europe 2003, 2). The pervasive and unregulated control of prison staff is conceded where no policies exist, exposing vulnerable transgender women to institutional victimization (Tarzwell 2006). Ashley was instructed by the warden to strip “to make sure he didn’t have a female in his unit.” Ashley explains when “you go through the intake procedure you have to strip naked … there’s no way a person can get past that point as far as what’s between their legs.” Similarly, after a serious medical incident, Linda was ordered to “expose herself” to the deputy warden and a dozen other prison staff “so they could laugh at what she had done.” The command for both Ashley and Linda to remove their clothes was unnecessary, humiliating, and degrading. The lack of prison policies granted absolute power to prison officials (Edney 2004), leaving Ashley and Linda vulnerable to mistreatment. Autocastration and Autopenectomy: Cruel and Unusual provides a medium for these women to share their lived experience of double imprisonment: being trapped inside a male body, in a male prison that repeatedly denies

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the existence of their gender identity, and further denies access to necessary gender-affirming medical care. Linda repeatedly petitioned prison administrators requesting medical assessment and treatment for her GID and received the consistent response: “Does not constitute a medical need – hormones are considered elective.” Linda became depressed and suicidal; she hated her male genitalia: “I didn’t like to look at the thing [penis], I didn’t like to feel the thing, I didn’t like to wash the thing. The thing just thoroughly disgusted me.” Linda was desperate for treatment and warned the prison “shrinks” in 1998, “If you don’t treat me I’m gonna cut the shit [testicles] off.” This was met with disbelief. Linda reports that she was told: “Ah you’re blowing hot air … Ain’t nobody gonna cut their shit off – you’re just trying to get attention.” However, in March 2000, Linda completed her autocastration and was in hospital for five days. The prison continued to deny her treatment, despite her drastic (and unimaginably painful) self-surgery and subsequent expensive hospital stay. Linda warned prison administrators a second time that if she was not treated within a year she would cut off her penis. Their response was again, “We aren’t gonna treat you.” True to her word, “I sat down in my prison cell with a razor blade – no pain medication, no dope, no nothing like that. I’m cutting the shit off. I sat down with a razor blade and started cutting.” Linda completed the autopenectomy and flushed her penis down the toilet. The prison administrators and “shrinks” failed to treat Linda’s severe GID, with full knowledge of what she was capable of doing; thus, they showed deliberate indifference to Linda’s serious psychiatric medical needs. The trauma of her untreated GID that led to her self-surgeries could have been avoided for a paltry “twenty dollars a month” for hormone therapy; instead, it cost taxpayers approximately “fifty or sixty thousand dollars.” The prison officials continued to deny Linda appropriate and necessary medical treatment for her depression and GID. Genital self-surgery can be mislabelled as attention-seeking or manipulative behavior by prison officials who lack an understanding of severe GID. The phenomenon of autocastration and autopenectomy is not seen outside the prison environment in the absence of psychosis and is the result of transgender women having no other viable option but to perform self-surgery, which is not considered “manipulative behavior” by psychiatrists (Brown 2010). As in Linda’s case, self-surgery is not a spontaneous event and typically occurs after exhaustive failed attempts to obtain treatment. The driving force behind autocastration is to remove the effects of testosterone (Brown 2010). Ophelia explains, “what a transsexual goes through, is first there’s a sense of our identity and that’s the most important thing and to have our body match what we feel inside. Nothing else is important other than our identity, and it’s like if I can’t be who I am then I’d rather be dead than have to be imprisoned in a body that’s not mine.” Like Linda, Ophelia engaged in cutting her testicles: “I wanted to get rid of my testicles, to stop the hormone … testosterone, at the same time, I feel that they’re

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not supposed to be there anyway.” This occurred after Ophelia’s treatment with female hormones was discontinued and her lawsuit against VDOC to recommence treatment was dismissed. Ophelia’s case gained media attention in the newspaper. She engaged in further legal action and continued a pattern of self-mutilation and attempted autocastration. Rebecca Glenberg (American Civil Liberties Union) reviewed Ophelia’s medical records of “each individual incident where she mutilated her own genitalia. February 22nd, 1996 self-mutilated scrotum with razor blade; May 21st 1996 five lacerations to scrotum ranging half inch to 1 inch long; May 21st 1996 later the same day self-mutilated scrotum again, lacerations approximately half inch long. The list of incidents just goes on and on.” When interviewed in Cruel and Unusual, VDOC’s defense attorney states: There are documented evidence of other personality problems going on with this inmate, that strongly suggests that the self-mutilation may be not so much a factor of gender identity disorder, as simply manipulative behavior – and I want what I want and this is the way I’m going to get it – you had someone who was a difficult prisoner in a lot of respects outside of gender issues. It’s not a foregone conclusion that treatment of gender identity disorder is going to stop the genital self-mutilation that was going on or that the genital self-mutilation was caused by a lack of treatment.

It is a defense attorney’s role to discredit the plaintiff; however, he appears to lack a full understanding of the serious medical needs of transgender women with untreated severe GID. The frequency of prison officials citing “manipulative behavior” is common (Lobel 2008) in a misguided attempt to negate the constitutional violation of “deliberate indifference.” It is noted within prison settings where transgender women are provided medical care for their GID these self-surgical events are not reported (Brown 2010). Solitary Confinement: Protection That Punishes When prison administrators place transgender women into solitary confinement to “protect” or segregate them from the general population, it is experienced as retributive punishment (Edney 2004; Enggist et al. 2014; Lobel 2008; Shah 2010; Tarzwell 2006), “a type of punishment, up on top of a punishment, just because you’re transsexual.” Solitary confinement is a form of institutional “dehumanization” (Edney 2004, 333) forced on transgender women and is considered punitive by those subjected to its harsh conditions as the constitutional rights and privileges (e.g., access to prison programs, exercise, social contact) afforded to those in the general prison population are removed (Edney 2004; Lobel 2008; Tarzwell 2006). The social isolation and prolonged solitary confinement can result in serious physiological symptoms such as gastrointestinal problems, insomnia and heart palpitations; and psychological manifestations such as anxiety, depression, hostility, memory loss, confusion, hallucinations, psychosis and self-harm

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(Enggist et al. 2014), and in extreme cases insanity and suicide (Edney 2004; Enggist et al. 2014; Lobel 2008). Those with an existing mental illness are at increased risk to the negative psychological effects of solitary confinement (Enggist et al. 2014; Edney 2004; Lobel 2008), placing transgender women with severe GID in a virtual torture chamber. Yolanda describes her year-long experience in solitary confinement: It’s just like a room, just a room. You don’t have anything in there but your bed, your window that you can’t even open so you don’t even get air. You feel like an animal, then the room it has a big window so everyone can see you. It was entertaining for them to see this person in this room going crazy you know. Everyone was laughing who was walking by ha ha ha, “look at the fag, lalala look at the homo.” Oh it really feels like you’re in a mental hospital, it really does.

Yolanda’s experience of solitary confinement caused significant trauma, and when faced with the choice between living in the general population (thus being at risk of sexual assault) or seeking protection from prison officials and placement in “twenty-four hour … lockdown,” she chose the former. Similarly, Ophelia was placed in administrative segregation to protect her from other prisoners; however, it resulted in severe psychological trauma and self-harm. Ophelia explains, “segregation, can be very hard, especially when you [are] there for something you have not done.” The graphic images of Ophelia’s arms, heavily scarred from self-mutilation, are a testament that administrative segregation is a form of “de facto punishment” (Coolman et al. 2005, 4) or “double punishment” and is not a solution for “protecting” transgender women in a male prisons. Transgender Women’s Sexual Experiences in Male Prisons Sexual Hierarchy The construction of a transgender woman’s identity in prison, as is true of all prisoner identities, is governed by the socially derived sexual hierarchy operating within a given prison system (Ristroph 2006). Transgender women, due to their visible femininity, are considered weak, placing them at the bottom of the sexual hierarchy, prohibited from advancement, or gaining any form of power (Peek 2004). They are targeted by high-ranking dominant males (Peek 2004; Rosenblum 1999) and expected to be sexually subordinate (Ristroph 2006; Peek 2004). Ristroph (2006, 148) contends this inequality within male prisons is grounded in “sexual differentiation” between those who are dominant and submissive. The introduction to Cruel and Unusual provides an insight into such carceral sexual hierarchies and the sexual inequality transgender women experience in male prisons. Yolanda was informed on her first night by the dominant sexual predator in her cell that “I got you in my room

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to be my, you know wife.” Yolanda’s designated sexual role was that of “jail wife”; she had little choice but to accept her position as there would be no escape from sexual violence and coercion. “That is what all these guys want in here – they just want a pretty-looking transgender to have their cake and eat it too.” Dominant sexual predators have a sense of entitlement that transgender women “please them sexually” (Yolanda). Assertion of Heterosexual Masculinity Sexual harassment is another element of the sexual hierarchy and a means by which a prisoner can increase their ranking and status through overt displays of power through hypermasculinity (Ristroph 2006; Rosenberg and Oswin 2014). Prison officials enforce heterosexual masculinity within prison, condoning and engaging in sexual harassment toward transgender women (Brömdal et al. 2019a, b, c; Erni 2013; Mintz 2013; Robertson 2003; Rosenberg and Oswin 2014). Consequently, sexual harassment is entrenched in the culture of prisons (Ristroph 2006). The constant and unending pressure of sexual harassment and coercion is experienced by some transgender women as “mentally stripping” (Wilson et al. 2017, 389), reinforcing subordination (Ristroph 2006). Ashley describes her experience of sexual harassment: I was in what they call the “clothing room” to get the uniforms, and they have this window that looks out into the hallway. It was so crowded with inmates looking in, and I mean, I couldn’t even actually see the hallway, because they had the window so covered. Tapping at me, pointing at me. If they’re tapping on the window like this, when I walk out into the hallway are they going to attack me? Are they going to be yanking at me, pulling me [saying] “she’s mine she’s mine”? I was scared.

When transgender women are released into the prison general population, they become a target of curiosity and sexual harassment. Many prisoners will lay claim to her—“I want to be with her, then others say that I want to be with her”—to secure their hypermasculinity and reinforce the sexual inequity of transgender women (Ristroph 2006; Rosenberg and Oswin 2014). Experiences of Rape Robertson (2003, 436) postulates, “prison rape is the most tolerated act of terrorism in the United States” and rape has become part of the carceral landscape with little justice for victims. In male prisons transgender women can be “sexually enslaved … continuously raped” (Tarzwell 2006, 176). Prison rape is typically portrayed in the media as a violent attack by one or more sexual predators upon a resisting victim. However, frequently (in reality) there is an absence of physical violence due to a “bargain made under the coercive conditions” (Ristroph 2006, 183). This is the experience of rape told in Cruel and Unusual: an unwilling, unconsenting victim that may not physically struggle or resist (Ristroph 2006). Yolanda describes an occasion where

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she was raped in her cell, an event she had never spoken about previously. Yolanda had told the sexual predator, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this.” However, she was powerless, “You know we’re gonna do this … You don’t really have nothing to say about me doing this cuz I just want to come in here and just do what I have to do.” Yolanda expresses that, “it was disgusting, it was degrading.” The victims of these dominant predators have little choice as they know, “if she doesn’t want to give it up then fine they’re going to take it.” While sexual coercion in prisons may not be viewed constitutionally as “punishment” (Ristroph 2006), it is experienced as punishment among victims.

Trauma and the Documentary Film: The Role of the Viewer This chapter’s concerns are not just with the specific issues of trauma raised by the women featured in this documentary, but also in the representations of these in the documentary form: that is, the problem of framing and presenting a narrative of trauma experienced by both individuals (the women featured in the film) and a collective (transgender women in prison more generally). Cruel and Unusual thus contributes to a wider discourse on the logic and ethics of trauma narratives and bearing witness to those narratives: that is, the task of productive and responsible listening. As Cathy Caruth (1996) has comprehensively explained, the logic of trauma theory holds that the experience of trauma is defined precisely by the way in which it exceeds the capacity for seeing and knowing during the original event. Because of this, it is not, in fact, experienced at the time, but only afterward (what Sigmund Freud terms Nachträglichkeit), in the experience of flashbacks, nightmares, or a repetition compulsion, for example. Thus, trauma returns unbidden and uncontrolled. It cannot be accessed and expressed at will, and in this way remains unspeakable and unresolved. Traditional models of trauma theory therefore hold that trauma lies beyond representation; it is only through the Freudian process of “working through” that the traumatized subject can articulate and narrativize the trauma, thereby integrating it into their psyche and moving from melancholic repression to resolvable mourning. However, it can also be argued that such a process ultimately works to silence the experience of trauma which is so important for both the traumatic subject and those to whom they speak to recognize. As Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub point out: The listener, therefore, has to be at the same time a witness to trauma and a witness to himself. It is only in this way, through his simultaneous awareness of the continuous flow of those inner hazards both in the trauma witness and in himself, that he can become the enabler of the testimony – the one who triggers its initiation, as well as the guardian of its process and of its momentum. (1992, 58)

Thus, this model of trauma theory raises problems for an understanding of the narrativization of trauma: Is the task here one of making whole, of

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“healing,” or is it rather simply listening, and in this way attending to and perhaps learning from the “scars” of the experience? The representation of trauma in non-fictional narratives such as documentary films and life writing compounds these issues since they constitute what Anne Cubilié terms “commodified testimonials” (2005, 76), designed for public circulation and public rehearsal of the psychological process of remembering trauma for real people (rather than fictional characters). The ethical representation of historical or individual trauma requires further careful management on the part of the mediator (the documentary filmmaker or author of the narrative) in order to permit empathy and emotional connection that is not only necessary for the original interviewer (Lindgren 2012, 38), but also for the audience as listener. The ethical viewer cannot be passive; rather, they must be an active participant in the construction of the story. This interaction between text and reader or viewer as a process of meaning-making is central to Wolfgang Iser’s reader response theory and is also critical for an understanding of the reception of the trauma narrative precisely because it exposes the way in which the listener is a necessary element of this method of working through, of making sense of chaotic experiences. Responsibility for action therefore lies simultaneously with the filmmaker and the viewer: it is the viewer who must take action (as in the writing of this chapter), and it is the filmmaker’s responsibility to uphold the authenticity of representation of the trauma subject’s story in order for the viewer to participate in their ethical position as a responsible listener. Cruel and Unusual permits this in its form: indeed, Daniels-Yeomans (2017, 86) has recently made the claim that the documentary genre alone is equal to the “challenges” of representing trauma in ways beyond those traditional models of unspeakability because “it both sheds light on ongoing, and frequently structural, mechanisms of traumatization at work in the twenty-first century moment, and it potentiates a form of productive access to experiences of these conditions, facilitating an opening-up of trauma to spectators that neither reduces nor elides its intimate violences.” As such, Cruel and Unusual’s emphasis on face-to-face interviews allows each woman to present their story in their own words. The interlocutor of the author/ filmmaker is removed as much as possible, so that there is no spoken narration, and only a few explanatory title cards. More than this, however, this positioning of the women minimizes the way in which their bodies are subject to the viewer’s gaze and scrutiny, and thus the replication of their bodies’ vulnerability (Ristroph 2006) in the prison system. In this way, Cruel and Unusual allows the women to tell their own stories, to reclaim their voice, and also to reclaim ownership of their bodies. This has the effect of creating an “affective transaction” between the film and the viewer which stimulates not only emotion (Daniels-Yeomans 2017, 92), but also action. Indeed, Walters and Rehma (2013) found that exposure to documentary film about transgenderism, as well as friendship with a person identifying as transgender, increased empathy and understanding of transgender issues. Other benefits to

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the community might include campaigning for appropriate policy change or speaking out on the issue at hand (Lindgren 2012). In these ways, Cruel and Unusual exposes (and provokes a call to rectify) these violations of national and international justice systems: that is, the precisely cruel nature of the punishment of those who appear to be gender non-conforming. In its construction of direct connection between the film’s subjects and its viewers, Cruel and Unusual seeks to provoke empathy for the Other, to approach an understanding of the unknowable pain of the Other. Perhaps more powerfully, Cruel and Unusual is concerned to make clear the layers of the women’s experience of trauma in ways that they do not explicitly appear to realize. It is the characters in conjunction with the documentary filmmakers who “confront the audience directly with the unbearable paradox of the imperative to tell of their experience and yet the inability to ever convey it adequately” (Cubilié 2005, 77). For instance, the women are frequently represented as in transition, filmed in cars, walking, or in the homes of others. The effect is to suggest their position as outsiders, marginalized: there is no place for them in the hostile environment of the contemporary nation. In their liminality, then, the subjects of Cruel and Unusual expose the contradictions at the heart of these national and international justice systems. They confront the viewer with the realization that even incarcerated people, those who have ostensibly violated the laws of a nation, have the human right to health care and freedom from victimization and discrimination. Indeed, there is no justice system if such rights are violated. The logic of justice depends on this being upheld, rather than permitting further unauthorized punishment which is physically and psychologically damaging outside the bounds of the correctional system (Shalev 2014, 28). Cruel and Unusual clarifies the women’s vulnerability and their structural inequality, their multiple marginalization, as inextricable from the trauma of their lived experience. Although it is of course true that the primary focus of the documentary is on the violence and trauma of the experience of the prison system and its administrators (what might be seen as a kind of institutional violence), it also presents this as a function of the individual violence they enact against themselves, as well as the structural violence of their already marginal position as convicted offenders and as transgender women (and, in some cases, as African American women, homeless, unemployed, or living in poverty). Cruel and Unusual thus critiques the “transnormative ideology” of a medical model of transgender identity which “excludes those who do not have the resources to access the services necessary to receive diagnosis and subsequent medical interventions,” such as those who are additionally marginalized by race or class position (Johnson 2016, 486). Finally, in attending to the ongoing trauma of these women’s experiences, which are not limited to their transgenderism, but extend to their class and race positions, Cruel and Unusual offers minimal resolution to the narrative. Importantly, this lack of resolution is in direct contrast to the optimism expressed by Ashley, at the film’s end: her hope that one day she too will

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achieve the “American Dream.” There is no “happy ending” to offer Ashley or the other women featured in the documentary; instead, all that is available are the potential actions of the viewer. Ultimately, Cruel and Unusual makes clear, it is up to the viewer/reader to do something and thus to listen productively to this narrative of trauma.

Conclusions How is it that in a present-day civil society, these atrocities persist? How have these violations been deemed acceptable and continue within formal, social institutions in a well-developed, high-income country? Based on these five stories, what have the learnings been for transgender women, fellow incarcerated individuals, staff, and the viewer/reader? These stories ultimately represent a microcosm for perpetuating abuse and disadvantage. Would we tolerate this mistreatment with other “vulnerable” groups or “priority” populations (such as veterans or refugees)? If not, why not? This begs a larger social discussion and collective action. This chapter highlights and analyzes the lived experiences of five transgender women in the documentary Cruel and Unusual and paints a disturbing picture of the ongoing mistreatment and victimization (sexual coercion, denial of female hormone therapy, solitary confinement, dehumanization, subjection to demeaning gender-checks, genital-related mocking) experienced while incarcerated in male prisons. Narratives are explored through various lenses, including Ristroph’s sexual punishment theory; national and international human rights laws; contemporary transgender rights scholars; and trauma theories—to situate their stories within broader medical, psychological, historical, and political conversations and to acknowledge the ongoing violations experienced among transgender women in male prisons. Predominant themes using thematic analysis of the lived experience narratives from these five transgender women revealed three major themes and seven secondary themes (Prison Policy [e.g., Lack of Prison Policies for Housing and Medical Treatment]; The Prison System Mentality [e.g., Maintaining Control, Autocastration or Autopenectemy, Solitary Confinement: Protection that Punishes]; and Transgender Women’s Sexual Experiences in Male Prisons [e.g., Sexual Hierarchy, Assertion of Heterosexual Masculinity, Experiences of Rape]). Together, these themes represent an antiquated and even barbaric perspective—consistent with enduring international and national human rights violations, and supposedly within the “care” of the “justice” system. Through reading the selected illustrative quotes from the transgender women’s narratives from this documentary and subsequent analysis throughout this chapter, the viewer and reader are “called to action,” as productive listeners to experience an empathic response regarding the affected Other. Together these stories highlight the absence of duty of care and compassion through the breaching of numerous national and international laws. The prisons described in Cruel and Unusual do not adequately support the housing or medical needs and requirements for transgender women in correctional

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environments, particularly access to necessary medical treatment including the relatively inexpensive cost of hormone therapy ranging $300–2400 USD per year (Colopy 2012) and necessary psychological support and treatment regarding gender-related issues and experienced trauma. Further, housing based on genitalia remains an ongoing practice (Malkin and DeJong 2018; Mintz 2013; Shah 2010), despite documented harm and heightened vulnerability. Transgender women are already serving their sentence for offenses, and they are further vulnerable to victimization within the prison hierarchy, where staff show “deliberate indifference” and experience “double punishment” by prison staff and fellow offenders. Transgender women in correctional environments typically “suffer in silence,” which exacerbates and compounds their trauma experience, for it is not just the endurance of adverse consequences which these women suffer, but the permanent and unhelpful changes to their psychological belief systems regarding themselves (for instance, self-worth, vulnerability), the future (hopelessness), and the world around them (injustice), which can erode resilience, hope, future thriving and can ultimately contribute to self-harm and suicide (Beck et al. 1987; Beck 1993; Herman 2015), coupled with denial of access to psychological support and treatment. This mistreatment is considered normative within hierarchical systems, with transgender women in male prisons experiencing heightened stigma due to affiliation with multiple marginalities (Quinn and Earnshaw 2013) and experiencing poorer levels of psychological health particularly when attempting to conceal their identity (Sexton et al. 2010; Quinn and Earnshaw 2013). Transgender people experience greater stigma and discrimination than members of other sexually diverse identities, which is in direct violation of national and international charters (e.g., 2003 PREA; 2005 Sexual Abuse in Detention Elimination Act; Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners; Yogyakarta Principles). Prison environments also typify a totalitarian philosophy whereby the “system” is deemed the focus and has priority over the rights of an individual, such as placing transgender women into solitary confinement framed as protective custody. Psychological support and treatment for trauma is typically deemed beyond the scope of prison mental health services, even when incarcerated individuals have experienced violence, assault, and sexual coercion under the guardianship of the same correctional environment. Despite a number of years passing since the documentary was filmed, and since the passing of major international resolutions regarding the rights and well-being of transgender people, time has largely stood still for many in prison as transgender people continue to experience various forms of victimization and inhumane treatment by fellow prisoners and prison officers. These legal and human rights protections are ultimately not sufficiently nor consistently implemented. Prisons, similar to other societal institutions, such as hospitals and schools, have an obligation to ensure the safety and promote the health and well-being of residents under their care. However, transgender women, as evidenced through the sharing of these collective lived experiences, demonstrate that ultimately this group is misunderstood, dehumanized, and violated. Prison

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officials frequently lack adequate training and education in the management of incarcerated transgender people (Brown and McDuffie 2009; Jenness and Fenstermaker 2014; Routh et al. 2017) and this has been addressed in the PREA Final Rule (US Department of Justice 2012). Prison staff and healthcare professionals also lack knowledge and supportive attitudes conducive for adequately supporting transgender people (Brömdal et al. 2019c; Clark et al. 2017; Grant et al. 2011; Mullens et al. 2017; White Hughto et al. 2018). Cruel and Unusual demonstrates concerning gaps between policy and consistent practice, which contributes to further institutional victimization, including demoralization and discrimination via significant and serious mistreatment and human rights violations. How can the bridging of gaps between policy and practice be hastened? Where is the accountability and compliance? Ironically, although a prison is based on principles of “justice,” the prison system is not upholding national and international law. Furthermore, this victimization is a normalized and routine phenomenon even though it is in breach of standard code of conduct guidelines for justice staff and administrators. Policies are meaningless and token unless sufficiently enacted, enforced, and adhered to. Lawsuits mentioned in this documentary by transgender women have made inroads in legal practice; however, these examples are isolated and in the minority, while perpetration of abuse and denial of care continues to be pervasive and typical in reality (Brömdal et al. 2019b). In recent years, there have been major revisions to US federal law concerning the placement and housing of incarcerated transgender people. The PREA Final Rule (US Department of Justice 2012, 37109) mandates the following: [A]n agency may not simply assign the inmate to a facility based on genital status. Rather, the agency must consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems, giving serious consideration to the inmate’s own views regarding his or her own safety.

The PREA Finale Rule was enacted in 2012 and allowed US states a transition period of three years to implement new policies to increase the protections for transgender people. Malkin and DeJong (2018) reported in early 2017 that 25% of US state prisons endorsed policies consistent with the majority of the PREA transgender provisions and only 10 states were fully compliant. This data suggests that some transgender people incarcerated in US prisons today are potentially exposed to unnecessary and avoidable harm due to the failure of developing prison policies consistent with the PREA. Less is known regarding the extent to which prisons are now following guidelines, and it is unknown what consequences exist for prison staff who condone mistreatment of transgender women by other prisoners, as well as the action (or inaction) on reported violations, with a likely pattern of underreporting of assaults experienced in prison due to trauma, marginalization, and fear of future punitive repercussions by staff or other prisoners (e.g.,

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solitary confinement, prison hierarchy) (Brömdal et al. 2019c). This is in part linked to the difficulty of pursuing research in and with incarceration settings exploring both the lived experiences of incarcerated transgender people and the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of correctional staff have regarding transgender people in incarceration settings (Mullens et al. 2019). Thus, submission, compliance, and obedience become adaptive short-term coping and survival mechanisms, but contribute to psychological and physical harm and exacerbate the experience of GID and complex trauma. Cruel and Unusual contributes to a wider discourse on trauma narratives, particularly the logic and ethics for framing these experiences as “cruel and unusual” punishments, and ultimately as unconstitutional. Through the retelling of the five transgender women’s lived experiences within male prisons, they have had the opportunity to “work through” or process their complex trauma. Further, these women have afforded a privileged opportunity to viewers (and readers) to experience empathy for the Other. This documentary exposes the contradictions surrounding justice systems, in that people in prison have the human right to health care and freedom from victimization, discrimination, and mistreatment. Cruel and Unusual reveals the women’s vulnerability, the structural inequality, and multiple marginalization that is inextricable from the trauma of their lived incarceration experience. Productive listeners must tap into their own vulnerabilities and unique needs, and experiences to enact felt injustice. This then becomes a “call to arms” and a moral responsibility to not contribute to a global “bystander effect” (Hudson and Bruckman 2004, 165),8 but rather to take action. These detailed and dramatic portrayals of actual horrific experiences and mistreatment transcend philosophy, psychology, prison systems, and medical care. Thus, based on these documented vignettes and the subsequent analysis, the following areas require pertinent and timely redressing: review of and stricter adherence to prison policies (see Brömdal et al. 2019b; Malkin and DeJong 2018) and enactment of cultural shifts regarding prison system mentality toward transgender women in prison (Longo 2017). Policies which ensure compliance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) regarding solitary confinement and medical care (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2015), housing based on gender identity and access to optional LGBTIQ housing would significantly advance the health and well-being and protection, and ultimately reduced human rights violations among incarcerated transgender women (Brömdal et al. 2019b). Prison policies to improve access to necessary medical and psychological treatments for transgender women are urgently needed (Brömdal et al. 2019b; Longo 2017). Changing the prison culture through the provision of mandatory transgender sensitivity training for prison officers and fellow prisoners would also represent a critical advance (Brown and McDuffie 2009; Brömdal et al. 2019b; Jenness and Fenstermaker 2014; Routh et al. 2017; Sexton et al. 2010).

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Notes 1. The contemporary terminology for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is Gender Dysphoria, however, to be consistent with the documentary’s time period and terminology GID is used throughout the chapter. GID was replaced with Gender Dysphoria as a diagnostic category in 2013 when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-V; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) was released. 2. Solitary confinement refers to “the physical and social isolation of an individual in a single cell for 22.5 to 24 hours a day, with the remaining time typically spent exercising in a barren yard or cage”; “[t]his regime can last for months or years, and can be of an indeterminate duration” (Shalev 2014, 27). 3. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., Text Revision; DSM-IV-TR), the four diagnostic criteria for GID are “A) A strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex). In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as a stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live and be treated as the other sex, or the conviction that he or she has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex. B) Persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex. In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., request for hormones, surgery, or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics that simulate the other sex), or belief that he or she was born the wrong sex. C) The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition. D) The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (American Psychiatric Association 2000, B-44). 4. More specifically, in Estelle v. Gamble 1976, 429 US 97, 104–105, the Supreme Court elaborated: “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain proscribed by the Eighth Amendment” (Tarzwell 2006, 182). 5. Where solitary confinement is viewed as a measure to protect the prisoner from sexual violence. 6. To provide some further context regarding the five women, Anna Connelly, a Caucasian transgender woman, knew at the age of five that she was drawn to being a girl. Anna was 43 years old when she was held at gunpoint and forced to drive an acquaintance to a store to commit a robbery or be shot. As a consequence, Anna was arrested for armed robbery. Anna was advised by a lawyer she knew that she would not win her law case and should take the plea bargain. Despite not having any prior criminal involvement, Anna was sentenced to four years and two months imprisonment in a male prison in Florida. Ashley, an African-American transgender woman, had always identified as a girl “and never felt like a boy, ever” and self-identifies as a “good girl gone bad.” At a young age, she became involved with making “fast money” committing bank fraud by opening accounts in other people’s names. Although Ashley admits that she never felt comfortable with this criminal activity, she was convicted of credit card fraud and sentenced to 25 years with four and a half years to be served in an Arkansas male prison. Linda Thompson, a six-foot seven-inch

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Caucasian transgender woman in her late forties who at a very early age remembers praying “Dear God, when I wake up that thing down there will not be there.” Linda “officially came out of the closet” in 1991 and has experienced persistent employment discrimination since this time. To support herself, Linda resorted to stealing to buy groceries and other necessities. Linda was sentenced to seven years in prison for selling stolen aluminum wire and served her time in an Idaho correctional facility for men. Ophelia De’Lonta, an African-American transgender woman, knew at the age of seven that she was a “little girl but … born in a boy’s body.” At the age of 17 years, she robbed a bank, as she wanted the money to have sex reassignment surgery. Ophelia’s gun had no bullets, as she did not want anyone to be hurt. Ophelia was sentenced 67 years served in a correctional facility for men in Virginia. Yolanda Valentine, a young AfricanAmerican transgender woman in her early twenties incarcerated at a male youth correctional facility in New Jersey for stealing and assault. Yolanda’s early life had many challenges, as her mother was a recovering drug addict, she dropped out of school and was working as a prostitute from the age of ten. Yolanda started taking female hormones from age 12–13 years and her feminine appearance led her to initially being housed with other women. This quickly changed once the prison officers understood she was a transgender woman and she was soon transferred to a male correctional facility (Baus et al. 2006). 7. This six-phased guide of thematic analysis consists of (1) familiarizing yourself with your data; (2) generating initial codes; (3) searching for themes; (4) reviewing themes; (5) defining and naming themes; and (6) producing the report (Braun and Clarke 2006, 87). 8.  According to Hudson and Bruckman (2004, 165) “the bystander effect … explains why individuals are less likely to help in an emergency situation if others are present.”

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Rosenberg, Rae, and Natalie Oswin. 2014. “Trans Embodiment in Carceral Space: Hypermasculinity and the US Prison Industrial Complex.” Gender, Place & Culture 22, no. 9: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2014.969685. Rosenblum, Darren. 1999. “Trapped in Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught in the Gender Binarism.” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law 6, no. 2: 499–572. https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=, https://scholar. google.com.au/&httpsredir=1&article=1206&context=lawfaculty. Routh, Douglas, et al. 2017. “Transgender Inmates in Prisons: A Review of Applicable Statutes and Policies.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 61, no. 6: 645–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/03066 24x15603745. Sagar, Kristen. 2006. “De’Lonta v. Angelone 99–642 (W.D. Va.).” University of Michigan Law School: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=974. Sexton, Lori, Valerie Jenness, and Jennifer Macy Sumner. 2010. “Where the Margins Meet: A Demographic Assessment of Transgender Inmates in Men’s Prisons.” Justice Quarterly 27, no. 6: 835–866. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418820903419010. Shah, Benish A. 2010. “Lost in the Gender Maze: Placement of Transgender Inmates in the Prison System.” Journal of Race, Gender and Ethnicity 5, no. 1: 39–56. https:// www.tourolaw.edu/Journalrge/uploads/Issues/Vol5Issue1/Shah_Final.pdf. Shalev, Sharon. 2014. “Solitary Confinement as a Prison Health Issue.” In Prisons and Health, edited by Stefan Enggist, Lars Møhller, Gauden Galea, and Caroline Udesen, 27–35. Copenhagen: World Health Organization. Tarzwell, Sydney. 2006. “The Gender Liens Are Marked with Razor Wire: Addressing State Prison Policies and Practices for the Management of Transgender Prisoners.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 38: 167. https://heinonline.org/HOL/ P?h=hein.journals/colhr38&i=173. United Nations General Assembly. 1982. Principles of Medical Ethics. New York: United Nations General Assembly. United Nations General Assembly. 1990. Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners. New York: United Nations. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 2015. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Vienna, Austria: UNODC. US Congress. 2017. “Eighth Amendment: Further Guarantees in Criminal Cases.” US Government Printing Office. https://www.congress.gov/content/conan/ pdf/GPO-CONAN-2017-10-9.pdf. US Department of Justice. 2012. “National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape: Final Rule.” https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ FR-2012-06-20/pdf/2012-12427.pdf. Walters, Andrew S., and Kae Rehma. 2013. “Avenue T: Using Film as Entrée in Teaching About Transgender.” Sex Education 13, no. 3: 336–348. https://doi.org /10.1080/14681811.2012.743460. White Hughto, Jaclyn M., et al. 2018. “Creating, Reinforcing, and Resisting the Gender Binary: A Qualitative Study of Transgender Women’s Healthcare Experiences in Sex-Segregated Jails and Prisons.” International Journal of Prisoner Health 14, no. 2: 69–88. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijph-02-2017-0011.

360  T. PHILLIPS ET AL. Wilson, Mandy, et al. 2017. “‘You’re a Woman, a Convenience, a Cat, a Poof, a Thing, an Idiot’: Transgender Women Negotiating Sexual Experiences in Men’s Prisons in Australia.” Sexualities 20, no. 3: 380–402. https://doi. org/10.1177/1363460716652828. World Health Organization (Europe). 2003. Declaration on Prison Health as Part of Public Health. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/98971/ E94242.pdf. Yogyakarta Principles. 2007. Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. http://data. unaids.org/pub/manual/2007/070517_yogyakarta_principles_en.pdf.

Incarceration as a Dated Badge of Honor: The Sopranos and the Screen Gangster in a Time of Flux Robert Hensley-King

Introduction At the close of the last millennium, The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) reflected the imagination of a world in a state of flux. Scholarship has explored the revolution affected by The Sopranos in television from production to consumption. The show and its diverse characters provide opportunities to explore issues of gender, ethnicity, and class. One struggle that merits closer investigation is the idea of characters dealing with changing society, ideology, and personal circumstance. This is particularly poignant for characters who return to the fictive world of The Sopranos after serving lengthy prison sentences. This chapter examines the delicate relationship between the gangsters’ code of honor, the omertà, and the reality of returning to a changed world after standing trial and serving a substantial prison sentence. Through a contextualized analysis, this chapter examines four characters who find it difficult to re-assimilate after serving long sentences. Ritchie Aprile (David Proval), Feech La Manna (Robert Loggia), Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi), and Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) struggle with what Feech sarcastically terms “a brave new world.” Problematic readjustment differences include social-political, circumstance, ideologies and priorities, and, with regard to gender, what it means to be a man of honor. In addition

R. Hensley-King (*)  Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_21

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to their struggles, they are faced with the image of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), who seems to have succeeded in a strictly controlled world despite transgressing its norms.

The Omertà and the Sopranos In a number of interviews, David Chase (creator of The Sopranos) has stated that he wanted to make a television series with cinematic qualities in content as much as in production values. The idea of updating the gangster subgenre for television is important to understanding how the omertà is understood and defined in The Sopranos at the beginning of a new millennium (Nelson 2011, 41–53; Nochimson 2002, 2–13). In the same way that the stories of gangsters have been shaped to attract mass interest, the underlying values that make up the omertà are also rewritten. The code of the omertà as a way of living for honorable men derives from Sicily. That it evolved as a way of life for the Italian-American Mafia is well established in the gangster subgenre of movies. The idea of acting with honorable comportment is explained to a young gangster, Charlie (Harvey Keitel), in Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973): “Honorable men go with honorable men.” The place of honorable men in society is explained by Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) voice-over at the beginning of Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990): The Mafia protects people who are unable to go the police. In defining its understanding of the omertà, The Sopranos also draws on these established Hollywood tropes and expresses a dialogic relationship between itself and mafia-inflected cinema. This is especially evident in frequent intertextual references to The Godfather Trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, 1974, 1990) in the first two seasons. The films provide a model for how the characters in The Sopranos interact with each other and carry out their business. The film characters also provide a model of how to live as a soldier within a strict hierarchy and remain silent about the Mafia and its activities when questioned by the enemy, the Federal Government. The Godfather Triology also, along with other films, provides a mythology for the characters in The Sopranos. Tony’s office in the backroom of the Bada Bing is decorated with Mafia and other Italian-American film posters. When the main characters socialize with Tony in his office they often watch and discuss The Godfather films in the first two seasons. They also relate their criminal activities to each other with references to Coppola’s Mafiosi. Yet, as Toscano notes, The Sopranos is set in a different age to the first two Godfather films (Toscano 2014). By the 1990s, many dominant ideologies have been challenged and society has changed in many ways. In The Sopranos, the old values of the omertà are called into question when juxtaposed with contemporary concerns like gender, ethnicity, and class. This is particularly evident through differences in how The Sopranos deals with masculinity. The idea of manliness in relation to the omertà is developed

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and defined through Tony and his various relationships and worlds. These are discussed in greater detail below. For now, it is important to consider how a range of characters challenge a number of binary understandings about “manly” roles in The Sopranos.1 Even among the Mafia characters, there is a spectrum of those who embody an aggressive masculinity to commit murder and adultery frequently, those who reflect a softer-masculinity, and more importantly, those who are able to be both violent and loving. While such characters might not see or understand themselves performing masculinity within the spectrum identified by Judith Butler, Tony’s generation is different to that of his father (Butler 1990). This is particularly true in instances when misogynistic and homophobic attitudes are exposed. A good example of this is when Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) feels that he has to break up with a woman he clearly loves for fear of appearing emasculated for giving oral sex. The problems between generations are also evident in the discharged prisoners who simply cannot understand how the values of the Mafia have changed from a binary understanding of what it means to be a man. They were removed from a world of street-crime in which they were respected for displays of hard-bodied masculinity. Tony Soprano’s childhood flashbacks and his discussion of them reveal a world in which men were admired for their ability to be brutal. Ritchie, Feech, Tony Blundetto, and Phil are shown to return exasperated that the values they were taught now appear diluted. This apparently relativistic approach to the omertà is also seen through the lens of sociopolitical change. The “Class of 04” stood trial during the 1980s. At this time, there was a clampdown on organized crime in the United States. Feech, Ritchie, and Phil were arrested at a time when the Federal Government and the courts imposed long sentences on people working in organized crime. This was intended to break up the Mafia by encouraging gangsters to inform on each other. The intertextual references to Goodfellas remind the audience that both the real Henry Hill and Ray Liotta’s screen interpretation of him made a deal with the government to avoid a long prison sentence for dealing in drugs. Earlier in the film, before the FBI clampdown, Henry is seen serving a shorter prison sentence where he and his fellow gangsters could smuggle in food and alcohol and conduct criminal activities with impunity. For Ritchie and the “Class of ’04,” they encounter not only a different climate but also what appear to be a different set of ideologies. They paid a heavy price to keep the omertà and save members of their crime family from arrest. The divergence between the omertà they lived by and the omertà they now witness, which is the product of the intervening years of their imprisonment, reflects a distinction between an old-school approach and a new one. In the old world, gangsters were rewarded for taking risks and not being afraid. A good example of how things have changed is the mis-­schooling of Jackie Aprile Jr. by Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano). In the episode Amour Fou (3:12), having learned from Ralph how Tony Soprano and Tony

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Blundetto forced their way into the Mafia’s respect by holding up Feech La Manna’s card game, Jackie decides to make a name for himself. He copies the two Tonys by robbing a card game, but makes a mess of things and accidentally kills someone. The old-school values clearly do not work for Jackie who is inept and, as described by Tony, not cut out for a life of crime. Instead of being rewarded and promoted in the Mafia, he is punished with death. As is evident in each for the characters discussed below, the old-school gangsters have missed out on the changes and transition to a new way of doing business. They fail to grasp the complexities of why what once worked no longer does.

Ritchie Aprile Ritchie Aprile is an important character in the second season of The Sopranos. The character returns to the world of the New Jersey Mafia after spending ten years in prison, he struggles with what he sees as an unmanly way of leading while his own masculinity is challenged. In terms of leadership, Ritchie returns to a world in which the audience have seen Tony’s struggles and his rise to become boss of what was once Ritchie’s brother’s crime family. Unlike Ritchie, the men in Tony’s crew and others in the family have seen and supported Tony becoming boss in changing times. It is important to consider the context of Tony’s assent and hard-won peace with his family and why this might be problematic to someone returned from prison. To become boss, Tony has had to work through generational tensions with his uncle, Junior. With the help of insights gained from his therapy with Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), Tony finds a way to become actual boss while allowing Junior to be a figurehead boss. This has many benefits for Tony: Junior becomes a lightening conductor for FBI attention, his feelings are not hurt, and it is generally agreed among the family crews and associates that Tony is the better leader. Junior comes to understand this and agrees that it makes sense. By the beginning of the second season and Ritchie’s return to New Jersey, there is a tenuous peace between Tony and Junior. Richie, however, is less pragmatic about leadership in changed circumstances. He thinks a man of honor should not step over others, and that the boss should be prepared to lead openly and take a fall in accordance with his old-school values. The experience of returning from prison to a changed reality has made Ritchie vulnerable; however, the prison experience has further hardened him. He is not afraid of Tony. In his world, he should be rewarded for keeping the omertà. His forceful attempts to return to crime should be supported, not sanctioned. Ritchie’s efforts to reassert himself as a gangster are juxtaposed with his frustration at having to meet with Tony in a shopping mall instead of one of his usual more masculine places of business. At the mall, Ritchie is warned about being patient and cautious not to attract the attention of the FBI.

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Richie fails in his efforts to usurp Tony and undermine his authority. In response to the refusal of Peter “Beansie” Gaeta (Paul Herman) to pay protection, Richie violently attacks him. The brutality of the attack is frowned upon by Tony. It is clear that Tony’s sympathies are with Beansie when Tony rules that Ritchie must make financial retribution. Another important example is Ritchie’s failed attempt to re-ignite tensions between Uncle Junior and Tony. Instead of taking the bait, Uncle Junior reasons aloud to Bobby Baccalieri (Steve Schirripa), the gangster charged with his care, that they are better off with Tony. The frustration and resentment keenly evident in Ritchie is readily harnessed by his childhood sweetheart and Tony’s sister, Janice Soprano (Aida Turturro). Valerie Palmer-Mahta notes how Janice enjoys considerable power over Tony (Palmer-Mahta 2006, 56–68). Janice’s hold over Tony enables Ritchie to prosper. However, for both Janice and Tony, Ritchie is more of a commodity than a person who commands respect. For Janice, Ritchie is a way of transitioning back into the world of New Jersey from her free-spirited Seattle-based phase. She wants to come home but lacks the means to do so. With help and encouragement, Ritchie’s restored status could see him earn enough money to house and keep her as a New Jersey housewife like Carmela. Janice’s use of boyfriends is a recurring theme in The Sopranos. Examples include Janice’s affair with Ralph Cifaretto who has an antagonistic relationship with her brother. This affair also helps her transition from a religious man who fails to provide enough for her. This transition is even more evident when she works her way into life of the recently widowed and kindhearted gangster, Bobby Baccalieri, who is Uncle Junior’s Mafia caregiver. In the case of Ritchie, Janice is quite frank with Carmela (Edie Falco) that she is able to manipulate his fragile masculinity by playing to his need to be a “respected” gangster. She allows him to hold a gun to her head during sex (Reis 2009, 55–72). However, Janice has her limits and her time with Ritchie is short-lived. Ritchie’s fragile masculinity with his homophobic and misogynistic outlook is evidently at odds with Janice’s values. This brings them into a series of conflicts that reach a lethal climax in The Knight in White Satin Armor (2:12). They celebrate their engagement in an expensive house they are buying with Tony’s reluctant help. Janice’s plan has worked and the niceness of her new suburban home even attracts a jealous glance from Carmela. Yet, the audience is privy to their ongoing argument about accepting a homosexual son, which escalates to a violent outburst resulting in Janice shooting Ritchie over dinner in her mother’s house. While there is a tragic side to Ritchie, who has paid a heavy price to keep the omertà and struggles to return to a changed world, there are frequent reminders about his residual toxicity as a homophobic, misogynistic, and generally violent character. For his example, his indignation that his niece, Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo) is beaten by her fiancé Christopher

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Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) is not a question of chivalry or, in fact, any serious challenge to intimate partner violence. His anger is at Christopher assuming what Ritchie considers the rights of a married man. He is repeatedly clear that marriage entitles a man to strike his wife.

Feech La Manna Feech only appears in four episodes of The Sopranos. Yet, his inclusion here is important to understanding generational considerations for gangsters returned from incarceration. Feech returns as an old-school gangster with considerable experience and the respect of other gangsters. In a world that draws heavily from a mythology rooted in Hollywood, Feech is the “real deal.” He was granted formal status as a gangster in Italy. In both the film and television world of the gangster subgenre, being “made” in Italy carries great weight. As explained by Henry Hill in Goodfellas, a gangster’s roots must be traced back to Italy in order to be formally admitted as a member of a crime family. Like the others who return from prison, Feech wants to earn again. He is impatient about being expected to wait and fit in with existing crews. Feech feels slighted by a boss he last knew as the young man who help up his card game. He is openly disrespectful toward Tony. In a show of oldschool values, Feech does not ask for permission to earn or step over capos in their businesses. When challenged he is defensive. Two instances of note show his determination to force his way back in after serving his sentence. Firstly, Feech takes business from Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico). Paulie is one of Tony’s capos, a difficult man he handles with great caution. Secondly, he ignores Tony’s clear instruction not to steal cars parked at the wedding reception of one of Tony’s friends, Dr. Ira Fried (John Pleshette). His ignoring the rules upsets the balance of power in Tony’s family. A nuanced combination of mise-en-scène, cinematography, plot development, and editing is used to create a scene that shows how Tony perceives Feech’s struggles to reintegrate as a serious challenge to his power. On one occasion, Tony is told by Carmela that he has no friends and his men only laugh at his jokes because they are afraid of him. Tony is shown to pause and consider this observation. When Tony arrives at work, he finds people listening to one of Feech’s funny stories. Tony is dismissive in his treatment of Feech and interrupts him to tell his own joke. The reaction of people laughing is slowed down. This distorts the image and exaggerates their laughter in a way that makes it look forced and insincere. Feech, however, is not laughing. Instead, he returns Tony’s gaze with a stony glare. While Feech might not be afraid of Tony, he perhaps should be. He stands as an isolated figure. Tony tells his consigliere, Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt), that he wants Feech killed. Silvio explains that Feech is popular and takes a different course of action. He has Feech manipulated by Christopher Moltisanti and Benny

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Fazio (Max Casella) to take in stolen goods. Silvio then has the police alerted. This results in Feech’s loss of parole and return to the prison. Feech, when driven away, gives a look that suggests he is aware that he was set up as a punishment. As an old-school gangster, he once again stays true to the omertà.

Tony Blundetto Unlike Ritchie and Feech, Tony Blundetto is loved by Tony Soprano. Tony, the boss of the family, wants his cousin back and has worked out a plan to reintegrate Tony Blundetto. Once reunited, however, the two cousins have a problematic relationship. This is important to the plot development in season five. Tony Blundetto has served his time and now wants to go straight. He wants out of the Mafia and Tony Soprano is compelled to accommodate his request. Even though Tony Soprano has reason to be disappointed and even envious that his cousin can make a life outside of the Mafia, he helps his cousin get a job in spite of his criminal record. Tony Blundetto has, and exercises, agency. He is at first willing to work hard at a physically demanding job to make an honest life for himself and the girlfriend he met online while in prison. However, his path toward a crime-free life in a changed world is not without problems. Tony Blundetto is first introduced to the audience in The Rat Pack (5:2). The scene of his homecoming party combines a humorous presentation of painful realities and a barbed passive aggression, which is repeated in many subsequent scenes. Tony Blundetto is first presented as a tragic figure whose dress is comically out of sync. This emphasizes the fact that he went away in his 20s and returns in his 40s. Tony Blundetto also appears in sharp contrast to his outwardly successful cousin who is smartly dressed. In spite of a temporary separation from Carmela, Tony enjoys a close relationship with his children; Tony Blundetto is estranged from his daughter and fathered his sons while incarcerated by semen smuggled out of the prison. As with his cousin, it is clear that Tony Blundetto is intelligent. In Unidentified Black Males (5:9), it is revealed that Tony Blundetto has an IQ of 158. While there is a lack of consensus about IQ scores, the revelation is significant in that they think this is a marker of intelligence. He is also industrious. In a cold contrast to Christopher Moltisanti’s ineptitude, Tony Blundetto is able to pass the State of New Jersey licensing exam to work as a masseur. Someone else had to take Christopher’s exam to be a stockbroker in Guy Walks into a Psychiatrist’s Office… (2:1). While Tony Blundetto is not working with the crime family, he enjoys the unusual privilege of socializing with the gangsters who work for Tony. In spite of going straight, he is still a part of the inner circle, in contrast to others who are not allowed to leave the family or are punished for doing so. Tony Blundetto’s return becomes problematic when he tires of hard work and wants back into the Mafia. Successive episodes show how he misses the

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life of a gangster and envies Tony Soprano for his wealth and outward signs of success. Tony Blundetto’s employer has offered to set him up in business as a masseur but this is not enough for him. He feels manipulated and exploited. In a moment of anger, Tony Blundetto reasserts himself with an active rage. He physically abuses his boss and business partner who has frequently taunted him about how he took him on as a favor for Tony Soprano. Tony Blundetto realizes that he runs the risk of always being exploited because of his criminal record. The path back into crime is not as easy as Tony Blundetto expected. He transgresses the rules to earn extra money by undertaking a hit for another family. As experienced by the other returned characters, the world in which the two cousins were rewarded for using their initiative to hold up a card game has passed. The unsanctioned murder Tony Blundetto commits begins a spiral of events that puts him and his cousin, Tony Soprano, in a difficult situation with the New York crime family. This further escalates when Tony Blundetto kills again, this time Phil Leotardo’s brother Billy (Chris Caldovino). Phil is given the backing of his New York Mafia boss to avenge the death of his brother. However, Tony Soprano’s first loyalties are to protect his cousin. This brings Tony into conflict with his own crime family who want to see Tony Blundetto punished for breaking the omertà by killing without permission. They are concerned for their own safety in what has already become a murderous skirmish. Tony Soprano eventually decides that he must kill his cousin. Tony Blundetto has caused instability with his hasty return to crime. However, Tony Soprano believes his cousin should be killed cleanly and without torture and denies Phil the satisfaction he feels he is due in accordance with the rules of the Mafia. The damage caused by Tony Blundetto’s frustration at finding himself out of sync in a changed world has a serious impact on Phil’s struggles to understand what has happened to the Mafia he knew before imprisonment.

Phil Leotardo Phil Leotardo is also a member of the “Class of 04” and first appears in the same episode as Tony Blundetto, The Rat Pack. He has spent twenty years in prison and is repeatedly vocal about keeping quiet during his arrest and through his lengthy incarceration. For Phil, his time in prison and his conduct there is evidence that he is a man of honor. This distinction becomes increasingly central to his mounting tension with Tony Soprano. Phil sees himself as being strong in contrast to others, especially Tony Soprano. For Phil, the New Jersey family is little more than a “glorified crew.” In contrast with his understanding of the Mafia, he believes that Tony and eventually his own boss, Johnny Sacrimoni (Vince Curatola), are self-interested mavericks with no interest or concern for the ways of the Mafia.

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Unlike the members of Tony’s crime family, Phil is able to return to his gangster status. He was a capo before his indictment and incarceration. His skillful political reading of a power struggle upon his return sees him gain considerable power when Johnny becomes head of the Lupertazzi crime family in New York. Phil willingly commits murders for Johnny so that he might supersede the deceased boss Carmine Lupertazzi’s son, Carmine Jr., to assume the top position. When Johnny becomes head of the family, Tony is able to find a peaceful solution to the problems created by his cousin, Tony Blundetto. Johnny even confides that he is concerned about Phil’s old-school thirst for blood. However, the peace is short-lived as Johnny is arrested. This sets Phil on course to become boss himself, albeit reluctantly at first. Phil’s loyalties to Johnny are called into question by two key events. Johnny is granted permission to leave prison under escort to attend his daughter’s wedding. The ceremony is lavish, and the gangsters are seen to be relaxed together. However, the lavishness is in contrast to the federal marshals tasked with escorting Johnny. When the bride and groom’s departure is interrupted by a muscular display of preparing the convoy to return Johnny to prison, he breaks down and cries loudly in the face of humiliation. This is discussed in a group conversation between Tony, Phil, and their respective inner circles at the reception. Tony is sympathetic to a father wanting his daughter’s wedding day to be perfect. However, Phil is appalled at Johnny’s inability to act like a “man.” In addition to a misogynistic conflation of crying as an effeminate act, there is an unspoken suggestion about his ability to continue to act as a “man of honor.” If the marshals can make Phil cry publically, they will be able to apply much more pressure on him in the face of a long prison sentence and time away from his family. The second key occurrence is Johnny making a deal with the government. Faced with losing everything, leaving his wife destitute, and spending many years away from his family and friends in prison, Johnny accepts a plea deal. He makes a public speech about the existence of the Mafia and his role in it, and pleads guilty in exchange for some financial security for his wife. Like Tony, Johnny had moved to a large house in the suburbs in New Jersey. While Tony takes a sympathetic and pragmatic approach to Johnny’s decision to break the omertà, Phil is disgusted at the actions of a dishonorable “traitor” who has sold out on everything he holds dear: the omertà which he himself stood trial and did time to respect. This play on the values between the old- and new-schools is central to the process of narrative escalation in the final series. On the night of the wedding, Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli) is first spotted dressed in a leather costume in a gay club. Vito is one of Tony’s capos and is related to Phil’s wife. The information takes a while to filter back to Tony and Phil. When it does, others also come forward to offer evidence about Vito’s sexuality. Anticipating a lynching and probable murder, Vito flees from New Jersey

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to New Hampshire, where he enjoys a short but loving relationship with a diner chef and firefighter, Jim (John Costelloe). Back in New Jersey, Tony is anxious to resist the call from his own men and Phil to murder Vito. On a personal level, Tony is uncomfortable with killing someone over their sexual orientation. On a business level, Vito is one of his best earners. As the capo in charge of property development project shared with New York, he has produced considerable profits. In contrast to Tony, Phil is willing to sacrifice profits for a homophobic code that demands Vito be punished with death. This time Tony is unable to frustrate Phil’s need for retribution. When Vito returns hoping to find a way back, Tony, as his boss, takes his time to decide how to act. It is Tony’s job to punish him. His reluctant decision is preempted by Phil who comes out of hiding in the closet in Vito’s motel room to watch him being tortured and murdered. For Phil, it is a matter of keeping the old code at work and addressing the demands of his wife’s sense of shame on the domestic family. His wife is presented as a socially conservative Catholic, albeit a hypocritical one in keeping with Carmela Soprano and the norms of gangster media more generally. Now that the lines have been redrawn, Phil is able to exercise his leadership as an old-school Mafia boss. He punishes Tony financially with extortionate demands for Tony’s illegal asbestos disposal. The material itself is a metaphor for the toxicity in general. Work on the joint property development project is also delayed. They are both losing out because of their entrenched differences in perspectives on how to run a crime family. The clash of values related to the omertà between Tony and Phil reaches a dramatic climax. As the series concludes, Phil’s obsession with himself as a model gangster makes him act increasingly irrational and appear delusional. This leads to his crime family sanctioning his murder at the hands of Tony’s gangsters. Whether Tony’s pragmatic approach to the omertà triumphs over the old-school approach is left unresolved. It is clear, however, that for Phil and all the characters returned from prison, the world they once knew has changed.

Reading Tony Soprano as a Complex Mafia Boss Suited to His Time Unlike the returned characters, Tony has been able to live through many changes that have shaped and redefined his understanding of what it means to be an honorable man. He presents a contrast to the characters removed from the world in which they lived by their imprisonment. Their understanding of how the Mafia operated on the streets is stuck in a bygone era. Ritchie, Feech, Tony Blundetto, and Phil remember the tight insular world as described by Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco) in Goodfellas. In frequent references to the past, it is clear that Ritchie, Feech, Tony, and Phil worked, lived, and played together as a tight collective in an almost exclusively Mafia world. In contrast, Tony Soprano has learned to be open to the world that they fear.

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While he is tight with his Mafia community, he has friends and business associates who are not members. Quite simply, his world is larger and his different experiences enrich him. This equips him with the skills to be a better (honorable) man, albeit in a manner that may not be recognizable to old-school Mafiosi. Soprano is evidently a man of contradictions and this is important to the range of masculinities he exhibits. Franco Ricci’s distinction between the domestic Tony and the Mafia Tony is helpful for reading him as a modern crime family boss (Ricci 2014). Likewise, his restlessness is important to his decision-making process. His friend and confidant Hesh Rabkin (Jerry Adler) observes that Tony is always chasing something. This is noted as a weakness but it is also a strength. Tony is not content with the status quo; he is ambitious and his constant struggles to understand himself and improve, help him develop the aforementioned skills to be a better husband, father, and crime family boss. At home, Tony provides for his wife, daughter, Meadow (Jamie Lynn Sigler), and his son, A. J. (Robert Iler). Yet, at the same time the dynamics of modern family life frequently challenge his outlook on the modern world with regard to issues concerning race, gender, politics, and sexuality. Tony’s wife is particularly important as a positive influence.2 She is much than just a complicit wife. While Carmela depends on Tony financially and makes many personal compromises to be with him, she nonetheless holds considerable power over him. In discussing how Tony’s skills in negotiation differ between home and work, Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan note how Carmela persuades a reluctant Tony to make a significant donation to their daughter’s university, Columbia, in Second Opinion (3:7) (Sutherland and Swan 2011). Carmela’s hold over Tony and the importance of family as a place where his values are challenged is important to understanding him as a liminal character caught between two worlds. This is underlined by the opening sequence of every episode in The Sopranos. The traditional screen imagery of the gangster is subverted to show a powerful man returning home from the city to the suburbs. The phallic symbol of a cigar burns down until it is discarded as Tony arrives home. Here, the mise-en-scène of Tony’s domestic setting, kept in pristine order by Carmela, is in sharp contrast to his more masculine, disorderly workspaces in the backroom of a strip club and a pork store.3 The domestic and work spaces represent worlds he would rather keep separate but is often unable to do so. As they spill into each other, Tony is confronted with the same identity conflicts at home and work: gender, ethnicity, and class. Tony’s struggles cause him to have panic attacks and struggles with depression. His therapy with Dr. Jennifer Melfi allows audiences to see how Tony comes to understand himself and his circumstance by talking through his problems. It is clear that Tony desires to provide for his wife and children and that also wants to be a good leader at work. It is frequently evident that

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he wants to be seen and acknowledged as a success in both worlds. However, he is inclined to overthink his conflict, especially at work. Again, this is both a strength and a weakness. As explained above, his cautious hesitation frustrates the members of his crime family and infuriates Phil. Yet, his pragmatism keeps the business going in changed circumstances. In sum, Tony Soprano makes no claim to be an enlightened man, yet he is a man who succeeds in his age and time. He grows in self-awareness as the plot unfolds. Tony is able to think and to make up his own mind. He is pragmatic that the world has changed and he is willing to adapt to it, even if it means rethinking his identities and what it means to be an honorable man.

Conclusion In studying issues highlighted by going to prison for upholding an ideology, albeit rooted in organized crime, this chapter looks at the hard reality of returning to a changed world. The characters discussed have been, as is often suggested in the plot, out of sight and out of mind, and struggle to re-establish and reassert themselves as men and as Mafiosi. The ways in which constructs of prison, the omertà, and honor work to both empower men and render them invisible or powerless is particularly poignant and offers a reflection on the wider human condition.

Notes 1.  Cf. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 2. Cf. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, “‘Blabber Mouth Cunts’; or, Speaking in Tongues: Narrative Crises for Women in The Sopranos and Feminist Dilemmas,” in The Essential Sopranos Reader, ed. David Lavery et al. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 93–104. 3.  Cf. Aaron A. Toscano, “Tony Soprano as the American Everyman and Scoundrel: How The Sopranos (re)Presents Contemporary Middle-Class Anxieties,” The Journal of Popular Culture 47, no. 3 (Summer): 451-469.

References Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2011. “‘Blabber Mouth Cunts’; or, Speaking in Tongues: Narrative Crises for Women in The Sopranos and Feminist Dilemmas.” In The Essential Sopranos Reader, edited by David Lavery et al., 93–104. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Connell, R. W. 2005. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nelson, Robin. 2011. “Author(iz)ing Chase.” In The Essential Sopranos Reader, edited by David Lavery et al., 41–53. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky

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Nochimson, Martha P. 2002. “Waddaya Lookin’ At? Rereading the Gangster Genre Through The Sopranos.” Film Quarterly 55, no. 2 (Winter): 2–13. Palmer-Mahta, Valerie. 2006. “Disciplining the Masculine: The Disruptive Power of Janice Soprano.” In Reading the Sopranos, edited by David Lavery, 56–68. London: I.B. Tauris. Reis, Bruce. 2009. “Names of the Father.” In Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory, edited by Bruce Reis and Robert Grossmark, 55–72. New York: Routledge. Ricci, Franco. 2014. The Sopranos: Born Under a Bad Sign. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Sutherland, Sharon, and Sarah Swan. 2011. “This Isn’t a Negotiation.” In The Essential Sopranos Reader, edited by David Lavery, 232–242. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Toscano, Aaron A. 2014. “Tony Soprano as the American Everyman and Scoundrel: How The Sopranos (re)Presents Contemporary Middle-Class Anxieties.” The Journal of Popular Culture 47, no. 3 (Summer): 451–469.

Innocence Lost (and Then Found): The Depiction of Wrongful Convictions in Prison Films Kenneth Dowler

Narratives surrounding wrongful convictions provide compelling drama, including elements of mystery, outrage, and human suffering. This drama is more pronounced when the story is set in a prison environment and the protagonist is an innocent person. The innocence of the protagonist ensures that audiences can relate to and sympathize with his or her predicament. This chapter will focus on prison films that feature lead characters that are wrongly incarcerated. Common narratives will include the “feel good”; the “fish out of water”; and the “reform” narrative. This chapter will start by considering the scope and meaning of the genre these characters inhabit. Academic circles debate the existence of a prison film genre. Some scholars argue that the prison film can be placed in a distinct genre with very tightly constructed “stock” characters and storylines (Crowther 1989; Cheatwood 1998; Rafter 2000). Others suggest that the prison genre is either non-existent, difficult to define or multi-faceted, and not applicable to periodization (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004; Mason 2003). Debate regarding the prison film genre is a useful starting point. According to Nellis (1988, 2), the prison movie may refer to “a feature film … [rather than a documentary]…which is set wholly or mainly in a penal institution, whether for men or women or adolescents or –more loosely—which takes imprisonment and its consequences as a primary theme.” Incarceration has featured in several films encompassing dramas, comedies, horror, and K. Dowler (*)  Wilfrid Laurier University-Brantford, Brantford, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_22

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science-fiction, all of which can offer meanings of incarceration and different interpretations of institutional life. Rafter (2000) argues that the prison genre emerged during the silent film era and in films thereafter she found many similarities with plots, themes, and characters across the decades. Rafter contends that plots revolve around riots, escapes where order is restored, and good triumphing over evil. Themes involve stories about rebellion and injustice, control and manhood. She further argues that the prison genre employs stereotypical characters, such as a paternalistic warden, a cruel guard, a craven snitch, a bloodthirsty convict, and a young hero, who is innocent or at most guilty of a minor offense that does not warrant prison. Conversely, Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 63–67) through a critique of Rafter’s argument maintain that her work captures only one dimension of the genre, the so-called justice restored theme. Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 80) argue that categorization based on time periods improves the analysis of prison films and use a similar model to explore British prison films. Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 80) suggest that penal policies and film trends have a substantial influence on the creation and production of prison films. This trend is best suggested by Cheatwood (1998), who places the prison film in a four-stage model which he labels as the depression era, the rehabilitation era, the containment era, and the administrative era. Nonetheless, in a critique of Cheatwood, Mason (2003, 196–197) argues that the prison genre has gone through a process of natural development, where oversimplified taxonomies become tautologous, where historical periods narrowly defined (either using a small number of films, in a cultural and industrial vacuum, or built solely on UK and/or US criminal justice policy developments) serve simply as artificial frames wedged round an ill-fitting pile of prison films which may or may not be justifiably grouped together based on their release date. This practice becomes a one-eyed decontextualizing of the prison film, the purpose of which seems to be seeking out films which prove the category works, rather than exploring what discourse(s), constructs through its representation of prison at particular historic moments.

Despite Mason’s critique of false typologies, periodization is useful in understanding the historical context that influences prison-based films. Granted, some typologies become forced, attempting to place films in narrowly defined categories. However, we must recognize that historical context is an essential element in the construction of film, especially considering impactful shifts in censorship regulations, public morals, and punishment philosophies. For example, Civil Rights, War on Drugs, rehabilitation, and tough on crime policies play have successively played critical roles within correctional ideology that bleed into popular culture narratives. Being mindful of this debate, the following discussion focuses on the subgenre of films featuring protagonists who are innocent of the crimes of

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which they are convicted. To clarify the discussion, this chapter will exclude documentary films and focus on scripted films. While a large number of documentary films feature the wrongfully convicted, the nature and scope of these films differ from scripted films. The failings of justice become the primary narrative, with the incarceration experience taking a secondary role and the facts of the case taking precedence. There is also a substantial quantity of made for television movies that feature the wrongly convicted. Although these films are useful in the construction of narratives, many have not enjoyed a large audience nor are they readily available for analysis so this chapter includes Hollywood-based films that are primarily set within an institution or have incarceration-based themes. The following films are discussed: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932); Each Dawn I Die (1939); I Want to Live! (1958); Stir Crazy (1980); An Innocent Man (1989); In the Name of the Father (1993); The Shawshank Redemption (1994); Life (1999); The Hurricane (1999); Double Jeopardy (1999); The Next Three Days (2010); and Conviction (2010). Scholarly literature on the depiction of innocence within a prison film is limited. Scholars argue that the prison film of the 1930s is the ultimate metaphor of social entrapment, where individuals disappear among the masses to an impersonal institution. Films of the 1930s regularly constructed the protagonist as an innocent man or woman, with such films as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932); Road Gang (1936); 6,000 Enemies (1939); Boys Reformatory (1939); Fury (1936); The Last Mile (1932); and Ladies of the Big House (1931) highlighting this narrative. The storylines reflected the dejection that the public experienced as a result of the Great Depression. Audiences of the 1930s experienced social and economic upheaval, and film depictions re-created the sense of frustration and restriction in a land of lost opportunity (Purdy and Roffman 1981, 26). Similarly, Rafter (2000) claims that in many prison films, the protagonists are unjustly imprisoned, while ultimately justice is restored. Rafter argues that this Hollywood constructed “feel good” narrative is out of place in a mass-incarceration society. She writes the United States is now 30 years into the biggest prison-building spree in all history, a binge that has led to one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and to huge, impersonal institutions, disproportionately filled with people of color. In this context, it is increasingly difficult to escape into the world of Hollywood prisons, where the good guys look like movie stars and injustices are ultimately repaired. In the face of the new realities of incarceration, feel-goodism may be growing obsolete. (2000, 137)

However, this narrative of justice restored is not limited to the so-called prison film genre. There are examples within popular literature of novels that have incarceration-based themes that end in redemption, including in literature the works of Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, and Victor Hugo. In

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Hugo’s classic Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is an archetype for the ­innocent or unjustly imprisoned character, with many themes borrowed in later popular cultural narratives. In terms of innocents that appear in prison films, three major themes emerge and encompass this particular subgenre: (1) The “Feel Good” Narrative; (2) The “Fish out of Water” Narrative; and (3) The “Reform” Narrative. 1. The “Feel Good” Narrative Plots that feature the innocent are constructed to make the audience hunger for justice to be restored and the protagonist to be released from the institution. The goal in the “feel good” narrative is total exoneration, especially in films that are based on true stories. The Hurricane (1993) features a powerful performance from Denzel Washington as middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was wrongly convicted of a triple murder and sentenced to three life sentences. The film also shows the difficulty in gaining his exoneration from a racist establishment which doggedly upholds a miscarriage of justice. Carter makes an emotional appeal to a federal judge, declaring For twenty years I have spent locked up in a cage, considered a danger to society. Not treated like a human being, not treated like a person. Counted fifteen times a day. I served my time in a house of justice, and yet there is no justice for me. So I ask you to consider the evidence. Don’t turn away from the truth. Don’t turn away from your conscience. Please don’t ignore the law. Embrace that higher principle for which the law was meant to serve. Justice is all I ask for. Justice.

Shortly after, Rubin Carter is vindicated by the judge, who claims that “Rubin Carter’s conviction was predicated on appeals to racism, rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure.” The judge releases Carter, and his supporters celebrate enthusiastically inside the courtroom. Even the “screw,” Lt. Jimmy Williams (played by Clancy Brown) had a smile on his face after Carter is exonerated. In prison, an announcement is made to declare his legal exoneration, and the inmates celebrate by cheering and raising fists, as sentimental music is playing. The film registers a number of feel-good clichés, highlighted by Denzel Washington’s iconic line “Hate put me into prison. Love’s Gonna Bust me out.” The film underscores Hollywood’s fascination with a “feel good” narrative. The facts of the actual story are revised to enhance this narrative. David Denby (2000, 90), the New Yorker film critic, found that the film “false, evasive and factually very thin—a liberal fairytale.” One of the most significant embellishments was the depiction of the fight between Hurricane and former Middleweight World Champion Joey Giardello. The film presented Hurricane’s loss as a fix based on racism. In reality, Hurricane lost the fight

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to a superior boxer. The film also exaggerated the role that Lesra (a young African American teenager living in Toronto) and his Canadian advocates played in the court case. Regardless, the film does provide a powerful depiction of racism and its role in wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system. The film also traces the attempt to “dehumanize” Carter, who stubbornly refuses to follow the rules of the institution. In the Name of the Father (1993), also based on a true story, presents exoneration in a scripted film. Daniel Day Lewis essays the part of Gerard Conlon, who was wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing of a pub in London. In the melodramatic ending, after fifteen years in prison, Conlon is freed, and despite being told to exit out the back of the court, he demands to walk out the front door. He defiantly yells, “I am a free man, and I am going out the front door.” There he exits to a throng of supporters and vows to “fight on in the name of my father and the truth.” Like The Hurricane (1999), the film takes liberties with the truth. Claiming creative license, director Jim Sheridan had Conlon’s father Giuseppe share a cell with his son. In reality, Giuseppe Conlon, who was also wrongly implicated in the bombing (as part of the Maguire Seven), was mainly housed at different institutions and did not share a cell with his son (Pallister 1994) although he did indeed die in prison in 1980, which became a major plotline that propelled the protagonist to fight with more vigor for the exoneration of himself and his father. In a similar vein, Conviction (2010) was based on the true story of Kenneth Waters, who was wrongly convicted of killing his neighbor. The film starred Hilary Swank as Waters’ sister, Betty Ann and Sam Rockwell as Kenny Waters. The film conforms to “feel good” themes and narrative approaches, with Betty Ann, a high school dropout, working her way through law school in an attempt to help exonerate her brother. She graduates and works on the exoneration, and eventually, he is freed from prison. Unlike the jubilation captured in The Hurricane and In the Name of the Father, Waters’ release is more subdued as he calmly walks out of his cell and down the range (prison corridor) leaving the prison with his bag of belongings. In an empty court, the judge states “Kenneth Waters, you are free to go.” Waters then asks his lawyer (Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project), “That’s it?” with Scheck replying, “That’s it.” The handcuffs are removed, he hugs his sister, and he leaves the courtroom. All is quiet until he enters the lobby and meets with a horde of reporters, who ask him about his sister’s tenacity in gaining his release. In the characteristic Hollywood tear-jerking moment, he meets his daughter, whom he has not seen since she was an infant. Despite Waters’ incarceration, it is difficult to categorize this movie as a prison film. The primary storyline is focused on Betty Ann’s resolve in getting justice for her brother, with Waters’ prison experience limited to his anger at being wrongly incarcerated and his difficulty in adjusting to the rules of the institution. Nonetheless, it is the epitome of a “feel good” Hollywood ending, with a narrative rife with a sentimental soundtrack, emotional struggles, and a sense of winning against all odds.

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Precisely because these films conform to the “feel good” narrative, to the extent of creatively manipulating facts and emphasis, the same redemptive and hopeful tone does not carry over into real life for the wrongly convicted. Actual exonerees experience not only the loss of freedom, but also the difficulties readjusting to life outside of the institution. Gerard Conlon suffered two nervous breakdowns, an attempted suicide, and alcohol/drug addiction. Conlon recovered and went on to be an advocate for miscarriages of justice around the world. Similarly, upon release, Waters experienced numerous anxiety attacks and died in an accident less than one year after his release. Moreover, the running length of a motion picture does not give space or time to reflect the dreariness and monotony inherent in incarceration. In the fictionalized film, An Innocent Man (1989), the lead character, Jimmy Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is preparing for his parole hearing and reflects on his time in the institution. While shaving, he talks to the mirror and says “And I think I have proven myself ready to re-enter society and start a new life for myself. I have a good… How about the truth? Hi, there members of the parole board. I have just wasted over three years of my life for no fucking reason.” Wisely, he reconsiders, calmly stating “No, I don’t think the truth will fly.” He is then seen leaving the parole hearing and celebrates his release on parole. In a timescale reduced to minutes, audiences observe valuable years vanish in time essentially squandered in the carceral environment. In Life (1999), sixty-five years pass by with the passage of various characters and aging of the leads, Ray Gibson (Eddie Murphy) and Claude Banks (Martin Lawrence). The most poignant moment of the film is when Claude, who is now 65 years old and working with Ray at Superintendent Dexter Wilkins’ mansion, is tasked with driving and picking up the new superintendent. As Claude is waiting in the parking lot, he sees all the changes in society and catches a glimpse of his aged reflection in the bus window. This moment lasts seconds before the viewer is brought back to the comedic storyline which provides audience an escape from contemplating the dreariness and despair of aging in an institutional environment. The film even has a Hollywood happy ending, in which the two leads eventually escape, albeit at the age of ninety. Exoneration provides an upbeat ending that registers on an emotional rather than official level as innocent characters do not receive an official pardon. They instead escape from prison, while others get revenge or find redemption. The escape is a “feel good” moment within the prison film genre and a fantasy outlet for viewers. Audience members can enjoy the planning and execution of the escape. The prison escape film could be considered a genre in itself, comprising films like The Great Escape (1963); Papillon (1973); Escape from Alcatraz (1979); Con Air (1997); and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). In prison films that feature innocent characters, the escape narrative fulfills the role of fantasy, as viewers imagine that escape is the only avenue that the protagonist(s) can take to relieve the pains of imprisonment. Several films have physical escapes, including I Am a Fugitive from a Chain

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Gang (1932), Stir Crazy (1980), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Life (1999), and The Next Three Days (2010). In the prison comedy, the escape becomes the avenue for freedom. Both Stir Crazy (1980) and Life (1999) feature escapes by the protagonists. In Stir Crazy, Chip (Gene Wilder) and Harry (Richard Pryor) join the prison rodeo, and with the help of their inmate friends, concoct an elaborate escape during the event. After they escape, they find out that the real bank robbers were arrested, and the pair are actually free. Being a comedy film, the exoneration process was extremely quick and obviously unrealistic. In Life, Ray and Claude attempt to escape but are quickly captured and placed in the sweatbox. Later on, they are almost exonerated, as Superintendent Dexter Wilkins overhears a confession by Sheriff Warren Pike, the man who actually committed the murder that led to Ray and Claude’s incarceration. Their plans are thwarted as Wilkins unexpectedly dies of a heart attack before he can pardon them. The pair eventually escape after devising a plan to fake their deaths in a fire. In the last scene, they are shown to be alive, enjoying a baseball game in New York aged of ninety. Escape is the basis of the action-thriller, The Next Three Days (2010) which starred Russel Crowe as John Brennan and Elizabeth Banks as his wife, Lara, who was wrongly incarcerated for the murder of her boss. This film sits awkwardly within the prison genre, as there are only a handful of scenes that are set within a correctional facility, all in the visiting area. However, there are some incarceration-based themes involving the pains of imprisonment, as Lara Brennan attempts suicide and misses the time lost from her son and husband. There is also a short scene, in which the stigma of incarceration is shown, with John telling another parent about his wife’s incarceration. However, the film is not about incarceration. It features a dramatic and intricate prison break, laden with suspense, surprises, and a happy ending, in which John, Lara, and their son start their new lives in Venezuela. Similarly, in The Shawshank Redemption, the escape of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) provides the audience with a gratifying conclusion, although the escape storyline is not revealed until near the end of the film when Andy seemingly disappears into thin air. After learning of Andy’s escape, a furious Warden Norton throws a pebble at “fuzzy-britches,” a poster of Raquel Welsh on Andy’s wall, and by accident discovers a secret tunnel behind the poster. In a powerful narration, Andy’s friend Red (voiced by Morgan Freeman) reveals what happened. In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.

As Red’s narrative continues, Andy’s escape is revealed as the audience watches him climb through the tunnel and then proceed down the pipes

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where he “crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine- or maybe I just don’t want to. Five hundred yards… that’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.” It is here that the protagonist gains his redemption, with the iconic image of Andy ripping off his prison shirt, reaching with his arms toward the sky while being drenched in a rainstorm. Red nostalgically remarks Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne headed for the Pacific. Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear the stuff he pulled… Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright, and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

Near the end of the film, Red is released on parole and makes an important choice, encapsulated by the line, “Get busy living or get busy dying. That’s goddamn right.” Red decides to join Andy, breaking his parole conditions, meeting Andy on a picturesque beach in Mexico as the film ends. The meaning of the happy ending in Shawshank registers across several levels, as an emotional and inspiring ending, but also as one that allows the audience to find redemption in revenge. The “bad guys,” Bogs Diamond, Warden Norton, and Captain Bryon Hadley receive their “just deserts.” Early in the film, Bogs Diamond who was physically assaulting and raping Dufresne received a life-altering beating at the hands of Captain Hadley, to whom Andy had provided some sensible financial advice regarding an inheritance. His disability and then Bogs and the “sisters’” removal to another prison allow Andy, a former banker, to give financial advice to the correctional staff without the constant harassment from “the Sisters.” The plot is then propelled in a different direction, which eventually ends with the unexpected escape of Dufresne. After the escape, Andy leaves incriminating evidence with a local newspaper that exposes the corruption of Warden Samuel Norton and Captain Byron Hadley. As the Warden is about to be arrested, he commits suicide, with Red narrating “I’d like to think the last thing that went through his head other than that bullet, was how the hell that Andy Dufresne got the best of him.” Viewers are just as gratified when they learn that Hadley is arrested, with Red narrating “Bryon Hadley started sobbing like a little girl when they took him away.” Revenge is also a key feature An Innocent Man (1989) starring Tom Selleck as Jimmy Rainwood. The law-abiding Rainwood is framed by two corrupt cops, who mistakenly shoot him in a drug raid. He does not escape nor is he exonerated. The protagonist is released on parole and is forced to seek revenge against the cops who framed him. In typical Hollywood fashion, Rainwood, with the help of his inmate friends, sets up the corrupt cops,

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which invariably ends with a shootout and a fistfight. One of the cops dies, while the other cop, Mike Parnell (David Rasche), is incarcerated at the same institution as Jimmy and his mentor, Virgil Caine (F. Murray Abraham). Parnell enters the prison as a “fresh fish” and Caine, who was wronged earlier by the corrupt cops and is seeking revenge, quips “ain’t life a motherfucker.” Shortly afterward, Jimmy is seen working at his previous job as an airline engineer, ending the film. 2. The “Fish out of Water” Narrative The “fish out of water” narrative is relatively common in Hollywood prison depictions but is even more pronounced when an innocent enters the prison system, as their punishment and the narrative are constructed to make the audience view it as undeserved punishment. They are in the relevant parlance “newbies” to the institution, but also “newbies” in the criminal justice system. They are not hard-core criminals and have little understanding of the correctional system and the so-called inmate code of conduct. They are often scripted and performed as naïve, scared, and completely out of their element, leading to a further character dynamic as they receive mentorship from an older, more experienced inmate. These narrative constructions exist in important foundational films. In I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Bomber Wells fulfills this function, and eventually helping the protagonist escape a second time from the chain gang. This schooling is even more pronounced in An Innocent Man (1989), with F. Murray Abraham’s depiction of Virgil Cane. Cane helps Jimmy navigate institutional life and becomes the protagonist’s best friend. It is Virgil who helps Jimmy transform from a “fish out of water” to a hardened, tough, and righteous “con.” In the prison comedy, the “fish out of water” is a source of humor, whether the character is guilty or innocent. Several comedies such as Let’s Go to Prison (2006) and Get Hard (2015) have “guilty” characters who enter prison for the first time, with the major storyline being a novice adjusting to the bizarre and violent world of corrections. The comedy in Stir Crazy (1980) involves the introduction of lead characters, Harry Monroe (Richard Pryor) and Skip Donahue (Gene Wilder), into the carceral environment. After being framed and arrested for an armed robbery, Harry and Skip enter the jail, with Harry strutting down the corridor. Skip asks him “What are you doing?”, and in a deep voice, Harry replies “I am getting bad. Better get bad. Jack! Because if you ain’t bad you going to get fucked! If you’re bad, they don’t mess with you.” The pair strut to the holding cell, where they enter while proclaiming their badassery by saying “they don’t want no shit.” In a crowd of much tougher inmates, Chip starts a haphazard karate routine, which makes them appear even more ridiculous. In an attempt to swat an imaginary fly, Chip slaps a much larger (and tougher) inmate on his bald head. The bald inmate proceeds to punch Chip, misses and hits an even larger, tougher inmate, ruining his cigarette.

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The bald inmate nervously replaces the cigarette, while Harry is tasked with lighting the smoke. While attempting to light the match, Harry is crying and holding Skip for comfort. Richard Pryor is at his best, nervously lighting the match on the inmate’s chest. Again, the scene extracted comedy from the suggestion that “toughness” is the only way to navigate incarceration. This notion of “toughness” is of comedic value but transcends that approach, to be often played out in a variety of prison films of all genres. Drama can exploit the fear of an unknown environment to capture the attention of audiences. Most viewers have very little knowledge of prison and are only exposed to popular culture tropes, such as overtly violent prisoners, homosexual rape, corrupt administration, and brutal guards. In the drama, An Innocent Man, the protagonist, Jimmy Rainwood exemplifies this trope playing out on the big screen. Rainwood is white, middle-class, successful, and married to an attractive woman. Conversely, actor Bruce Young depicts Jingles, a very large and imposing African American inmate, who almost immediately decides to victimize the hero. Jingles plays on audiences’ fears of being homosexually raped in prison. In a particularly violent scene, Rainwood is forced to watch a white inmate being brutally and animalistically raped by a group of African American prisoners. Director Peter Yates balances this explicit racism with a negative depiction of white Aryans and using an African American character as an internal affairs cop, who ultimately helps the Rainwoods. Nonetheless, Bruce Young’s portrayal of Jingles is intended to terrorize and horrify white middle-class audience members. Although race relations are strained within many correctional institutions, the depiction of African Americans as “animalistic” predators that violently victimize white inmates is problematic, to say the least. Conversely, race relations seem less problematic in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), where the protagonist Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is mentored by the elderly African American, Red (Morgan Freeman). The lead is from a white-collar background and not prepared to enter or survive the prison environment. After being sentenced for the murder of his wife and her lover, Dufresne arrives at Shawshank to a throng of inmates clapping, whistling, and screaming “fresh fish.” The experienced inmates bet on which of the “fresh fish” will “break” first. Red, who masterfully narrates the film, picks Andy as the inmate who will be the first to have a mental breakdown. As Red narrates: The first night’s the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell when those bars slam home, that’s when you know it’s for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. Most new fish come close to madness the first night. Somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who’s it gonna be? It’s as good a thing to bet on as any, I guess. I had my money on Andy Dufresne. [Guard yells lights out!] I remember my first night. Seems like a long time ago.

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Contrary to this expectation, Dufresne “never made a sound,” while another inmate, derogatorily nicknamed “chubby fat ass” breaks first, crying out that he does not belong there, wanting to go home, and wanting his mother. That narrative swiftly introduces the brutality of Captain Hadley, who beats the unfortunate man to death in the middle of the cell block. Nor does Dufresne escape the brutality of the institution, as he is repeatedly beaten and raped by a group of inmates called “the Sisters,” led by the depraved Boggs Diamond (Mark Rolston). The physical entrance of innocent characters into prison affords dramatic opportunities. The Shawshank Redemption and An Innocent Man feature terrifying entrances to a crowd of unruly inmates. In I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, the protagonist’s experience of incarceration is being shackled in chains. As a novice, he has difficulty walking in the chains, a tangible sign of the difficulty he then has with the intangibles of prison in learning the rules and adapting to the poor food. Conversely, in Each Dawn I Die (1939), the protagonist, Frank Ross (James Cagney) is an idealistic reporter who was framed by a crooked district attorney and sent to prison. In this iteration of the newcomer entering prison, Ross is not scared; he is confident that his innocence will be proven, and he will be quickly released from prison. In his first day, Ross is introduced to the institution by a fair-minded warden, who is both respectful and honest in stark contrast to later film depictions, in which the administration is corrupt and cruel (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 157). The protagonist helps the respected “Hood” Stacey (George Raft), and they quickly become allies. In the films based on actual events, Conviction, In the Name of the Father, and The Hurricane, the entrance into the world of the prison is more subdued. Both Kenny Waters and Hurricane Carter have had troubled pasts, and incarceration is just another obstacle in their journey. Both characters are defiant and experience both anger and resentment at being incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. Where Waters violently lashes out at the guards, Carter refuses to wear prison uniforms, and both men are sent to solitary confinement. In the Name of the Father depicts Gerard Conlon being sent to a maximum-security wing and told by the head warder “this is your home for the rest of your life. So accept it and get on with it.” In their first foray into the dining hall, Conlon and his father are forced to eat in their cells, as they are Irish. Conlon’s father, Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite), defiantly tells the inmates, “My name is Giuseppe Conlon, I am an innocent man. So’s my son. Shouldn’t even be in here.” As the film progresses, Conlon transforms himself into a defiant prisoner, first with the help of a violent IRA operative, much to the chagrin of his father, and later as a forceful advocate for his innocence. In the buddy comedy Life, the protagonists, Claude and Ray enter the barracks of a Southern chain gang to a world that is utterly foreign to them. Both are from New York City, which adds to the “fish out of water” narrative. Although they soon adapt to their new surroundings, they are invariably

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exposed to homosexual advances, guard brutality, and the racism of the Deep South. In Stir Crazy, Harry and Skip are sentenced to 125 years in prison and are sent to a maximum-security prison, where they are shackled, encounter a mean-spirited guard, and are exposed to the strict regulations of the institution. Gene Wilder shines at this point in the film, playing the naïve man with no understanding of the prison environment. As both Harry and Skip enter the cell block, Skip finally has a “freak out,” saying “I don’t think I am going to make it,” and jumps on the back of a guard, trying to ride him like a horse to escape. After Skip calms down, Harry starts to freak out, to scream and strip off his clothes, while yelling “I can’t take it. Momma, Momma.” The comedy continually reinforces prison film clichés of lousy food, homosexual references, a callous guard, and an extremely dangerous and large inmate named Grossberger. As mentioned earlier, the comedy even features an ostentatious escape during a prison rodeo. 3. The “Reform” Narrative The function of motion pictures is to ENTERTAIN…This we must keep before us at all times, and we must realize constantly the fatality of ever permitting our concern with social values to lead to us into the realm of propaganda… the American motion picture…owes not civil obligation great than the honest presentment of clean entertainment and maintains that in supplying effective entertainment, free of propaganda, we serve a high and self-sufficing purpose. William Hayes, President of MPPDA, circa 1932 (Doherty 1999, 45)

Despite Hayes’ assertion, there is a fine line between propaganda and entertainment in the film industry, and sometimes this line can be blurred to the point of being indistinguishable. There is a considerable discussion on whether the role of film is to provide “escapist” entertainment or to educate audiences about social ills while advocating for social reform. In the prison genre, some films attempt to sway audiences to support penal reform. Although not always obvious, these films show the humanity of the incarcerated and reveal inhumane or brutal living conditions and unfair (or overly harsh) punishments. Some prominent examples include The Defiant Ones (1958), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Brubaker (1980), and Animal Factory (2000). Moreover, films such as I Want to Live! (1958), Dead Man Walking (1995), True Crime (1999), and Monster’s Ball (2001) serve the anti-death penalty narrative. In academic circles, there is much discussion about the role of the prison film as either a form of escapist entertainment or a producer of social reform (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). Some scholars contend that prison films have had little significant impact on penal reform (Rafter 2000; Nellis 1982, 1988; Mason 2003). Rafter (2000) argues that the prison film produces a “justice restored” narrative, in which only escapist prison fantasies exist. In their critique of her work, Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 89) claim that “Rafter

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overstates the triumph of the prison innocent and is probably overly influenced by the Shawshank Redemption.” Nellis (1982, 1988) offers a slightly different perspective, in that some films are reform-minded, but they unintentionally reaffirm the legitimacy of prison, in what Wilson and O’Sullivan call “authority reasserted.” Mason (2003) further argues that the prison film stopped serving a reform-minded function after the genre became clichéd, formulaic, and replete with tropes. Mason (2003, 198) agreed that the prison film genre in the 1930s developed as a form of protest cinema. This is especially evident in the pre-code era of the early 1930s, in which the prison film featured characters that were unfairly incarcerated and institutions that were punitive, strict, and unforgiving.1 The actual penitentiary system was crumbling under the weight of the Great Depression, and film highlighted inhumane conditions and injustice. Prison films featured large masses of men with matching uniforms living in a highly structured and regulated environment, with little hope for salvation. The institution was depicted as a machine, in which the incarcerated struggled to survive the monotony and regulation of life within the institution. The inmates undertook repetitive tasks in profoundly grim surroundings while experiencing dehumanization at the hands of cruel and unforgiving correctional officers. According to Mason (2003, 204), this “mechanistic discourse has been fundamental in Hollywood’s prison cinema, producing other narratives in the genre: escape from the machine, riot against the machine, the role of the machine in processing and rehabilitating inmates, and entering the machine from the free world as a new inmate.” Whereas northern institutions were portrayed as machines, depictions of southern justice revolved around the chain gang. The chain gang is the ultimate symbol of draconian punishment with unbearable living and working conditions, brutal keepers, and corrupt administrators. In his groundbreaking autobiography, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!, Robert E. Burns (2011, 51) describes his first day as a convict on the chain gang: Even as I write this meager description of a Georgia chain gang, I realize words or language cannot give an exact presentation of the malicious words or language cannot give an exact presentation of the malicious cold brutality that we encountered. One was never allowed to rest a moment but must always be hard at work, and even moving in the mass of chain was painful and trying—yet if one did not keep up his work greater terrors and more brutal punishment was in reserve…. And fear and despair clutched my weary heart. Was this a nightmare? Was it the hell I once read in “Revelations,” or was I going insane?

The book appeared in 1932, after a series of articles in Greater Chicago Magazine, edited and published by Burns after his escape from the chain gang. This riveting autobiography provides an exhaustive and intense account of chain gang camps, drawing attention to “unsanitary living conditions, unpalatable and meager food, excruciating hard work, and sadistic cruelty of

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the guards” (Rodimtseva 2010, 123). Moreover, the book reveals the murky and idiosyncratic decisions made by the legal system, where the “goal is not justice but punishment” (Rodimtseva 2010, 123). The book was quickly adapted into a Hollywood film and became one of the most powerful condemnations of the chain gang and southern “justice.” The influential film was retitled I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and starred actor Paul Muni as Robert Burns, renamed James Allen for the film version. The film begins as Allen returns to his hometown of Chicago after serving in World War I. The protagonist is disillusioned with the strict regimen of the army and the possibility of returning to the tedious job that he had held before the War. Much to the consternation of his family, Allen uses his new-found freedom to drift around the United States, taking construction jobs as he travels, with the hope of someday being a construction engineer. After meeting a hobo, he enters a café, where he is tricked into participating in a robbery. Despite his lack of culpability, he is sentenced to ten years on a chain gang. He escapes, with the help of an African American prisoner, who uses a sledgehammer to hit Allen’s ankle shackles. Allen than removes his feet from the bent shackles. In a dramatic sequence, bloodhounds chase Allen through the woods, where he eventually finds his way to freedom back in Chicago. There he makes a new life for himself, marrying Marie Woods to silence her after she discovers he is a fugitive, and rising to business and social prominence, only to be betrayed by his wife when he falls in love with another woman. He returns to serve out a short term as promised by the state where he had been imprisoned. But the state reneges on its promise and, once Allen is back on the chain gang, tells him he will serve out a lengthy term for his escape on top of his original sentence. He again escapes, as did the real Burns, meeting briefly with his love interest, Helen, at the end of the film. Hearing a noise, he retreats into darkness. Helen calls out “How do you live?”, with the faceless and futureless, Allen ominously replying, “I steal!” The ending was disheartening, highlighting the anti-establishment sentiment that was prominent in pre-code depression-era films. The film also generated an image of a righteous, honorable, and hard-working protagonist, who was subjugated to unfair persecution and harsh punishment. According to Rodimtseva (2010, 123), the film “establishes a connection between economic conditions [depression era] and illegal activities and exposes the twisted rhetoric of the vindictive legal system as well as its crushing effects on individuals.” As the prosperous 1920s abruptly transitioned into the grim 1930s, the differences between an honest working American and a prison inmate withered, challenging the long-held assumption that convicts were not human. Public attitudes toward crime and justice became blurred, with the vulnerable public willing to accept a more liberal philosophy of law and punishment (Rodimtseva 2010, 127). The film takes a strong position against the retributive model of justice, which was the leading punitive policy in the United States during the 1930s. After Allen is captured and awaits extradition, he angrily exclaims “I want this

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rotten chain gang system exposed!” Afterward, the film features a newspaper headline that reinforces the point, asking, “Is This Civilization?” The article text reads “Shall we stand by while a man who becomes a respected citizen of the community has the shadow of medieval torture again creeping over him? Must James Allen be sent back again to living hell?” Director Mervyn LeRoy holds nothing back in this stark and realistic production, showing the brutal use of sweat boxes, savage whippings, and other sadistic tortures inflicted on chain gang inmates. The film horrified and enraged the American public and is an early illustration of the social conscience film that inspired later prison films, such as Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones. Legal scholars acknowledge the film’s role in sweeping prison reforms in the South, which led to the “constructive demise” of the chain gang system (Glazer 1995, 1200). While I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang exemplifies a reform-minded and socially conscious film, many films that feature innocent characters do not explicitly advocate for prison reform. The prison comedies, Stir Crazy and Life, provide elements of reform, with both featuring harsh sentencing, overcrowded and cramped cells/barracks, back-breaking labor, and inhumane corporal punishments such as sweat boxes, solitary confinement, and medieval torture techniques. The films are comedies, and the purpose of the films is not for audiences to reflect on penal reform, but for the buildup of quick laughs that ameliorate the horrors. For instance, Gene Wilder’s character, Skip, is sent to a sweatbox, and after his time is complete, he requests “just one more day,” as he was “just getting into myself” through meditation and self-reflection. Coincidently, Life debuted just four years after the reintroduction of chain gangs in Alabama with Randolph Lewis (1996, 227) glumly proclaiming, “the chain gang is back…Of course, the chain gang is also black.” However, director Ted Demme’s comedic depiction of the chain gang is a far cry from earlier chain gang films and certainly does not promote penal reform or social justice. Similarly, films that are better classified as thrillers, Double Jeopardy and The Next Three Days, have no elements of penal reform. Even legal or police reform is absent in these films, with the significant storylines being revenge and escape, respectively. Films that are based on true stories foreground legal reform and police misconduct rather than penal reform. For instance, the movie In the Name of the Father emphasized the role that discrimination, police, and legal misconduct play in wrongful convictions. Similarly, The Hurricane frames racism as a critical element in Rubin Carter’s conviction, whereby the “fictional” Detective Sgt. Della Pesca (Dan Heyda) was portrayed as a vile racist, who had vindictively pursued Carter from childhood. Unfortunately, none of this was actually true, as the real lead detective had not met Carter before the murders. Director Norman Jewison took several liberties with the truth in the film, which led many critics to question the very innocence of Carter. However, if Jewison had stuck to the facts in the case, rather than exaggerating for dramatic effect, critics might have been more willing to concede that Rubin Carter and his alleged accomplice John Artis were likely innocent.

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Nonetheless, this highly fictionalized “true story” does highlight racism within criminal justice. Conviction also features a corrupt police officer and incentivized informants that contributed to the wrongful incarceration of Kenneth Waters. DNA proved Water’s innocence, so the audience is left with no doubts about his virtue. Although all three films illustrate the harshness of prison life, their primary focus is not penal reform. Similarly, the fictional An Innocent Man and Each Dawn I Die featured crooked cops and district attorneys, respectively, as their core issues. In the film Each Dawn I Die, corrupt district attorneys frame investigative reporter Frank Ross, who is about to expose their misdeeds. Ross is abducted, knocked out, doused with alcohol, and placed into a car that smashes into another vehicle murdering “three young innocent citizens.” Although the film negatively depicts solitary confinement, the overall story focuses on the relationship between “Hood” Stacey and Frank Ross, with Stacey escaping and then voluntarily returning to prison to help exonerate Ross after he receives information about the real killers. There are a few other “bad apples,” including a brutal screw (Kassock) and a “rat” inmate (Limpy), but the warden is depicted as intrinsically good. The warden admonishes a guard for violent behavior toward the prisoners and is actively supportive in the exoneration of Ross. The film shifts the narrative from a corrupt system to a “few bad apples” inside the institution. The brutal “screw” is murdered, preceding a prison riot that was meant to free Stacey. The riot ends in the death of Stacey, but not before he forces the real killer to confess in front of the Warden, granting Ross his eventual exoneration. This film is a classic example of a production code-era film, with the “gangster” Stacey dying and order being restored. Unlike earlier prison films, penal reform was not the primary narrative. It was “Hood” Stacey’s redemption that was the primary theme. At the end of the film, the Warden makes an impassioned speech to Ross, telling him that his time in prison was not in vain, as Stacey had become reformed by giving his life to help exonerate him. Redemption is a primary theme in Shawshank. However, Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 62) argue that the film does not belong in the prison genre, suggesting that it “is not really a prison movie.” They further claim that the Christmas fantasy film, It’s a Wonderful Life has more in common with Shawshank than many prison films. Although Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004) attempt to displace Shawshank from the prison film genre, their argument is unconvincing. First, the genre is multi-dimensional, with films that do not necessarily fit together within a predefined framework. Second, the film does provide numerous incarceration-based themes, such as prison brutality and corruption, institutionalization, injustice, monotony, lack of freedom, imprisonment, and confinement. Of course, the film also has hope, which is overtly lacking in many prison films. In terms of penal reform, Andy stubbornly requests funding to update the library, in which he is successful, much to the surprise of the staff and inmates. However, the film is a throwback to the institutions of the 1940s. In this sense, it is difficult to illustrate

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the need for current penal reform when the story is not set in the present. The film does humanize some characters, such as Red, Brooks, and Tommy, but the overall purpose of the film is not to change the system or critique a mass-incarceration society. Conversely, the film I Want to Live! (1958) is loosely based on the dramatic story of Barbara Graham who was convicted of the robbery and murder of an elderly Californian widow, Mable Monohan. Nicknamed “Bloody Babs,” Graham was executed in 1955 (O’Shea 1999). The film is a clear ­example of protest cinema, with a powerful anti-death penalty message for audiences. Winning an academy award for best actress, Susan Hayward portrayed Barbara Graham as innocent of the crime. However, there is considerable debate about Graham’s role in the murder. Reporters who covered the original trial argued that the film was inaccurate. Gene Blake (1958) claimed that the film was “a dramatic and eloquent piece of propaganda for the abolition of the death penalty,” while author Bill Walker (1961) cites claims of innocence in the film as hoaxes (Hamisch 2008). However, author Kathleen Cairns (2013) argues that the film was factually true, claiming that the male perpetrators of the murder tricked Graham. Regardless of her guilt or innocence, the film provides an excellent example of the inhumane nature of the death penalty, with those believing in her guilt arguing that it is a “propaganda” film, while those believing in her innocence calling for an abolition of capital punishment.

Conclusion Films that feature an innocent protagonist deliver solid entertainment value for audiences, driven by Hollywood plots that feature feel-good endings and “against the odds” storylines. In the prison film, the pains of imprisonment and the “fish out of water” scenario create even more tragedy for the protagonist, propelling audiences to demand justice for the hero, in the form of exoneration, escape, or revenge. Finally, with the exception of I Am a fugitive from a Chain Gang and I Want to Live!, the penal reform narrative is generally eschewed in films that feature innocent protagonists. Rather than a critique of penal policy, these films highlight the misgivings of the front end of criminal justice including crooked cops, bad lawyers, and an unfair legal system.

Note 1. In the American film industry, the so-called pre-code Hollywood era occurred between the commencement of sound films in 1929 to mid-1934. The Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) was developed under the direction of William Hayes, who served twenty years as the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The MPPC was more popularly known as the Hays Code and the edict set forth general principles about

392  K. DOWLER morality, with strict restrictions on language, sexuality, and the mixing of races. Despite the code being approved in 1930, it had little effect until mid-1934, when Production Code Administration (PCA) was established and started to enforce censorship of Hollywood studios stringently.

References Blake, Gene. 1958. “Barbara Graham Case Revisited.” Los Angeles Daily Mirror, November 28. Burns, Robert E. 2011. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! Athens: University of Georgia Press. Cairns, Kathleen A. 2013. Proof of Guilt: Barbara Graham and the Politics of Executing Women in America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Cheatwood, Derral. 1998. “Prison Movies: Films About Adult, Male, Civilian Prisons: 1929–1995.” In Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice, edited by F. Bailey and D. Hale, 209–231. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth Publishing. Crowther, Bruce. 1989. Captured on Film: The Prison Movie. London: BT Batsford. Denby, David. 2000. “On the Battlefield.” The New Yorker, January 10, pp. 90–96. Doherty, Thomas. 1999. Pre-code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. New York: Columbia University Press. Glazer, Yale. 1995. “The Chains May Be Heavy, but They Are Not Cruel and Unusual: Examining the Constitutionality of the Reintroduced Chain Gang.” Hofstra Law Review 2: 1195. Hamisch, Larry. 2008. “Barbara Graham Case Revisited.” Los Angeles Times, November 28. Accessed February 28, 2019. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2008/11/barbara-graham.html. Lewis, Randolph. 1996. “Black and White on the Chain Gang: Representing Race and Punishment.” BORDERLINES-SWANSEA- 3: 225–248. Mason, Paul. 2003. “The Screen Machine: Cinematic Representations of Prison.” In Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice, edited by P. Mason, 278–297. London, UK: Willan. Nellis, Mike. 1982. “Notes on the American Prison Film.” In The Prison Film, 5–49. London: Radical Alternatives to Prison. Nellis, Mike. 1988. “British Prison Movies: The Case of ‘Now Barabbas’.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 27, no. 1: 2–31. O’Shea, Kathleen A. 1999. Women and the Death Penalty in the United States, 1900– 1998. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Pallister, David. 1994. “In the Name of the Father.” Vertigo Magazine. Accessed February 28, 2019. https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/ volume-1-issue-3-spring-1994/in-the-name-of-the-father/. Purdy, Jim, and Peter Roffman. 1981. The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rafter, Nicole Hahn. 2000. Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, USA. Rodimtseva, Irina V. 2010. “On the Hollywood Chain Gang: The Screen Version of Robert E. Burns’ I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! And Penal Reform of the 1930s–1940s.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 66, no. 3: 123–146.

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Walker, Bill. 1961. The Case of Barbara Graham. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press.

Filmography An Innocent Man. Directed by Peter Yates. Performed by Tom Selleck and F. Murray Abraham. United States: Buena Vista Pictures, 1989. DVD. Conviction. Directed by Tony Goldwyn. Performed by Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell. United States: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2010. DVD. Double Jeopardy. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Performed by Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones. United States: Paramount Pictures, 1999. DVD. Each Dawn I Die. Directed by William Keighley. Performed by James Cagney and George Raft. United States: Warner Bros., 1939. DVD. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Performed by Paul Muni. United States: Warner Bros., 1932. DVD. I Want to Live! Directed by Robert Wise. Performed by Susan Hayward. United States: United Artists, 1958. DVD. In the Name of the Father. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Performed by Daniel Day Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite. United States: Universal Pictures, 1993. DVD. Life. Directed by Ted Demme. Performed by Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. United States: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, 1999. DVD. Stir Crazy. Directed by Sidney Poitier. Performed by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. United States: Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1980. DVD. The Hurricane. Directed by Norman Jewison. Performed by Denzel Washington. United States: Universal Pictures, 1999. DVD. The Next Three Days. Directed by Paul Haggis. Performed by Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks. United States: Lionsgate Home Entertainment, 2010. DVD. The Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont. Performed by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. United States: Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994. DVD.

Learning from Prison: Ethics, Education, and Audiences

The Lord of the Flies in Palo Alto James C. Oleson

The Stanford Prison Experiment is “one of the most famous experiments, and arguably the most famous experiment, in the history of psychology” (Griggs 2014, 195, italics added). It has “had more impact on the public consciousness than almost any other piece of psychological research” (Haslam and Reicher 2003, 22). Even ordinary citizens, with no training in psychology—“a cab driver in Budapest … a restaurant owner in Poland” (Zimbardo, in Blum 2018), understand that the Stanford Prison Experiment is seminal and stands for a significant proposition. But for what proposition, exactly, does it stand? Does it prove that “prisons are not reformable” (Cullen, in Blum 2018)? Does it prove that human nature is inherently wicked? Or is the study emblematic of “the power of the situation” (Zimbardo 2016)? Or is it a cautionary tale, of experimentation loosed from its ethical moorings (Zimbardo 2017)? Or is it all just a lie (Le Texier 2018)? A search for the ontological significance of the Stanford Prison Experiment, ultimately, leads back to the Holocaust. An estimated 11+ million people were murdered in the Holocaust (Oleson 2016), a crime so immense it ceases to seem like crime.1 Eighteen years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Hannah Arendt published Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), arguing that the evil of the Holocaust is not the product of great, diabolical villains, but of unremarkable, banal bureaucrats. That same year, Stanley Milgram published the first findings from his iconic electric-shock experiments, in which he concluded that obedience to authority could make people behave in unexpected, destructive ways

J. C. Oleson (*)  University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_23

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(Milgram 1963, 1974). Sixty-five percent of Milgram’s sample administered electric shocks to a stranger all the way to 450 volts—long after the “electrocuted” subject had demanded to be released from the experiment.2 Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford Prison Experiment in this vein of research,3 asking whether it was bad people (dispositional explanations) or bad environments (situational explanations) that produced human cruelty.

The Original Study The story is familiar to psychology students. As detailed elsewhere (Haney et al. 1973; Zimbardo 2007, 2019), a three-cell mock prison was constructed in a basement corridor of Stanford University’s Jordan Hall during the summer of 1971. Randomly assigning a total of 24 healthy, male university students to guard and prisoner groups,4 Zimbardo and his team of researchers5 hoped to demonstrate that social environments, not innate traits, produce prison tensions. Good apples are corrupted by bad barrels (Zimbardo 2007, 228). Nine “guards” were provided with khaki uniforms, sunglasses, and batons (symbols of authority). Inspired by the prison film Cool Hand Luke (1967), they also wore sunglasses to make their emotions difficult to read. Nine prisoners were arrested at their homes (for armed robbery or burglary) by real Palo Alto police, fingerprinted, booked, blindfolded, transported to the simulated prison at Stanford, strip searched, de-loused, dressed in emasculating, numbered smocks and deindividuating stocking caps, and fitted with a chain around one ankle (a symbol of powerlessness). Prisoners and guards could interact however they wished, and guards were free to establish whatever rules were deemed necessary to maintain order and command respect. Prisoners were referenced by number, not name. Prisoners were instructed to call guards “Mister Correctional Officer.” The simulation began quietly enough. However, at 10:00 a.m. on the second day, cell number one organized a riot: prisoners barricaded their door, removed their stocking caps, and refused to participate in count. The three on-duty guards called in off-duty reinforcements, quelled the riot with CO2 fire extinguishers, stripped the prisoners naked, took their cots, and placed the ringleaders into solitary confinement (a cramped 2’ by 2’ closet). The guards resolved to maintain order by creating a privileges (such as clothing, brushing teeth, and special food) cell to reward those who had not participated. Prisoners were then reintegrated, and inmate solidarity broke down. Prisoner 8612 experienced an emotional breakdown. Carlo Prescott, the study’s prison consultant, taunted 8612 for being weak, and offered no further guard harassment if 8612 would serve as an informant. When 8612 returned to his cell, he told other prisoners, “You can’t leave. You can’t quit.” He began to cry and worked himself into a hysterical rage:

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I feel so fucked up inside. I feel really fucked up inside. You don’t know—I gotta go, to a doctor, anything. I mean Jesus Christ I am burning up inside! Don’t you know? I can’t say it—I am fucked up. I don’t know how to explain it. I am all fucked up inside. And I want out! I want out now!

Less than 36 hours in, Zimbardo released 8612 from the study. On day three, parents and friends came for a visiting hour. Although some parents remarked on how tired their sons appeared, everyone conformed to the rules of the simulation. That night, responding to a rumor of an escape (possibly orchestrated by a returning 8612), the experimenters broke down the prison and moved the prisoners to a fifth floor storage room for 3½ hours. Zimbardo waited alone in the empty hall to inform 8612 that the experiment was over. But there was no escape attempt and the guards (and the experimenters) resented the wasted effort. Hours of the study went unrecorded. On day four, a priest was brought into the prison and he also slipped into a role, offering to help the prisoners’ parents find legal assistance. Prisoner 819 was also released from the study for signs of depression. After being sent to solitary for messing up his cell, 819 began crying. Zimbardo took him to an adjacent recreation room, but 819 could hear the other prisoners being punished for his defiance: “Because of what prisoner 819 did, my cell is a mess! Because of what prisoner 819 did, my cell is a mess!” Even though he felt sick, 819 wanted to prove that he was not a bad prisoner. Zimbardo told him: “Listen, you are not #819. You are [his name], and my name is Dr. Zimbardo. I am a psychologist, not a prison superintendent, and this is not a real prison. This is just an experiment, and those are students, not prisoners, just like you. Let’s go.” He stopped crying suddenly, looked up at me like a small child awakened from a nightmare, and replied, “Okay, let’s go.” (Zimbardo 2019)6

819 was replaced by prisoner 416. On day five, after being told that the prison was a real prison, that you could not leave, 416 refused to eat his sausages. For his defiance, he was placed in solitary for three hours (violating a guard rule that specified a maximum of one hour). Guards told the prisoners that 416 could come out if they gave up their blankets, or they could keep their blankets and 416 would remain in solitary overnight. Most prisoners chose to keep their blankets. Although the study was supposed to have lasted for a fortnight, it was terminated on day six, for three reasons. First, the guards were becoming increasingly abusive, especially at night (when they thought they were not being recorded). Counts dragged on for hours; bucket toilets went unemptied; pushups became increasingly sadistic, with prisoners forced to sit on top of prisoners; and the degradation of prisoners assumed an increasingly pornographic turn. Second, Zimbardo’s fiancée, Christine Maslach, was disgusted by the sight of a late-night toilet run: prisoners with bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other’s shoulders. She told Zimbardo, “It’s terrible what you are doing to these boys!”7

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Third, Zimbardo realized that he had, himself, lost objectivity, was operating more as a superintendent that a dispassionate experimenter, and had become caught up in his own simulation. For decades, the Stanford Prison Experiment has been surrounded by controversy (Banuazizi and Movahedi 1975; Fromm 1973). Although it had been approved by Stanford’s human subjects review committee, the Stanford psychology department, and the Group Effectiveness Brach of the Office of Naval Research, and although the 1973 American Psychological Association review found that all existing ethical guidelines had been observed, Zimbardo agrees unequivocally that the study was unethical: I should have ended the study after the second prisoner broke down. After the first one broke down, we didn’t believe it. We thought he was faking. … But when the second prisoner broke down, we said point proved, here is the power of the situation. At that point, by the third day, when the second prisoner broke down, I had already slipped into or been transformed into the role of ‘Stanford Prison Superintendent’. (Zimbardo, in Drury et al. 2012, 163)

As an unethical study, the Stanford Prison Experiment cannot be replicated— at least not in its original form (Carey 2018; Oleson 2002). Therefore, it seemed, the study would remain a provocative singularity—the stuff of legend—something so extreme it can be neither ignored nor repeated.8

The Replications Of course, there have been (partial) replications. An Australian study used 60 subjects to evaluate three different prison regimes, placing six prisoners and four guards into experimental prisons for four days. The authors confirmed the basic finding of the Stanford experiment. “Our results thus support the major conclusion of Zimbardo et al. that hostile, confrontive relations in prisons result primarily from the nature of the prison regimen, rather than the personal characteristics of inmates and officers” (Lovibond et al. 1979, 283). On the other hand, in 2002, Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher created the BBC Prison Study (a.k.a., The Experiment), producing divergent results from the Stanford Prison Experiment thereby raising questions about the reliability of Zimbardo’s original study. Five guards and 10 prisoners were housed in a prison-like facility. Unlike the Stanford Prison Experiment, the guards did not show any natural proclivity for their roles and became stressed. The prisoners developed strong group cohesion, gained the upper hand, and organized a breakout on day six that ended the guard’s regime (Reicher and Haslam 2006). An egalitarian commune was established in its place, but this quickly collapsed, and the gradually emerging tyrannical regime could not be fully realized under the study’s ethical guidelines, so the study was concluded on day eight. Reicher and Haslam (2006) found support for social identity theory, and argued that the dramatic outcome of the Stanford Prison

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Experiment was artefactual, a demand-effect consequence of Zimbardo’s instruction to his guards: “We cannot physically abuse or torture them…. We can create boredom. We can create a sense of frustration. We can create fear in them, to some degree” (Zimbardo 2007, 55, italics added). Subsequently, Zimbardo defended the original Stanford study, and denounced the BBC study as fraudulent (Zimbardo 2006, 47) and a pseudoexperiment (Zimbardo 2007, 252). However, after a number of sharp critiques on both sides, a consensus statement acknowledging the validity of both the Stanford and BBC studies was issued. The authors also noted: [W]e regret instances in which our statements appeared to involve ad hominem criticisms or used intemperate language. Although it is legitimate to debate the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and meaning of research reports, we have no definitive evidence that any signatory of this statement committed scientific fraud or deliberately misled others about their research findings. (Haney et al. 2018)

The Controversies The consensus statement did not, however, stem an emerging chorus of challenges to the Stanford Prison Experiment (Bartels 2015; Bartels et al. 2016; Griggs 2014; Kulig et al. 2017; Ribkoff 2013). Today, there are more than a dozen online articles with headlines such as “One of Psychology’s Most Famous Experiments Was Deeply Flawed” (Geggel 2018) and “Time to Dismiss the Stanford Prison Experiment?” (Toppo 2018). Twitter feeds call for the expungement of the study from psychology textbooks. Yet two principal sources lie at the root of the controversy: Blum’s 2018 Medium article, “The Lifespan of a Lie,” and—in French—Le Texier’s book, History of a Lie (2018). In recent exchanges, and rebutted by Zimbardo (2018), five principal accusations have been leveled against the Stanford Prison Experiment: • A 2005 op-ed entitled “The Lie of the Stanford Prison Experiment” was published in The Stanford Daily, attributed to Carlo Prescott, the study’s prison consultant. This article claims that the results of the study were the product of Prescott’s experience in San Quentin, and of instructions that Zimbardo and Prescott issued to the guards. Today, however, Prescott denies writing the op-ed (Prescott 2018) and Zimbardo (2018) claims that the document is fraudulent, produced by screenwriter Michael Lazarou.9 • Although Zimbardo stated that the abusive guard behavior emerged organically, telling Congress, “They made up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect. They were free to improvise any new rules” (Zimbardo 1971, 111)—it has become clear that the guards were instructed by Warden David Jaffe on how to behave and they took particular inflections of behavior from the cinema. “[T]he guards have to

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know that every guard is going to be what we call a ‘tough guard’” (in Resnick 2018). The guard known as “John Wayne” (Dave Eshelman) has long admitted that he deliberately pushed the boundaries of humiliation, not because he had slipped into a sadistic role, but because he wanted to ensure the success of the study. “I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. … I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, ‘How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, “knock it off?”’” (in Ratnesar 2011). • Prisoner 8612 (Doug Korpi) claims that his hysterical breakdown was a fake, and that “anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking” (in Blum 2018). Korpi, however, was truly surprised when his “breakdown” proved unsuccessful and when the experimenters would not release him. Prisoners Richard Yacco and Clay Ramsay were also surprised that they could not quit. Zimbardo claims that he rejected requests to be released because the informed consent forms required subjects to use a particular phrase: “I quit the experiment.” But, as Blum notes, the consent forms make no mention of this requirement.10 A former deputy district attorney for Stanford’s Santa Clara county says that the six hours Korpi was confined after making clear his desire to quit is “very close to being out of the realm of informed consent and into the realm of a violation of the penal code” (in Blum 2018). And Korpi could not escape, even after the study ended. Zimbardo liked to emphasize that 8612-Korpi became a prison psychologist, and sought him out for media appearances long after Korpi asked him to stop. “We unlisted the number and [Zimbardo] figured out our unlisted number,” Korpi said. “It was just bizarre. I would always tell him, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with the experiment anymore’.” (in Blum 2018). • The BBC study has been suggested as a falsification of the Stanford study. Moreover, when the BBC authors attempted to publish their findings in the British Journal of Social Psychology, they claim that Zimbardo began privately contacting editors to block publication of their work. This, however, was not a scientific disagreement, but “a commercial rivalry. At that point, he [Zimbardo] was very keen on getting the Hollywood film [The Stanford Prison Experiment] out” (Reicher, in Blum 2018). • Some suggest Zimbardo’s decision to publish early accounts of the Stanford study in obscure journals (e.g., the International Journal of Criminology and Penology [Haney et al. 1973]) and in popular outlets (“The Mind Is a Formidable Jailer: A Pirandellian Prison” [Zimbardo 1973] appeared in the New York Times) was an attempt to circumvent responsible peer review. Zimbardo justifies publication of the findings in these outlets “to reach a large national audience” (2018).

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The Representations Many people, if not most people, have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment.11 Because the study is typically described in uncritical terms (Bartels 2015; Griggs 2014; Kulig et al. 2017), they probably do not know about the controversies, but they know that it was important. Even though sadism was the exception rather than the rule among the guards (Fromm 1973), they know the study’s dominant master narrative: “the experience of imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced” (Zimbardo 1971, 111). They might know that the “bad barrels corrupt good apples” motif was invoked to explain the abuses at Abu Ghraib (Zimbardo 2004).12 Le Texier explains its allure: It’s like, “Oh my god, I could be a Nazi myself. I thought I was a good guy, and now I discover that I could be this monster.” And in the meantime, it’s quite reassuring, because if I become a monster, it’s not because deep inside me I am the devil, it’s because of the situation. I think that’s why the experiment was so famous in Germany and Eastern Europe. You don’t feel guilty. “Oh, okay, it was the situation. We are all good guys. No problem. It’s just the situation made us do it.” So it’s shocking, but at the same time it’s reassuring. I think these two messages of the experiment made it famous. (in Blum 2018)

Another reason the Stanford Prison Experiment is so well known is that so much of the story has played out in public images. The 1973 New York Times article contains 10 photographs. When the study is described in psychology textbooks—and it is covered in approximately 85% of texts—it usually (81%) contains a photograph (Griggs 2014). When the study is taught in introductory psychology courses—and nearly 85% of instructors do cover it—almost three-quarters of them report doing so by showing a video. Most often, that video is Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment (1992), produced by Zimbardo himself, although others use the BBC’s The Stanford Prison Experiment (2002) (Bartels et al. 2016). Some might know Reicher and Haslam’s 2002 BBC documentary, The Experiment, and conflate it with the original Stanford study. It is also possible that people know about the Stanford study from feature films—either Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s ensemble feature, The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), for which Zimbardo served as a consultant, or from earlier, less faithful, retellings: Mario Giordano’s (1999) German novel, Black Box; the German-language adaptation of Giordano’s novel, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Das Experiment (2001), in which the violence of the study is magnified to fantastic levels, with sadistic guards murdering prisoners (and each other)13; or Paul Scheuring’s English-language 2010 remake of Das Experiment, entitled The Experiment.

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It is easy to glimpse a mad scientist story in Das Experiment and The Experiment, where the levels of violence are extreme and the experimenters are charged with criminal conduct. But is Quiet Rage (1992) a mad scientist story? Is The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)? These are not Frankenstein (1931) or The Human Centipede (2009), after all. Still, to some degree, all of the fundamental elements appear to be present: • The scientist who is obsessed with, and consumed by, his work, and who seeks and seems to have mastered the ‘secret of life itself’; • His creation who, by accident or design, turns out to be monstrous and malevolent; • A visibly crippled assistant or aged retainer [Carlo Prescott?] who is often instrumental in initiating the creature’s rampage; • The younger male and female characters who constitute the film’s ‘threatened innocents’ [c.f. Zimbardo’s description of subjects as “boys”, especially the release of 819: “…looked up at me like a small child awakened from a nightmare”], often paid only desultory attention in the actual realization of the film; • The laboratory setting, frequently contained within an isolated castle or mansion, and filled with elaborate pseudo-scientific apparatus; and • A surrounding environment, which provides both representatives of existing bourgeois authority (police chiefs, judges, physicians) [e.g., participation of the Palo Alto police, visiting parents, and a prison chaplain] and a population of potential victims who finally rise, en masse, against the threat (Tudor 1989, 29). The 2015 film includes a telling interlude in which Zimbardo’s colleague asks him what the independent variable is in the experiment. Zimbardo, waiting to thwart an anticipated escape, snaps, “I’m sorry?” His colleague clarifies, “Have you introduced a variable that might influence your outcome? This is an experiment right? Not just a simulation.” Zimbardo’s response is immediate irritation: “Are you challenging me, Jim?” “No, I’m not challenging. I just.…” Zimbardo then shifts blame, playing a classic cinematic misunderstood genius/mad scientist card: “Well, while I would love to sit here and explain my prison to you, I actually have more pressing matters than whether or not you understand the academics of my work.” It remains unclear whether Zimbardo is angry because he is embedded in the role of superintendent or because the colleague’s question highlights the methodological limitations of his own study. While the violence of The Stanford Prison Experiment never rises to the level of Das Experiment, the fundamental elements of the mad scientist story—a researcher who has lost perspective and a creation that is monstrous and malevolent—are both clearly evident.

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Conclusion The Stanford Prison Experiment remains one of the most famous studies in psychology (Griggs 2014), and it remains one of the most controversial including through filmic afterlives. It was controversial even in 1971, when Philip Zimbardo terminated the two-week prison simulation at day six, and it has remained controversial. A handful of scholarly papers have addressed the credulity with which the study has been accepted within psychology and criminology (e.g., Bartels 2015; Griggs 2014; Kulig et al. 2017), and the 2018 publication of Blum’s Medium article and Le Texier’s book have further intensified academic scrutiny of the study. Outside of academic circles, however, the study’s mythical status only grows. After all, the influence of popular culture dwarfs that of academic criminology (Rafter and Brown 2011). The discrepant results of the 2002 BBC series, The Experiment, catapulted the original Stanford study back into the spotlight, as did the public struggle to explain the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The 1992 and 2002 documentaries are used in university teaching (Bartels et al. 2016) but the 1971 archival images blur with the study’s subsequent dramatic representations. This is true of Das Experiment (2001) and The Experiment (2010), but it is especially knotty in the case of The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), where Zimbardo served as consultant, the actors appear dressed in period-costume, and the dialogue faithfully replicates original recordings. In both the film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and in the underlying study, distinguishing what is real from what is performance (Ribkoff 2013) might be an impossible task.

Notes

1. “Kill a man, one is a murderer; kill a million, a conqueror; kill them all, a God” (Rostand 1962, 68). 2. Participants in the Milgram study were told that a subject “learner” (who was in fact a confederate) would be asked memory questions and shocked with increasing voltages for each incorrect answer. The job of the volunteer was to serve as “teacher,” administering the electrical shocks under the supervision of the experimenter. In reality, it was the behavior of the teacher—not that of the learner—being studied. Milgram wanted to know at what point normal people would refuse to administer shocks. The experimenter led the teacher to an electroshock generator upon which toggle switches ran from 15 volts to 450 volts. The volunteer was given a sample 45 V shock, and assured that “Although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage.” Once the experiment began, the confederate-learner made both correct and incorrect answers. At 75 volts, the learner (who was not receiving actual shocks) began to grunt. At 150 volts, he said, “Experimenter, get me out of here! I won’t be in the experiment any more! I refuse to go on!” At 180 volts, he cried that he could not stand the pain. At 270 volts, his response was a scream. At 315 volts, after another scream, the learner repeated that he was no longer a participant. He shrieked when shocks were administered, but

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provided no answers. And after 330 volts, the learner did not respond at all. This, however, was not a proper experimental response and the experimenter would encourage, “Please continue.” Twenty-six of the 40 subjects went all the way, administering three 450 V shocks even when their prompts were met with silence (Milgram 1974, 17–35). 3. Zimbardo and Milgram attended James Monroe High School in the Bronx together. Milgram was considered the smartest kid and Zimbardo was the most popular (Zimbardo et al. 2000). One can imagine that the terrific impact of Milgram’s obedience studies might have prompted Zimbardo to do something equally important, equally audacious. John Mark, one of the Stanford guards, suggests that the study was affirmatively designed to fail. I didn’t think it was ever meant to go the full two weeks. I think Zimbardo wanted to create a dramatic crescendo, and then end it as quickly as possible. I felt that throughout the experiment, he knew what he wanted and then tried to shape the experiment—by how it was constructed, and how it played out—to fit the conclusion that he had already worked out. He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds—people will turn on each other just because they’re given a role and given power. (Ratnesar 2011)







Certainly, the Stanford Prison Experiment rivals the Milgram (1974) study for impact. Carr (1995) argues that the Stanford Prison Experiment eclipses it. 4. Participants were “the most normal people they [the experimenters] could select: students who completed a battery of psychological tests and who were randomly assigned to the positions of prisoners and guards” (Aronson 1999, 294, italics in original). Each group included nine subjects and three reserves. Two reserve prisoners and one reserve guard were not used. Thus, the study was based on 10 prisoners and 11 guards. 5. In addition to serving as principal investigator, Zimbardo also participated in the study as the “Prison Superintendent.” An undergraduate, David Jaffe, served as “Warden.” Graduate students Craig Haney and W. Curtis Banks were researchers. The researchers were advised by a former San Quentin prisoner, Carlo Prescott, who had spent approximately 17 years behind bars. 6. Five of the 10 participating prisoners were released from the study either by acting crazy or by breaking out in a rash (Zimbardo et al. 2000). 7. In the 1992 documentary, Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment, the nature of the argument and the nature of their relationship is underplayed. Zimbardo says: I was watching all of this on the television monitors in my office with one of my graduate students…. I told her I was really impressed by what we had accomplished in less than a week. She looked at me and said, “I think what you are doing to those boys is horrible.” And she was right. I had to end the experiment. (italics added)



8. “[T]he study has stood like a magic box that no-one is allowed to open—and this untouchable quality has only added to the mystique and authority of its contents” (Haslam and Reicher 2003, 24). 9. This is a very serious allegation. If Lazarou did impersonate Prescott, it could trigger California’s tough identity theft laws. If he did not, and if Lazarou is innocent, Zimbardo’s claim could constitute libel.

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10. The precise language of the consent form is: “I will be expected to participate for the full duration of the study, that I will only be released from participation for reasons of health deemed adequate by the medical advisers to the research project or for other reasons deemed appropriate by Dr. Philip Zimbardo.” The human subjects review form notes, “They will however be led to believe that they cannot leave, except for emergency reasons.” 11. Or perhaps they just know the LA punk band, Stanford Prison Experiment. They put out three albums: Stanford Prison Experiment (1993), The Gato Hunch (1995), and Wrecreation (1998). 12. Zimbardo provided expert testimony in the defense of Ivan “Chip” Frederick, the staff sergeant who supervised the military police responsible for the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. Frederick was paroled after serving three of the eight years to which he was sentenced. 13.  Although the plot strains credibility, remember that the Milgram studies described in note 2 involved the administration of electric shocks even after the learner had become unresponsive. Moreover, the in-custody homicide of Manadel al-Jamadi and systematic rapes at Abu Ghraib prison (Greenberg and Dratel 2005) also underscore the real plausibility of the attempted rape and murder in Das Experiment.

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Toppo, Greg. 2018. “Time to Dismiss the Stanford Prison Experiment?” Inside Higher Ed. June 20, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/06/20/ new-stanford-prison-experiment-revelations-question-findings. Tudor, Andrew. 1989. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Zimbardo, Philip. 1971. “Hearings Before Subcommittee No. 3 of the Committee on the Judiciary.” In House of Representatives Ninety-Second Congress First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform, and Prisoners’ Rights: California. http://prisonexp.org/pdf/congress.pdf. Zimbardo, Philip. 1973. “The Mind Is a Formidable Jailer: A Pirandellian Prison.” New York Times Magazine, 38, April 8, 1973. http://pdf.prisonexp.org/pirandellian.pdf. Zimbardo, Philip. 2004. “Power Turns Good Soldiers into ‘Bad Apples’.” Boston Globe, May 9, 2004. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/ oped/articles/2004/05/09/power_turns_good_soldiers_into_bad_apples/. Zimbardo, Philip. 2006. “On Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study.” British Journal of Social Psychology 45: 47–53. Zimbardo, Philip. 2007. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House. Zimbardo, Philip. 2016. “Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Lesson in the Power of the Situation.” In Perspectives on Contemporary Issues, edited by Katherine Anne Ackley, 8th ed., 309–317. Boston, MA: Cengage. Zimbardo, Philip. 2017. “On the Ethics of Intervention in Human Psychological Research: With Special Reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment.” In Research Ethics, edited by Kenneth D. Pimple, 243–256. New York: Routledge. Zimbardo, Philip. 2018. “Philip Zimbardo’s Response to Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment.” June 23, 2018. https://www.prisonexp.org/ response. Zimbardo, Philip. 2019. “Stanford Prison Experiment: The Story.” Accessed March 1, 2019. https://www.prisonexp.org/the-story/. Zimbardo, Philip G., Christina Maslach, and Craig Haney. 2000. “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences.” In Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, edited by Thomas Blass, 193–237. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bad Teens, Smug Hacks and Good TV: The Success and Legacy of Scared Straight! Catherine Harrington

Introduction The dynamic of an intimidating and agitated convict shouting in the face of a scared teenager, verbally assaulting the youth with ominous predictions of what their life in prison will be like, is a scene that has been repeated and parodied in popular culture for decades.1 The legibility of this scene is a testament to the enduring imprint that its originator, the made for television documentary film Scared Straight! (1978), has had on popular culture. Nationally broadcast in 1979, winner of an Oscar and Emmy award that same year, the success of Scared Straight! provided a notable precedent for prison representation on television, even without considering that its impact and approach have been cyclically reinforced with Scared Straight! Another Story (1980), Scared Straight! 10 Years Later (1987), Scared Straight! 20 Years Later (1999) and Beyond Scared Straight (2011–2015). This chapter takes up the question of why Scared Straight! was successful, with a concurrent awareness that Scared Straight has had an enduring impact in popular culture and the legitimate policy options available to address “troubled youths” in the United States. In order to address the success of Scared Straight!, this chapter first provides key political, social and legal contexts to better grasp the public discourse and political maneuvering that occurred prior to its initial broadcast. I pay particular attention to the legal precedents set during the 1970s concerning journalists’ access to prisons since they established limitations that have impacted how and by whom prisons may be visually documented. C. Harrington (*)  Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_24

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The second part of this chapter provides consideration of the narrative content of Scared Straight! itself with particular attention paid to the racial dynamics of the film. The final section of this chapter positions Scared Straight!, as a participant in an ongoing debate about the value of television and links together the narrative content of Scared Straight! with the arguments made in its defense.

Prison in America in the 1970s The ultimate function of prison is a perpetual question in the United States, but during the 1970s, in particular, the purpose and direction of the carceral system were a topic of sustained public discussion. Lee Bernstein in America is the Prison states that the cultural meaning of prison was “up for grabs during the 1970s” (2010, 20). Prison reform initiatives during this period gave prisoners access to wide range of programs and prisoners themselves were organizing as political actors and as laborers (19). Prison activist groups utilized the spectacle of violence during this period to push prison into the public consciousness as a racialized injustice. The profession of corrections itself came under sharp criticism in the wake of the Attica rebellion in 1971. The subsequent Attica Report, released in print and televised in 1972, attacked the motivations of officers and highlighted the fact that there were no black officers at Attica at the time of the rebellion, despite the majority of the incarcerated population being black (Department of Justice 1972). While activists assailed prisons as a symbol of oppression, corrections officers began to rally and unionize to protect themselves and their occupation. During a period when California was considered the national leader in progressive imprisonment, the California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA) transformed from a social club with no real bargaining power into a much more radical and pro-active group during the 1970s (Page 2011).2 The CCOA would continue to grow in numbers and in lobbying power, taking a defensive stance in regard to the media portrayal of officers (Page 2011, location 248 Kindle). The perception that media mostly portrayed officers as what Ray Surette calls the “smug hack” stereotype—a depiction of corrections officers as “caricatures of brutality, incompetence, low intelligence and indifferent to human suffering” made officers particularly critical and wary of their portrayal on film and television (Surette 2015, 224). The racialization of prison and the backlash against social and political pushes for change resulted in what in hindsight appears to be a strange combination of meanings. Prisons during the 1970s become a symbol of inequality for some and a symbol of administrative failure and lenience to others. As Bernstein puts it, “If the 1970s brought to light the view that prisons were symbols of American racism and inequality, it immediately preceded policies inspired by the contradictory conviction that they were too few and too comfortable” (Bernstein, 194). Criticism from both sides of the political spectrum

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identified prisons as failing, for differing reasons, in the project of rehabilitation and the national approach to prison shifted during the 1970s from rehabilitation to punishment and deterrence. In the midst of this political and cultural upheaval, several court decisions shaped how prison documentary henceforth could be made, by determining the extent to which administrators can limit access to their facilities.3 The Supreme Court was and is a means by which incarcerated persons could seek redress for grievances for infringement upon their constitutional rights but those rights are not considered untouchable. The Court has established in a multitude of cases that when considering the rights of incarcerated persons, the institutional goals of the prison must be balanced against the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals. For example, Lee v. Washington (1968) affirmed that racial segregation was as unconstitutional inside prisons as it was outside, except in the service of “the necessities of prison security and discipline.” Where individual, constitutionally protected rights and institutional goals appear to conflict, the Supreme Court has been very reticent to interfere with, suggest or otherwise guide institutional policy. The Supreme Court decided in Pell v. Procunier (1974) that a California prison’s regulation that prohibited face-to-face interviews between journalists and individual inmates did not violate the inmate’s freedom of speech since they had access to other means of communication, nor the journalists’ freedom of press since the press had access to the same information sources as the general public. Both dissents in Pell v. Procunier centered on the idea that an absolute ban on prison-press interviews unduly and broadly prevented the press from informing the public about their own government. The companion case to Pell, Saxbe v. Washington Post centered on a similar regulation by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the two cases were consolidated and decided on together. These decisions overturned lower courts’ decisions that had declared blanket bans on press interviews unconstitutional, specifically in violation of the freedom of the press. Pell and Saxbe continued the court’s pattern of deferring to what the prison institution framed as policy necessary to its operation. Pell set a precedent that would be called upon again in one more key case during the 1970s, Houchins v. KQED (1978). Following the suicide of an incarcerated man at Alameda County Jail, KQED, a California educational television station, and the local branch of the NAACP sought access to the jail in order to investigate potentially dangerous conditions and practices. The Sheriff instituted regular public tours of the jail that the press could participate in but did not allow cameras or recording equipment. A federal court, in 1975, issued an order requiring Sheriff Houchins to allow KQED to enter the jail and investigate conditions, using television cameras and tape recorders. The Supreme Court later ruled that the federal court had erred in ordering the Sheriff to give journalists more extensive access to the prison facility than the general public. Chief Justice Burger cited Pell and Saxbe and declared that

414  C. HARRINGTON The news media have no constitutional right of access to the county jail, over and above that of other persons, to interview inmates and make sound recordings, films, and photographs for publication and broadcasting by newspapers, radio, and television.4

Justice Stewart decided with the majority but wrote a concurring judgment and argued that KQED should have been allowed more limited injunctive relief, A person touring Santa Rita jail can grasp its reality with his own eyes and ears. But if a television reporter is to convey the jail’s sights and sounds to those who cannot personally visit the place, he must use cameras and sound equipment. In short, terms of access that are reasonably imposed on individual members of the public may, if they impede effective reporting without sufficient justification, be unreasonable as applied to journalists who are there to convey to the general public what the visitors see.5

Importantly, Justice Stewart’s opinion distinguished between print and televisual reporting and did not assume that one could substitute for the other. Televisual reporting required technology and was recognized as not only communicating information differently from print but containing different information. Stewart’s opinion provides us with some recognition of the notion that visual and audible recording communicates a version of prison reality that the written word cannot substitute for. The dissent, written by Justice Stevens, argued (similarly to the dissent in Pell v. Procunier) that the press should have some right to information at public institutions; otherwise, “the process of self-governance contemplated by the Framers would be stripped of its substance.”6 While the concurring judgment and the dissent provide evidence that televisual reporting could be defended as distinct from written journalism and journalists could potentially be framed as having a right to access beyond the general publics, the court has deferred to prison administrations in regards to media access policies and ultimately refused to contemplate the press as an entity separate from the general public. One of Sheriff Houchins’ rationales for the ban on cameras during the public tours of Alameda Prison was the worry that security devices would be enlarged and studied if the tape recordings were broadcast. Houchins framed cameras as potential threats to security, even though he also admitted that someone could also easily sketch the locks from where they were sitting, inside a cell.7 Historically, the reasoning for disallowing visual documentation of prisons has often centered on visual representation as means by which security could be undermined or undesirable infamy and spectacle could be created.8 The avoidance of spectacle as the visible evidence of the state’s power fits within Michel Foucault’s reasoning in Discipline and Punish (1995, 47), but Foucault’s analysis cannot be applied to penal history in the United States

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without considerable accommodation of the racialized, economic impact and realities of the southern plantation and expansionism that have assisted in formulating notions of humanity, sovereignty and freedom. Foucault’s analysis does include the creation of the delinquent—someone whose very existence implied illegality and crime, this status being one of the results of prison as a knowledge producer (about the life of the prisoner, not rehabilitation) but in the United States, the concept of delinquency cannot be considered in an un-raced context. The status of delinquency has been, in the United States, solidly affixed to particular phenotypes. Colin Dayan has traced how the conception of the social contract as one requiring the exchange of some “natural liberty” in order to enter civil society, opened the door, or in her words “haunts,” the law itself and creates space for the existence of persons dead to society or “negative personhood” (Dayan 2011, 46). The state’s vested interest in avoiding spectacle is not equally distributed across all bodies nor does this interest bar the possibility of spectacle through the press. Caleb Smith argues in The Prison and the American Imagination that the rituals of punishment never completely disappeared in the American context. “The difference between the spectacle of the scaffold and the privacy of the cell was, at least in the American context, a matter not so much of chronology as of race and geography” (Smith 2009, location 169–170 Kindle).

Getting Scared Straight! In the beginning of Scared Straight!, before we meet the teens who disregard the law or the convicts who are going to try to scare them onto the straight and narrow, we are warned about the explicit language we will soon be exposed to. Before we even see our host, Peter Falk, we read along with Falk a yellow text warning on a black screen, “This program contains explicit and coarse street language. It is not intended for children’s viewing. Parental guidance is advised.” We first meet the teenagers that are the subjects of Scared Straight! as they walk to the prison doors. The teens are filmed walking past the camera, smiling and waving with a bit of bravado as they stream toward Rahway Prison in New Jersey. This is followed by a cut to the Lifers, who are making their way through the prison to meet with the teens. The contrast is clear, between teen arrogance and hardened, sober reality. In the first few minutes of Scared Straight!, Peter Falk, in the role of host, looks directly into the camera and asks America to “Imagine yourself, the innocent victim of one of these youngsters.” Falk proclaims: “today’s prisons are filled with yesterday’s juvenile delinquents,” clearly framing the intervention that is about to happen as preventative. The teens are then asked, by an unseen interviewer, “How do you feel about your victims?” The teens, filmed against several different backdrops (chain link fence, in front of a baseball field, in a run-down parking lot) from varying perspectives, respond, “I don’t really care,” with a smile.

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The teens are first taken on a brief tour of the prison, shown a cell and then taken to a meeting room. While touring the facility, before the teens are brought to the discussion room, an incarcerated man is shown pointing and commenting out loud, “that’s a sweet motherfucker right there.” Peter Falk (through off-screen narration) a few seconds later notes, as the teens pass by, “prisoners in solitary verbally molest the young boys with homosexual taunts.” After the tour is over, the teens enter a large room and sit on a bench in a row facing a group of Lifers, as individual men stand up to talk, or yell, at them. The Lifers are labeled (with superimposed text) not with names but rather with their conviction—their sentence and the crime they were sentenced for. The first topic is sexual desire, brought up by a white Lifer wearing a tan hat who is doing time for murder. Referring to the three girls in the group of teens, the Lifer proclaims, “I’ve been in here ten years and I’m gonna die in this stinking joint and if they wanted to give me these three bitches right here, I would leap over them like a kangaroo just to get to one pretty, young, fat fuck like you” (leaning into speak with a blond young white man). This is quickly followed by a story about what would happen to one of the young men in prison, beginning with their rape. The next Lifer, a black man with sunglasses doing time for armed robbery, takes the teens’ shoes and discusses the consequences of theft. The speakers switch (with the teens’ shoes still in pile) to a different white Lifer, doing time for murder. The Lifer tells a blond teen boy that he will take his blue eye out and squish it. He tells the teens that part of being in prison is thinking about killing and being killed daily. Again, the speakers switch, to a black Lifer, wearing a knit cap and sunglasses, doing a life sentence for murder, who starts by taking the shoes of two of the boys and throwing them off-screen, “go home barefoot, faggot.” The same Lifer continues, “It’s pretty bad what happens to young boys when they come to prison, ain’t it? Ain’t it!? You think that’s bad? This is even badder. Girls beaten and raped. 18 years old, she’d been molested 11 times by other women in the prison. Don’t you want to be like her?” The camera lingers on a blond young woman during this brief speech. In general, the camera tends to rest on the expressions and reactions of the teens but this is the first time (thirty minutes in) that the girls of the group are addressed directly. The vast majority of Scared Straight! is addressed to the boys of the group. The Lifers then state their identification numbers and their sentences. At this point, the talk takes a turn toward the positive, “Go to school! Get that education!… A gun ain’t going to tear that 30ft wall down out there, a pipe is not going to tear that 30ft wall down out there, but an education just may tear that motherfucker down.” Three more Lifers finish out the discussion, returning to warning the teens that they are looking at their future, that they may be owned in prison and used sexually and finishing with a young black Lifer who concludes with, “Why do you think I’m standing up here putting everything into this here? Do you know why? It’s because if somebody would have done this to me, I wouldn’t be here. Ya’ll have the best opportunity

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in the world… we telling you what it is and you’d got to be a goddam fool not take it. You’d have to be a fucking fool not to take it.” A montage of teen faces is shown before the screen fades to an exterior shot of the prison itself. Scared Straight! ends with post-prison interviews of the teens and then a follow up three months later in which Peter Falk labels all but one teen still “straight.” The audible spectacle of “coarse language” is a clear part of the draw of Scared Straight! The response to the film accepted the language as real, authentic and necessary. In an article from March 8, 1979 (the same week that Scared Straight! is nationally broadcast), Shapiro is quoted, “Surprisingly, the unusually harsh language in the program did not evoke a hailstorm of complaints at the station where it was first shown.” “I was amazed,” Shapiro says. “A lot of parents said, ‘Could you air it earlier next time, so the kids can watch?’” (Shales 1979). Only a few years after George Carlin first listed the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” (1972), the men in Scared Straight! use, not only a number of Carlin’s words but also descriptions of sexual assault and brutalization, mostly aimed at young men, without a public outcry. The positive response to Scared Straight!’s broadcast on KTLA was remarkable. Playing at 10 p.m. (so within the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. time window that broadcasters were allowed to show “indecent” material), KTLA reported that 13 hours after showing the documentary it had received 1016 calls in regards to Scared Straight! with only 57 negative and Scared Straight! beat all its time slot competitors handily.9 Even reviews of Scared Straight! 20 Years Later, hosted by Danny Glover, continue to mention that the program “contains every profanity in the book, including the dreaded f-word” (Owen 1999). One reviewer for the Los Angeles Times writes: “the language and manner of the convicts is crude and abrasive, but their motives and effectiveness are laudable. The mixture is exciting. Simply put, ‘Scared Straight’ is extraordinary, one of the most unusual and powerful television programs ever broadcast” (Lee 1978). A New York Times reviewer calls the confrontation between teens and convicts “searing,” “fascinating” and notes that censoring would have been impossible and reduced the sound track “to a series of blips” (O’Connor 1979). The Juvenile Awareness Project did not, when it began in 1976, emphasize the use of intimidation and shock tactics. According to an interview of Frank Bindhammer (one of the Lifers) by James Finckenauer a Criminology Professor at Rutgers University, the program turned from a big-brother conversational approach to shock tactics after realizing that one juvenile had visited the program four times because he thought the incarcerated men were cool (Gavin and Finckenauer 1999, 26). Frustrated with the persistence of the “Hollywood stereotype” of prisoners as cool, the inmates changed their approach, moving to the model that was shown, and heard, in Scared Straight! The confrontational approach and “street” language were a direct attempt to correct a perception of incarceration as glamorous. This is just one

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example of how Scared Straight! is a response to the discourse about prisons and the incarcerated at the time. Fear of the glamorization of incarceration produced a description of prison as a brutal and deadly place of pain and unending violence. While we do not have records of what kinds of interactions occurred between filmmakers and prison staff, Scared Straight! would never have been made without the administrators’ approval because allowing cameras into prison was a policy decision left to administrators by the Supreme Court. In light of that dynamic, it follows that we should turn a critical eye toward how corrections and those incarcerated are depicted. Scared Straight! does not dwell on the job of corrections or the officers themselves, but it does show corrections officers assisting in the deterrence of juvenile crime. The incarcerated men play the part of intimidating monsters and the officers are neutral and for most the film, absent, custodians. Scared Straight! positioned officers as helpful and the Lifers and the prison itself as lost causes. By affording individual histories and identities only to the teens (not even naming the Lifers) and keeping the officers’ screen time to a minimum, the prison appears dominated and even run by the incarcerated. Given how the Lifers describe their life in Rahway, prison is not just a horrible place in Scared Straight! it is a place that is horrible because of the men in it. Mainstream reviews gushed that Scared Straight was extraordinary, fascinating and searing yet the same reviews rarely mention race, perhaps because Scared Straight! itself deftly navigates around it. We might wonder, in a decade rife with prison activism that bluntly addressed prison as a tool of racial oppression, two years after the mini-series Roots (1977) is a huge success, and Richard Pryor collected three consecutive Grammy Awards for comedic recordings that directly addressed race, how does Scared Straight! not mention or even motion toward race? Dr. Jerome Miller in his testimony before the Oversight Committee (more on this in section “Getting Scared Straight!”) does discuss race. He states (addressing the Juvenile Awareness Program, not Scared Straight!): One of the things that comes through very clearly is that a large portion of those kids going to that program…are white middle-class kids. I would guess that the majority of threatening comments made are made by black inmates that fulfill certain scary stereotypes for white, middle-class kids.10

This is certainly part of the dynamic of Scared Straight!, and because of the continuing association of blackness with criminality, the reproduction of a black male convict, seemingly threatening, potentially violent, is a trope that fits into larger social stereotypes in a way that a large, male, white convict acting similarly and labeled similarly would not do. There is however a difference between who is going through the Juvenile Awareness Program on an average day and who went through it for Arnold Shapiro’s production. Shapiro states in his testimony that he deliberately asked the counselors

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that he was working with for a diverse group of teens, “I did not want all black or all whites, all girls or all boys, all hardcore or all softcore offenders.”11 The group that we see on Scared Straight! is much more racially mixed than the average, with nearly half being young men of color. The Lifers who address the teens are also about half white and half black, and they appear in a racially alternating pattern. Another pattern becomes apparent as well—the white Lifers tend to yell at white teens. The black Lifers yell at everybody. This means that those face-to-face confrontations that Scared Straight! is so famous for have more black men yelling at teens than white. There are also no scenes of white men yelling in the faces of black teens about rape—which is perhaps a lot more likely to recall racial oppression and the history of slavery in the United States generally than vice versa. So Miller’s statement about the Juvenile Awareness Project holds true for Scared Straight! and there is an emphasis, on black inmates (even though at this time, the prison system is still predominantly white) (Langan 1991). If only attentive to demographics, then the racial dynamics within Scared Straight! remain obscured by a seemingly progressive impression of a group of racially diverse convicts working together to address juvenile delinquency. Scared Straight! subtly reinforced an already existing stereotype of black men as aggressive, uncontrolled criminality, just not exclusively. While most often we see the Scared Straight! dynamic repeated elsewhere for laughs, Monona Wali’s UCLA thesis film, Grey Area (1982) offers a critique of Scared Straight!’s approach. The very first scene of Grey Area mimics the scene of group confrontation between juvenile delinquents and the men identified as convicts in Scared Straight. A prisoner grabs a boy and tells him that men inside like young boys like him, moving one step further than Scared Straight, this prisoner winds up on top of the boy, with a knee to his chest, restraining his hands and asking him if he is a boy or a girl. A second prisoner forces a different boy to drop his pants. The third man to speak to the children, Cecile, marks the turning point in the scene. He asks the children, “how many white folks you see in here?” When one of the children answers, “3 honkeys,” Cecile explains that this is because “the prisoners here are political prisoners. Our only crime has been to be born into this fuckin system. Our only remaining crime is that we have not yet destroyed it.” As the very first moments of Grey Area mimic and then even exaggerates the sexualized fear mongering that Scared Straight is famous for, Cecile’s departure from the scare tactics takes the rhetoric of personal responsibility that permeates Scared Straight! and turns it on its head. Instead of proposing that individual willpower and discipline can keep the youths out of prison, Cecile pleads with them, grabbing their hands, almost begging them to disrupt the established political structure. In a later scene between the filmmaker Yvonne and Cecile, Yvonne asks Cecil what he thinks is the best way to keep children out of jail and Cecile replies, “Tear down the jails.” Grey Area offers a stark contrast to Scared Straight! and a response that critiques the concept of deterrence as a viable goal.

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Scared Straight! positioned violence, specifically male sexual violence, as the forgone conclusion of prison and the fact upon which deterrence could be based. The prison described in Scared Straight! is in no way rehabilitative; rather it is pure punishment and the punishment most often cited is not the one given by the state but rather the assault by other incarcerated men. The film accepts this fact: The point of Scared Straight! is not to improve prison conditions or make anyone aware of the fact that sexual assault was rampant in prisons. Ultimately, Scared Straight! is not about prison, it is about fearbased deterrence and watching the teens’ reactions and it takes for granted the conditions it exploits for the purported purpose of “straightening out” the teens. Scared Straight! neatly avoids association with prison reform (and certainly prison abolition) activists by appearing racially neutral and not only positing that horrible prison conditions could be a deterrent but also reinforcing the idea that juvenile delinquency is a rising, national problem, which in turn implies that prisons themselves will continue to be necessary. Using “raw” language, Scared Straight! offered viewers a new experience, framed as progressive without really centering on the exposure of prison space itself (after all, the vast majority of Scared Straight! is a group of men yelling at a group of teens in a strangely painted room). As entertainment, Scared Straight! offered a comeuppance directed at arrogant teens, justified in the film text itself by the program’s success in changing young people’s lives. In doing so, Scared Straight! acclimated the American public to the normalization of sexual assault in prison.

Scared Straight! As Public Service Scared Straight! sparked so much public interest and discussion that the subcommittee on human resources for the Congressional Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing on Scared Straight! and the Juvenile Awareness Project on June 4, 1979. The testimony from this hearing highlights the entanglement between the Juvenile Awareness Project and the film, particularly in regard to how the recidivism statistics for the Project quoted in the film were a large part of the film’s success. The testimony of Arnold Shapiro the producer, writer and director, of Scared Straight! and John T. Reynolds, Executive Vice President of Golden West Television (who employed Arnold Shapiro), attempts to draw on a state-provided study to imply that the state of New Jersey had proved the methods shown in Scared Straight! worked and approved of their continuation. Jerome G. Miller, president of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, the first to testify, describes the Juvenile Awareness Project as an obscure project that was “hyped” to the level of “national panacea” by the film.12 He also notes that if it were not for the exaggerated success claims made in Scared Straight!, the film itself would not have received such an enthusiastic reception. Miller goes on to question the veracity of the statistics (90% success rate) quoted in the film. During Shapiro’s testimony, it becomes

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clear that he had only ever read a 15-page version of a much longer study by New Jersey’s DOC which ultimately recommended that “scare tactics be eliminated from the program.” Given the criticism of the “success” statistics in Scared Straight! (both in the 1970s and in the research since), it may seem that the Congressional Committee’s hearing offers little insight into the continued popularity of Scared Straight!, but in the later part of the hearing Scared Straight’s position—as a broadcast documentary—is itself put in the spotlight in a way that elucidates how Scared Straight! and its progeny have been framed as valuable and of service. Reynolds states, As broadcasters we have a responsibility to communicate to the world some of the things that go in the world. There is such a hue and cry today by many knowledgeable people about the lack of importance in television programming; the bad, if you will, that is seen so many times on television. Indeed, there is a lot of bad but we also feel there are many hours and many moments of beauty and intellectual stimulation in television. We decided to make this product and to do this film and put in on the air after much though because we thought it was an important message.13

Reynolds then quotes a letter he received from someone who works at the FCC calling it “good television.” Continuing to quote this letter, Reynolds says: “Right or wrong, it is the occasional appearance of adventuresome and bold artists who provide an oasis of originality in the Newton Minnow’s wasteland.” We feel while controversial we have at least brought an oasis with this program, a program of importance that people will discuss and debate and the results can only be good for the use of America.14

Reynold’s reference to public service is immediately picked up on by subcommittee member Mr. Stack, “Are you suggesting, Mr. Reynolds, that this is a public service? You are not a nonprofit corporation are you?” to which Reynolds replies: No, sir. When we refer to a public service film that is a descriptive phrase that defines a program that is designed to serve the public as against designed to entertain or amuse. We don’t feel that there is anything wrong in making a profit out of public service films because we will then make more public service films.15

The reference to Newton Minnow’s wasteland made in the letter that Reynolds quotes ties this discussion of Scared Straight! to earlier discussions of television’s responsibility to serve the public. Minnow’s first speech as chairman of the FCC is known for labeling television a “vast wasteland” but the speech was actually entitled, “Television and the Public Interest”

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(1961). Minnow emphasized the duty to provide programming in the public interest in return for allowing broadcasters to make a profit off of public property. This was a direct attack on the commercialization of television, and Minnow was critical of the inadequate educational television available. Reynolds positions Scared Straight! as part of an effort to provide television programming in the public interest, to argue that this is still possible in a commercial television industry. In other words, in an era of increased programming competition, Reynolds draws on the contempt for the televisual landscape no longer partly shaped by public service requirements, to define Scared Straight! as service, as informative and as educational. The categorization of Scared Straight! as a documentary (which Dr. Miller tries to question in his testimony) also emphasized its content as authoritative and authentic. The first program broadcast in many markets to use the word “fuck,” to describe anal rape, to show grown men screaming in the faces of teenagers is framed here as instructive and in the service of the public good.16 Scared Straight’s use of real teens, real incarcerated men, in a real, operational prison space served to buttress its claim to display an authentic process—the “straightening out” of the teens. The media access decisions in the early part of the decade ensured little competition would be likely to surface that would contravene any of Scared Straight’s depiction of prison or its narratives. In a political climate where corrections, as a profession, were defensive, the focus was on the fate and effect on the teens—not the men incarcerated and not the corrections officers or even the prison itself. The focus on teens created a seemingly neutral focus in a highly politicized space.

Conclusion Scared Straight!’s connection to policy is direct and unavoidable and so this has been the focus of most of the writing about it (coming predominantly out of criminology or sociology). This chapter is an addition to that important work, taking a step back to consider how Scared Straight! came to be, under what circumstances it was produced and celebrated. This approach can assist in moving the conversation about prison media past simplistic denunciations toward a better understanding of the complexity and history of prisons on screens. In particular, I aim to move away from the myopic reliance on “the public’s appetite” as an acceptable and uncomplicated explanation for why we have the prison media that we have.

Notes

1.  Beavis & Butt-Head (Episode 42), Saturday Night Live (Season 33, Episode 11), The Office (Third Season, Episode 9) and How I Met Your Mother (Season 8, Episode 8), just to name a few. 2. The California Correctional Officers’ Association transformed from a social club with no real bargaining power into a much more radical and pro-active

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group during the 1970s. Joshua Page, The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), location 722, Kindle. 3. While many have decried the exploitative nature of prison dramas and the lack of media documenting “true” prison experiences, little attention is paid to the specifics of how access to prisons has been legally limited in the United States to journalists and cameras. Leaving the institutional and structural limitations unexamined makes their particular configuration appear ahistorical and unchangeable and leaves consumers and producers as the sole focus of blame when texts are considered exploitative, uncritical or even just uncreative. 4. Houchins v KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1 (1978), 2. 5. Houchins v KQED, Inc., 17. 6. Houchins v KQED, Inc., 32. 7. Houchins v KQED, Inc., Footnote 2/11. 8. In 1928, Tom Howard took a surreptitious picture of Ruth Snyder being executed by electric chair in Sing Sing prison, the first known photograph of an execution by electric chair. The photograph that resulted was published in The Daily News and resulted in stricter searches and selection of reporters covering executions. 9.  “Radio-Television: Big Numbers for ‘Scared Straight!’.” Variety (Archive: 1905–2000), November 8, 1978, 42, ProQuest. Accessed October 5, 2014. 10. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Education and Labor. Oversight on Scared Straight (96th Congress, 1st sess., 1979), 18. 11.  Oversight Hearing on Scared Straight, 43. 12.  Oversight Hearing on Scared Straight, 3. 13.  Oversight Hearing on Scared Straight, 67. 14. Ibid., 67. 15. Ibid., 67. 16. Indeed, when Golden West Television approached Signal Cos. (a conglomerate that held a 49% interest in Golden West) for the financial backing to make Scared Straight! Signal agreed to underwrite the costs as a public service. “Programing: Prison Program Gets the Ratings for KTLA, Will Air on Other Outlets.” Broadcasting (Archive: 1957–1993), November 13, 1978, 62–63, ProQuest. Accessed October 5, 2014.

References Bernstein, Lee. 2010. America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s. University of North Carolina America Press. Dayan, Colin. 2011. The Law Is a White Dog. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Department of Justice: Bureau of Prisons. 1972. The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica. Moving Images 129.BOP.27, 2VHS Transfers. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Gavin, Patricia, and James O. Finckenauer. 1999. Scared Straight: The Panacea Problem Revisited. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

424  C. HARRINGTON Langan, Patrick. 1991. Race of Prisoners Admitted to State and Federal Institutions, 1926–1986. NCJ-125618, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/125618.pdf. Lee, Margulies. 1978. “TELEVISION REVIEW.” Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File): 3, November 2. ProQuest. Accessed October 5, 2014. O’Connnor, John J. 1979. “TV: ‘Scared Straight,’ Documentary.” New York Times (1923–Current File): 1, March 8. ProQuest. Accessed October 5, 2014. Owen, Rob. 1999. “‘Scared Straight!’ Again—TV Producer Returns to Prison for 20th Anniversary of Documentary [Sooner Edition].” Pittsburgh Post—Gazette, April 14. E–5. Print. Page, Joshua. 2011. The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California. New York: Oxford University Press. Shales, Tom. 1979. “SCARED STRAIGHT! AN Ex-Con Takes Teen-Agers and TV Viewers Behind a Few Forbidding Bars.” The Washington Post, March 8. LexisNexis. Accessed October 4, 2014. Smith, Caleb. 2009. The Prison and the American Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Surette, Ray. 2015. Media, Crime and Criminal Justice. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

Reality TV: Instilling Fear to Avoid Prison Erin DiCesare

Introduction Reality television came onto our screens in varying forms and covered v­ arious topics; one major focus is crime-based reality television. Crime-based reality television portrays criminals in a specific light to invoke fear in audiences resulting in a form of compliance, both to laws and surveillance that has been forced into our lives since the events of September 11, 2001. Society thus becomes self-monitoring due to the fear that is introduced by shows like Lock-Up and Girls Incarcerated. The shows are designed in an almost a confessional format where notorious criminals are interviewed, their crimes are “confessed” in detail, and voice-overs are utilized to create a sense of fear: fear that we can encounter these harden criminals if we break the law. Utilizing Brian Massumi’s theory behind the color-coding system implemented after the terrorist’s attacks on September 11, 2001, this chapter explores how reality television uses fear to create compliance in audience members and, as a result, acceptance of surveillance technologies, which compel audience members to adhere to the social order and abide by societal laws.

Surveillance Techniques and Measure Societal reliance on technology has allowed for the growth of surveillance measures. According to Lyon, “much of the mushrooming growth of surveillance in 20th century administration and commerce may be related to

E. DiCesare (*)  Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Philosophy, and Religion, Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_25

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‘disappearing bodies’ showing that human interaction is slowly diminishing” (Lyon 2003, 27). The elimination of face-to-face contact forces one to become increasingly reliant upon various surveillance tactics to keep tabs on everyone in our lives. Our reliance on technology has created the human aspect of interaction to completely change and be devoid of human contact in our relationships. Crime reality television relies on the disengaged human to partake in and not make a connection outside of the structured relationships the shows create. Shows like Lock-Up and Girls Incarcerated create an engagement with inmates in a safe space, our own home. Law enforcement officials rely on this lack of human connection to maintain surveillance on various criminal rings they are targeting and to keep the rest of society in order/compliance. The surveillance that surrounds us is ignored by most and catered to by many. Although much surveillance is meant to monitor criminal activity, non-criminals are subject to the same forms of surveillance. As Andrejevic argues, “monitoring is not limited to particular suspects but is extended to broad categories—indeed, at the limit to the entire populace: everyone is a potential suspect” (Andrejevic 2007, 125). In other words, tools that exist to monitor criminal activity actually monitor everyday life, and since we participate in the same form of monitoring, as voyeurs of reality television, people have become increasingly numb to it. According to Andrejevic, “Of late, the spatial component of this type of monitoring has been developed as a technique to permit the automated recognition of criminal activity: computers are programmed to recognize, in their monitoring of a particular space, interactions to the attention of human monitors” (Andrejevic 2007, 125). As members of society, we are under constant, unrecognizable monitoring. Many may be unaware of the cameras on streetlamps, traffic lights, and college campuses (with live feeds available). This constant surveillance or “digital enclosure” can be distinguished, according to Andrejevic, between “those for whom interactivity means the delivery of customized goods and services and those for whom it means subjection to inescapable forms of disciplinary monitoring and sorting” (Andrejevic 2007, 125).

After September 11, 2001 In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, which continues to loom over the American mind, criminal reality television drama took off. Audiences became aware of this genre and accepting of it. Many implicitly accepted the various security measures used by crime fighters, ignoring the effects of these various surveillance practices on their own personal lives. Support for these practices emerged out of the media narrative, with arguments that these steps are necessary for protection and safety, our personal safety, but more recently, society is becoming painfully aware that we are under constant surveillance, and we are unable truly to hide from it. Part of this surveillance is our own fault in that we are too open with our own information, which we constantly provide via the Internet.

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In the post-9/11 United States, companies were quick to jump at the chance to “help” prevent similar tragedies. As Lyon notes, “very quickly, proposals were made to pour public money into policing and security services. High-tech companies fell over themselves to offer not just ‘heartfelt condolence’ for the attack victims but technical fixes to prevent such attacks from happening again” (Lyon 2003, 13). These preventative measures were not long in the works. They were ready and waiting to be used. It almost seemed as if they (the companies and the government) needed a reason to put them into place. Prior to 9/11, the monitoring of social areas was limited; however, it was not long after that urban street corners could easily be equipped with cameras and listening devices, in the name of security. In August of 2004, the city of Chicago released planning to have 2000 surveillance cameras stationed throughout the city. These remote-controlled cameras were equipped with motion-sensing software to indicate criminal and terrorist activity (Howlett 2006). In 2006, the city released plans to add another 250 cameras to the monitoring system. These cameras, according to Kinzer, were designed to “immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it” (Kinzer 2004). The software tracks and highlights the suspects “at the city’s central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately” (Kinzer 2004). These instant monitoring tools are available to cities like Chicago and touted as tools for crime prevention, but are they not another way to maintain constant watch over the American people? As Howlett explains, legal challenges to these forms of monitoring are nonexistent: “neither the courts nor the American Civil Liberties Union have objected to cameras in public places, saying there is no expectation of privacy on a city street” (Howlett 2006). Reality television arguably aids in the acceptance of this invasion of privacy. Through this genre, audiences freely enter into the private domain of others as a means of entertainment, blinding us to the invasion of privacy inherent in this form of entertainment. Although many blame the media for the increase in surveillance, these forms of surveillance are not new—just older forms with more emphasis. As Lyon points out, “despite the media hype, responses to the attacks do not amount to an entirely new surveillance landscape. Rather, already existing surveillance systems are being reinforced and intensified” (Lyon 2003, 15). The systems already in place became more socially acceptable, and issues surrounding privacy seemed less important in the direct aftermath of the attacks. The implementation of security cameras on Chicago’s street corners was the next step in promoting safety. Most of the cameras were already in use by the time the news reports were released to the public, and the addition of 250 more cameras showed the growing surveillance trend throughout the city.

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As years have passed, more and more people are starting to question and revolt against these various types of surveillance, but reality television is still gaining popularity at every turn. Surveillance is not a simplistic concept; it is a multilayered construction. As Lyon argues, “surveillance is practiced with a view of enhancing efficiency, productivity, participation, welfare, health or safety” (Lyon 2003, 23). As much as we are reassured that the advent and implementation of recent, more developed forms of technological surveillance practices are for the purpose of public safety, questions remain regarding the purpose behind watching average Americans interact on a random street corner. Lyon explains, “sheer social control is seldom a motivation for installing surveillance systems even though that may be an unintended or secondary consequence of their deployment” (Lyon 2003, 23). However, the question remains: Why does a city like Chicago have a camera on every street corner if not for social control? Why has Wall Street installed security cameras? The issue is not constructed around the desire to promote public safety and welfare. The problem is that it promotes a deviation from maintaining a private life and identity. Surveillance could be reaching a point where a personal phone conversation could be picked up by the cameras mounted above us and an entire conversation recorded when walking down the street. Although the promotion and acceptance of these forms of surveillance is justified as a deterrent to potential terrorists, these cameras are not just monitoring terrorists. Post-9/11 fear provided local governments and surveillance companies with a reason to insert already produced surveillance products into society.

Audience Engagement with Reality Television Although surveillance in one way or another is long-standing, earlier limitations meant people could keep some portions of their lives private; however, a constant desire to stay connected with others and the recent ability to track one’s movements through cell phones makes it more difficult to maintain a private sector. In fact, this increased surveillance allows for intrusion by others without consequences, which is what happens when we engage with reality television. We engage in another’s private world, and rather than being punished, our voyeurism is welcomed by the “stars” of these shows. We may no longer feel guilty about listening in on private conversations. The “actors” welcome our intrusion into their daily lives, even the criminal acts. Without guilt or consequences, voyeurism becomes harmless, making it easier to accept the surveillance of us by the government and private businesses. We have open conversations in public, which we assume will not be recorded, but the cameras in the public sector open our lives and conversations to possible surveillance. Society’s desire to know every detail about someone is aided by various tools to which we have easy access. Surveillance via the Internet makes it easy

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to locate people and track their moves. The ability to monitor others relies on the user’s ability to ignore privacy settings, making it easier for others to access their lives. As Lyon points out, “sociologically, it makes sense to think in terms of paying very close attention to personal details—often in the form of digital data—for the purpose of influencing, managing, or controlling those under scrutiny” (Lyon 2003, 15). Even though many sites have security settings, users may not take the time to set their personal information to private, which would make it easier to manage those with whom one has come in contact. For example, Facebook clearly states it is concerned about user privacy, and it explains how its policy exists to help users determine what they want to share with others and how they “collect and can use” an individual’s “content and information.” They explain what can and cannot be done on Facebook by the user, but the wording is vague regarding what Facebook can do with the information they collect from its users. People’s ability to watch others has created an obsessive society, a tell-all society, which is evident in the popularity of the websites for reality television show. Lyon argues, “mediated watching has become a key feature of contemporary societies, sometimes to an obsessive degree. The popularity of so-called reality TV is some measure of this, as is the proliferation of webcams depicting mundane activities inside people’s homes” (Lyon 2003, 21). Such desires are derived from the film theory of scopophilia (Lyon 2003, 21). Society is programmed to desire to watch and enjoy the big screen, but with the advent of television and reality television, society is now obsessed with watching “real, everyday people,” and, in return, to desire that watchful eye upon themselves (some in hopes of becoming a celebrity in their own right). Thus, viewers often do not question the purpose of the surveillance they encounter on a daily basis, or they ignore it completely.

Monitoring Our Reactions Massumi discusses the advent of the alert system created after the attacks on the World Trade Center. This color-coded system was created as a means to warn people of the possible threat of a terrorist attack. Since the adoption of the system, the United States has maintained a permanent stance between yellow (meaning the threat level is “elevated”) and red (meaning the threat level is “severe”). As such, people are accustomed to living under an elevated threat level and go about daily lives with a looming threat of attack. Following 9/11, the government had the fear factor on its side; they could create a public reaction and dispel any overreaction with the change of a color: “The alert system was designed to modulate that fear. It could raise it a pitch, then lower it before it became too intense, or even worse, before habituation dampened response” (Massumi 2005, 32). Television, which began losing ground in the early 1990s because of the rise of the Internet, gained back its hold on the American population following the events of September 11.

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As Massumi argues, “In a time of crisis, television was once again providing a perceptual focal point for the spontaneous mass coordination of affect, in a convincing rebuttal of the widespread wisdom that as a medium it was falling into obsolescence as a consequence of the Internet’s meteoric rise in the late 1990s” (Massumi 2005, 33). Television helped maintain fear in the American people. Reactions can become habitual, especially if reacting to the color change and the up-to-date notifications of the most current events. Once viewers received news reports about the current war in which we were engaged; now we see the front lines. Images of terrorist attacks instill fear and displace any sense of comfort. We are seeing the death toll rise and the effects of war; we are also becoming less shocked by the images the front line has to offer us. We have been taken from the comfort of the news reports, which created a barrier between our lives and the war, to being directly in the war (much like Lock-Up eliminates the barrier of those who are “locked up” and us, those who are free). Lock-Up and Girls Incarcerated follow the same pattern on a smaller scale. We, the audience, are fearful of the most notorious criminals housed in the facilities featured in Lock-Up or the violent girls (under the age of 18) interviewed on Girls Incarcerated. Fear is instilled with the tagline of “the most notorious inmate” showing that every prison has an inmate, or more, of whom we should be extremely fearful. We behave or comply to avoid an encounter with these inmates. Our fear is never dispelled, even when we are told they are in solitary confinement, because there is always a chance encounter behind the prison walls. The rise of shows such as these after the September 11 attacks is not surprising, as they operate on creating fear and the promise of public safety and protection; these inmates stay behind bars, and if you behave you can avoid them. This invoking of fear is not reliant upon an actual event done to us physically. The fear is constructed out of the idea that this could happen to us, much like the color-coded system shows the potential for another terrorist attack. For Massumi, a rational connection to actual fear need not exist (Massumi 2005, 43). Our rational connection to the interviews conducted on these various shows creates the fear. The reactions to the events, or described events, naturally open the door for control and surveillance. He explains, “in thought, fear becomes intensively self-relating, independent to the extreme of actual context, or even other thoughts. It demonstratively signs itself” (Massumi 2005, 44). Fear is, in and of itself, self-induced, and thus controlling, especially when used to invoke a sense of control over the viewing audience. Crime-based reality television uses fear to show the continuous cycle in which we live, post-September 11, because “all that is certain is that fear itself will continue becoming-the way of life” (Massumi 2005, 47).

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Forms of Control Marx argues there is a difference between hard and soft forms of control: “although hard forms of control are hardly receding, the soft forms are expanding in a variety of ways—requesting volunteers based on appeals to good citizenship or patriotism, using disingenuous communication, trading personal information for rewards and convenience, and using hidden or low-visibility information-collection techniques” (Marx 2006, 38). Reality television, specifically shows like Lock-Up and Girls Incarcerated, function as soft forms of control. While the information collection technique is based on ratings, we volunteer to be goods citizens to avoid the fearful spaces presented to us. We gladly provide information on our positive behavior to show that we are not like those we have seen on these shows. We conform. We do not combat surveillance technologies; instead, we feed into them to prove that we are different. Another form of soft control, “disingenuous communication,” mentioned above, “seeks to create the impression that one is volunteering when that really isn’t the case” suggesting that this volunteering of information is required rather than by choice (Marx 2006, 39). We may be volunteering information to reveal our good behavior, but are we truly volunteering? With the constant surveillance, we are almost required to provide this information.

Social Sorting Social sorting, according to Lyon, explains the pervasiveness of surveillance under which we live: “watching others has become systematic, embedded in a system that classifies according to certain pre-set criteria, and sorts into categories of risk or opportunity” (Lyon 2003, 149). Reality shows not only aid in our systematic watching of others, but they help create categorical labels to maintain comfort zones and easily associate with a character type. Surveillance is not a threat to our privacy. For Lyon, “to think of surveillance primarily as endangering personal spaces of freedom is highly individualistic. It also misses the point about surveillance contributing to social sorting mechanisms” (Lyon 2003, 151). Surveillance, such as that provided by reality television, is not endangering personal spaces as those within the show are openly engaging in the surveillance, they are welcoming it. These issues arise when the surveillance we are unaware of intrudes into our individualistic spaces. A camera posted on every stoplight is structured to promote public safety, but it can also catch other private aspects of a person’s life. The cameras that are located on college campus are live-feed cameras. One can log on any time and watch what is occurring in various areas of the campus. The thought is that these areas are public spaces, but are we aware of those watching us? With the open availability of these forms of surveillance, one questions who really is watching people and could this be a way to track the habits of others to pinpoint opportune times to commit mischievous acts. The looming threat of violence

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is not dispelled by these cameras; it promotes and opens up the opportunity of criminal activity into our lives. Applying Massumi’s concepts, society behaves due to the fear that was instilled by the interviews; we do not want to encounter those inmates, so we comply with the laws, we deal with the surveillance to prove we are well-behaved, law-obeying citizens. The surveillance proves we are good citizens; thus, we do not belong with the inmates.

Lock-Up MSNBC’s series entitled Lock-Up profiles the various jails and prison systems throughout the nation. The show is structured to instill fear in the viewing public. The show profiles the most violent jails and prisons, discusses the most violent criminals, and conducts various interviews with the inmates and the staff. The interviews with the inmates follow the same pattern: They inform the audience what crimes they are serving time for, how long they have been in the prison (or jail) giving almost a rap sheet of sorts, what daily life is like, and other major issues that occur within the prison system. Many of the interviews with the staff recount the most horrific events that have occurred throughout their time working in the system. The fear that is instilled in the viewing public forces the viewer to analyze their own activities. Could the viewer have done something bad enough to end up in this prison? If so are their survival skills up to par? The program’s profile of the prison system demonstrates what types of people one would encounter upon entering this prison. The show follows the same pattern throughout the series: Camera crews enter the prisons, interview various inmates (ensuring they interview the prison’s most notorious criminals), profiles the various segments of the prison, and conducts interviews with the staff. Lock-Up employs a voice-over narration to create a sense of uneasiness in the viewer to ensure that some sort of fear is instilled. Although the voice-over used in Lock-Up is limited, it is successful in instilling fear. The prison setup follows the Benthamite Panopticon concept that Michel Foucault analyzes in Discipline and Punish and is referred to throughout the series. All of the prisons have an outer wall with guard towers, forcing the all-seeing surveillance eye upon the prisoners. Kevin Haggerty discusses the purpose of the visibility that the Panopticon structure promotes stating that “it was essential that prisoners be aware that at any given moment they were, or might be, under scrutiny” (Foucault 1977, 25). This awareness is intended to force their criminal behavior into behavior of compliance with the rules and regulations of the prison; “this constitutes the disciplinary component of the Panopticon, which sought to instill a form of productive ‘soul training’ designed to encourage an inmate to reflect upon the minutia of their behavior in a subtle and ongoing effort to transform their selves in prescribed directions” (Haggerty 2006, 25). This is not always the case, as some of the prisoners become more violent in the system, especially

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when they know they have no chance for release. For society, the awareness created by the construction of the Panopticon is employed in surveillance technologies that are used daily. If we thought about engaging in criminal behavior (which is out of the norm for us), we know the possibilities that await us thus, out of fear, we comply with the laws. Within the series, only one prison profiled was a true Panopticon structure in which there was an armed tower in an open area, the F-house (a.k.a. roundhouse) of Statesville Correctional Center in Illinois. This is the only roundhouse-structured prison remaining within the United States, and it is one of the most violent prisons featured on the show. The surveilling and monitoring of inmates does not help to form “productive soul training” but rather produces more violent inmates because their right to privacy is stripped away upon entering the roundhouse. Inmates are in constant view of others, and in the prison system, this could be a very dangerous occurrence as prison gangs are gaining popularity. The ability to be in constant view of other inmates as well as the ability to constantly be viewed by others does not promote compliance with the rules but rather forces a revolting aspect to occur within the inmates in hopes of removing the surveillance and monitoring of their daily activities. Within society, there is a sense of privacy, we are aware of the surveillance around us, but we have the luxury to go home and close off the surveillance (although not totally as Alexa, Google Home, and other technological advances have proven to increase surveillance). The overall structure of the series promotes fear and control within the viewing audience as viewers become aware of what they could encounter upon entering into the prison system. Throughout the various inmates that are interviewed, it becomes clear that all of them have committed violent crimes inside and outside of the prison. Most of the older inmates interviewed claim to have seen the error in their ways and have made changes to conform to the structure of the prison system, some inmates never change and remain in constant battle with the system. The inmates are fully aware that their actions are being monitored, especially in the Statesville prison, and yet many do not stop their criminal ways, showing that the success of reforming prisoners within the system is vastly limited. The confessional aspect of this show is structured where the inmates speak directly to the camera (sometimes a producer is heard in the background asking for more details to the stories, normally the most violent and horrific stories audiences can experience) informing the audience of their crimes and the purpose behind committing those crimes. Many inmates show remorse or sorrow for what they have done (sometimes while holding a grudge against the system) and comment that they wish for redemption or forgiveness in their actions. The audience is allowed an intimate moment with the prisoner, but that moment is short lived realizing that they are engaging with a hardened criminal. The show purposely profiles the most violent offenders within the prison as well as discusses famous criminals who may no longer be housed

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in the prison. Fear is instilled in the audience upon listing the offense of the criminals, showing that the prison system is a place to avoid. The heavy monitoring of inmates is accepted by the audience as we are able to see what it is like to be in prison, making our freedom much more desirable. The monitoring of society is accepted to prove we are good citizens and that our freedom is justified. Society willingly proves they are good. The staff interviews also discuss how important the various monitoring techniques are for their protection. Within the show, multiple prison riots, gang turf wars, and inmate uprisings have been profiled and the monitoring of the inmates is the only way to avoid disastrous outcomes. The corrections officers rely on the close monitoring of inmates by other staff members as well as by other inmates; having informants helps to maintain some sort of structure and order within the prison system. The show serves many purposes and can be used as a tool to help prevent criminal activities as well as promote the acceptance of surveillance outside of the prison walls; the monitoring of society could essentially create a society that is compliant with the laws set in place. The revolting against these surveillance techniques can be detrimental to the overall structure of the Big Brother concept but with shows like Lock-Up audiences become aware of what happens when you deviate from the social norm and the social laws that guide them.

Girls Incarcerated The Netflix original documentary Girls Incarcerated follows the same format as Locked-Up, but the girls featured in the series are minors under the age of 18. The show follows the same interview/confessional format where the girls introduce themselves and explain why they are within the confines of Madison Juvenile Center. The show employs a notable use of the color code system. The girls are ranked in their privileges by their color: purple or burgundy. The goal for all is to get to the burgundy level and earn more freedom and privileges. The use of a color code system invokes a reaction, almost a fear, that once the level of burgundy is achieved, it can easily be taken away with one wrong action. The girls are almost forced into compliance to earn these freedoms. While these juveniles will be released and will earn their freedom back, while incarcerated within Madison Juvenile Center, they are limited in what they can do, much like what we see in Lock-Up. This show serves as a warning: If these girls do not correct their actions, they will be the ones society needs to fear and will continue on in a life of crime. The only exception to this is one young lady who chose to go to Madison due to her guilt for killing her best friend in a car accident. She felt she needed to be punished for her actions (which were really an accident). She spent one week on the purple level and quickly upgraded to burgundy due to good behavior and being a model “inmate.” We are given a direct dichotomy of ideal inmate verse the rest of the population within Madison.

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Their length of time behind bars may be limited but these inmates are treated much like what we see in Lock-Up. There is a potential for solitary confinement for bad behavior, the removal of privileges (such as phone use and television time), and punishment for not following orders in the classroom and within the facility. These juveniles still attend classes so their education does not come to a halt once they enter Madison, but their classes are smaller and limited in subject. Their ability to earn privileges comes with following orders, meeting their goals they have set with their mentor, and avoiding more trouble (fights, arguments, disrespecting the administration and officers). While the girls try to avoid the constant surveillance that surrounds them, they realize that to give into it the surveillance means that they can prove their ideal behavior and will thus earn their burgundy. Giving into the surveillance means they can earn privileges, they can prove they are following the rules. This will carry with them outside of Madison as they can continue to prove their good behavior without having to report or track it, and the cameras will catch the good behavior (much like these cameras can catch their bad behavior). The fear that is instilled in the audience is that these are the next round of criminals we need to be concerned about; the audience can write off these girls as lost causes or see potential in them. The push for seeing the potential is limited but is handed to us with role model inmates that are portrayed; this should stifle the fear that an audience member has because there is hope in this group. Instead of the idea that one bad apple spoils the bunch, we have one good apple that can improve the bunch. The fear is used in a rather tricky way, we fear for the girls’ future, we fear for society’s future, and we fear for ourselves knowing that we can encounter girls like this in our lives. We want to remain in the safe space of our well-behaved space, away from any criminal element.

Conclusion Lock-Up and Girls Incarcerated are not designed to inform the public about the state of the prison system or juvenile facilities across the United States; rather, these shows purposely interview and profile the criminals with the most violent records, those that have continued to have problems within jail or prison, and those who refuse to change. These shows use fear in their portrayal of the system and those one could encounter if compliance with the law is not adhered to. Fear functions as a controlling factor in society; it can control our actions and reactions. Audiences, while enthralled with the show and the underbelly of society, feel a sense of relief that there is a clear divide between good and bad and a physical separation (both via the television and bars) which protects them. The idea being that if we comply with the surveillance forced onto us and we behave, this separation will remain.

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References Andrejevic, Mark. 2007. ISpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Kansas: University Press of Kansas. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House. Haggerty, Kevin D. 2006. “Tear Down the Walls: On Demolishing the Panopticon.” In Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond, edited by David Lyon. Devon: Willan Publishing. Howlett, Debbie. 2006. “Chicago Plans Advanced Surveillance.” USA Today, March. Kinzer, Stephen. 2004. “Chicago Moving to ‘Smart’ Surveillance Cameras.” The New York Times, September 21. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/us/chicago-moving-to-smart-surveillance-cameras.html. Lyon, David. 2003. Surveillance After September 11. Cambridge: Polity Press. Marx, Gary T. 2006. “Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Colleting Personal Information—‘Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?’” In Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life, edited by Torin Monahan. New York: Routledge. Massumi, Brian. 2005. Fear (The Spectrum Said). Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 13, no. 1: 31–48. Durham: Duke University Press. Project Muse.

Women Behind Bars: Dissecting Social Constructs Mediated by News and Reality TV Jennifer C. Thomas

Introduction The watchdog role of the news media can collide with the bottom-line objective of entertainment media when it comes to sharing stories of women behind bars and notably the children left behind them. The true stories of inmates are sometimes obscured behind distorted notions of so-called reality entertainment; their real-life narratives become skewed behind the storylines, confusing the viewer with a warped sense of reality. In this sense, and perhaps unintentionally, both traditional and new media can be responsible for mediated visions detached from reality. Factors include a commitment to the “bottom line” and decision-making processes that influence news and entertainment coverage, and this chapter addresses the long-term impact of such stories on the incarcerated women and their children. News and entertainment are driven by among others, novelty and controversy. This, coupled by pressure of deadlines and competition, often leads to incorrect or subjective assessments and stories of singular or exaggerated subjects that do not shed accurate light on the interviewee or topic, but instead in the skewed elucidation by the media professional. Despite these factors, it is possible for the intersection of information and entertainment in the coverage of incarnated women to coexist in news, traditional and new media, and television. This chapter will propose this outcome can only be achieved intentionality by the media source. Some of the more successful attempts in which J. C. Thomas (*)  Associate Professor, Department of Media, Journalism and Film, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_26

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information is disseminated has been through: traditional news media outlets producing more investigative and longform documentary-style reporting on the subject; interactive media approaches, where the viewer becomes a participant of the penal system through the stories of the female inmates; innovative approaches to traditional public broadcasting which include digital video, “tools,” and other approaches for children, family members, and the incarcerated; and to programming which seeks to “scare straight” would-be inmates. While also controversial in nature, some reality TV programs have also been successful at informing audiences to the plight of the most innocent of victims of this dilemma, by opening the lens into the results of incarceration on the families left behind.

The Professional Context The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in its code of ethics states ethical journalism should be accurate and fair, and that journalists should seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent (SPJ Code of Ethics). “The media is the most influential enterprise in a democratic society instrumental in the transmission of cultural values” (Day 1990, 26). Day’s point exemplifies many scholars who define the roles of journalists, yet these underlying values can get lost in today’s thirst for quickspeed consumption and ratings-driven headlines and storylines. The process by which American journalists conduct research impacts the outcomes of the subjects who in turn are received not as their true selves, but in the skewed images of the media professional. Journalists, by trade, use observation and interviews as a means of ethnographic research. This approach, coupled by pressure of deadlines and competition, often leads to incorrect or subjective assessments and stories of singular or exaggerated subjects that do not shed true light on the interviewee or topic. Enterprise stories that can, as Edward R. Murrow stated, “educate, illuminate and inspire” are best done when the journalist has access to the individuals, thorough research of the subtleties of the subjects, and necessary time to organize it into a comprehensive impactful story.

Mastering the Message: The Bottom Line The reporter’s role extends beyond defending the public’s right to know, to assuring the company’s bottom line: ratings. This is measured during four primary times of the year, known as “sweeps” or “ratings” periods, when broadcast outlets measure their power potential by its viewership. The more viewers, the greater the potential advertising dollars, the more power. This sales and ratings derivative oftentimes drives programming. In a television market, there are buyers who are the advertisers and the sellers who are the television stations (Caves 1964, 2). In local and national newsrooms, reporters and producers seek out enterprise or investigative stories that will inform, educate, and (sometimes) entertain viewers while keeping them returning

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for the next installment. Television networks have a similar bottom-line philosophy, as journalism is a business (Hallin 1994, 1). While television news may still be considered traditionally the most important of the eight mediums of communication (Hallin 1994, 1), the Internet through convergence has shifted to become the most dominant form of relaying information (Day 1990, 26) and as such has affected the way in which television and other traditional media conceptualize, relay, and shape information.

News Coverage While many pinpoint the changing role of journalists, most would agree with their fundamental role, which is to defend the public’s right to know. From its inclusion in the First Amendment in the US Constitution, the impactful role of journalism to the fabric of American society is clear: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Journalists play a vital role in maintaining a healthy democracy that includes acting as a watchdog of the powerful, separating truth from lies, and presenting a wide variety of different opinions based on empirical information (Robinson 2011, 13). Reporters achieve this storytelling through observation and interviews. The methods in which journalists relay this information have changed. While in the 1980s showing graphic images of victims, children, or even a person being resuscitated in video was considered too graphic for television, these have, in today’s technologically sensational landscape, become a mainstay. There has been increased criticism on media outlets for its methods at covering tragedies and in its “focus on the sensational over the substantive. Critics argue that television fosters shallowness, simplistic views of society, and a sense of unreality by virtue of its commercial and technical nature” (Barkin 2003, 7). This shift can be attributed to the suggestion that the media “mirrors” what takes place in society, meaning “events are reflected instantaneously, as in a mirror. This notion of immediate reporting is reinforced by the way people in television news depict the process to the public. News executives sometimes say that, given the immediacy of television, the network organization has little opportunity to intervene in news decisions” (Epstein 1973, 99). Crime and the coverage of criminal behavior and its aftereffects have become an intersection in which journalists have created a mainstay. The public’s desire for immediate coverage of crime stories and the invention of reality television and “infotainment” can be traced to the “Trial of the Century,” the O. J. Simpson trial. The 1995 case, in which the former National Football League (NFL) player and movie star was charged with the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, became infamous for many reasons, including the notorious “slow speed chase” through

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Los Angeles which gave the public its first-ever live reality TV crime show (Boyette/CNN). Televised coverage of the chase and subsequent trial of the former football star-turned-murder suspect became a ratings juggernaut. The daily live coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial and subsequent Court TV culture, set the precedent for salacious coverage in local and television news, and led Americans to a voyeurism for the criminal world. This trend may have also set a dubious precedent for how the media report on stories involving crime and minority women. Scholars and feminists argue there is an historical pattern of white society that renders black women as invisible (Neely 2015, xi), and that some perceptions of women as deserving of violence is a direct result of the media constructing victim culpability in its coverage of the news (Meloy and Miller 2011, 70). However, the competition to be first, and getting the exclusive, more so drives the coverage. If the news management believes certain coverage will bring in more viewers thereby increasing the bottom line, that factor drives coverage, not necessarily a deliberate attempt at discrimination. The racial make-up of the editorial staff in decision-making positions may also powerfully influence the decisions on types of news coverage. When it comes to the factors that drive media coverage, many point to five major categories or “motivators” which include money, family, safety, health, and community (Tompkins 2012, 174). There are also fundamental factors that news outlets use in determining newsworthiness. Some of these factors include: It will have a great impact on people; it is unusual or unexpected; it deals with death or tragedy; it concerns an important issue; it is the first of a kind; it is timely; and it is controversial (Kern 2008, 172). These factors also contribute to the justification of coverage of women behind bars. How their stories are translated for consumption via entertainment and the news may greatly vary; so may the outcomes.

“The Worst Part of My Incarceration Is That I Was Incarcerated”: Traditional Journalism Provides “Infotainment” on the Prison Experience In a 2010 report, The Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent, nonprofit public policy organization, shows the USA holds the dubious distinction of the highest incarceration rate in the world. In 1980, there were 500,000 incarcerated individuals in America. That number swelled to 2.3 million at the time of the report (Pew Charitable Trusts 2010). Since 1990, the number of female prisoners grew by nearly 50%. Three-quarters of jailed women were mothers and two-thirds of them have children under the age of 18 (Bouchet 2008). For children of incarcerated parents, that causes many challenges as well as financial and school performance problems, and institutional stigma (Bouchet 2008). There are ways in which several media outlets are sharing information and subsequently contributing to public awareness and potential

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political advocacy. The New York Times, known as the newspaper of record in the USA, took an innovative multimedia approach to reporting on the topic of incarcerated women by partnering with the popular Netflix series, Orange Is the New Black for what it termed a “T BrandStudio” paid post-segment on women inmates entitled, “Separate but Not Equal” (2015). The interactive online article featured slick graphics with statistics, traditional interviews, and documentary-style video clips. The videos feature several vignettes with current and former inmates, including Piper Kerman, creator of the series and author of the book Orange Is the New Black, a memoir about her time incarcerated. The current and former inmates interviewed in the video gave frank recollections. “I think I had that look in my head of what a woman in prison might have looked like; but we don’t have a look. We are your everyday woman that made bad choices,” says Ayana Thomas, who served three years for fraud (“Women Inmates Separate but Not Equal”). Some of the women in the videos are dressed professionally. White, black, and Latino, they share various testimonials of their lives before, during, and after being on lockdown. The women look directly into the camera when making their statements. Rusti Miller-Hill stated matter-of-factly, “When you incarcerate a woman you incarcerate her whole family… everybody does the time whether you realize it or not” (“Women Inmates Separate but Not Equal”). Another inmate shares that she was born as the result of a conjugal visit by her incarcerated parents. Another reveals that she worked for IBM and Lehman Brothers before she began breaking the law due to substance abuse, while a different inmate explains she grew up in an unstable home, having to live in parks. The poignant and personal viewpoints of these women, which inspired the award-winning television show, helped to shed light on the complexities of incarcerated women, a primary one being the difficulty of visitations by their children. “The first visit was the worst visit, trying to explain to her why she can’t stay” says one inmate who begins to cry. “..Knowing that you’re breaking their heart on purpose cause you could’ve made a better choice” (“Women Inmates Separate but Not Equal”). This interactive method of infotainment is one of the pioneering ways in which media outlets are trying to educate wider audiences. While local newscasts and newspapers traditionally report special coverage highlighting lives behind bars, this new brand of “native advertising” or “sponsored content” in which advertisers pay for ads that mimic editorial content is actually underlying the argument that “the mass media play a crucial role in social construction of reality” (Dowler et al. 2006). Such projects also begin to distance themselves from theoretical arguments that the media distort portrayals of crime and criminals to breed moral panics (Umamaheswar 2013, 283).

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Little Children, Big Problems: Sesame Street Tackles Incarcerated Parents One of the mainstays of educating the public to societal ills while offering possible solutions, has been the nonprofit Public Broadcast Service (PBS), a national network of television stations with a mission to offer “‘instructional, educational, and cultural purposes’ that the (television) market has little incentive to provide” (Silver et al. 2010). It began in 1967 after an act of Congress under the auspices the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, prompted by a landmark report by the Carnegie Commission, a group comprising business leaders, academics and artists (Lowe 2017). A second Carnegie Commission report, which convened a decade after the first one to assess the state of the system, underscored its purpose in 1978: “The nonprofit sector – in education, public service and the arts – has a different bottom line from the business community. In an ultimate sense, its contributions to human betterment constitute its ‘profit’” (Silver et al. 2010). For more than 50 years, PBS’ programming has proven to be instrumental in helping some of the youngest citizens affected by the incarceration of a parent, with the most popular children’s series making the most impact. In the summer of 2013, Sesame Street, the longtime American children’s educational program, introduced a new character named Alex. In the episode, Alex shies away from his friends during a conversation about spending time with their dads. Eventually, Alex shares his secret, which is analogous to the dilemma faced by 2.7 million children in America: He has a parent behind bars (“Collateral Costs”). The orange Muppet character with blue hair, green nose, and gray sweatshirt is ultimately given encouragement and coping skills from his fellow Muppet friends and caring adults (Sesame Street in Communities). The episode is part of the show’s Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration series. In its lesson on incarcerated parents, producers collaborated with the Osborne Association, a multi-service advocacy center for children of incarcerated parents. The bilingual (English/Spanish) resources include videos and a storybook for children to help support and comfort them, videos and guides for parents and caregivers to help them find the language to talk about incarceration with their children, and a resource for the incarcerated parent that highlights the importance of communication (OsborneNY). In June 2013, the program’s executive director Elizabeth Gaynes received the “Champions of Change” recognition by the White House for the program (Gaynes). The initiative provides multimedia, bilingual (English/ Spanish) materials targeting young children of incarcerated parents. The episode that features Alex is not for terrestrial broadcast but is shared directly with organizations that work with children of incarcerated parents. The project also includes social media components, including apps, Twitter, and videos featuring some of the vignettes. One video on the social platform Vine

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features a child’s handwriting that reads, “Sometimes I feel ashamed and confused. Other times I feel happy because I get to see my mom” (Flock 2013). The Little Children, Big Challenges series also features topics such as sibling rivalry and bullying. Sesame Street debuted in 1969. It is now the first broadcast on Home Box Office (HBO) and then shared on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations and exists to give preschoolers skills that would help them transition from home to school. It has received more Emmy awards than any other program in television history (“50 Years of Sunny Days on ‘Sesame Street’”). The show’s episodes, which are seen in more than 150 countries on multiple media platforms, have addressed other issues such as death of a loved one, autism, and the Syrian refugee crisis. They are intended to resonate with children in a way that’s referred to as the Sesame Effect: “That’s what happens when you combine the power of media and the Muppets of Sesame Street” (“Our Impact | Sesame Workshop”). Its “Sesame Workshop” and “Sesame Street in Communities” initiative launched a program specifically designed to “help children cope with traumatic experiences,” citing that nearly half of US children experience some type of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) (“Our Impact | Sesame Workshop”). On its new online iteration, Sesame Street offers “tool kits” in the form of guides to support parents and caregivers. They include games, videos, and activities designed to foster communication and understanding (“Coping with Incarceration”). Tips for caregivers include signs and clues that indicate stress, shame, and frustration within the child. It also tackles difficult conversations regarding the whereabouts of the incarcerated parent: Question: “Where is Mommy/Daddy?” Answer: If the parent has been convicted: “Daddy is in a place called prison for a while. Grown-ups sometimes go to prison when they break a rule called a law. He is not there because of anything you did. This is not your fault.” If the parent is not yet convicted: “Daddy is in a place called jail. He’s there because he may have broken an important grown-up rule called a law. Right now people are trying to figure out what happened (“Coping with Incarceration”). The toolkits also offer this specific language between “jail,” if the parent has not yet been sentenced, and “prison” if the parent has been sentenced, as well as advising parents and caregivers to write down also verbalize the word “incarceration,” explaining exactly what it means. Experts suggest to keep this terminology as simple and age-appropriate, as not to confuse them or cause additional stress. Researchers found that the longtime children’s show has made significant cultural implications on its young viewers; one researcher arguing no other show could have as large as an “aggregate impact because it just doesn’t have the market capture” of the program (Fleisher). This multimedia approach to incarceration is vital to children with a mother behind

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bars, because these children are more apt to have problems with relational issues such as “insecure attachment relationships with their mothers and caregivers” (Poehlmann 2005). If not properly addressed, children suffering from the stress of an incarcerated parent can also lead to themselves becoming a part of the same penal system of their parents. One highly successful yet controversial television program, which is now available online, sought to stop the trajectory of juvenile inmates in its tracks by a frank and oftentimes frightening confrontational view of prison life.

“Scared Straight” or Straight Entertainment? Keeping Today’s Kids from Becoming Tomorrow’s Prisoners The study of the media’s portrayals of crime has broadened in the last few years to include crime in news coverage as well as in reality crime shows, with viewers accepting crime drama as crime reality (Dowler et al., 838). One of the most memorable prevention juvenile deterrence programs became a long-running reality-type program more than 30 years after it was initially broadcast. Scared Straight, produced in 1978, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (“The 51st Academy Awards | 1979”). The program featured a prison where troubled teens were brought from the outside in to get a visceral experience of the dangers of prison life, which literally scared the teens into changing their destructive behaviors. Arnold Shapiro, also a 16-time Emmy award winner, said he learned about the Juvenile Awareness Project at the Rahway State Prison in New Jersey from an article in Reader’s Digest. He contacted the facility and was allowed to bring cameras in to document the “lifers” as they interacted with the troubled teens. Shapiro said he knew the documentary would be good because of the subject matter but did not know that young people would change their behavior from just watching the film (“Watch Arnold Shapiro”). After the success of the documentary, several follow up films and the A&E (Arts and Education Television) Emmy-award nominated cable series, Beyond Scared Straight followed from 2011 to 2015. Over its nine seasons, the docu-series profiled more than 300 teenagers in crime prevention programs in 29 prisons and jails across the USA (“About Beyond Scared Straight”). The program, as did the documentary, used cameras to document real teenagers whose life trajectories are at a crossroads. This series featured multiple episodes filmed at various correctional facilities across the country, including Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, CA. The daylong prison experience was part of the prison’s “Crossroads” program, which uses “fear, intimidation and information to give the at-risk kids a taste of prison life, and tries to scare them back to the straight and narrow. If they could not convince the inmates they were going to make changes in their lives, they’d have to stay at the prison for 72 hours” (“Follow-Up: Chowchilla, CA”). In this series, family members of the teens allow them to spend a day in handcuffs and shackles and get what they say is a real dose of life behind bars. The series also featured counseling “rap sessions” in which the inmates gave practical advice.

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In the premiere episode, at Chowchilla, the teenage girls met 50-year-old female inmate “Pretty Boy” who was serving 15 years to life for seconddegree murder. The inmate forces one of the girls to sit on a toiled in an outside courtyard, while another inmate wearing an oversized t-shirt stares and shouts at the girls lined up outside: “Understand what you have right now cause once you get here, you have nothing! What the police don’t take from you, we will” (“Chowchilla”). In another episode, a young girl named Cecilia is in tears after seeing her mother, who is one of the yelling inmates, at the facility. “Do you want to be like that?” a guard asks. After Cecilia shakes her head no, the guard continues, “It’s sad that you have to go to prison to see you mom, but you break the cycle” (“Beyond Scared Straight”). For women behind bars, breaking the cycle can be challenging as are the criminogenic risks. According to the Women’s Prison Association, these risks include housing safety, depression, and parental stress (“How It’s Unique”). Being away from their children is one of the challenges for women serving time at the San Bernardino County, California jail. Jennie Hernandez, a sheriff-training specialist at the facility, was one of the guards who took part in the Beyond Scared Straight Program. She says having the inmates interact with the young girls can be emotional. “We tell the female participants that it really sucks being a female and being in jail; Mothers are supposed to be nurturing and being incarcerated away from your family is just miserable” (“Beyond Scared Straight: Mothers”). A 29-year-old inmate, Ambur, serving 16 months for burglary, talked about her problems with drugs that started at a young age. “My oldest daughter is eleven. I started using drugs at eleven. And I look at her and I can’t even picture her anywhere near that. I’m 29 years old and I have nothing to show for my whole life” (“Beyond Scared Straight: Mothers”). “I’ve come across a couple of girls so far that had deep issues and I felt bad because nobody listened to me when I had my deep issues when I was growing up and I wanted to be an that ear for that little girl, regardless of if I was a stranger or not,” said Darlene, 32, who is serving more than three years for assault with a deadly weapon (“Beyond Scared Straight: Mothers”). In another episode, inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women hold a session where the young offenders share some of their personal tragedies that led to their destructive lifestyles. The inmates give the young girls ages 10–18 straight talk on how to change their lifestyles while they have time. “Sometimes you can love somebody enough that you have to let them go,” the inmate says (“Jessup Women’s Prison”). Even the scariest inmates provide teachable moments to the one-day “inmates.” Chowchilla, California inmate, “Diabla” with tattoos covering much of her face and mouth, threatens the teens who come in, “I’ll be your mamma today, I’ll be your daddy too and I’ll whoop your ass as somebody should’ve [sic] did” (“Watch Series Finale”). Yet in another episode, she shares a story of her child who had cancer. “Be better than us,” she admonishes one teen, as a tear rolls down her face (“Watch Series Finale”).

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Shapiro says the program proved effective because the inmates “have done everything these kids have done and more… there’s someone in the group who can relate to them. Someone who understands them, perhaps more than their parents.” He said the negative role models imparted positive messages that seem to resonate with a lot of these kids and argued that the experiential events in their lives allowed the students to get the wake-up call they needed and the trust by the prisons to let him and his cameras in (“Watch Series Finale”). He says the inmates receive no special acknowledgment for doing the program (“Watch Arnold Shapiro Interview”). This altruistic approach has earned millions of viewers and led to several similar shows such as Cell Block 6: Female Lock Up and Breaking Down the Bars. However, the Scared Straight franchises also its share of critics who argue the scared straight approach is ineffective, citing that so-called control approaches are not as effective as therapeutic approaches such as skill building and counseling (Vignati). A study by the National Institute of Justice found that juvenile awareness programs such as Scared Straight had the opposite effect, increasing the odds that youth exposed to such programs are actually more likely to commit future offenses (“Juvenile Awareness Programs [Scared Straight]”). The program also became the focus of mockery on Saturday Night Live, with Betty White and Taylor Swift among noted celebrities to parody the television program (“Watch Lorenzo McIntosh Sketches”). Despite mockery and controversy, Shapiro maintains the success of his project. “The fact that I was doing a documentary and not an exploitive reality show allowed me access where others may not have had it,” he said in an interview on A&E. “Prisons are happy with what they’ve seen because they’ve told the story honestly. Nothing is manipulated” (Watch Arnold Shapiro Interview”). Despite this claim, the creative graphics, sensationalized promos, and unending storylines cause critics to argue that documentaries have made way to docu-series, docu-dramas, and so-called reality television that is more scripted than reality. Despite the disputed context of these programs, storylines featuring incarcerated women or family members, notably in the Bravo Real Housewives series, may offer an unintentional scope of both information and entertainment.

Reality Bites? “Reality Show” Tackles Mothers Behind Bars and Families Affected by Incarceration In the past decade, the “Reality TV” phenomenon has taken media by storm. This genre includes long-running “reality-crime” shows such as Cold Case Files to popular “reality-court” programs such as Hot Bench and Judge Judy, shows which may also blur the boundaries between crime information and crime entertainment (Dowler et al., 837). Some scholars refer to this genre as “crime control pornography” (Koskela 2002, 2). Aside from shows that highlight various aspects of crime in the USA, one genre that has captivated the media market is the “reality show.” PBS’ An American Family, which

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launched in 1973, was the first such program to allow cameras to capture the everyday goings-on of families’ lives. Music Television’s (MTV) The Real World followed in 1992 and, 8 years later, Survivor (Gray 2018). The current controller of this brand of entertainment is the Bravo network, which has dominated the reality television industry since its 2003 launch of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Gray 2018). The network becomes a mainstay with its The Real Housewives franchise. The weekly shows capitalize on this concept of highlighting the everyday lives of the rich and soi-disant rich and famous/quasi-famous women and their families in selected cities across America. Besides the typical fashion-induced dinner parties and travel escapades, on-camera verbal and sometimes physical sparring, the shows have also dealt with serious issues including divorces and cast members’ health scares, to a cast member’s husband’s suicide and some of the real-life characters serving real time behind bars, and according to executives, the shows even have an “aspirational element” (“Inside the Bravo Lap of Luxury”). One of the better-known characters in the franchise, Teresa Giudice, known for her temper tantrums on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, served eleven months for fraud at Danbury Connecticut federal correctional facility, the same prison on which the series Orange Is the New Black is based. Giudice, mother of four daughters, pleaded guilty to multiple fraud charges and was released on December 23, 2015, a few months early for good behavior. Her husband Joe received 41 months beginning in March 2016. He was released in March 2019 and is custody of immigration authorities while his attorneys await an appeal decision. A judge ruled that upon Giudice’s release he should be returned to Italy, where he was born before moving to the USA at the age of one (“This Is How Teresa Giudice Is Doing”). The Bravo network capitalized on the lead-up and beginning of Teresa Giudice’s jail-time, in a three-part series, which among other things, featured the 43-year-old mother praying for her children and husband. Her daughters talk about their hardships, while cameras follow father Joe taking on roles of both parents, including washing, cooking, and stopping their 9-year-old from drinking coffee (Upmalis 2015). In an interview, Giudice admitted that events that took place prior to his family being on the reality show are what led to their trouble. He also admitted to having to “step up to the plate” to do things he did not have to do before as the father figure. “I mean I never had used to have to you know get up early in the morning to get them to school and all that stuff like that but, you know you got to adapt you know, make changes,” he revealed (“Joe Giudice Tells How His Family Life Has Changed”). The special also shows the family receiving phone calls from their federally imprisoned mother (Upmalis 2015). This voyeurism allowed viewers to follow the family through the process, while giving the network a ratings boon. While serving her sentence, Giudice’s children, then ages six to 14, reportedly made weekly visits, which she said allowed needed parental interaction. The nonprofit research organization, Child Trends, warns maternal incarceration can adversely affect a child’s

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well-being and can lead to depression, anxiety, and problems in school (“What Happens When Moms Go to Prison”). Family experts say it is generally best for children to see their parents on a regular basis, even if those visits are behind bars. Statistics do not support that, however. Only about 42% of incarcerated parents get visits from their children under age 18 (Associated Press). Such was the case for the husband of another Real Housewife cast member. Apollo Nida, the husband of attorney and cast member Phaedra Parks, of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, was sentenced to serve in the same New Jersey prison as Joe Giudice. Nida began serving an eight-year sentence for fraud in September 2014 (Ho 2014). The estranged couple’s two young sons, then ages two and five, seldom visited their father after he reported to prison (“Phaedra and the Kids Visit Apollo in Prison”). The topic was a focal point of Parks’ storyline in Season 8. Parks explained to the boys that their father had to go away for doing something bad. She stated separately that seeing their father behind bars may be too difficult for her young children. This saga continued to play out on the franchise, which finally culminated with the attorney reluctantly taking her sons to see their father behind bars (“Phaedra and the Kids Visit Apollo in Prison”). This would be the only such visit until Parks’ contract was discontinued and she ultimately left the show in 2017 (Bricker 2017). While its audience may consider the Housewives franchise as entertainment, the program and other media may provide a realistic lens into the substantial impact to children, families, and communities when a parent, namely a mother, is behind bars (Kang et al. 2017). One investigative report found despite attention by the media, women in prison lack many essential needs, including treatment and medical care for female inmates who suffer from drug dependency, proper facilities and conditions for pregnant prisoners, denial of care for those who suffer miscarriages, and ultimately the termination of women’s parental rights (“Women, Incarcerated”). Convergence has changed the ways in which consumers obtain news, information, and entertainment. It this sense, it may also serve as an effective means to inform and educate audiences about the impact of imprisonment on female inmates and their families left behind, while challenging the social constructs of family and femininity. The stories of women behind bars, whether in broadcast or online news, via public broadcasting or traditional entertainment, are able to shed light into the challenges and consequences of incarceration, primarily through social constructionism (Cecil 2018). In order to do so, however, news outlets and managers must do more to balance the bottom line with the responsibility of informing their audiences into the stories of the women who are behind bars and their children. Multimedia storytelling, such as the New York Times’ Separate but Not Equal, and PBS’ Sesame Street’s Incarceration online initiative are two examples of the groundbreaking ways in which mainstream media can successfully educate the masses.

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Reality TV programming presents a wider challenge. Studies show that targeted viewers (18–49-year-olds) tune in for several reasons including voyeurism, emotional involvement, companionship, social affiliation needs, so-called humilitainment as well as therapeutic qualities (Psarras 2014). In this sense, programmers have an opportunity with the latter. While television networks have a captive audience, the aftereffects of the stories of female subjects behind bars may also provide an opportunity of the truth and consequences to the viewers who may not intentionally desire to be educated while entertained. Whether using fear factor tactics as the subject of a television series that have been a ratings boon for cable networks and digital audiences, or having cameras follow the aftermath of subjects whose lives are affected by the poor choices of their loved ones, the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saying may ring true in the reality that comes from incarceration. While the profitability factor lies at the core of infotainment programming, such programming may also help shape one’s view and understanding of maternal prison life. If that lens is focused, it may also, in the process, do more than entertain the information-obsessed consumer.

References “50 Years of Sunny Days on ‘Sesame Street’: Behind the Scenes of TV’s Most Influential Show Ever.” The Hollywood Reporter. Last modified February 6, 2019. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/sesame-street-turns-50-howa-childrens-show-revolutionized-television-1183031. “About Beyond Scared Straight.” A&E. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.aetv. com/shows/beyond-scared-straight/about. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “The 51st Academy Awards | 1979.” Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Accessed February 11, 2019. https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1979. Associated Press. “Kids with a Parent in Prison Face Vast Challenges.” Yahoo. Last modified November 2, 2015. https://www.yahoo.com/news/kids-with-a-parentin-prison-face-vast-challenges-154239364.html. Barkin, Steve Michael. 2003. American Television News: The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. “Beyond Scared Straight: Most Memorable Moments (Season 7) | A&E.” YouTube. Last modified December 1, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sWxDtgSOV6M. “Beyond Scared Straight: Mothers Behind Bars Talk to Teens | A&E.” YouTube. Last modified December 30, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UGyT5TNT6Fw. Bouchet, Stacey, ed. 2008. Children and Families with Incarcerated Parents: Exploring Development in the Field and Opportunities for Growth. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Boyette/CNN, Chris. “Key Moments from the O.J. Simpson Trial.com.” CNN. Last modified October 6, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/us/ oj-simpson-trial/.

450  J. C. THOMAS Bricker, Tierney. “Phaedra Parks Is Not Returning to Real Housewives of Atlanta.” E! Online. Last modified May 8, 2017. https://www.eonline.com/news/842177/ phaedra-parks-is-not-returning-to-the-real-housewives-of-atlanta. Caves, Richard E. 1964. American Industry: Structure, Conduct, Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Cecil, Dawn K. Prisons in Popular Culture. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Last modified April 18, 2018. http://oxfordre.com/criminology/view/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-194. “Champions of Change and Sesame Street Initiative—OsborneNY.” Home— OsborneNY. Accessed June 16, 2018. http://www.osborneny.org/services/ strengthening-communities/new-york-initiative-for-children-of-incarcerated-parents/champions-of-change-sesame-street-initiative/. “Chowchilla.” A&E. Accessed January 13, 2011. https://www.aetv.com/shows/ beyond-scared-straight/season-1/episode-1. “Coping with Incarceration.” Sesame Street in Communities. Accessed February 16, 2019. https://sesamestreetincommunities.org/topics/incarceration/?activity= ask-me-anything. Day, Louis A. 1990. Ethics in Media Communications: Cases and Controversies. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co. Dowler, Ken, Thomas Fleming, and Stephen L. Muzzatti. 2006. “Constructing Crime: Media, Crime, and Popular Culture.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48, no. 6: 837–850. https://doi.org/10.3138/ cjccj.48.6.837. “Elizabeth Gaynes.” The White House. Accessed February 16, 2019. https:// obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/champions/champions-for-the-childrenof-incarcerated-parents/elizabeth-gaynes. Epstein, Edward Jay. 1973. News from Nowhere: Television and the News. New York: Random House. Fleisher, Chris. “Learning from Sesame Street.” American Economic Association. Last modified February 1, 2019. https://www.aeaweb.org/research/sesame-street-television-impact-early-childhood-education-melissa-kearney-interview. Flock, Elizabeth. “‘Sesame Street’ Tackles Incarceration Through Muppet with Father in Jail—US News.” US News & World Report. Last modified July 17, 2013. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/07/17/sesame-street-tacklesincarceration-through-muppet-with-father-in-jail. “Follow-Up: Chowchilla, CA.” A&E. Last modified March 21, 2019. https://www. aetv.com/shows/beyond-scared-straight/exclusives/follow-up-chowchilla-ca. Gray, Tim. 2018. “Before ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians,’ There Was PBS’ ‘An American Family’.” Variety. Accessed February 16, 2019. https://variety. com/2018/vintage/features/reality-tv-an-american-family-1202660360/. Hallin, Daniel C. 1994. We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge. Ho, Rodney. “Apollo Nida Sentenced to Eight Years for Bank Fraud, ID Theft.” Ajc. Last modified July 8, 2014. https://www.ajc.com/blog/radiotvtalk/apollo-nida-sentenced-eight-years-for-bank-fraud-theft/rHN2UKq 5RBT4dcogOwBt7M/. “How It’s Unique.” Women’s Prison Association. Accessed March 19, 2019. http:// www.wpaonline.org/about/how-its-unique.

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“Inside the Bravo Lap of Luxury: Secrets to the Network’s Glamorous Reality TV Success.” The Daily Beast. Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.thedailybeast. com/articles/2015/11/02/inside-the-bravo-lap-of-luxury-secrets-to-the-network-s-glamorous-reality-tv-success.html. “Jessup Women’s Prison.” A&E. Last modified March 3, 2011. https://www.aetv. com/shows/beyond-scared-straight/season-1/episode-7. “Joe Giudice Tells How His Family Life Has Changed Since Teresa’s Been in Prison | WWHL.” YouTube. Last modified October 12, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kIlGQnsa9x8. “Joe Vignati: ‘Beyond Scared Straight’ Is Beyond Common Sense.” Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. Accessed December 10, 2015. http://jjie.org/ joe-vignatibeyond-scared-straight-beyond-common-sense/. “Juvenile Awareness Programs (Scared Straight).” Programs and Practices—What Works in Criminal Justice—CrimeSolutions.gov. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://www.crimesolutions.gov/PracticeDetails.aspx?ID=4&outcome=120#120. Kern, Jonathan. 2008. Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Koskela, Hille. 2002. “Webcams, TV Shows and Mobile Phones: Empowering Exhibitionism.” Surveillance & Society 2, nos. 2/3: 199–215. Lowe, Vesna J. 2017. “Public Broadcasting Turns 50.” Carnegie Corporation of New York. Last modified November 3, 2017. https://www.carnegie.org/news/articles/ public-broadcasting-turns-50/. Meloy, Michelle L., and Susan L. Miller. 2011. The Victimization of Women: Law, Policies, and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, and Laura Heston. 2017. “Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies—Open Textbook.” Open Books—Open Access Books Published by UMass Amherst Libraries. Last modified June 30, 2017. http:// openbooks.library.umass.edu/introwgss/. Neely, Cheryl L. 2015. You’re Dead? So What? Media, Police, and the Invisibility of Black Women as Victims of Homicide. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. “Our Impact | Sesame Workshop.” Home | Sesame Workshop. Accessed February 16, 2019. https://www.sesameworkshop.org/who-we-are/our-impact. Pew Charitable Trusts. 2010. Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Phaedra and the Kids Visit Apollo in Prison.” Bravo TV Official Site. Last modified March 4, 2016. https://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-atlanta/ season-8/episode-16/videos/phaedra-and-the-kids-visit-apollo-in. Poehlmann, Julie. 2005. “Representations of Attachment Relationships in Children of Incarcerated Mothers.” Child Development 76, no. 3: 679–696. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00871.x. Psarras, Evie. 2014. “We All Want to Be Big Stars: The Desire for Fame and the Draw to The Real Housewives.” Clothing Cultures 2, no. 1: 51–72. https://doi. org/10.1386/cc.2.1.51_1. Robinson, Matthew B. 2011. Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice. 2nd ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Sesame Street in Communities. “What Is Incarceration?” YouTube. September 30, 2016. https://youtu.be/08sFsxTnG6g.

452  J. C. THOMAS Silver, Josh, Candace Clement, Craig Aaron, and S. Derek Turner. 2010. Free Press. Last modified May 2010. https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/legacy-policy/New_Public_Media.doc.pdf. “SPJ Code of Ethics.” Society of Professional Journalists | Improving and Protecting Journalism Since 1909. Accessed December 1, 2015. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp. “This Is How Teresa Giudice Is Doing After Joe Giudice’s Prison Release.” Bravo TV Official Site. Last modified March 18, 2019. https://www.bravotv.com/ how-teresa-giudice-doing-after-joe-giudice-prison-release-deportation-case-update. Tompkins, Al. 2012. Aim for the Heart: Write, Shoot, Report and Produce for TV and Multimedia. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Umamaheswar, J. 2013. “Gendered Representations of Parents Behind Bars: An Analysis of Newspaper Reports.” Punishment & Society 15, no. 3: 274–303. Upmalis, Jordan. 2015. “See How the Giudice Family Is Coping Since Teresa’s Departure Blog.” Bravo TV Official Site. Last modified September 14, 2015. https://www.bravotv.com/the-daily-dish/real-housewives-of-new-jerseyteresa-giudice-family-special. “Watch Arnold Shapiro Interview—Part 1 Video—Beyond Scared Straight | A&E.” A&E. n.d. https://www.aetv.com/shows/beyond-scared-straight/season-1/ episode-1/arnold-shapiro-interview-part-1. “Watch Lorenzo McIntosh Sketches from SNL Played by Kenan Thompson.com.” NBC. Accessed January 10, 2016. https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ cast/kenan-thompson-15086/character/lorenzo-mcintosh-77641. “Watch Series Finale: ‘Lights Out!’ Full Episode—Beyond Scared Straight | A&E.” Aetv.com. n.d. http://www.aetv.com/shows/beyond-scared-straight/season-9/ episode-11. “What Happens When Moms Go to Prison.” Child Trends. Last modified October 28, 2015. https://www.childtrends.org/what-happens-when-moms-go-to-prison. “Women, Incarcerated: Investigative Series Shows Systemic Abuses of Women in Prisons and Jails.” RH Reality Check. Accessed January 10, 2016. http:// rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/03/30/women-incarcerated-investigative-series-shows-systemic-abuses-women-prisons-jails/. “Women Inmates Separate but Not Equal (Paid Post by Netflix from The New York Times).” New York Times. Accessed December 9, 2015. http://paidpost.nytimes. com/netflix/women-inmates-separate.

The Prison as Dystopia

Speculative Punishment, Incarceration, and Control in Black Mirror David Pierson

Introduction In the Black Mirror episode, White Bear (2013) a convicted woman has her daily memories erased in order that she can be forced by authorities to relive a nightmarish experience of being hunted down by a masked gang while bystanders are passive voyeurs watching and recording everything around them. In the episode Black Museum (2017), a murder convict, who had his consciousness downloaded into a digital device called a “Cookie,” must forever experience the pain and agony of his own execution for the amusement and perverted pleasures of groups of tourists. And in White Christmas (2014), a networked, interactive dating coach, who was deemed responsible for a client’s death, is released by the police but is registered as a sex offender, which means that he will be visually and aurally blocked by nearly everyone. He will appear as a red silhouette and will be unable to interact with anyone for the rest of his life. In this same episode, a murder suspect has his consciousness downloaded into a Cookie, which enables the authorities to incarcerate him within a virtual recreation of the crime scene and to sentence him to such sadistic punishments as having him experience time at the rate of a thousand years per minute and having the same Christmas song play on a continuous loop for the time period. These speculative dramatic scenarios are featured in Black Mirror (2011–present), the British science fiction TV anthology

D. Pierson (*)  Department of Communication and Media Studies, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_27

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series created by Charlie Brooker. The series focuses on a range of fictional computer–human interface technologies along with many of their unintended human consequences. Despite the futuristic character of these episodes, this study argues that their speculative representations are expressive of contemporary neoliberal governance and criminology, public shaming and humiliation, penal tourism, and criminal justice and punishment as entertainment. The futuristic punishments in Black Mirror’s episodes exemplify the type of retributive justice that has come to characterize the neoliberal penal turn in criminal justice in the United States, the UK, and some other Western nations over the past four decades. Mike Nellis (2006) affirms that dystopian penal imagery in American science fiction films approximately corresponds with markedly more punitive penal practices for the past 30 years. Many of these films, including Demolition Man (1993), Fortress (1992), The Running Man (1987), and Wedlock (1990), focus on the use of panoptic surveillance and digital technologies for disciplinary control and as agents of confinement they express cultural anxieties about the increased capacity of these technologies for social and mental control (Nellis 2006, 216–225). These aforementioned Black Mirror episodes intersect with these and other relevant discourses as they serve to imagine a technological future characterized by new forms of governance and social management, spectatorship punishment, and confinement. In order to closely analyze how these episodes’ speculative representations are expressive of contemporary neoliberal criminological and penal discourses, this study will first review the historical and political formation of neoliberal penality and policies in the late twentieth century and the rise of the grand penal state of mass incarceration in the United States and its influence on European nations. The study will then focus on neoliberal penality in the episode White Christmas (White Bear is considered in detail in Chapter 29). It will examine how Black Mirror’s depiction of the visual and aural identifying and panoptic monitoring of a person convicted of a sex crime in this episode illustrates the central moralistic and punitive discourses of public shaming, moral vilification, and the social isolation of this criminal figure. It will also analyze how narrative scenarios in the three episodes represent the modern-day penchant for retributive justice and just deserts punishment as well as stoking the pornographic public desire for the spectacle of punishment.

Neoliberal Penality, Neoconservatism, and the Grand Penal State Beginning in the 1970s, the United States began a steady increase in prison populations that 40 years later saw an increase of more than 500 percent in the rate of imprisonment. America’s “grand penal state” encompasses over seven million Americans, which corresponds to one adult male in twenty and one African-American man in three (Wacquant 2009, xiv–xv). Incarceration

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rates have also shown steady growth across countries in Western Europe since the early 1980s, including Belgium, England and Wales, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden (Wacquant 2011). David Garland (2001) identifies several indices of change taking place in crime control and criminal justice in America and Great Britain in this time period: (1) The waning of the rehabilitative ideal. A central change in penal policy has been the shift away from pursuing rehabilitation as the primary goal of the penal institution along with the decoupling of sentencing laws from treatment programs, which tended to reduce the length of the prison sentence; (2) The return of punitive sanctions and expressive justice. The past 40 years have seen the return of “just deserts” punishment in the United States and the UK, prompted by a move away from individual sentencing to proportionality and fixed sentencing terms. This change has led to the legitimization of retributive justice along with the return of punitive and expressive sanctions, including the death penalty, chain gangs, and corporal punishment; (3) Changes in the emotional tone in crime policy. Since the 1970s, the fear of crime has become a predominant theme in public discourse and the commonplace welfare era image of the poor, disadvantaged, but delinquent juvenile has been replaced by a host of modern folk devils: unruly AfricanAmerican and Latin American, urban youth, dangerous sexual predators, and incorrigible, career criminals; (4) The primacy of the victim. Over the last four decades, there has been the notable return of the victim at the center of the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system now considers the emotions and concerns of victims and their families in its sentencing. The image of the crime victim is projected to justify increased expressive sanctions and penal practices (Garland 2001, 8–12); (5) The politicization and populism of crime policy. Crime policy has ceased being a domain addressed by professional experts and is now a highly charged political and populist issue in most election campaigns. Initiatives emerging from this hotly contested political environment include such political catchphrases as “Prison works,” “Three strikes and you’re out,” “Adult time for adult crime,” and “Zero tolerance” (Garland 2001, 13); (6) Transformation of criminological thought. Contemporary criminology increasingly views crime as a normal and routine part of modern society, committed by individuals who are, for all intents and purposes, normal, typical persons. The primary focus of penal theory is to control and regulate the market for crime by increasing the costs or penalties of committing crime and accepting the fact that crime can never be completely eliminated from society; (7) New managerialism and the commercialization of crime control. Prison authorities see their primary task as securing the custody of prisoners rather than guiding them through a selection of rehabilitative programs. Probation and parole agencies have de-emphasized the social work ethos that once dominated their fields and instead are oriented toward the monitoring of offenders and the management of risk. At the same time, the United States has seen the remarkable expansion of the private

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security industry and this industry is increasingly recognized by the government as a partner in the production of security and crime control (Garland 2001, 15–19). Most of Garland’s changes in crime control and criminal justice are acknowledged by fellow western penal scholars, many of whom see a correlation between the rise of neoliberal dogma and policies in the 1970s and 1980s, and the steady rise in mass incarceration (Xenakis 2018, 1). The central idea of neoliberal ideology is that the market should be the organizing agent for nearly all social, political, economic, and personal decisions. On the political front, neoliberalism is generally characterized as “free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of an incompetent, bureaucratic government that is incapable of doing good for its citizenry” (McChesney 1999, 7). While no broad consensus exists among penal scholars, many of them have put forward what is known as the “neoliberal penality thesis” (Xenakis 2018, 2). The theory’s key assertion is that neoliberalism is the primary engine for increased state punitiveness and mass incarceration. The neoliberal penality thesis starts from the idea that the degree of state punitiveness is not determined by crime rate statistics, but rather from social and economic forces at work within society (Xenakis 2018, 2). Loïc Wacquant (2009) argues that the rise of a penal state in the United States is not a response to a rising crime rate, which remained fairly constant in the time period, but rather as a response to the social displacements caused by the decline of the welfare state and the insecurities associated with low wage labor for citizens who find themselves stuck at the bottom of the social class structure (xv). At the end of the twentieth century, the mass incarceration system had moved prisons from the margins of the modern state to near the center, as toward an overarching hegemony over the lives of the urban poor (Wacquant 2009, 151–152). Pat O’Malley (1999) points out that in addition to neoliberal penality’s return to just deserts and punitive sanctions, it also fosters community reintegration and prisoner enterprise programs in which convicted people become responsible for their own rehabilitation and even play a role in managing their own confinement (184–185). He argues that while neoliberal penality provides a model to account for the diversity of penal practices and policies, it does not address the contradictory nature of formulations and practices that are presented as consistent with this rationality. For example, can neoliberalism explain the contradictions found in the rise of boot camps and the warehousing of prisoners and reintegration and prisoner enterprise schemes? (O’Malley 1999, 185). O’Malley suggests that perhaps the reason for these incongruities in neoliberal penality is its capricious association with neoconservatism as a political ideology (1999, 185). Neoconservatism comprises two distinct and competing trends of thought: a neoconservative social authoritarian strand and a neoliberal free-market strand. The resulting

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alliance, although usually referred to as neoliberal in current criminology, is in practice far less coherent than a single political dogma. For instance, neoconservatism is responsible for much of the emphasis on disciplinary crime control that is attributed to neoliberal penality, including the nostalgic return of boot camps and chain gangs (O’Malley 1999, 186) and the return of the borstal via reality television. Neoconservatism, which is reflective of white patriarchal interests, is also responsible for the moral vilification and exclusion of certain criminal “others” in modern society. According to Wacquant (2009), these excluded others include black welfare queens, young, urban African-American and Latin American men, habitual criminals, and sexual predators (83–84).

Moralism, Penal Panopticism, and the Sex Offender Wacquant asserts that “Sex offenders are, along with young black men from the neighborhoods of relegation in the big cities, the privileged target of the penal panopticism that has flourished on the ruins of America’s charitable state over the past three decades” (2009, 209). Before the emergent panic over people convicted of a sex-related crime in the 1990s, America has been through at least two historical periods of moral panics over sex crimes: From the 1890s to the 1920s, people who had committed sex-related crimes were classified as “sexual perverts” and were singled out for eugenic experimentation by scientists, and from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, there was a strong belief that “sexual psychopaths” were wandering the nation’s countryside in search of innocent victims. States and local municipalities responded to these sex-related panics by ordering some people committed of sex offenses to be secured in mental hospitals and by requiring them to register with the local police once they were released from prison. As people convicted of sex crimes, these individuals, at least until recently, were able to start their lives over in relative anonymity in their communities. This was no longer the case in the 1990s when convicted sex offenders faced the dual specter of extreme public exclusion and perpetual monitoring (Wacquant 2009, 210–211). Through the narrative situation of Matt Trent, White Christmas exemplifies several of the punitive techniques and discourses associated with neoliberal penality. In the episode, Trent (Jon Hamm) has a day job in which he coerces the digital copy of a person’s consciousness inside a Cookie to not only accept the brutal fact that they are not a real person per se (they are a digital copy), but to also to consent to being a lifelong slave to the real person. The digital copy is relegated to maintaining the real person’s daily calendar of activities, along with the household, electronic chores, and routines. At night, Trent works as a networked, interactive dating coach with a team of other men to communicate and teach single men how to pick up women. When one of his clients is poisoned by a woman the client picks up at an office Christmas party, Trent is charged and arrested by the police for his role

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in the man’s death, along with voyeurism for the recordings he makes of his clients having sex with women. Because Trent agrees and assists the authorities in coaxing a double murder confession from Joe Potter (Rafe Spall), who is actually a digital copy of the real Joe’s consciousness, the district attorney agrees to drop the accessory to murder charges, but proceeds to register him as a sex offender. In practice, the term “sex offender” is an extremely broad one, encompassing a wide range of sex-related crimes from consensual sex with a minor and soliciting or promoting prostitution to the injurious with categories as sexual assault, rape, and the sexual abuse of a minor. It also comprises incest, possession of child pornography, corruption of a minor, sex trafficking, and sodomy and bestiality in some jurisdictions. In some states, convictions of indecent exposure and public urination can lead to a person being classified as a sex offender. In its current form, the term sex offender becomes almost indistinguishable from such highly damaging designations as child molester, pedophile, and sexual predator, and thus, despite the vast diversity of sex-related offenses, it emerges as a moniker that instantly communicates extreme danger and menace to the public (Wacquant 2009, 211). As a registered sex offender, Trent appears as an aurally muted, red silhouette while everyone else appears as a white silhouette. Trent will be unable to communicate with other people for the remainder of his life. Trent’s inaudible, red silhouette becomes a highly visible branding of his status as a sexual offender. Branding serves as a public marker for people who should be avoided. It is also a mark of public shaming illustrated when Trent must contend with a woman who panics when her pathway is momentarily blocked by Trent’s silhouette. Trent’s technologically speculative punishment and monitoring epitomize the current stigmatizing blacklisting and permanent monitoring of sex offenders that appeared in the 1990s with the Congressional passing of “Megan’s Law” in 1996. Megan’s Law, named after Megan Kanka, a young girl from New Jersey who was raped and murdered by a paroled man, who had been convicted of sex crimes, unleashed a torrent of legislation across the nation requiring police in all fifty states to not only register former sex offenders, but to let the public know of their presence and crimes. Laws regulating registered sex offenders vary from state to state. The length of time that a sex offender must remain registered ranges from five years to life. All of these registries are available to the public. Three states require offenders to obtain a “sex offender card” from the Department of Motor Vehicles (Zoulis 2018). Most states have enacted tight restrictions on where offenders can reside. These sex offender laws become an expression of shaming punishment, which was once seen as an alternative to incarceration and associated with the ideals of restorative justice, a punitive form of post-conviction surveillance. These laws, for the most part, have not worked in reducing sexual offenses and have led to formerly convicted people experiencing homelessness and vigilantism (Zoulis 2018). Lyn Hinds and Kathleen Daly (2001) assert that sexual offender laws “can be viewed as exemplifying a neo-conservative

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strand in penal politics, where the state re-asserts its power to punish” (269). The laws are a governmental concession to the public that they are more responsible and effective than the police in controlling crime in their communities (Hinds and Daly 2001, 269–270).

Just Deserts and Personalized, Retributive Punishment The new culture of crime control and criminal justice has brought the return of retributive punishment. Retribution is the oldest theory of punishment. The presence of retributive justice is found in the laws of Moses, which includes punishments “of a life for a life, an eye for an eye…” Although retribution has no firm definition, the underlying notion of retribution is that when someone violates a society’s laws, the scales of justice become out of balance and the violator must be punished in order to restore judicial balance. Thus, a wrongdoer is punished because he or she deserves it. The justification for this form of punishment is referred to as “just deserts.” The guiding principle of just deserts justice is to restore social normality through punishment that is proportionate to the wrongdoing. The perpetrator is seen as a person with a free will vested with the capacity to make a moral choice in whether or not to engage in an act that violates society’s laws (Carlsmith et al. 2002, 284). Although just deserts prosecutors and judges strive to enact punishment that is commensurate and proportionate to the committed crime, the results, which can include mandatory sentencing, financial restitution, and even the death penalty, do not fully resolve the victim’s deep-seated desire for psychic revenge against the convicted person. One fantasy theme in science fiction film and literature is the notion of personalized punishment. In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen eighty-four, for example, each political prisoner knows that she will face her worst nightmares, fears, and phobias in Room 101, the torture room. The fantasy also includes the use of disciplinary technologies that place a criminal in a situation in which he suffers in much the same way as his victim. In White Bear (discussed elsewhere in this collection in Chapter xx), through the fictive technological capacity to erase memories and the theatrical staging of scenes, penal authorities are able to construct a daily narrative in which the convict must endure the same type of physical and psychological terrors that she imposed on her victim. Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) wakes up in a house where it appears that she is recovering from a possible suicide attempt. In the house, she sees pictures of herself and a man, along with one with a small girl. Confused and scared, she runs from the house searching for help, but the people she sees ignore her while recording her with their phones. A masked man appears and fires a shotgun at her and she flees, meeting a woman who explains that a signal began appearing on television and phone screens turning most people into passive voyeurs. The few people who are unaffected by the signal are targets

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of a set of hunters who hunt down and sadistically torture them. After being pursued by hunters, Skillane and the woman travel to the transmitter to shut down the signal but before they can complete their mission, a wall opens up to reveal that everything was staged. Before an audience, Skillane learns that she and Iain, her fiancé, abducted a young girl, named Jemima. Their crimes echo the actual Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who respectively killed and watched the killing of children and made a sound recording of one of them dying. Skillane videotaped Iain torturing and killing Jemima, before he burned her body. After Iain committed suicide in his prison cell, Skillane was sentenced to undergo the daily punishment she experiences in the “White Bear Justice Park,” named after Jemima’s teddy bear. Shamed and traumatized, Skillane is then driven past an angry crowd who cry out for vengeance, and she is returned to the place where she awoke. As she uncontrollably weeps, Skillane is forced to view images of Jemima and then has her daily memories erased so her retribution can begin anew the next day. As with sex offender laws, the concept of shame or shaming has become a key component in retributive justice and punishment. While the longstanding tradition in western democracies has been to lessen explicit appeals to emotions in sentencing and to view punishment as a rational process, the 1990s brought emotion to the foreground in criminal justice policy-making and practices, especially the emotion of shame (Kohm 2009, 190). Neoliberalism and neoliberal penality have amplified the role of shame “through the individuation of shame wherein the apartness of the subject is intensified in the return of the gaze; apartness is felt in the moment of exposure to others, an exposure that is wounding” (Wrisley 2016, 1). Shame is invoked as an instrument of social and hegemonic control over the poor, working-class, and convicted people in society. For some, the return of emotionally charged sanctions expresses a wider public dissatisfaction with the prevailing modes of punishment. In White Bear, Skillane’s most emotional experience is the intense shame and guilt she feels once she learns of her role in the torture and death of Jemima before the public glare of an audience. In restorative justice, shame is often employed as a tool to psychologically and emotionally rehabilitate criminals, as well as to reconcile them with their victims and resident communities. But, in the case of the White Bear Justice Park, these emotions only serve as a means of commodified, retributive justice to ensure that Skillane enduringly suffers before a paying audience. As with a wild spectator sport, the park audience actively participates in her public humiliation, screaming hateful expressions at her and throwing sponges filled with red paint (symbolizing her fiancé’s bloody deed) at her glass-enclosed carriage as she is paraded back to her compound. Since Skillane’s daily memories are erased, she will never be able to remember and confront her illegal actions, and thus there is no opportunity for rehabilitation or reconciliation with the victims and the community. Her shaming punishment becomes a public spectacle enacted for the entertainment and pleasure of paid spectators.

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Steven Kohm (2009) argues that since the latter part of the twentieth century, shame and humiliation have become intensified “through mass media in the name of crime control and entertainment” (188). The prevalence of “mass-mediated humiliation” is situated in the rise of infotainment, or the deliberate blurring of entertainment and information that emerged in popular narratives about crime and crime control (Kohm 2009, 189). Beginning in the 1970s, the Death Wish franchise suggested police action was hamstrung and limited and showcased vigilante justice. Beginning in the next decade, through the popularity of reality TV programs Cops (1989–present), America’s Most Wanted (1988–2012), and Crimewatch UK (1984–2017), the commonplace view of crime in the media and popular culture is that it is out of control, it can happen anywhere, everyone is at risk, and the only remedy is to let the police employ tougher tactics against culprits. Gareth Palmer (2006) argues that in Crimewatch UK and Cops the police perspective prevails so that those suspects “caught-on-camera” are there to be specifically shamed. Criminals are perceived as outsiders and it is the responsibility of those of us (viewers) behind the camera and the police to apprehend them (Palmer 2006). Several scholars have pointed out that shame serves a critical role in reality television because the many series focus on the neoliberal governance of the self, which involves the propagation of “self-disciplined, self-sufficient, responsible, and risk adverse individuals” (Ouellette 2004, 232). Through reality television, audiences are implicitly taught to be selfreliant and to rely on the marketplace for their well-being and self-realization rather than the government or other institutional entities. Many of these programs represent “the failure of self-government; specifically, the ineffable, self-annihilating experience of trauma (author’s emphasis) as it emerges in psychoanalytic literatures” (McCarthy 2007, 21). This failure is epitomized in the scores of people who are arrested by the police and/or shamed within the programs’ narrative worlds. Skillane’s traumatic experiences at the Park serve as a dire warning of the failures of self-governance and self-management, as well as the inadequacies of the existing liberal state’s guarantee of protection for its citizenry. Kohm asserts that the prevalence of shaming punishments in popular culture may indicate a much larger trend in the celebration of shame and cruelty in our media-saturated culture (2009, 191). TMZ (2007–present), for example, the celebrity tabloid TV program, consistently presents embarrassing and often painful images of celebrities caught in shameful and degrading situations. Stories and images of celebrities in trouble with the law have become a staple for the celebrity gossip industry (Kohm 2009, 191). The popular television program Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator (2004–2007) presents the spectacle of humiliating alleged pedophiles on network television made possible by an alliance between the police and an Internet vigilante group known as Perverted Justice (Kohm 2009, 195–196). For audiences, like the people who attend Skillane’s routine spectacle of terror and humiliation,

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the act of consuming the spectacle stands as a social marker dividing us (the audience) from them (the criminals). Spectacles of pain and humiliation provide audiences with a sort of guilty pleasure in that they can view the person being humiliated and can gain a sense of relief that they are not that person. However, in turning the hurt and humiliation of others into an entertainment commodity, there is always a danger that the audience may turn on the producers of the spectacle. To Catch a Predator, for example, became mired in controversy with claims of entrapment and conflicts of interest, and was canceled in 2008 in part because one of its alleged predators committed suicide after being profiled on the program (Kohm 2009, 189). Brooker (2008) commented as a TV critic on viewing the program: “when a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child-rapists, you know it’s doing something wrong.” The personalization of Skillane’s daily punishment—making sure that she experiences a similar state of terror and disinterested voyeurism she and her fiancé inflicted on Jemima—is analogous to the personalized, concentric circles of pain in Dante’s Inferno (2005), the first part of his fourteenthcentury epic poem Divine Comedy. In Inferno, there are nine concentric circles of hell representing a gradual increase in evilness. In each circle, the sinners are punished for eternity in a manner befitting their sin or crime. For example, fortune-tellers and prophets are forced to walk forward with their heads on backward, unable to see what is ahead, because they see the future through prohibited means. The “personalized agony” of Dante’s characters is derived from an awareness of their guilt and sin under the eyes of God. In modern prisons, convicted people have devised ways to alleviate thoughts about the heinousness of crimes they may have committed (Nellis 2006, 223). Nellis asserts that some science fiction films suggest that technology may be developed to induce a sustained sense of guilt in the convicted person’s mind. This prolonged blame is not triggered to stimulate remorse or as a step toward redemption, but rather to torment the convicted person (Nellis 2006, 223–224). In Minority Report (2002), for example, a police captain is arrested for murder and his body is deposited to a prison where he will be placed into a permanent state of dreamlike sleep viewing a projection of his past crimes as a continuous, visual loop. These speculative forms of punishment not only represent a fevered fantasy of punitive justice aimed at punishing convicted individuals, they represent the end of justice itself. The act of justice no longer becomes the process of administering punitive penalties for offensive behavior; it becomes a means to condemn a fellow human to eternal damnation. Similarly in White Christmas, Joe Potter confesses to two homicides and his virtual conscious is sentenced to spend an eternity reliving the worst moment of his life when he, in a fit of rage, strikes the father of Beth (his deceased girlfriend) in the head with a snow globe that he planned to give to the child as a Christmas present. The young girl, who Potter once believed

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was his child, wanders alone from the cabin and freezes to death. Potter, in retelling his story, realizes that he has been condemned to spend the rest of his life in Beth’s father’s cabin surrounded by snow and listening to the same Christmas song as a perpetual reminder of his culpability for the two deaths. As with Skillane, Potter will never be able to escape the dark memories of his crimes nor will he be able to acquire enough mental space to ever move beyond them. There is no possibility of rehabilitation, redemption, or reconciliation with his victims or his community in this fictional scheme of perpetual punishment. Potter’s extreme, fictional sentence of serving a thousand-years-perminute punishment may not be as far-fetched as it seems. Rebecca Roache claims that future biotechnologies may be able to make a convicted person’s mind believe he is serving a thousand-year sentence (Williams 2014). Roache states that “There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence” (Williams 2014). A second scenario similar to the fictive technologies employed in “White Christmas” is developing the means to upload human minds to computers so as to speed up the rate at which the mind works. While these biotechnological scenarios could be used to reduce the time and state expense of physically incarcerating convicted people,1 they could also function to condemn convicted individuals into an eternal hell on earth, serving sentences that last several human lifetimes.

Penal Tourism and the Spectacle of Punishment The fictional White Bear Justice Park, which offers paying tourists the daily spectacle of humiliation and punishment of an infamous convicted individual, is also part of a long western tradition of penal tourism (addressed in Section xx). Prisons have long been part of a broader institutional spectacle, including hospitals and asylums. Since the eighteenth century, people have visited prisons to observe and for the “gothic sensation of the sights to be seen there” (Barton and Brown 2015, 240–241). In the nineteenth century, public displays of punishment, which once served to deter deviant behavior through the visual display of state authority, were now hidden behind prison walls. John Pratt asserts that with the demise of public punishments, along with the growing idea that prisons were places of punishment themselves, prisons emerged as spectacular public structures, which served to separate society’s convicted people from the outside world. The prisons were expensive and extravagant in their designs with imposing observational towers and decorative carvings that conveyed the indisputable power of the state (Barton and Brown 2015, 242). In the contemporary era of mass incarceration, it is probably no surprise that penal tourism is a widely popular activity. The emergence of penal

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tourism occurred in tandem with the steady increase in size of the global prison population as well as the massive expansion of the American prison system. Today, ten and half million people are incarcerated worldwide, with nearly a quarter of them confined in the United States (McCorkel and Dalcortivo 2018). Michelle Brown (2009) points out that with the steady increase in global incarceration, states and nations began constructing new modern prisons and thereby, converted many of their aging prison structures into prison museums as a funding source to preserve them. In the United States, the top tourist prison museums include Alcatraz, Eastern State Penitentiary, Ohio State Reformatory, Old Idaho Penitentiary, Texas Prison Museum, West Virginia State Penitentiary, and Yuma Territorial Prison (Brown 2009, 85–86). Penal tourism is a global phenomenon with prison museums in several countries. Michael Welch (2015) explains that penal spectatorship involves onlookers who observe “the spectacle of pain and suffering” (1). The spectator’s gaze is carefully regulated as they are positioned to accept certain perspectives and perceptions about the prison and prison life (Welch 2015, 1). For the twenty-first-century penal spectator, torture and cruelty are positioned as antiquated deeds from a distant past, a part of a less civilized time and culture. The political and cultural contexts of past punishments are rarely addressed by prison exhibitions. The constructed space between the distancing of punishment from the past and the real experiences of prisoner suffering enables punishment to be depicted and partly experienced as a form of entertainment. With little connection offered between past and present incarceration practices, visitors frequently rely on popular culture references drawn from books, films, and television to make sense of their experiences within the prison museums. With the exception of a few celebrity prisoners (Al Capone, Ned Kelly), the majority of prisoners are perceived as an undifferentiated, deviant body of men and women. Although the White Bear Justice Park is not a museum per se, visitors are positioned to assume certain perspectives to the subject (convicted person to be punished), the park employees (actors and supporting personnel) and the park itself. Baxter (Michael Smiley), the primary actor and director of the justice narrative, reminds a new group of visitors that they have an important role in the park’s daily punishment activities. He further instructs them to follow three simple rules: (1) “No Talking.” It might interrupt the carefully established punishment narrative; (2) “Keep your Distance.” Skillane is a dangerous individual. Yesterday, she did throw an object at a park visitor; and (3) “Enjoy Yourself.” Feel free to wander through the woods and most importantly, remember to have fun and take plenty of pictures. Baxter’s orientation positions visitors to assume the perspective that Skillane is a dangerous convicted person who is deserving of her punishment. They are urged to enjoy the spectacle and to walk about the park, but not to disrupt the organized punishment activities. But visitors are not, however, encouraged to inquire about Skillane’s background or the political and moral contexts of her sentencing.

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Unlike contemporary prison museums, in which visitors are positioned and kept at a safe distance from the realities of torture and other forms of brutality, in the Park, visitors are encouraged to participate in observing and taking part in the terrorizing and humiliation of a convicted person. The visitors are invited to participate in three roles: First, as observers of Skillane reacting in terror to the hunters and their trail of killings; second, as audience members applauding Skillane’s public shame and humiliation once her true identity is revealed to her; and third, as participants in the nighttime angry mob complete with festive sparklers and torches as they follow and verbally berate her as she is driven back to her compound. In the contemporary era of mass incarceration, punishment has become conspicuous with the return of boot camps and chain gangs, and the nationwide registration and monitoring of persons formally convicted of sex crimes. Through the popularity of reality television programs like To Catch a Predator, Cops, and Cheaters (2000–present), shame and punishment have become an accepted feature of popular culture. Reality TV series Girls Incarcerated (2018–present), Inside American Jail (2007–present), Lockdown (2006–present), and Lockup (2005– 2017) that feature correction officers contending with convicted individuals in county and federal prison institutions are popular with viewers. In our punishment-obsessed culture, it is not difficult to imagine a future in which terrorizing and punishing a convicted person becomes a family-friendly leisure activity. Similarly, in the episode Black Museum2 museum visitors can enjoy the thrill of pulling a lever to make Clayton Leigh (Babs Olusanmokun) experience the painful agony of being electrocuted all over again. Leigh was a convicted murderer who sold the rights to his post-death consciousness in exchange for money for his family. In the episode, Nish (Letitia Wright) visits the Black Museum, which exhibits genuine criminal artifacts. She meets Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), the owner, who provides her with a tour and tells her the stories behind the objects in the museum’s collection. Haynes, a former science research recruiter, shows her the museum’s main attraction, which is a hologram projection of Leigh inside of a prison cell exhibit. Each execution is timed to last only ten seconds because any more than fifteen seconds, will destroy his digital synapses. After pulling the execution lever, visitors are rewarded with a key chain souvenir containing an enclosed copy of Leigh’s consciousness experiencing pain in perpetual agony. As with most museums, the availability and sale of souvenirs is a common practice in prison exhibitions. Michael Welsh details that at The Clink in London, penal spectators can sit in a torture chair and have their picture taken with the museum’s camera. Spectators will then receive a receipt from a box on the wall and they can go to a Web site where they can download a copy of the photo on their computer (Welch 2015, 2–3). Welsh states that the instruments of punishment are one of the most fetishized features of some prison museums. Unlike in past times in prison tourism, when a focus on the instruments of punishment might be seen as appealing to unsavory

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tastes and unwarranted voyeurism, today they are openly promoted on prison museum Web sites and promotional materials. The Clink, for example, publicizes that the museum features ghastly stories about prisoners along with a torture chamber in which visitors can become participants. The museum offers several hands-on experiences with torture devices, including the boot, a torture device designed to crush the foot, a ball and chain, thumbscrews, the chastity belt, and the chopping block (“put your head on the block and have your photo taken”) (Welch 2015, 1–4). Through their use in prison museums, punishment artifacts have shifted from their original state as objects of real pain and terror into something from a dismal past or more commonly as forms of punishment and pleasure. Brian Jarvis (2004) finds it interesting that Foucault, the author of The History of Sexuality (1984), does not address the “erotics of punishment” in Discipline and Punish (1975, 9–10). Jarvis maintains that sadism and masochism, the desire to punish and to be punished, have played an unstated role in the trajectory of punishment in the United States. According to psychoanalytic theory, the relationship of the law and its subjects is influenced by the dynamics of the Oedipus complex. The sadist identifies with the Law and the Father (Jarvis 2004, 10). Sadistic and masochistic tendencies, which are not necessarily sexual in nature, are quite common in most people. In Black Museum, as Haynes describes the popularity of the Clayton Leigh display with the public, we see a middle-aged woman pulling the execution lever sending Leigh into excruciating pain. Expressions of excitement and sadistic pleasure are shown on her face. In time, various groups protested the torture inflicted on Leigh, which harmed the popularity of the museum, but did not end the exhibit. To recoup declining revenue, Haynes opened up the Leigh exhibit to wealthy, morally depraved persons and racists (Leigh is African American) who would torture him (Leigh) to the limits of his virtual consciousness. While this episode exposes the perverse and commercial aspects of punishment, Jarvis reminds us that punishment goes beyond penal practices and is essentially the lynchpin in capitalist and libidinal economies, which are predicated on the domination and submission of people within modern cultures (2004, 12). All workplaces, factories, schools, hospitals, and the military are structured on a set of rules that regulate human behavior. The museum visitors who delight in inflicting pain on the holographic deceased man are replicating the patterns of domination, submission, and punishment that exist in their own lives. Black Mirror, through its speculative, dramatic scenarios, presents us with a futuristic, dystopian world in which punishments and crime controls share a marked affinity with the contemporary global, neoliberal penal world and turn to increased public punishments and mass incarceration. It is a world in which retributive public shaming and humiliation and corporal punishment have become acceptable and valued leisure activities. It is a world in which speculative technologies like mutual augmented reality and the downloading

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of human consciousness onto small digital devices become less forms of enhancing communication among people than the latest means for socially excluding and perpetually punishing deviant behavior in others. Without recourse to compassion and a belief in the rehabilitative ideal, it is a world that may stand waiting for us in the near future.

Notes 1. In The Outer Limits’ episode, “The Sentence” (8/4/1996) a scientist strives to resolve a future riddled with prison overcrowding by inventing a “virtual prison.” The device works on a convicted person’s feelings of guilt enabling him to serve a lifetime of imprisonment in a matter of minutes. The device, however, proves to be problematic for an innocent person convicted of a crime he did not commit and he is unable to escape a lifetime in the virtual prison. 2. Until recently the Crime Museum, a collection of criminal memorabilia, at New Scotland Yard in London, England was known as the “Black Museum.” The museum dates back to 1874 and its collection grew from the gathering of personal property of convicted people under the Prisoners’ Property Act of 1869. In 1875, the Black Museum became an official museum open only to the police with the express mission of providing the police with a place to study crime and people that have committed crimes.

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Palmer, Gareth. 2006. “Video Vigilantes and the Work of Shame.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 48: 1–12. The Running Man. 1987. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser. USA: Braveworld Productions, HBO Films. Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wacquant, Loïc. 2011. “The Punitive Regulation of Poverty in the Neoliberal Age.” OpenDemocracy.net. August 1, 2011. https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ loïc-wacquant/punitive-regulation-of-poverty-in-neoliberal-age. Wedlock. 1991. Directed by Lewis Teague. USA: HBO Films. Welch, Michael. 2015. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Williams, Rhiannon. 2014. “Prisoners ‘Could Serve a 1000 Year Sentence in Eight Hours’.” The Telegraph, March 14, 2014. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10697529/Prisoners-could-serve-1000-year-sentence-in-eight-hours. html. Wrisley, Samantha Pinson. 2016. “Neoliberalism and the Cultural Politics of Shame.” Academia.edu (Spring 2016): 1–14. https://www.academia.edu/28575508/ Neoliberalism_and_the_Cultural_Politics_of_Shame. Xenakis, Sappho. 2018. “Whither Neoliberal Penality? The Past, Present and Future of Imprisonment in the US.” Punishment & Society, January 25, 2018. https:// doi-org.ursus-proxy-1.ursus.maine.edu/10.1177/1462474517751911. Zoulis, Christopher. 2018. “Sex Offender Registries: Common Sense or Nonsense?” Criminal Legal News (June 2018): 1. https://www.criminallegalnews.org/ news/2018/may/15/ex-offender-registries-common-sense-or-nonsense/.

Carceral Imaginaries in Science Fiction: Toward a Palimpsestic Understanding of Penality Kaitlyn Quinn, Erika Canossini and Vanessa Evans

Introduction Black Mirror, created and written by Charlie Brooker, is a British science fiction television series which aired on Channel 4 before being purchased by Netflix. The anthology series has had four seasons and was most recently (2018) re-imagined as an interactive film. Each episode delivers a cautionary parable about the direction of our contemporary reality, sketching the contours of a not-so-distant dystopian future (Brooker et al. 2018). The continuity of these stand-alone episodes lies in their wariness of technological advancement and their illumination of the unanticipated consequences of “progress.” These episodes are also creative meditations on penality, wherein each narrative invites—and in many cases demands—viewers to contend with complicated, provocative, and emotional stories about punishment, technology, and what it might mean to be a citizen of such imagined futures.

K. Quinn (*) · E. Canossini  Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] E. Canossini e-mail: [email protected] V. Evans  Department of English, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_28

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As the producers of the series assert, “we pitched Black Mirror as the fears of the day. Things that hadn’t been dramatized. Things that people didn’t quite realize were unsettling them” (Brooker et al. 2018, “Series One”). Positioning the audience as voyeurs or penal spectators (Linnemann 2015), Black Mirror strikes a complex balance between fiction and the popular imaginary (Page and Goodman 2018, 4). As a result, we hold the Black Mirror series as an important site for the cultural (re-)production of penality (Page and Goodman 2018; Linnemann 2015; Smith 2009). In this paper, we place representations of penality in Black Mirror episodes alongside punishment and society scholarship to ask: how might a dystopian/fictional representation of punishment inform our understanding of the longue durée of penal change? While we do not suggest that creative sources can (or should) replace empirical research, following scholars Joshua Page and Phil Goodman (2018), we see fictional accounts as particularly generative sources for theorizing, “opening up new and different questions and alternative approaches to investigating the social world, as well as novel means of communicating findings and arguments” (3). Therefore, the purpose of this study is twofold: (i) to position fictional and creative sources of data as valid, important, and complementary to empirical research on punishment; and (ii) to take seriously what the carceral themes in Black Mirror can offer us in terms of theorizing processes of penal change. To date, a large and growing body of literature has investigated the changing practices, logics, and technologies of punishment. A number of these accounts have underscored abrupt breaks with previous forms of punishment and the beginning of new penal eras. However, recent works have challenged this conception, advancing a more complex understanding of penality in which former logics are recombined and reconfigured. We side with the latter perspective, extending it with a new metaphor for thinking about penal change: palimpsestic penality. Through this metaphor, we posit that shifting penal logics are continually superimposed, eroded, and re-imagined. This concept simultaneously allows us to free our theorizing from the strictures of linear time, as we invite scholars to reverse their viewpoint—to engage in a kind of productive presentism as a complement to historicism. We argue that penal change is fundamentally an interpretive process.

Literature Review Changes in punishment (its practices, ideologies, and technologies) have long been the site of significant attention (e.g., Durkheim 1997; Rusche and Kirchheimer 2003; Foucault 1995; Garland 2001). Existing scholarship tends to theorize penal change in one of two ways: as “rupture” or as “reconfiguration.” The former typically prioritizes “significant, widespread breaks with past practices, philosophies, and discourses” (Rubin 2016, 421). Examples include the emergence of a “new penology” (Feeley and Simon 1992), the

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shift toward “governing through crime” (Simon 2007), and the beginning of an era of “mass” and/or “hyper incarceration” (Garland 2001; Wacquant 2001). Recent scholarship has challenged these macro- and rupture-based accounts, moving toward more complex and variegated understandings of penality. Punishment has been variously conceived as “braided” (Hutchinson 2006), “assembled” (Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat 2006), “layered” (Rubin 2016), or “agonistic” (Goodman et al. 2015, 2017). Contrasting rupture accounts and reconfiguration scholarship understands penal change as occurring through shifts of emphasis rather than major upheavals. Aligning with and extending the latter scholarship, we seek to provide a new metaphor for thinking about penal change—one that accommodates a non-linear temporality and therefore sharpens our understanding of past penal logics in light of the present. In the paragraphs that follow, we will outline what we see as the weaknesses with existing reconfiguration approaches to set the stage for a palimpsestic understanding as a significant step forward in conceptualizing processes of penal change. Arguing that the coherence of modern penality is overplayed by rupture accounts, Hutchinson’s (2006) metaphor of braiding relies on the continuous weaving of punitive and reform impulses. While this approach is polylithic—like a conglomerate rock formation—we feel that this account simply transfers the problems of the rupture accounts downstream. While penality as a whole is certainly disaggregated by reference to braiding punitive and reform impulses, these too, must be unpacked, explored, and conceptualized as variegated in nature. With their concept of assemblages, Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat (2006) make progress in this regard. Penal logics can “combine, merge and continually reassemble…with other logics” and can be “reinvented and retrofitted in response to institutional agendas” (439–440). Penal change is therefore a process of adaptation and evolution— not merely of recombination. The blending of penal logics and technologies mutate core principles and their application results in novel possibilities for control and governance. However, both braiding and assemblage metaphors fail to provide guidance on how these logics, ideologies, and practices are combined. Goodman et al. (2015, 2017) and Rubin (2016, 2019) take considerable steps in this direction. Drawing on field theory, Goodman et al. (2015, 2017) see the penal field as agonistic: an emergent feature of continuous contestation. As a result, penal change is an agentic process impacted by variegated struggle among actors in the penal field. However, a number of scholars have suggested that the role of conflict is overplayed in field theoretical accounts such as this (e.g., Martin 2003; Savage and Silva 2013). Drawing inspiration from historical institutionalism, Rubin (2016, 422) elaborates on the metaphor of penal layers to illustrate how “new reforms often coexist with, rather than fully replace, prior technologies.” This metaphor builds on a topographical understanding of displacement over time, whereby

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“existing layers may be displaced, but not necessarily eliminated” (Rubin 2016, 422). Past penal logics might move to the background, but they remain present. As a result, even when submerged, they continue to play a role in shaping penality. The concept of penal layering allows Rubin to illustrate the relationship between deep layers and shallow layers. She answers the call for how that we found absent in Hutchinson (2006) and Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat (2006), by referencing the depth, thickness, density, and horizontal extension of penal layers. Rubin (2019) further elaborates on this mechanism of change by drawing attention to “legal templates” as conditioning the particular form punishment will take. With this development, she disrupts the deterministic relationship between form and ideology. However, Rubin’s (2016) topographical metaphor is limited by its linear understanding of historical time—submerged layers impact shallow layers, but not vice versa. One way to move forward amid this complexity is, as Swedberg (2012) suggests, to turn from theories (of penal change) to theorizing (penal change). Now, “theorizing is more than just a grammatical move, turning a noun into a verb. It is the acknowledgment that social inquiry is messy and difficult” (Schneiderhan 2016, 67). Theorizing prioritizes creativity, imagination, and diverse sources of inspiration, including fiction (see also Wakeman 2018; Rafter and Brown 2011; Ruggiero 2003). Accordingly, in this paper we draw on the genre of science fiction (SF)—Black Mirror in particular—as a valid source of data that is both meaningful and complimentary to empirical research on punishment (Page and Goodman 2018; Linnemann 2015; Smith 2009; Duncan 1996; Bender 1987). Science Fiction allows us to mine data from imagined worlds in ideal and close proximity to our own through the cognitive estrangement of its audience (Suvin 1979). It can “challenge basic assumptions that shape how we elicit, hear, interpret, and present stories” (Page and Goodman 2018, 3). In this way, attempts at understanding such foreign landscapes coincide with a sense of alienation that unsettles the audience within the boundaries of what they can imagine (Suvin 1979). A defining feature of SF is its nova, a “strange newness” that sets its world apart from what we know to exist in our own reality (Suvin 1972). For much SF, these nova are technological advancements like the Automated Drone Insects (ADIs) and “cookies” of Black Mirror. These particular nova emphasize an important distortion between the world we know and the one we are viewing. In this way, SF functions somewhat satirically with an estranged offering that must be possible (Ketterer et al. 2005). As the series producers explain, “the art of Black Mirror is to stay within a box that isn’t too far away from people’s perspectives. So then they fall into the box with you, and you can shake the box around, bang their heads and upset them a lot” (Brooker et al. 2018, “USS Callister”).

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Palimpsestic Penality Contrary to existing accounts, we believe that punishment is both cumulatively developed and retrospectively reflected upon. Motivated by widespread calls for sociological historicism (e.g., Bryant and Hall 2005), we argue for the addition of the reverse—a productive presentism—that takes seriously how contemporary understandings inform our interpretation of the past. Sociological historicism prioritizes the importance of the past in informing present arrangements—“the present, in other words, is what the past–as received and creatively interpreted by the present–has made it” (Bryant 1994, 11). We seek to make the case for reading history “backwards,” in which the goal is not a greater understanding of the present in light of the past, but of the past in light of the present. Current understandings of punishment impact how we see, understand, and reproduce narratives of penal change. Penal change, then, is an interpretive process. We act on the basis of meaning, which is derived from social interaction and modified by an ongoing interpretive process (Blumer 1986 [1969], 2). By emphasizing flexible directionality, interpretation, and reflection, we seek to destabilize the impulse to reify strands, layers, or sides of punishment. Instead, we posit that in the process of combination, various penal logics bleed and blur into one another across time and space, such that it is no longer analytically useful to maintain a reified understanding of their distinctions. Continual reinterpretation of the past triggers a recursive cycle in which penal logics across time are both “structured” and “structuring” (Giddens 1984). We believe that penal change can be most productively captured by our notion of palimpsestic penality which uses the idea of the palimpsest as a heuristic device. While a physical palimpsest is tied to events in time and therefore bound to a particular form of sequencing (like penal layers as a topographical metaphor), our adaptation moves away from the strictures of linear temporality to think of the palimpsest as an analytical convention. Historically, a palimpsest is a manuscript page with the original text scraped or washed off, making it reusable. With the passing of time, faint traces of previous writing reappear enough that scholars can reconstruct and decipher parts of the earlier text. However, these reconstructions of the past are refracted through what has since been superimposed. With respect to punishment, past penal logics give way to contemporary logics (as old text in a palimpsest), but traces remain and transfigure both the present penal configuration and our interpretation of this past penality. Accordingly, we define palimpsestic penality as: A framework for understanding the ways in which logics of punishment may mutate outside the strictures of linear temporality, continually being superimposed, eroded, and re-imagined, as new ideas integrate with those being effaced. This metaphor is intended to inform our understanding of penal logics as mutable, informing, and altering the past simultaneously with the future. To exemplify our concept, we turn to Black Mirror to illustrate the value of this metaphor for understanding the messiness of penal change and the value of engaging in a productive presentism.

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Data and Methods This analysis is based on qualitative coding of all 19 Black Mirror episodes. Each episode was watched and open coded a minimum of two times by each of our three co-authors; we shared our notes and impressions on each viewing to ensure strong inter-coder reliability in our analysis. In this paper, we anchor our analysis in the structure and storyline of Episode 19: Black Museum. It is our contention that this particular episode performs a palimpsest of the whole series. By describing and analyzing how vigilante justice is constructed within and between Black Museum and our three selected episodes, we will illustrate our palimpsestic understanding of punishment. These particular episodes allow us to exemplify how the combination of penal practices and logics impact not only “contemporary” punishment as an outcome, but also the way we perceive, interpret, and analyze elements of the past in light of Black Museum. Penal change, therefore, is not simply derivative of recombinant penal logics or development over time, but is structured by and structures the past simultaneously with the future (see Giddens 1984). Like the ink on the page, penal logics blur, efface, and bleed into one another, and in so doing multiply and open opportunities for alternative forms of punishment.

Analysis Our analysis begins with a brief summary of the final episode in the fourth season, Black Museum. Both the title and the opening song support our reading of this episode as a palimpsest of the entire series. “Always Something There to Remind Me,” performed by Dionne Warwick, tells a story of a former lover wandering around a city, visiting nostalgic spots, and seeing them now in the light of the relationship’s end. The palimpsest, too, allows us to “visit” the effaced text of the manuscript page, but only through the screen of everything that has been written on top of it. The title of the episode, “Black Museum,” also invokes this same sense of reflective wandering. In a museum, one is confronted with a curated exhibit, and yet is free to view artifacts in an alternate order. Patron experience of the space as a whole (and individual artifacts in particular) will differ on the basis of the choices they make. Black Museum This episode is presented as a sequence of three different stories told by the owner of the museum, Rolo Haynes, to his sole visitor Nish. Each of the museum’s inlayed artifacts explores technological advancements related to the human brain that were developed by Rolo. Rolo recounts the history of these artifacts for Nish while regular viewers watch and recognize them as technologies from previous episodes. Rolo brings Nish and the viewers to the main attraction: a

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hologram projection of Clayton Leigh, a man who was convicted of homicide and subsequently executed. Clayton sold his post-death consciousness to Rolo in exchange for funds that would support his family after his execution. As a result of cookie technology, which allows a digital copy of one’s consciousness to be extracted and placed anywhere, this hologram is both conscious and sentient, despite being constructed of digital code. Rolo confines Clayton’s hologram to a prison-like cell on display for paying customers who can pull a lever and electrocute him all over again. These executions create a keychain souvenir with a hologram copy of Clayton’s consciousness in eternal agony for patrons to take home. It is our contention that through its museum format, this particular episode performs a palimpsest of the entire series. Through a sequence of selected previous episodes, we will now detail this progression. Touring the Black Museum, the camera briefly settles on a DNA box containing a lollipop, recalling season 4, episode 1: USS Callister. In this episode, Robert Daly is the brains behind Callister Inc., a technology company that developed an online multiplayer virtual reality game, Infinity. Bullied and openly mocked by his employees, Daly has created his own quarantined universe within Infinity where he can live out his fantasies, escaping his unfulfilling work and interpersonal life. By covertly gathering DNA samples from his colleagues around the office (plastic cups, lollipops, and so forth), Daly uses cookie technology to insert his real-life bullies into a virtual reality: a “digital torture chamber” (Brooker et al. 2018, USS Callister). In there, he is in control as captain of the USS Callister, a spaceship from his favorite television series Space Fleet. Infinity, then, is not merely a personalized video game in which Daly can play out his fantasies; for the crew members imported inside it is their reality. These digital copies are fully aware that they are trapped in a constructed reality, imprisoned by digital code, and subject to Daly’s every whim. The digital copies of his employees are forced to perform particular roles with any show of resistance resulting in severe punishment (suffocation, transmutation, etc.). Among the other artifacts in the Black Museum is a mannequin wearing a black mask with a white symbol, recalling the costume worn by a “hunter” in episode 2 of season 2: White Bear (see Chapter 29 in this collection). White Bear follows Victoria, whose mugshot is displayed at the entrance of Black Museum. At that episode’s start, Victoria wakes to an empty house with no recollection of who she is. In this unfamiliar neighborhood, people appear to be controlled by a TV signal. Crowds follow her, recording her on their phones as she is chased by hunters. Only at the end of the episode, after a terrifying and exhausting pursuit, is Victoria’s past revealed to her and to the audience: she is imprisoned in White Bear Justice Park as punishment for her part in the kidnapping and homicide of a child. What the audience has witnessed throughout the episode is a form of “eye-for-an-eye” punishment to what the community considers a “uniquely wicked and poisonous individual.” Victoria is forced to relive her punishment, over and over again, as her memory is wiped at the end of each day and she is returned to her position at the opening of the episode.

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As Nish and Rolo move through the museum, viewers catch a glimpse of an Automated Drone Insect (ADI) on display and are reminded of episode 6 of season 3: Hated in the Nation. This murder mystery follows detectives Coulson and Parke who try to solve the deaths of people targeted by the hashtag #DeathTo on social media. They eventually discover a link between the hashtag and the ADIs manufactured by tech giant Granular to replace the collapsed bee population. By naming someone currently unpopular on social media with the hashtag, the ADIs are triggered to target and kill them. It is later revealed that the ADIs carry a digital manifesto written by Scholes, a previous employee of Granular, who calls for the punishment of those hiding behind the kind of anonymity permitted by social media—a “Game of Consequences.” In a plot twist, the hashtag’s true targets turn out to be the 387,036 people who participated in the game by tweeting the hashtag; a poignant commentary on “social media’s keyboard warriors” (Brooker et al. 2018, Hated in the Nation). Turning back to Black Museum, it is our assertion that through the performance of Nish’s guided tour, each encased artifact represents a part of the palimpsest. Walking through the museum, Nish observes Rolo’s organization of the technologies that came before, were effaced, and have ultimately made possible the display housing Clayton’s digital consciousness. We do not know anything about time as we watch the series’ episodes and are unable to sort the events under a linear progression. Such disjunction forces viewers to assume an unfamiliar “future” as a result of the technological advancements being observed. When we get to “Black Museum,” we can, for the first time, put the preceding episodes in conversation. Here, the series becomes cumulative—“[the episodes] build and interlock at the end” (Brooker et al. 2018, “Black Museum”). Remember that the main attraction of the museum is the interactive exhibit in which visitors can enact capital punishment upon a sentient hologram of Clayton, who despite feeling the full pain of his electrocution, is unable to die. Knowledge of previous episodes and their artifact’s illuminates the history that enabled Clayton’s particular punishment, itself representative of the cumulative palimpsest. The iterations of punishment embodied in the three episodes already discussed help us understand the logics, motivations, and effects of Clayton’s punishment. However, reading the episodes “backwards” also serves to illuminate how the past is re-interpreted as a result of Clayton’s imprisonment. For clarity, we will trace the transfiguration, effacement, and reinterpretation of just a small part of this palimpsest—one punitive impulse—throughout these episodes. While we have chosen a particular order to present our analysis, our metaphor necessitates that this be flexible. What follows is just one way of illustrating the interpretive journey of vigilante justice: The desire to enact the punishment others are thought to deserve. Our data presentation moves from Hated in the Nation, to White Bear, and finally USS Callister, revealing the gradual mutation of vigilante justice and its messy combination with other punitive impulses

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(such as prison tourism, permanent incapacitation). Throughout, we engage with the Clayton’s punishment as the contemporary lens through which to re-interpret past iterations of vigilante justice. Hated in the Nation As the producers of the series assert, Hated in the Nation asks of its viewers: “how much responsibility do I take in the world of social media, which seems to create some kind of artificial distance?” (Brooker et al. 2018, Hated in the Nation). This episode’s thread of vigilante justice informs and is informed by, Clayton’s digital imprisonment, providing a commentary on the way we punish by placing punishment in the hands of the many rather than the few—the people rather than the state. As such, Clayton becomes a proxy for museumgoers bent on punishing a “deserving” Black man in prison. For those targeted by #DeathTo, it is their online selves and reputations that suffer. These may not be conscious copies like Clayton, but they are undeniably extensions of the self-existing in digital code and unable to die. Patrons of the Black Museum are “innocent” because Clayton is just a hologram in the same way that #DeathTo is just a tweet—there is no fear of reprisal. Interesting, then, that both episodes fold back on such assumptions with further acts of vigilante justice that seek to punish those who assume too easily that their actions have no repercussions. Scholes mobilizes the ADIs to kill those on both sides of the hashtag, people prescribed as targets of public shaming and those making the prescriptions; Nish poisons Rolo, extracting his digital consciousness for imprisonment in a keychain. Viewing vigilante justice in Hated in the Nation through Clayton’s incarceration asks us to contend with issues of deservingness that operate like a moving target under rapid leaps in technological advancement. No sooner than we know the deadly result of #DeathTo, do we discover that Coulson has faked her own death to pursue Scholes outside the reach of the law. The episode closes under the heady implication that Coulson will reverse the tide of “justice” once again. This uncertain ending plays with ongoing complications related to deservingness, suggesting that such acts infinitely regress upon one another without resolution. White Bear This thread of vigilante justice is carried through to White Bear where, as the creators emphasize, “the focus is very much on how we bring people to justice and what outrages we can do if we feel we’re morally justified” (Brooker et al. 2018, White Bear). Victoria’s fiancé, who was the primary perpetrator of the crime, in some ways “escapes” punishment by taking his own life. The public thinks this was an evasion of justice and thus endorses the punishment of Victoria. Victoria filmed the murder without intervening.

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She now experiences a similar fate as the audience replicates her behavior. The host of the justice park asks her, “How do you like it now?” However, in this episode, this punitive impulse is diluted and effaced by elements of prison tourism and its inherent voyeurism. Visitors to White Bear Justice Park both participate in the punishment of a “deserving” criminal (as vigilantes would do), but also act as voyeurs to the process: “everyone watche[s] and enjoys it” (Brooker et al. 2018, White Bear). As the amusement park transforms into an institution of confinement, punishment becomes a performance for visitors to observe, record, and possibly share with others. Through this process of commodification, vigilante justice also acquires a public function. Although Victoria remains the main target, her punishment is not re-enacted for her own rehabilitation or repentance—her memory is erased every day—but rather for others to witness (and enjoy) how individuals are chastised for their crimes. Therefore, vigilantism absorbs a (potentially) deterrent impulse. This transfigured form of vigilantism speaks to Clayton’s exhibit in Black Museum as it similarly combines public shaming, the commodification of punishment, and voyeurism. Clayton and Victoria become spectacles for visitors, their pain is exploited, and they are forced to relive their punishment through the technology Rolo developed. Viewing White Bear in light of the developments of Black Museum invites the audience to consider what occurs when an object of voyeurism loses its attractiveness and public attention fades. No one has visited Black Museum in years when Nish arrives and finds Clayton’s hologram in his cell with a hollow expression. This suggests that visitors have become numb to Clayton’s anguish and are likely to do the same for Victoria’s. This apathy pushes us to reconsider our feelings about visitors’ excitement when witnessing Victoria’s suffering. What will happen to her when she is also forgotten and this theatrical performance exploiting her pain is no more captivating? Possibly, another “uniquely wicked and poisonous individual” will replace her. USS Callister Together, this combination of impulses toward vigilante justice and prison tourism is carried through to USS Callister and combined with (and transfigured by) the logic of permanent incapacitation. In the Infinity universe, a sense of vigilantism motivates game users to punish “deserving” people from their everyday life. But in this virtual world, we are only accountable to our own moral compass. Notions of deservingness are determined by our own fluctuating barometer. There is no threshold for inclusion in the game. We can do whatever we want to whomever we want—provided we can get our hands on a DNA sample. Complicating this idea further is that those placed in the game are not really people; they are just digital codes. Yet they think and feel like humans. USS Callister tests the boundaries of morality by asking:

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What would we do to others in our wildest dreams? What if there were no consequences? In this virtual universe, we are in control, without limits—the ultimate voyeurs to our own imaginations. The Infinity game and cookie technologies from USS Callister are what enable the transfer of a digital copy of any individual’s consciousness as well as the development of a “world” of one’s design—in Clayton’s case, a cell on death row. Death row takes on a different significance for Clayton as he cannot “die”; he is permanently incapacitated. His presence and his punishment transcend the laws of both reality and the state. After museum patrons execute Clayton, they take home a keychain souvenir commemorating his punishment. Punishment, here, becomes expandable. As with Clayton, this slippery combination of punishment and entertainment in Infinity is exacerbated by the limitless capacity of the game. When playing with digital code, we can be truly insatiable. Clayton’s torture and imprisonment play devil’s advocate to Daly’s comparatively benign Space Fleet reconstruction. Black Museum acts as a cautionary tale, showing what can happen when we become seduced by the fantasy of punishment (see also Katz 1988).

Conclusion Through our concept of palimpsestic penality, we have proposed that penal change is best conceptualized as the continual overlay and transfiguration of changing punitive impulses or logics. The act of theorizing penal change, then, is re-imagined as part of interpretive processes that reach toward the past and future simultaneously. We have mobilized Black Mirror episodes to illustrate this mechanism in action, arguing that “Black Museum” performs a palimpsest of the whole series. Our analysis demonstrates how the combination of penal practices and logics in Hated in the Nation, White Bear, and USS Callister impact not only “contemporary” punishment as an outcome via Clayton’s hologram, but also the way we perceive, interpret, and analyze elements of the past in light of Black Museum. Penal change, therefore, is not simply derivative of recombinant penal logics or development over time, but structured by and structuring the past simultaneously with the future (see Giddens 1984). We are not suggesting that our concept is the definitive “solution” to all remaining complexities regarding analyses of penal change. Rather, we lean on the value of “orienting statements” that operate to “identify a phenomenon, or social process, or mechanism and argue that it is important but overlooked or neglected in current theories” (Goldstone 2004, 50). We see palimpsestic penality as an orienting concept whose primary value is a change in perspective. We believe that seeing processes of penal change through the lens of the palimpsest can prompt other researchers to ask new and fruitful questions about existing theories, mechanisms, and events. While this concept emerges from fiction, we assert that it may also orient scholarship toward a greater appreciation of penality’s multiplicative, flexible, and

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processual character. As such, we also seek to embolden other researchers to take on board Swedberg’s (2012) call for theorizing and draw on new and creative sources for thinking and learning about punishment.

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Maurutto, Paula, and Kelly Hannah-Moffat. 2006. “Assembling Risk and the Restructuring of Penal Control.” British Journal of Criminology 46, no. 3: 438–454. Page, Joshua, and Philip Goodman. 2018. “Creative Disruption: Edward Bunker, Carceral Habitus, and the Criminological Value of Fiction.” Theoretical Criminology: 1362480618769866. Rafter, Nicole Hahn, and Michelle Brown. 2011. Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture. New York: New York University Press. Rubin, Ashley. 2016. “Penal Change as Penal Layering: A Case Study of Proto-Prison Adoption and Capital Punishment Reduction, 1785–1822.” Punishment & Society 18, no. 4: 420–441. Rubin, Ashley. 2019. “Punishment’s Legal Templates: A Theory of Formal Penal Change.” Law & Society Review 53, no. 2: 518–553. Ruggiero, V. 2003. Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction. New York: Verso. Rusche, Georg, and Otto Kirchheimer. 2003. Punishment and Social Structure. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Savage, Mike, and Elizabeth B. Silva. 2013. “Field Analysis in Cultural Sociology.” Cultural Sociology 7, no. 2: 111–126. Schneiderhan, Erik. 2016. “Theorizing Resistance.” The British Journal of Sociology 67, no. 1: 43–49. Simon, Jonathan. 2007. Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, C. 2009. The Prison and the American Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Suvin, Darko. 1972. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.” College English 34, no. 3: 372–382. Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Swedberg, Richard. 2012. “Theorizing in Sociology and Social Science: Turning to the Context of Discovery.” Theory and Society 41: 1–40. Wacquant, Loic. 2001. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Punishment & Society 3, no. 1: 95–133. Wakeman, S. 2018. “The ‘One Who Knocks’ and the ‘One Who Waits’: Gendered Violence in Breaking Bad.” Crime, Media, Culture 14, no. 2: 213–228.

It’s More Like an Eternal Waking Nightmare from Which There Is No Escape. Media and Technologies as (Digital) Prisons in Black Mirror Julie Escurignan and François Allard-Huver

Introduction: New Media, New Prisons? New forms of incarceration have emerged from the changing media environment. If information and communication technologies have been seen as ways to improve relations, communications and ultimately, people’s lives, they also have a darker side, often diminished or forgotten. From manipulating opinion through propaganda to new surveillance apparatuses, every medium can be used as a way to oppose or negate someone’s liberty. George Orwell’s 1984 showed the power of a totalitarian state controlling every medium in order to create the perfect prison state, for both the body and the mind of its citizens: changing events in the newspaper, destroying historical archives to control the future, creating simplistic songs to numb the masses or turning every ‘telescreen’ into a powerful surveillance device. These new forms of oppression have become more insidious, more intertwined in our everyday ‘USS Calister,’ Black Mirror, Season 4 episode 1. J. Escurignan (*)  University of Roehampton, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] F. Allard-Huver  University of Lorraine, Nancy, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_29

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life, more often accepted, and thus more dangerous. Not only can new media help deprive us of our liberty or free will, but they tend to turn every device, every interaction and therefore every citizen into an ‘inmate’ and, at the same time, into a ‘prison guard.’ Nonetheless, if in every epoch warning discourses have been intended to question the potential risks carried by every new medium—starting with Socrates criticizing writing—the changes brought by digital technologies and digital media are far from being as positive as those advertised by their accompanying discourses and promoters. Indeed, Manuel Castells, in The Internet Galaxy and his later works on the ‘network society,’ showed that from the very beginning the Internet has been torn between freedom and boundaries, liberty and control, privacy and surveillance. On the one side, the Internet has been developed following the ideals of its founding fathers— hippies, geeks and libertarians—who hoped to create a space in which ‘the values of individual freedom and open communication became paramount’ (2), in which ‘the values of individual freedom, of independent thinking, and of sharing and cooperation’ (24–25) could thrive. On the other side, governments, lobbies and companies very soon understood the potential of the Internet and networks to enforce new forms of surveillance and control in every aspect of one’s life: at work, at home, in the public space, in the digital space: ‘There has been so much enthusiasm about the freedom brought by the Internet that we have forgotten the persistence of authoritarian, surveillance practices’ (173). Moreover, these new forms of surveillance are only the preliminary stages to enforce one’s power over individuals and are for much of the time followed by punishments or incarceration. Nonetheless, the most perverse effects of these new means of surveillance and control means that not only were they often promoted as new ways to ensure citizens’ safety— protecting them from terrorists or pedophiles, for example—but they were also advocated as the best way to finally create a ‘transparent society’ in which everybody could be accountable. Manuel Castells precisely criticized the limits of this transparency ideology: ‘No one has ever been able to live in a transparent society. If this system of surveillance and control of the Internet develops fully, we will not be able to do as we please. We may have no liberty, and no place to hide’ (181). By seeking more transparency, we slowly renounced privacy and gave others—mostly governments and private companies—the means to ensure control over our lives, thus imprisoning us in a house of glass, a transparent prison where screens have become walls. If surveillance and control have often been at the center of criticism against new media, other problems emerge from their use. If they sometimes promote a false sense of liberation and revolution, they may actually create new forms of alienation or incarceration. For instance, Sherry Turkle has shown that new media often reverse our perspectives on how we consider our relations with others as well as the way we see a lack of privacy as something normal, even though it jeopardizes our liberty: ‘If you relinquish your privacy

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on MySpace or Facebook about everything from your musical preferences to your sexual hang-ups, you are less likely to be troubled by an anonymous government agency knowing whom you call or what websites you frequent. Some are even gratified by a certain public exposure; it feels like validation, not violation’ (263). The perspective is completely reversed, recalling the darkest hour of our history when Hitler predicted the future of the totalitarian state for the youth: ‘And they are no longer free their whole life and they are happy’ (Giesecke 1999, 17). How did our relationship with new media so quickly evolve from revolutionary communication devices to unprecedented and more alienating surveillance systems? How did our ‘liberating’ devices turn into new forms of servitude and detention for both the body and the mind? In this context, the British science fiction series Black Mirror stirs much debate around its representation of dystopian futures of Western societies. Often grim, pessimistic and technologically led, these representations confront the viewers with alternative societies deriving from the current use of new technologies. They not only question numerous forms of apparatus for surveillance and control, but also explore and suggest new forms of incarceration directly connected to our use of new media in a not-so-distant future. In each episode of the fourth season shown so far, multiple representations of real prisons or digital incarceration have thus been pictured: a personal grading system that limits freedom in the third season, a convict imprisoned in a torture theme park in season two’s White Bear or digital clones trapped in a Star Trek-like simulation under the yoke of a tyrannical and sadistic captain— their real-life boss’s avatar—in season four, USS Callister. These episodes present new forms of imprisonment, chosen or not, all linked with new media and technology. Using semiology and visual analysis, this work explores the diverse mediated forms of imprisonment in Black Mirror. We analyze more than a halfdozen episodes and the way each proposes, in its own way, a new form of incarceration. Drawing from Foucault’s reflections on penal systems and the bio-power apparatus created by Western societies (Foucault 1975, 1984), this chapter relies on the idea of a new panopticon, as crafted by Bentham, developed by Foucault and reused by the authors (Allard-Huver and Escurignan 2018) to analyze the representation of the notion of ‘prison.’ Indeed, in this new panopticon, mobile devices and social media serve as ‘disciplinary’ tools to normalize people’s behavior.

Surveillance, Interveillance and the Digital Panopticon In previous work, we explored the links between Bentham’s vision of a perfect prison—the panopticon—and Foucault’s theorization of this model, from which resulted a more complex structure in which he assumed that most parts of our modern societies are constructed as a panopticon in order to assume

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surveillance and control over citizens (Foucault 1975). Moreover, Bentham’s theorization of the panopticon not only involves controlling effectively the environments of incarcerated people, but also instills the idea that the surveillance apparatus is everywhere, in every moment, thus obliterating every ‘dark corner’ but also every inch of freedom: ‘Cells, communications, outlets, approaches, there ought not anywhere to be a single foot square, on which man or boy shall be able to plant himself—no not for a moment— under any assurance of not being observed. Leave but a single spot thus unguarded, that spot will be sure to be a lurking-place for the most reprobate of the prisoners, and the scene of all sorts of forbidden practices’ (Bentham 1843, 154). Foucault also thought that the panopticon was the main model adopted by modern societies to create environments to control citizens: From schools to factories, everything seems to be built on the idea of surveillance and restraining freedom. In addition, he also explored how this architectural model was in fact the cornerstone of what he called bio-power, which is a ‘set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power’ (Foucault 1975, 16) and more specifically how this strategy of power was ultimately enforced to ensure ‘the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’ (Foucault 1975, 140). What interests us here is not how Foucault described the prison system or the control of ‘insanity’ by modern societies, but how he focused some of his work on the ‘emergence of technologies of security within mechanisms that are specific mechanisms of social control’ (Foucault 1975, 25), and how digital media and digital devices can be seen as similar technologies of control, security, surveillance or even coercion. Drawing from these concepts, we observed how, in Black Mirror, ‘mobile devices and social media serve as “disciplinary” tools to normalize people’s behavior’ (Allard-Huver and Escurignan 2018). In the changing media environment, digital media and digital communication devices are not only means of surveillance; they create an environment in which every citizen becomes a guardian himself. As explained by André Jansson, the logic of surveillance is substituted by a culture of interveillance ‘in which people enjoy following the activities of others as well as the automatized reflections of their own “data doubles”’ (Jansson 2012, 415). In this perspective, controlling and observing is not exerted vertically, from top to bottom, but horizontally. Thus, new media seem to imprison us in a system where every citizen willingly complies to surrender his right to privacy and anonymity. We first observed how, in Nosedive, the first episode of Black Mirror’s third season, new media creates a digital panopticon. In this story, a young woman named Lacie Pound lives in a world where everybody rates and is rated by everyone and where every social interaction is observed through digital media, in this case a special type of contact lens. Falling to observe the rules, showing deviant behavior—being sincere and not faking emotions

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or relations—not respecting the digital panopticon inherent to this interveillance culture result in one being punished. The punishment ranges from social rejection to imprisonment. Indeed, the notation system creates a constant mise-en-scene of everyday life where most of the actors, including Lacie Pound, act in a calculated, predictable and very polite manner only motivated by the consciousness of being both observed and judged at all times, as also happens in Bentham’s panopticon. In this episode, if incarceration is the final sanction for those failing to have a positive enough grade, the idea of the panopticon is transformed, with digital devices playing the roles of walls and everybody being both the warden of others as well as their own self-warden. In the episode, incarceration takes numerous forms: One colleague of Lacie sees his access from the workplace revoked because of a low grade; with a grade below 4.2, Lacie cannot take her flight or rent a car, nor can she access a high standard gated community because of the strict rule: ‘Minimum entry 3.8. No exception.’ Here, digital devices create a new form of social exclusion and very real forms of privation of liberty: liberty of movement, liberty to work, liberty of expression. Therefore, those who do not comply with the digital panopticon not only lose their good grades but they are also marked with an infamous sigil for everyone to see and to further degrade or exclude them. For Michael Schur, Nosedive’s writer, this dystopian setting is not as much a: ‘near future [as] a parallel present’ (2016).1 Recent developments in the Chinese social control system—with citizens being graded for their online behavior and given access or not to travel depending on their grade—lead us to think that Nosedive’s parallel society is now following a collision course with our own. The society explored in Nosedive is the perfect depiction of a digital panopticon. Self-surveillance and interveillance have been accepted by the population in the most perverse way as grades serve as the principal currency and thus create a system which rewards its members for being good voyeurs, perfectly submissive and participating inmates. This turns the whole logic of the panopticon on end as the prison is now without walls and the sentence is a life sentence. Or in another way, the show pushes the logic of the panopticon to its maximum extent, reminding the philosophical and ideological principles behind the panopticon. Indeed, if we see Bentham as the architect of the panopticon—the apparatus of an almighty power who wishes to see everything at all times—he is also one of the first to promote transparency at the service of the State, as a way to protect citizens and as a personal code of conduct: ‘my endeavors shall be constantly directed to giving to them the greatest degree of transparency’ (Bentham 1843, 145). However, what started as a positive and sound principle turned into a fear: ‘A fear haunted the latter half of the eighteenth century: the fear of darkened spaces, of the pall of gloom which prevents the full visibility of things, men and truths’ (Foucault 1980, 153). Hence, transparency shall be everywhere, even in the thoughts of men, in order to eradicate all dark corners.

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In 2014, Christmas special White Christmas, the show explores a new communication device called ‘Eye-Link’ inserted in the brain of the subject. This device allows someone to see through somebody’s eyes or memories, to communicate, make copies of someone’s consciousness—in a small object called a ‘cookie’—but also to ‘block’ them, by literally taking them out of sight and hearing through a blurry filter. In this episode, the two main protagonists, Matt and Joe, are trapped in a remote cabin together for Christmas after spending five years together, with nothing more to do than to share memories about their past. Matt confides to Joe about the nature of his previous work. Not only did he serve as a relationship coach for people using the ‘Eye Link’ but he also created copies of people’s consciousness later used as digital ‘personal assistant’ for smart houses. Joe, who was at first reluctant to share his past, is so bored that he finally agrees to tell his story to Matt. In a previous relationship, he was ‘blocked’ by his ex-girlfriend who later found out she was pregnant. Joe started to stalk her and the little girl whom he believed to be his daughter. When the woman suddenly died in a train crash, Joe decided to join the little girl and her grandfather who were both living in a remote cabin away from civilization. When the grandfather told Joe he was not the biological father of the girl, Joe killed him in anger and left the dead old man and the little girl alone, who ultimately also died in the cabin. At the end of the episode, we understand that Matt was not really talking to Joe himself but to his digital duplicate located in a ‘cookie.’ Matt was playing the role of a ‘snitch’ in order to obtain a confession from Joe’s digital duplicate. The whole story actually took place in a digital environment created by Matt to obtain a confession, the cabin being nothing more than a digital prison for Joe’s digital clone. The different levels of imprisonment in this episode are complex as well as significant if we consider not only the idea of the panopticon, but also the concept of bio-power and its apparatuses. Indeed, the first level of imprisonment is the cabin in which the two men share their memories. But as is revealed at the end of the episode, the cabin is in fact a digital panopticon where police officers monitor the interactions between the two digital avatars in order to indict the ‘real’ Joe and obtain the murder confession from him. Here, only Matt is conscious that he is observed at all times. Joe is not aware of this intrusion. Transparency has become a new form of imprisonment, and the house of glass becomes the prison of glass. The digital panopticon leaves no dark corners: The mind of the prisoner or its digital copy, both can be used against him; even memories are exposed to the power of the eye and can thus deprive people of their freedom. Hence, the new media technologies shown in these two episodes question the notion of the panopticon by creating and exploring digital panopticons. By feeling and sharing the life of the protagonist we are made aware of some of the dark consequences of our interveillance culture. However, if the nature of the prison and the relationship between the prison and digital media are explored here in different ways, the concept of bio-power developed in Discipline and Punish can be further examined in other black mirrors.

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Will Digital Media Discipline and Punish Our (Digital) Bodies? In Black Mirror, the evolution of digital media or digital devices is never a simple pretext, it is always the starting point of a reflexive thought on how these technologies have modified the way we perceive our world and how, the more we trust them, the more freedom and free will we give away. Interestingly, the show also explores the complex and intimate relationships we create with digital apparatuses. They are not only devices we use or interact with, they are also devices which, at some level, shape our bodies and minds. We let them penetrate our intimacies in a very invasive way that can also be seen as a form of submission. In the second season of Black Mirror, the idea of disciplining and punishing someone’s body with the help of digital media is presented in White Bear (discussed elsewhere in this collection in Chapter 20). The episode pictures what appears to be a living nightmare for Victoria, an amnesiac woman chased by ‘hunters’ while passive ‘voyeurs’ record the action on their smartphones. A glyph that appears on televisions, computers, phones, ‘everything with a screen’ and which seems to ‘manipulate’ people’s minds, is also present on the face of the hunters. At first alone, Victoria finds help in Jem, another woman escaping hunters and trying to deactivate the transmitter apparently turning men into hunters or voyeurs. After a fearful hunt, both women finally try to shut down the transmitter. Then the truth is revealed: Victoria is a convicted murderer who abducted a young girl and filmed while her fiancé tortured and killed her. All the action takes place in the ‘White Bear Justice Park,’ an amusement park built around Victoria’s sentencing for her crime and she has to relive the hunt every day. In order to do so, a digital device is used to erase her memory every evening so she does not recollect her past. Hunters and adjuvants are actors/wardens and voyeurs are guests visiting the park and participating in her sentence. This episode is one of the most significant for this research on the links between new media and prison. Indeed, the ‘park’ reminds us of the old tradition of what Michel Foucault called the ‘spectacle of the scaffold’ or more precisely ‘punishment-as-spectacle’: ‘the insatiable curiosity that drove the spectators to the scaffold to witness the spectacle of sufferings truly endured’ (Foucault 1975, 88). Remarkably, in this ‘punishment-as-spectacle,’ the body ‘produced and reproduced the truth of the crime,’ the punishment thus becoming a ritual of which sole purpose is to show that the crime committed is ‘inscribed’ on the body ‘in the most striking way.’ Nonetheless, there is no spectacle without an audience which could sometimes become the ‘actor’ of the punishment ritual: ‘Not only must people know, they must see with their own eyes. Because they must be made to be afraid; but also because they must be the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment, and because they must to a certain extent take part in it’ (Foucault 1975, 107).

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If Foucault states that this kind of punishment diminished or almost disappeared after the nineteenth century in the western world, Black Mirror’s ‘White Bear Justice Park’ recreates and amplifies the worst parts of the carceral and punitive system. Indeed, every ‘voyeur’ is here to witness Victoria enduring her conviction and sentence. The fact that they use hidden cameras to observe her or their cellphones to record and take pictures, which is not only allowed but encouraged by the wardens, plays a dual role similar to the punishment-as-spectacle theorized by Foucault: Not only does the punishment resemble the crime but spectators must become actors of it. Nonetheless, this unique digitally enhanced punishment-as-spectacle also contradicts the purpose of the traditional sentence: If communication and media devices amplify the suffering of the victim, they should normally serve as a reminder of her crime. However here, Victoria has no recollection of it, making the imprisonment and the sentence even more pointlessly cruel. Finally, Black Mirror uses visual elements to foster our reflection and to suggest a ‘moral’ to the story: The glyph that appears everywhere is, as we learn at the end of the episode, Victoria’s fiancé’s neck tattoo. Jem, the woman playing the role of Victoria’s adjuvant, gives an important insight on the situation in which the protagonists live: ‘Screens […] They did something to people. Like, almost everybody just became onlookers, started watching, filming stuff, like spectators who don’t give a shit about what happens.’ The glyph is therefore to be understood as the symbol of the omnipresence of the media system and of its incursion in every corner of our lives and bodies, as well as to the transformation of our nature and tolerance to violence. In addition to exploring the discipline and subjection imposed on our bodies by digital media, Black Mirror interrogates the nature of our digital double, our avatars and the relationship we have with them, while also questioning the power these doubles have on our ‘real’ offline selves. Indeed, during the episode White Christmas we understand that the ‘cookie’ is a digital panopticon but also a torture device for the digital avatars falling into Matt’s hands: In order to create perfect digital ‘personal assistants’ for smart houses he duplicates the owner’s consciousness in a ‘cookie.’ The digital avatar is then forced to obey and serve its ‘real’ self and if not compliant, it is tortured by Matt who distorts time perception in the device: Seconds become weeks, minutes become years during which the digital avatar has nothing to do and cannot escape the emptiness of its digital prison. Bored-out, the digital avatar eventually obeys and accepts becoming a ‘personal assistant.’ At the end of this episode, every protagonist gets convicted and condemned to a form of imprisonment: The ‘real’ Joe remains in jail for murder, his ‘digital avatar’ stays trapped in the cabin where minutes become years, and Matt, although being freed from prison, is now labeled a ‘voyeur.’ As a sentence, he becomes ‘blocked’ by everyone carrying the ‘eye-link’: Everybody is ‘blurred’ for him and he appears in a red ‘pixelization.’ Hence, not only is Matt’s digital avatar visually ‘branded’ and ‘marked’ to punish him for his offense, but he is also

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deprived of contact and communication with everyone else. If he retains his freedom of movement, he is in a new digital prison which effectively isolates him from the rest of the world. As Foucault describes it, isolation is the first principle of every form of incarceration. If isolation is a means to avoid further crimes, Beaumont and Tocqueville noted in their report on the American prison system that it also serves a punitive purpose: ‘Thrown into solitude, the convict reflects. Placed alone in the presence of his crime, he learns to hate it, and, if his soul is not yet blunted by evil, it is in isolation that remorse will come to assail him’ (Beaumont and Tocqueville 1831, 109). Visually, the color white is omnipresent in the episode as a reminder of its title, White Christmas, as well as a reminiscence of all levels of imprisonment, torture and suffering encountered: the white vastness where the little girl was left alone with her dead grandfather, the isolation of the digital cabin that plays the role of both Joe’s avatar torture and the imprisonment apparatus, the white wall of Joe’s real prison cell and finally, the white noise and blurriness that now surround Matt every time he tries to interact with someone. Thus, digital media can also create new punishment forms imbedded in the subjection they foster, directly or indirectly, for those using them. The idea that digital devices can become digital prisons for our digital doubles is explored in multiple episodes of the show, always interrogating our relationship with them. The episode Black Museum evoked the Metropolitan Police’s museum of crime housed in Scotland Yard and depicts a museum of crime-related objects, but also presents some of the show’s most concerning apparatuses of imprisonment. The most disturbing is the re-creation of a prison cell for the digital double of a murder convict, Clayton Leigh, sentenced to the electric chair. At the moment of his death, the digital double of the man’s consciousness was copied by the museum’s curator, a former scientist with dubious morality, in order to be the principal ‘attraction’ of his exhibition. Represented by a hologram, the digital double of the man is not only trapped within the cell, he is also subject to a horrific reenactment of his sentence: Every museum visitor can pull the lever to electrocute him again and witness his ‘digital’ execution. Even more dreadfully, at the end of the ten seconds of brutal digital execution, the episode shows that every visitor receives a keychain showing what looks like a video of Clayton’s tormented face, but which is in fact, according to the curator, a real fragment of Clayton’s mind: ‘Every time you finished juicing him out pops a conscious sentient snapshot of Clayton. Not a recording a true copy of his mind perpetually experiencing that beautiful pain. Stuck forever in that one perfect moment of agony. Always on, always suffering.’ All communication and visual devices serve here as punitive devices to punish both the body and the mind. The body is restrained, the digital body is incarcerated and tortured and so is the mind of the prisoner. It evokes the most brutal forms of torture and of the ‘liturgy of punishment’ where ‘the very excess of the violence employed is one of the elements of its glory: the fact that the guilty man should moan and

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cry out under the blows is not a shameful side-effect, it is the very ceremonial of justice being expressed in all its force’ (Foucault 1975, 90). In addition to this ceremonial of the execution which visitors re-enact over and over, the keychains they take home are the symbols of ‘those tortures that take place even after death,’ and where ‘justice pursues the body beyond all possible pain’ (Foucault 1975, 65). The digital device originally created to save a person’s mind becomes an object of everlasting incarceration and torture, to discipline and punish the mind of the convicted forever, and more sadistically, for the pleasure of tourists. Finally, in the first episode of the show’s latest season, USS Callister, we observe how a somewhat reclusive and underappreciated game designer creates digital copies of his colleagues and traps them in his own version of the game in order to enslave and subjugate them to his will. In this case, the digital media, the video game, is used to create a spectacle which serves the ‘rectification’ process the game designer decided to inflict on those who did him wrong in ‘real’ life or worse, to enslave women which the affection he has difficulty gaining in his life. The digital body becomes an object, a commodity, which can be bent, tortured or even monstrously twisted for the amusement of the creator. If we do not have yet technologies able to originate digital copies of one’s consciousness, these episodes question the traces we leave behind us. They also interrogate how we define and invest our online identities and ‘digital’ doubles. By watching the avatars trapped in the USS Callister, Clayton’s digital prison, the show arouses our reflexivity toward new media: What part of these digital selves can also become a liability for ourselves and our real life? The more we invest ourselves in these online identities, the more we fear seeing them used against our will and become new prisons.

Conclusion: From Digital Prison to Digital Heterotopias The more we explore the digital prisons created by Black Mirror’s episodes, the more we find out that the show not only explores existing or possible punitive and imprisonment apparatuses, but challenges our understanding of digital media while offering us an interesting and unique exploration of these ‘parallel presents.’ Hence, we argue that the dystopian societies depicted in Black Mirror are in fact heterotopias, as defined by Michel Foucault: ‘something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (Foucault 1984). According to Foucault, every society creates heterotopias in time of great changes or in major crises. Our changing media environment and its digital ‘revolution’ is consequently the perfect time to acknowledge such heterotopias. But heterotopias are not only specific constructs juxtaposed in the same time and space, different times and spaces, they are also places to explore

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multiple realities, particularly realities and people that society has difficulties accepting: the dead, the insane, the exiled and so forth. Every society needs a place to store and question its monsters, a place to project its fears and hopes, the things that should not be said but cannot completely be forgotten. But what characterizes the heterotopia is also its system of ‘opening’ and ‘closing,’ which are the rituals a society produces to mitigate potential dangers and crises as well as to safely investigate what is within the heterotopia and ways to free the society from it. And indeed, if Black Mirror questions new forms of imprisonment, it also suggests, paradoxically, new ways to escape or be liberated from them. We can thus draw from these analyses the idea that Black Mirror not only creates digital heterotopias but is also, within our digital culture, a heterotopia itself. As Gregh Singh suggested: ‘it might come as no surprise to know that the title of the series, Black Mirror, is a direct reference to the look of various screens that surround us: if you have ever looked into a monitor, or an iPad, or a smartphone when switched off, you won’t see nothing; tellingly, you see your reflection, darkened, untrue. Is this a black mirror reflecting what we are to become: switched “off” and self-obsessed; a constellation of fears, anxieties and desires; possessed by the urge to look and be looked at?’ (Singh 2014, 122). Therefore, Black Mirror serves as a mise en abyme of heterotopias, a heterotopia itself containing heterotopias. This speaks of the complexity of this show, which does not mean to foresee a potential future as it does to make us reflect on our everyday practices and the boundaries we should astrain them. As such, Black Mirror is a cautionary tale for the twenty-first century, very much as the Brother Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales’ books were in the nineteenth century.

Note 1.  Eliana Dockterman, ‘Sci-fi Evolves Into Disturbing Reality in Black Mirror and Westworld,’ Time, October 13, 2016, http://time.com/4529439/ sci-fi-evolves-into-disturbing-reality-in-black-mirror-and-westworld/.

References Allard-Huver, François and Julie Escurignan. 2018. “Black Mirror’s Nosedive as a New Panopticon: Interveillance and Digital Parrhesia in Alternative Realities.” In Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory, edited by A. M. Cirucci et al. Boston: Lexington. de Beaumont, Emile, and Alexis de Tocqueville. 1831. Note sur le système pénitentiaire, Le Système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis. Bentham, Jeremy. 1843. The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 4 (Panopticon, Constitution, Colonies, Codification). Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et punir. Paris: Gallimard.

498  J. ESCURIGNAN AND F. ALLARD-HUVER Foucault, Michel. 1980. “The Eye of Power: A Conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, 146–165. New York: Colin Gordon. Foucault, Michel. 1984. “Of Other Spaces.” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5: 46–49. Giesecke, Hermann. 1999. Hitlers Pädagogen Theorie und Praxis nationalsozialistischer Erziehung. München: Juventa. Jansson, André. 2012. “Perceptions of Surveillance: Reflexivity and Trust in a Mediatized World (The Case of Sweden).” European Journal of Communication 24, no. 4: 410–427. Singh, Greg. 2014. “Recognition and the Image of Mastery as Themes in Black Mirror (Channel 4, 2011–present): An Eco-Jungian Approach to ‘Always-on’ Culture.” International Journal of Jungian Studies 6, no. 2: 120–132. https://doi. org/10.1080/19409052.2014.905968.

Dark Fantasies: The Prisoner and the Futures of Imprisonment Marcus Harmes, Meredith Harmes and Barbara Harmes

Introduction Even though rates of incarceration are high and still rising, most of the general population anywhere in the world will never enter an operational prison. As a result, as criminologist Jamie Bennett points out, for most people, the principal source of information (or misinformation) about incarceration is from visions of prison in the media, on film, or television. For decades therefore, films or television programs set in prisons, or other media portrayals of life behind bars have had a significant relationship with the prisons of reality. Because the mediated versions are a powerful source of information, they have become central to the social construction of reality (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004) and have had a genuine influence over law reform, either progressing it or frustrating it (Birkett 2017, 113). But what happens when the prison shown on screen is disconnected from even the loosest reality? What contribution to discourse is offered? Rather than a grounding in any realistic aesthetic, “Strange TV” is M. Keith

M. Harmes (*) · M. Harmes · B. Harmes  Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] B. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_30

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Booker’s way of describing television that produces “cognitive estrangement” owing to the peculiarity of what is portrayed. One such instance of this strangeness is ITC’s 1967 series The Prisoner, an enduring classic that has attracted much attention from television historians in these terms, as a product of cult television, as a work culturally coded as being about nuclear war or the Vietnam War, and as a deliberately enigmatic piece of Cold War espionage fantasy. The final episode is titled Fall Out and the title and the imagery of a rocket launch speak to contemporary concerns about nuclear war. Themes of countercultural rebellion can also be adduced from the series, and Gregory (1997, 42) suggests a degree of kinship with the 1968 film If…, set in a restrictive public school that is scripted and portrayed as akin to a prison and which offsets the discipline with scenes of surreal rebellion. Surprisingly little attention has been given to the program from the angle of incarceration, even though it is set in a giant prison (called “The Village”) and is about a prisoner repeatedly trying to escape. Scholars have approached the series from different frameworks including its relevance to modern political resignations (Nellis 2009), as a precursor to later enigmatic and “event” television series such as Lost (Morreale 2010), as an example of cult television (Gregory 1997) and postmodernist pop television (Mason 1996), and as a device to critique metric-driven academic publishing (Bourne and Fink 2008) but less often from the perspective of being a television program about incarceration.

Fantasy Prisons The Village may well be the weirdest and most creative prison to ever appear on screen, and this chapter analyzes the program in penological terms, thinking of it as a sustained meditation on incarceration beyond the conventional cell block and as an important forerunner of the atypical forms of imprisonment seen most recently in Black Mirror (2011–present). Its late 1960s production placed it at the cusp of epistemological shifts in carceral theory and ideas about punishment (De Giorgi 2012, 40). Simultaneously political, social, and academic thinking received disruptive impulses including critiques of repressive institutions and conventional penological thought (De Giorgi 2012, 40). The Prisoner was broadcast in both Britain and the United States, and on television screens, it also participated in a wider carceral discourse. In its own time, a constellation of other surreal prisons surrounded The Prisoner. Gotham City Penitentiary featured in 1966 episodes of the television Batman series, when the master female criminal Ma Parker conspired to actually be arrested and incarcerated to take over the prison and use it as the base of her criminal operations. Accidental imprisonment is evoked by My Favorite Martian and The Journey of Allen Strange (Corcos 2001, 473). These however show the unplanned arrival of people or entities who become

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accidentally trapped somewhere. Different from these are occasions of intentional but still eccentric imprisonment where, no matter how weird the type of incarceration, the deliberate intention is to deprive people of their liberty. In one episode of The Avengers, Mrs. Emma Peel is trapped inside a living house whose various moving parts and contraptions contain her and John Steed. In another episode, John Steed and Tara King become trapped in a hotel which is a charmingly implausible but potent prison. In Get Smart (1965–1970), a large-scale Nazi-style prisoner of war camp somehow exists in New Jersey with no one knowing or caring about it. Man in a Suitcase, another independent adventure series, confined its titular character in a prison built on flimsy illusions made strong by powerful mind control and mental abuse. These prison oddities, especially on British television, came at a watershed moment in criminal justice. The death penalty had just been abolished, leaving questions for the Home Office, prisons, and society about what to do about prisons and with prisoners. The Prisoner would hardly provide a realistic impression of actual prisons, but it did speak to anxieties about the future directions of incarceration; it did suggest alarmingly prescient ideas on surveillance, civil death, and confinement as the surrealism of The Prisoner turned people’s attention to the futures of incarceration and to contemporary uncertainties about once-settled carceral regimes. As mentioned, this chapter will examine The Prisoner as a series about incarceration, a signal aspect of the program that has largely escaped academic attention. The incarceration in the program is set against two contrasting backgrounds. One is the program’s bedfellows among the glossy independent telefantasies made during the mid- to late 1960s. The other is an altogether more squalid reality of 1960s British prisons, environments far removed from the exciting fantasies but which raised questions about containment, control, and carceral effectiveness that were refracted in the most imaginative television of the era.

Number Six The Prisoner is cult television that has an enduring fan base and fan appeal and has provoked decades of questions about what it actually means (Miller 2003, 104). The seventeen episodes do little to assist with answers. In the first episode Arrival, broadcast in September 1967, a nameless man arrives in a nameless place and is confronted by nameless sources of authority whose leader is nowhere to be seen. Therein lies the basis of all seventeen episodes (an eighteenth is an alternative version of a broadcast installment), in which the title character, designated as Number Six, attempts to escape from the “Village” where he is incarcerated. He simultaneously resists the vigorous interrogations of a series of Number Twos, who answer to the unseen Number One.

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The title sequence of most episodes provides a mini-narrative for the events behind what is seen to be happening. The sequence shows the Number Six angrily resigning from some sort of secret service organization, a sinister automated filing system canceling his record, and finally a team of undertakers gassing and kidnapping him and taking him to the Village, where he awakes in a facsimile of his own house. It soon becomes clear there is no escape, and while there are no cells or obvious trappings of a jail, Number Six is incarcerated. Most episodes of The Prisoner, despite building in layers of allusion and allegory, followed a linear narrative of escape and recapture, based on a tight assemblage of elements (Buxton 1990, 94). It is during the narrative climax of each episode when Number Six realizes yet another escape attempt has failed that the carceral aspect becomes most intrusive; before the final credits, a pair of animated prison gates slam shut over a picture of Number Six. The one way the series is not linear is the inverted process of trial and imprisonment. Whereas trial should precede imprisonment, the order is back to front in The Prisoner. It is only in the final episode, Fall Out, that Number Six is brought before a bewigged judge and a jury. In the absence of bars, gates, or wardens, the prion is instead more allusively present on screen and as a carceral environment. There are loose allusions to prison-style activity, such as the exhortation to the villagers to take part in craft and technical training (King and McDermott 1989, 108). Whoever is in charge of the place incarcerates the inmates via oblique but emphatic means. The Village operates according to social hierarchies, a set of relationships brought onto the screen by the anachronistic Edwardian dress worn by many characters (Mason 1996, 28). Mason suggests that The Prisoner, along with other 1960s telefantasy, is suggestive of an order/chaos binary. Its curious setting, connected via imagery and accent to England but also disorientingly set in no clear time or place, can also offer a projection into the future that could be subversively at odds with social and political hierarchies of the past. In that regard, the series can be suggested to be speaking to carceral issues of maintaining order. Conduct is inculcated by self-critical talks that humiliate and demean the villager inmates (Cox 2017) and by Orwellian slogans displayed on the walls. One proclaims “A Still Tongue Makes a Happy Life,” an ironic statement as the plot is driven by the Village authorities’ intention to make Number Six talk about why he resigned. Other slogans refer allusively to being in prison, including “Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.” Verbal and nonverbal communication unites to provide ongoing reminders of being not only incarcerated but also surveilled. “Be seeing you” is ostensibly a polite greeting used by the villagers, but also evokes the ever-present surveillance looking over them. The greeting is accompanied by a hand gesture which, in place of a handshake, takes the hand up to the eye and circles the fingers around the eye (Gregory 1997, 43). Gesture and wording point to the actuality of surveillance. High above the Village is a copper-domed building;

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inside, it is a large apparatus revolving, swinging, and probing, with penetrating cameras around the Village. The allusions to panoptic surveillance are strong, not merely in the circular design of the equipment and domed structure but also in the means of observation that make it impossible for the surveilled to know if or when they are watched. In the first episode, other tools for surveillance appear, including uncanny classical statues that conceal cameras in their eyes. The Village is a “surveillance microcosm”; the series’ direction reinforces that aspect with high angled shots looking down on the villagers (Lefait 2012). The surveillance also serves strongly practical ends, as attempted escapes are quickly spotted and thwarted (Lefait 2012).

The Model Prison? The nameless Number Six’s incarceration takes place in a curiously open-air prison, with no gates or walls. The surroundings are picturesque if eccentric. The filming location used, Portmeirion, is an architectural mélange of different styles and designs (Sardar 1998, 2). Within the diegesis, the architectural oddities of the location effectively evoke geographic indistinctiveness and uncertainty. The Village’s appearance has an aspect of a model town or a fantasy but also means the Village is not anchored in any distinctively regional or national style. It does not look especially English but does not have a design consistency that gives a clue to locations anywhere else in Europe or across the Atlantic. There are both high technology and antique trappings such as the penny-farthing bicycles (Miller 2003, 101). The way the Village looks causes slippage and uncertainty. To an extent, life within this environment is agreeable. There are leisure industries, recreational opportunities, pleasant surroundings including attractive buildings and parks and gardens, and a general impression of good health and prosperity prevails. Despite the titular character being a prisoner and despite the ongoing narrative resting on the portrayal of incarceration and attempted escape, The Prisoner has provoked little discussion about being a program about prisons. The series sits within the telefantasy genre; indeed, it possibly exemplifies the genre more than any of its contemporary dramas. The influence of Patrick McGoohan, in whose person is merged the roles of lead actor, creator, director, and writer, lent the series a level of tonal and editorial coherence that is suggestive of an auteur and the coherence and quality of the production and the production values give it an “aesthetic value” that stands out from similar programs. Television historian Lez Cooke refers to it as the “apotheosis” of the type (2015, 95). If The Prisoner is the apotheosis of telefantasy, what does that mean? Telefantasy lacks a stable generic definition; instead, it suggests a spectrum of codes and conventions that are in dialogue with genres such as science fiction and fantasy (Short 2011, 1). Film studies writer Rebecca Feasey pulls together “interplanetary travel, encounters with aliens,

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advanced technology and visions of the future” as key features (2008, 56). Catherine Johnson (2005) provides important conceptual clarity, invoking “the fantastic” elements of certain television programs as signs of their generic distinctiveness. Apotheosis also suggests an end point, and Sue Short repositions the importance of The Prisoner away from that idea to understanding it as the precursor of shows such Twin Peaks, The X Files, or Lost, in encouraging intense viewer speculation and an ongoing cult following (Short 2011, 2). Although it is understood as either fulfillment or origin, its sources are eclectic. It owes some creative debt to an earlier series, Secret Agent (aka Danger Man) (1960–1962, 1964–1968), including an episode where large numbers of people have been kidnapped and taken to a town behind the Iron Curtain (Buxton 1990, 88), although that series had a grittier aesthetic and more grounded narrative devoid of the fantasy elements. The program also sits within a creative milieu fed by the Cold War, including Number Six’s background in espionage, the uncertain political allegiances of the Village authorities, the surveillance, and the efforts to brainwash and manipulate.

Visions Real and Unreal The Prisoner is one of the better-remembered genre series of its era, at least in terms of fan and cult celebration and the spaces its narrative created for enduring debate about deferred meaning; as a specimen of cult television, its meaning is deferred, and as a modernist work, its enigma is unresolved (Hills 2002, 117; Miller 2003, 101; Buxton 1990, 92). Even if it stands out in terms of the longevity of its appeal and the strength of its fan interest, it was not alone and contextually it can be understood broadly against a range of contemporary series that share similar extra-diegetic features. They are productions made on film by independent production companies such as ABC and ITC, rather than the BBC, therefore achieving a “glossier” tone and important transatlantic sales (Cooke 2015, 93). Diegetically, there are also some common codes, signifiers, and approaches, including fashionable settings, outlandish plotting, and international glamour. The wider array of adventure series made by ITC or other independent companies is a broad context for The Prisoner; a narrower and more specific framework comprises those instances when the telefantasy ventured to show incarceration. Two instances in particular are significant here, both from the stable of the adventure series made on film for independent television and transatlantic broadcast. Man in a Suitcase, an ITC series, starred the American actor Richard Bradford playing a former intelligence agent now reduced to itinerancy, hence the title. It is an almost exact contemporary of The Prisoner (1967–1968) and shared many of the production personnel. The Avengers began on ABC Television in 1961, becoming a Thames Television production in 1968. By then, it was also a film-based adventure series sold to the United States.

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Many of the prisons appearing in 1960s telefantasy could not be mistaken for real prisons. The question arises of how they participate in forming social constructions of incarceration and where they sit alongside other fictional representations of prisons that may be grounded in a more measured or less fantastical impression of incarceration. The criminologist and prison governor Jamie Bennett points out that these “prevalent fictional representations” are where people will gain information about prisons (2006, 99). Drawing on David Wilson’s suggestions (2004) about where representation and reality converge, Bennett suggests that images of prisons influence what a wider public thinks prisons are like and how prisoners are treated (99). Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004) suggest that representations of prisons can be disruptive, creating impressions and beliefs that can be different from official accounts, but that suggestion still indicates that representations of prison can seem authoritatively real. Of course, even putatively realistic portrayals of prison may well be distorted or sensationalized, and the impressions they create can be unrealistic. Bennett stresses that the impressions created by representations of the media are only a “construction of reality” (99). The Prisoner, says postmodernist Ziauddin Sardar, “excels both in dissolving meaning and simulating reality” (1998, 3). The Prisoner endlessly defers explanation of where, when, and why the incarceration is taking place or the identity and affiliation of the jailors. What however is contributed by depictions of prisons that seemingly make no effort to resemble an actual prison? The Prisoner is part of a wider television landscape of adventure series made on film by the independent companies that include unconventional imprisonment. Man in a Suitcase is a close contemporary as is The Avengers. Both eschew the ambiguity and deferred meaning of The Prisoner and provide narratives with resolution and explanation. They do however intersect with The Prisoner in proposing eccentric, atypical carceral environments. Man in a Suitcase is the adventures of a disgraced CIA agent. In that regard, it shares a plot similarity with The Prisoner in the storyline of a former secret service agent, but departs in other respects by insisting on the grimier and more quotidian aspects of espionage. Incarceration however still takes on fantastic forms. Brainwash opened the series in 1967, taking the ex-CIA agent McGill inside a bizarre and improvised prison. The prison exists for the same reason as the Village; being incarcerated is secondary to a wider purpose of coercing the prisoner into taking a particular action. In The Prisoner, it is to provide information for the reason for his resignation. In Brainwashed, the last and deposed British governor of a former African colony wants to coerce McGill to sign a confession about a scandal that took place in the colony in the dying days of the British Empire. The carceral space in Brainwashed shares a similarity to The Prisoner in that it initially seems comfortable, even cozy. After being kidnapped, McGill wakes up in a bedroom in what could be a country house or well-appointed hotel and meets a friendly waitress, in a mise-en-scène encounter that echoes how episode one of The Prisoner begins.

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The carceral environment though is marked by a sinister unreality. The walls are thin veneers, evoking an opulent interior but hiding the stark spaces of a warehouse. Deeper inside the complex is a stark concrete cell. Scenes there pre-empt the sequences in the novel A Clockwork Orange of the Ludovico Technique, when McGill suffers a sensory assault from loud music and images projected in front of him. The carceral environment is also panoptic, with one way mirrors allowing the jailors to monitor their captive. However, McGill breaks the panoptic principle of being seen but being unable to know if one is being observed, by realizing he is being watched and finding the location of the observation points. The prisons in The Prisoner, The Avengers, and Man in a Suitcase are eccentric, but they share a notable characteristic, in that they are effective. This effectiveness has its limitations. The Avengers and Man in a Suitcase both showcase heroic protagonists who, in each episode of their adventures, overcome an antagonist. The Prisoner eschews any such logical plotting. Its final episode, Fall Out, reverses the normal order of criminal proceedings, bringing Number Six before the judge and jury after he has served a term of imprisonment. As the episode ends, it indicates escape from the Village but in its final moments it suggests that the commencement of the same cycle of imprisonment is about to begin. This cyclical repeat of capture and incarceration in fact powerfully suggests the Village’s potency as a site of imprisonment. The Village housing Number Six effectively contains him, as sixteen of the seventeen episodes follow a similar narrative pattern of attempted but thwarted escape. Effective surveillance of the entire Village is matched by the potency of a mechanical guard, the spherical Rover, which patrols and kills. Contextually, Number Six’s energetic escape attempts are played out against similar efforts in telefantasy. In The House That Jack Built, a 1966 episode of The Avengers, Mrs. Peel believes she has inherited an old house and appears brandishing the key to the ancient building, prompting her partner John Steed to quip that a trip to the Bastille seems in order. The joke brings carceral resonances into the dialogue, but also provides a darkly appropriate clue to the building’s actual nature and function. In part, it is panoptic. “Every move I make, someone is watching” realizes Mrs. Peel, who discovers the entire house is a computerized and motorized carceral environment. Doors, corridors, and rooms endlessly and confusingly reconfigure, not only thwarting escape but driving the captives mad from frustration and confusion. At the start of the episode, the audience sees a prisoner escape from a conventional prison and a pursuit by tracker dogs and armed guards across the countryside. The escaped prisoner seeks refuge in a remote country house. The episode therefore brings into dialogue the conventional prison with the peculiar one. The conventional British prison has failed to contain the inmate, but the far less conventional establishment proves more effective. Trapped in the titular house, the inmate cannot escape and is driven mad by the reconfiguring rooms and corridors. The mid-1960s episode shows the ineffectiveness

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of the conventional prison. The scenes of the escape and the prison guards’ failure to recapture distill the “crisis of containment” that afflicted British prisons at that point. High profile escapes include two of the Great Train Robbers and George Blake, a spy, who had broken out of prison (Scott 2012, 50). The scenes of the prison escape and pursuit in The House That Jack Built are timely evocations of what was happening in and outside of British prisons at that moment. The Avengers had earlier de-stabilized the meaning and reality of prisons in the 1964 episode The Gilded Cage, whereby a gang of criminals temporarily duped Mrs. Catherine Gale to believing she was in the condemned cell at Holloway. Carefully controlled props and ambient sound and a repertory actress playing the wardress, all temporarily created a plausible fiction. Scripting and editing of the episode reinforced the fiction, when knocking on what she thinks is the door of the prison governor’s office, a sudden jump in editing and a mise-en-scène take Mrs. Gale from the cell to the criminals’ lair and the simulated prison world collapses into its own fiction. In Wish You Were Here, a 1969 episode of the same series, the protagonists become trapped in a charming and well-appointed country hotel. There are no obvious barriers or guards, but escape is impossible. Television historians consider the episode to be a deliberate pastiche of The Prisoner, with an important narrative shift in that the reasons for imprisonment and the people responsible are both revealed (Chapman 2002, 90). The fact that the guests trapped in hotel cannot simply walk through the front door to freedom is made plausible by various escalating threats. Crossing the threshold is thwarted by a roller skate that a man trips on, a broken-down car, a bucket of water thrown on someone, and a hit and run, all of which prevent escapes. Telephone calls are politely blocked with the excuse that the line is busy. The guests struggle to recognize the prison for its real nature, finding it absurd in ontological terms; one remarks that the chintz and oak paneling make it “so ridiculous this place being a prison,” while another ominously warns “now you’ll be stuck here forever.” The threat is heightened rather than obscured by the surface charm of the Elizabethan Hotel. There are no locked doors or wardens, and conceptually, guests continue to struggle to reconcile charming menace with the conventional image of a prison where the guests are visibly locked up. Here, the villainous plan depends on normality, and the inmates, as unconventional as the prison itself, are kept in captivity by benign means. The drama of the episode, as well as its underlying menace, derives from implacably middle-class courtesy, including the polite excuses for the phone being unusable or the impossibility of calling a taxi, frustrating efforts to leave. At the time of production of these telefantasies, actual British prisons were not monolithic in type or character. Instead, a range of approaches and at times attempts at creative change and innovation characterized prison regimes (King and McDermott 1989). Following the so-called crisis of containment,

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Lord Mountbatten’s committee had proposed a raft of changes, including the concentrated confinement of high risk prisoners (Scott 2012, 52). The idea met with criticism, but it is also a curiously close analogue to the carceral philosophy behind the Village. While Number Six’s efforts to find out who is Number One, who controls the Village and even where he only ever elicits partial information, he does discern that the Village exists to hold especially problematic prisoners. The carceral regimes appeared to domestic and international observers to be in crisis and archaic, compared for example to the promotion of the Swedish system received as an exceptional humane system and model (Nilsson 2012, 80, 85). British prisons commenced structural changes in the 1960s (Scraton 1991, 3), a process which was an upheaval to a system settled by the 1948 Act (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). The suspension followed by the abolition of hanging as the means of carrying out the death penalty cascaded implications into prisons. British prison officers protested abolition, arguing that prisoners were more likely to kill their wardens without a capital deterrent (Block and Hostettler 1997, 129). Especially for their staff, not only wardens but chaplains and governors, prisons seemed less settled and their functions unstable. Moving deeper than the type of prison, the length of the sentence, the type of cell, or the manner of imprisonment, the 1960s were marked by theoretical policy debates about the extent to which punishment depended on understanding the criminal intent. Underpinning every episode of The Prisoner is the intention of the authorities to gain information. Each moment of Number Six’s incarceration exists to extract reasons and explanations for why he acted as he did. In Do not forsake me, the means of information extraction include psychotropic drugs. Actual prisons entered the 1960s with a particular intellectual and policy background, as correctional institutions intended to rehabilitate. What George Vold referred to as “crime causation” (cited in Bailey and Hale 1998, 219) prompted searches to understand criminal intent, although Vold’s observation ranged wider in offering criticism of any impulse of rehabilitative penology to neglect of wider social factors. The Prisoner’s writing, production, and broadcast traversed major carceral changes. In 1964, the Home Office, responsible for the prison service, still implemented as its Prison Rule 1 that “training and treatment” was the purpose of incarceration. It mirrored the emphasis given in the United States’ Prisoner Rehabilitation Act of 1965 on correctional treatment in order to “salvage” the offenders (Long 1965). The emphasis on treatment in particular testifies to the impulse to understand the prisoners and their actions. That emphasis eroded under a greater emphasis on security and control (King and McDermott 1989, 108). Against this context, this chapter has examined The Prisoner against two backdrops. One is its bedfellows on the 1960s small screen which showed various types of carceral eccentricities. The other is from the same period, when British prisons in particular experienced uncertainties relating to their

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purpose and effectiveness. Showing unconventional prisons on television that nonetheless successfully retained their inmates was a creative act in dialogue with contemporary security failings. The escape of high profile prisoners such as the Train Robbers intersected in meaningful ways with television culture and popular culture and being non-fictional interactions of escapes and pursuits seen in drama. Fantasy prisons that could incarcerate and keep prisoners can seem a riposte to actual prisons. To return to Jamie Bennett’s point that the wider public’s source of information about prisons is the popular media, neither The Prisoner nor its fantasy contemporaries show anything resembling an actual prison or its regime and operation. They are however products of, and richly dialogic with, 1960s British prisons. These prisons could no longer resort to hanging, and what they did and how they operated became subject to shifts in understanding. The Prisoner, if thought of as a program about prisons, can be sited in this context as an allusive rather than direct meditation on keeping people incarcerated and seeking to explain their actions.

References Bailey, Fankie Y., and Donna C. Hale. 1998. Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth. Bennett, Jamie. 2006. “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Media in Prison Films.” The Howard Journal 45, no. 2: 97–115. Birkett, Gemma. 2017. Media, Politics, and Penal Reform. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Block, Brian P., and John Hostettler. 1997. Hanging in the Balance: A History of the Abolition of Capital Punishment in Britain. Winchester: Waterside Press. Bourne, Philip E., and J. Lynn Fink. 2008. “I Am Not a Scientist, I Am a Number.” Plos Computational Biology 4, no. 12: e1000247. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000247. Buxton, David. 1990. From The Avengers to Miami Vice: Form and Ideology in Television Series. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Chapman, James. 2002. Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s. London: I.B. Tauris. Cooke, Lez. 2015. British Television Drama: A History. Bloomsbury Television. Corcos, Christine Alice. 2001. “I Am Not a Number—I Am a Free Man: Physical and Psychological Imprisonment in Science Fiction.” Legal Studies Forum 25: 471–483. Cox, Alex. 2017. I Am (Not) A Number: Decoding The Prisoner. Harpenden: Oldcastle Books. De Giorgi, Alessandro. 2012. “Punishment and Political Economy.” In The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks, 40–59. London: Sage. Feasey, Rebecca. 2008. Masculinity and Popular Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gregory, Chris. 1997. Be Seeing You: Decoding The Prisoner. Indiana University Press. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Psychology Press. Johnson, Catherine. 2005. Telefantasy. London: BFI.

510  M. HARMES ET AL. King, Roy D., and Kathleen McDermott. 1989. “British Prisons 1970–1987: The Ever Deepening Crisis.” The British Journal of Criminology 29, no. 2: 107–128. Lefait, Sébastien. 2012. “Dystopian Villages: Surveillance and Re-mediation in The Prisoner. TV Series.” https://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/1394. Long, Edward V. 1965. The Prisoner Rehabilitation Act of 1965. Mason, Francis. 1996. “Nostalgia for the Future: The End of History and Postmodern ‘Pop’ TV.” Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 4: 27–40. Miller, Toby. 2003. Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and TV from the 1930s to the 1960s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morreale, Joanne. 2010. “Lost, The Prisoner, and the End of the Story.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 38, no. 4: 176–185. Nellis, Mike. 2009. “‘I Am Not a Number’: David Davis, The Prisoner, and the Critique of Surveillance.” Surveillance and Society 6, no. 1: 48–51. Nillson, Roddy. 2012. “‘The Most Progressive, Effective Correctional System in the World’: The Swedish Prison System in the 1960s and 1970s.” In Penal Exceptionalism? Nordic Prions Policy and Practice, edited by Thomas Ugelvik and Jane Dullum. Abingdon: Routledge. Sardar, Ziauddin. 1998. Postmodernism and the Other: New Imperialism of Western Culture. Chicago, IL: Pluto Press. Scott, David. 2012. “The Changing Face of the English Prison.” In Handbook on Prisons, edited by Yvonne Jewkes, 49–71. Oxon: Routledge. Scraton, Phil, Joe Sim, and Paula Skidmore. 1991. Prisons Under Protest. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Short, Sue. 2011. Cult Telefantasy Series: A Critical Analysis of The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Heroes, Doctor Who and Star Trek. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Waterside Press.

Minority Report, Abjection and Surveillance: Futuristic Control in the Scientific Imaginary Fran Pheasant-Kelly

Introduction Repression of identity and identification are at the core of the post-9/11 Spielberg science fiction film Minority Report (2002), these aspects being closely associated with surveillance and control. Accordingly, the film is not only a reflection of new millennial sociocultural preoccupations with scrutinizing the lives and actions of others but also parallels the political activities of the US Administration at the time of its release. In October 2001, under the auspices of George W. Bush, US Congress sanctioned the Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) (Lyon 2003, 48). The act has had three significant repercussions in relation to enhanced surveillance in the post-9/11 period: First, recipients of online payments can be traced and email messages ‘can be read or listened to in real time’; second, ‘foreign hackers can be prosecuted by the USA’; and third ‘more and more ­mundane transactions and conversations of everyday life are under scrutiny as never before’ (Lyon 2003, 122). Since 9/11, surveillance has intensified to entail a range of biometric identifiers including facial recognition technology and whole body screening as well as the establishment of international terrorist databases (Lyon 2003, 30–33). As David Lyon notes, ‘[w]hat may be called digital discrimination consists of the ways in which the flows of personal data – abstracted information – are sifted and channeled in the process of risk assessment […] Note also that this done in advance of any offense. F. Pheasant-Kelly (*)  University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_31

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Automated surveillance is frequently pre-emptive, reminiscent of the Pre-Crime Department in Spielberg’s 2002 movie Minority Report [italics in original]’ (2003, 81). A link between post-9/11 scrutiny and Minority Report therefore arises because of the film’s theme of pre-emptive action before an offense or incarceration and the fact that sophisticated surveillance and instant recognition via retinal scans (known as ‘eye-dents’) are constant features of its public places. One might argue that the dispersion of surveillance throughout noninstitutional spaces in Minority Report constitutes a revisionist interpretation of Michel Foucault’s (1991) version of the panopticon as a type of incarceration. At the same time, however, this chapter argues that there is an intersection between surveillance, control and abjection that is especially evident in a specialized police department known as Pre-Crime (where much of the film unfolds) and its adjoining futuristic prison, the Department of Containment. This suggested crossover between surveillance and abjection contrasts with usual theoretical approaches to real-world prisons and other similar institutions that are often subject to Foucauldian interpretation. Foucault (1991) details a panoptic architecture in which individuals move uniformly and predictably. However, the institutional zones of Minority Report, akin to other on-screen organizations, simultaneously conform to concepts of abjection, primarily because extremes of control lead to compromises in identity but also because the institution operates narratively, and to some extent visually, as a maternal entity. Indeed, scenes of maternity bookend the film—in the opening scene when protagonist, Pre-Crime Chief John Anderton initially enters the Pre-Crime building to respond to predictions about potential murderer, Howard Marks, he passes a pregnant colleague and asks her ‘any contractions yet?’ At the end of the film, Anderton is framed in long shot embracing his heavily pregnant and formerly estranged wife while the loss of his son underpins the entire plot. If these references seem incongruous in a science fiction film about pre-emptive justice, they connect more logically when considering the Pre-Crime department as a maternal entity. Several other aspects of the diegesis (such as its focus on bodily detritus, corporeality and revolting imagery) further promote a sense of abjection. Even though there are clear elements of Foucauldian regimes present in Minority Report, these therefore repeatedly intersect with abject imagery and overall, are reflected via its two key strands: respectively, order and its disruption. These two opposing facets can be located in both the narrative structure and visual style: The narrative centers on an apparently flawless anticrime initiative that conceals corruption, murder and drug abuse; and the visual style comprises a combination of smooth panning and tracking cinematography juxtaposed with disjointed montages, acute canted angles, jump cuts and distorted filming, as well as a mise-en-scène of mechanical, automated processes and equipment that contrasts with nebulous, repulsive or otherwise transgressive imagery associated with abjection.

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Control and pre-emption are ultimately facilitated through the use of a ‘halo,’ a device that stuns its ‘victim’ and results in a cataleptic state. Once haloed, perpetrators, despite the fact that they have not yet committed any actual crime, are maintained in a seemingly unconscious condition in a panoptic futuristic prison while the details of their personal lives that led up to their crime are freely accessible to security personnel. The film thus involves not only physical isolation in a comatose state through technological means, but additionally, like others including Prometheus (2010), and Inception (2013) enables access to both psychic and bodily spaces in an exercise of total domination. As a result, memories, desires, dreams and visions are made available for consumption by others in intrusive acts of surveillance that parallel those of the Patriot Act. Invariably dependent on sophisticated technology, the film depicts surveillance as being invasive on one’s privacy to the extent that, in some cases, individual identities are compromised or repressed permanently. For example, the three visionaries, known as Pre-cogs and exploited by the Pre-Crime division, are maintained in conditions that completely inhibit any sense of personality, corresponding to the loss of self identified by Kristeva (1982) as a state of abjection. Moreover, their restriction to a fluid-filled ‘photon milk’ pool (located within the Pre-Crime police headquarters), their inability to talk or communicate, their minimal clothing and their inability to walk independently have further alliances with Kristeva’s (1982) notion of the abject form in that they effectively revert to a semiotic condition. If the exercise of punishment via halo technology arguably exemplifies Gilles Deleuze’s (1995) notion of a ‘control society’ (whereby individuals are electronically tagged and released from institutions), it therefore paradoxically leads to the opposite extreme (because its victims are not only incarcerated but are effectively dehumanized until the halo is removed). Even though the film was scripted and in production prior to 9/11, its narrative themes of pre-emptive strike, highly technological and intrusive surveillance, and the dehumanization of suspected criminals thus chime with the strategies of the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11. Consequently, while several scholars (Buckland 2006; Morris 2007; Muir 2012; Wise 2016) comment on its theme of free-will versus determinism, analysis of the film has tended to focus on surveillance as it relates to the Patriot Act, the contested invasion of Iraq, and the broader post-9/11 milieu. For instance, Cynthia Weber (2007) interprets the film as a commentary on US morality, as well as considering surveillance through the film’s preoccupation with eyes and vision. Although she discusses gender and subjectivity and alludes to the Pre-cogs’ abject existence by noting that, ‘Agatha resembles an infant. She lives in the temple with the other precogs, cradled in a womb-like pool of what might be amniotic fluid or mother’s milk, dressed in what the film’s costume designer referred to as “an embryonic kind of covering”’ (2007, 131), she centers on aligning the film with the Bush Administration, contending that:

514  F. PHEASANT-KELLY Minority Report draws a devastating picture of the Bush administration’s moral geography of terror, its practices of securitizing the unconscious through its policies of pre-emptive “justice,” and its construction of a so-called moral American “we.” As such, it stands as a warning to all Americans that justice and security both in the United States and as it is projected by the United States abroad are dangerously out of balance. (2007, 124)

Nigel Morris (2007) too draws attention to the maternal imagery of the Temple but perceives it as a reflection of Spielberg’s self-reflexivity. For Morris, [Agatha] is another personification of cinema. Not only a star within the diegesis […] she also receives visions and projects them onto a screen in the so-called Temple she and her two fellows inhabit. Its dark, quilted walls and geometrically interspersed spotlights would pass for a movie theatre. The rectangular window looked through by Anderton (Tom Cruise), the active surrogate directed according to her visions, flanked by speakers amplifying his voice, in the analogy, inscribes a screen. So, reciprocally, does the surface of the ‘photon milk’ suspending her […], which she breaches whenever engaged in the action, sinking back when less involved in her unfolding dreams. Amniotic associations compound the analogy with cinema as maternal Imaginary. (2007, 317)

In a similar vein, Joanne Dillman (2007) registers the meta-reflexive aspects of the film while also considering the centrality of women to the narrative. Neither Morris nor Dillman, however, comments on the Department of Containment, which houses the haloed detainees. John Wise, on the other hand, sees the theme of the film as being concerned with a trust in biometrics (2016, 88). This aspect is further discussed by Lorna Muir who notes that, while the film has Deleuzean undertones in its allusion to a control society, it ‘suggests that just as the material persists in the immaterial so the structures associates with the disciplinary model [as described by Foucault] continue to be present within the control paradigm [as proposed by Deleuze], although they are deployed in subtly different ways’ (2012, 277). In other words, despite the fact that in the real world, Gilles Deleuze argues that ‘[w]e’re in the midst of a general breakdown of all sites of confinement – prisons, hospitals, factories, schools, the family […] Control societies are taking over from disciplinary societies’ (1995, 178), Muir suggests that a Foucauldian perspective remains relevant to the film. In contrast, Warren Buckland makes little mention of its theme of surveillance and instead focuses on the visual style and generic tropes of the film as well as the representation of trauma (2006, 196). Different to these approaches, this chapter shifts attention from themes of 9/11, self-reflexivity and gender to focus on the film’s central institution, the Pre-Crime unit, and the resultant external reach of Foucauldian/Kristevan intersections. The main contention here is that the department operates at a juncture of these two perspectives, while the film ostensibly comments on the

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inadequacy of surveillance systems, arguably as a reflection of failed attempts to deal with not only terrorism and disturbances in penal centers but also miscarriages of justices in other institutions in the Western world. Insofar as the aftermath of 9/11 is concerned, such failure of surveillance manifested most starkly in US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, claims that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Engaging theoretically with Kristeva’s (1982) theory of the abject and with reference to Foucault’s (1991) treatise on institutions, Minority Report can be positioned as a case study of the ways that cinematic prisons lead to a loss of identity in an increasingly technological world. Out of this case study, the primary contention is that the innovative incarceration depicted in Minority Report, as in other fictionalized prison films, deviates from a purely Foucauldian perspective regarding surveillance and discipline in institutions. Rather, it also correlates closely with Kristeva’s theory of abjection in the inmates’ absolute loss of subjectivity. A key feature of the film is the way that it sets up mechanical, automated and cybernetic systems as functional (but devoid of adaptive response), against human, abject and emotion-driven individuals.

Foucault, Institutions and Surveillance The panoptic model has been a central conceptual apparatus of the institutional age and directly informed Foucault’s (1991) analysis of the prison. While individuals in real-world institutions, such as prisons, are subject to rigorous discipline and timetabling, consistent with Foucault’s (1991) application of panoptic principles, their fictional counterparts operate in different ways. This is because even though on-screen inmates are marshaled through space and time in an equally orderly fashion, and are similarly subject to persistent scrutiny, resistance to control inevitably occurs, leading to a breakdown in order. Such resistance can take the form of inmate solidarity and rioting, or ultimately, escape. Even so, real-world prisons are also prone to disorder, riot, break out and escape, suggesting that a wholly Foucauldian perspective is somewhat misplaced here too. Foucault’s model of the institution contends that the physical organization of space and architecture in prisons leads to discipline, both through observation of the prisoner, but also as a result of self-disciplining. His approach refers to Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the panopticon, based on a central tower surrounded by cells. As Foucault notes, ‘[a]ll that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy’ (1991, 200). However, prisons on screen are often prone to disorder, usually as a result of excessively dominating regimes, and are therefore effectively anti-Foucauldian. A key example of repression involves social isolation and prolonged solitary confinement. As Foucault states, ‘[e]ach individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the

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supervisor, but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen but he does not see, he is the object of information, never a subject in communication’ (1991, 200). Threats to subjectivity that such isolation induces, together with a high degree of resultant disorder, correlate more with a Kristevan model. If inhibition of subjectivity may be rendered, as Foucault notes, by physical isolation, it can also be the result of control via drugs and electroconvulsive therapy (as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1975]), high levels of physical restraint, or extreme and often homo-erotically motivated violence that may culminate in proximity to bodily detritus and excrement, as occurs in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Indeed, as has been noted previously ‘the institution film is an obvious site for abjection, with such notions becoming pertinent immediately one perceives the institution as a place that separates normal from other’ (PheasantKelly 2013, 5). In sum, therefore, prison films exhibit a convergence between Foucauldian modes of control and Kristevan models of abjection. Such a convergence is especially illustrated by the futuristic prison in Minority Report whereby the ‘inmates’ are uniformly arranged and entirely under the control of the sentry, Gideon. They are subjectively inert while their memories, histories and thoughts are made readily accessible. A corresponding overlap is evident in Coma (1978) in coma-induced victims maintained at the Jefferson Institute. A futuristic scene here, akin to the prisoner arrangement in Minority Report, demonstrates an equally uniform display of apparently healthy bodies and likewise makes obvious the crossover of the ideas of Foucault and Kristeva, since the highly controlled and uniformly arranged bodies are subjectively ‘dead’ and exist at the border between life and death (Pheasant-Kelly 2013, 17).

Kristeva, Subjectivity and the Semiotic Despite such convergence being potentially problematic in that the two approaches are effectively polarized, they are both ostensibly concerned with ordering the unruly body. Originating in various ways, abjection initially occurs when the infant, which exists in a semiotic world unified with the mother, is separated from her during childbirth. The semiotic describes a psychic space wherein the infant is unable to use language symbolically through usual syntax, grammar and symbols but rather expresses itself via various gestures and sounds (McAfee 2004, 18). Abjection subsequently arises when the child grows to be more independent and attempts to become autonomous of its mother. As Kristeva explains, ‘[t]he abject confronts us […] with our earliest attempts to release the hold of maternal entity even before ex-isting outside of her, thanks to the autonomy of language. It is a violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling [italics in original]’ (1982, 13). Moreover as

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the child further develops, it also learns to recognize and exclude sources of contamination such as bodily detritus. For the adult, the process of keeping the abject at bay is ongoing and essential to maintaining a coherent subjectivity as ‘the abject does not cease challenging its master’ (Kristeva 1982, 2). At times, this is not possible, and individual identity may be compromised, for example, by certain forms of mental illness. One might also add aging and dementia as agents of abjection. Central to Kristeva’s argument though is a focus on bodily fluids, notably those associated with the female reproductive body, while the corpse epitomizes abjection, especially if one encounters it unexpectedly. As she notes, ‘[t]he corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life’ (1982, 4). In the context of Minority Report and its institutions, the primary process and enunciation of abjection are twofold. It occurs in the Pre-Crime department’s confinement of the Pre-cogs whereby they are effectively stripped of any sense of self and the Temple that houses them functions as a maternal entity, and second in the surveillance, ‘haloing,’ and incarceration of prisoners which again serves to repress subjectivity via extreme methods. These features of abjection intersect with the way in which the Containment Department and Pre-Crime unit are radical forms of the panoptic model described by Foucault. Anderton’s attempts to resist haloing and captivity lead to further alliances between Foucauldian surveillance, abjection and disorder; for example, in the replacement of his eyes; the ingestion of drugs to alter his appearance; his escape from a car assembly plant; his visit to Iris Hineman’s home; and his kidnap of Agatha (Samantha Morton), one of the Pre-cogs. At the same time, there are other aspects of the cinematography and miseen-scène that parallel this dichotomy: long shots, extreme canted angles and overhead shots of the dark and rundown ‘Sprawl’ on the outskirts of the city contrast with smooth pans of the highly commercialized city center malls; the rapidly edited sequences of repetitive, regimented retinal scans oppose the extreme close-ups of Anderton’s bloody disembodied eyeballs which are used to enter Government buildings illicitly; the uniform movements of the machinery in a car assembly plant (into which Anderton is pursued) vary from the random snaking motion of the vine that attacks him after he escapes in a newly assembled vehicle. In sum, the convergence between Foucault and Kristevais signaled via distinctive visual and narrative strategies, namely highly sophisticated technological and mechanical surveillance methods, and amorphous, disembodied and sometimes revolting imagery.

Subjectivity, Abjection and Surveillance in Minority Report The film centers on detecting crime before it is committed and is achieved through the visions of three gifted beings, known as Pre-cogs, who are the brain-damaged children of drug addicts, and whose precognitive foresight enables the imprisonment of potential perpetrators. Lamar Burgess (Max von

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Sydow) is the Director and founder of Pre-Crime while protagonist and leading figure in the Pre-Crime department, Anderton and his team are responsible for its execution. Its creator is Iris Hineman who reveals to Anderton that the system is flawed because the three Pre-cogs do not always have identical visions, and therefore, on occasion, generate a ‘minority report’ (Anderton discovers numerous examples of deleted minority reports which alert his suspicions to the fallibility of the system). However, Burgess has concealed this information, not only in order to gain national recognition for the Pre-Crime initiative but also because he has murdered Anne Lively, Agatha’s mother (narratively, to prevent her removing Agatha from the Pre-Crime programmer). When Anderton discovers the existence of the minority reports, he unwittingly confides in Burgess, unaware of the latter’s involvement. Burgess then sets up Anderton (whose son had been abducted six years prior) to kill a man called Leo Crow, whom he has never met by placing photographs of his son in an apartment that appears to belong to Crow (with Crow’s family to receive a payout from Burgess for Crow’s part in the conspiracy). Accordingly, the Pre-cogs foretell that Anderton will murder Crow but at the predicted time of the murder, Anderton consciously chooses not to kill him. Nonetheless, it appears as if the Pre-cogs’ predictions are correct as Crow grabs the gun, pulls it toward his chest and fires it, thereby committing suicide. Wrongfully suspected of being about to commit a crime, Anderton is captured shortly thereafter, ‘haloed’ and incarcerated in the Department of Containment. However, Danny Witwer, a representative of the Attorney General to the USA, who is sent to check the viability of the Pre-Crime programmer, suspects that Anderton is being set up and questions Burgess about Anne Lively, leading Burgess to kill Witwer with Anderton’s gun. Ultimately, Lara, Anderton’s estranged wife, realizes that Burgess is guilty, intervenes, and reveals his plan publicly, leading to the latter’s suicide. The Temple The crossover between Foucauldian and Kristevan models manifests in the opening sequence via a cut from a murder sequence to an extreme close-up of Agatha’s eye, followed by a camera pull-out as she utters ‘murder’ and sinks back into the pool of ‘photon milk.’ An overhead long shot contextualizes her location along with two other Pre-cogs in the opalescent pool, and as she sinks back into it, bubbles rise to the surface. This follows a previous disjointed, incoherent montage of images that reveals potential murderer Howard Marks stabbing his adulterous wife after he returns home to find her with another man. The distortion and disjointedness of this opening sequence typify the amorphousness associated with the Pre-cogs and are achieved by what Christine Cornea describes as a ‘squishy lens device […] [which] consists of a soft plate containing fluid, through which the camera records images onto film. The flexibility of the lens allows for the peculiar

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distortion of filmed images, which in the case of Minority Report blurs and fans the outer edges of a central images or creates ripples of movement across the frame’ (2007, 261). As the Pre-cogs’ visions, mediated via brain scanning technology, appear and are recorded on a transparent screen on the ceiling of the Temple in which they are housed, the three twitch violently (as if emotionally traumatized), their erratic involuntary movements similar to the uncoordinated movements of infants and only arrested by Jad’s (Anderton’s Pre-Crime colleague) instruction to Wally (their keeper) to ‘erase the incoming!’. Thereafter, they revert instantly to a state of emotional inertness. Not only is their physical movement impeded but also their visions and thoughts are therefore also carefully regulated. Moreover, we learn that their mental activity is further manipulated by the routine administration of a cocktail of nutrients and drugs that controls their serotonin, endorphin and dopamine levels. This too has reflections of the Foucauldian panopticon in that ‘[t]he Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To ­experiment with medicines and monitor their effects’ (1991, 203). Further, they are completely isolated within the Temple to avoid tampering of evidence. The Pre-cogs are thus subjected to radical forms of scrutiny, this perspective often enhanced by extreme overhead shots. Concurrently, the unit functions as an excessive form of the maternal body, with the Pre-cogs existing in an almost embryonic state. The maternal connotations are enhanced by the fact that Wally administers to their basic needs, such as cleaning their teeth, while their costume comprises a flesh-colored, semi-transparent suit, making them appear as if they are naked. Immediately after their visions of the murder, the film cuts to a close-up of a highly mechanized contraption that converts the Pre-cogs’, and particularly, Agatha’s stream of consciousness into material facts relating to the crime, including the names of victims and perpetrators. The names are embedded in wooden balls, while the time of the crime, along with a series of images generated by their previsions, is organized sequentially by Anderton. In other words, the amorphous and incoherent mental pictures generated by Agatha are orchestrated and put in chronological order (known as ‘scrubbing the image’) by Anderton so that they become logical and meaningful and enable the department to apprehend the potential perpetrator before he commits a crime. The visions of the Pre-cogs intercut with the real-time murder sequence as Anderton attempts to locate the crime, with clues to the location lying in the presence of a rapidly turning merry-go-round and a revolving water sprinkler on the front lawn of the perpetrator’s home. This dichotomy of regimented orderliness versus amorphousness pervades the visuals of the film and effectively embodies the aforementioned intersection of Foucauldian and Kristevan aspects. One might contend that Agatha’s pre-verbal visions constitute a semiotic mode, an argument heightened by the disordered

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sequence in which she visualizes them. As noted by Noelle McAfee, ‘while the semiotic may be expressed verbally, it is not subject to regular rules of syntax […] [and] could be seen to originate in the unconscious whereas the symbolic could be seen as the conscious way a person tries to use a stable sign system’ (2004, 17). The opening scene further illustrates this intersection in its cinematography and editing: As noted earlier, the murder sequence is filmed in a consciously disjointed mode which contrasts with the following scene in which a smooth and lengthy tracking camera action follows the freshly inscribed wooden balls as they roll down a chute. The precise mechanics of the apparatus and the clear-cut inscription of the names echo the overarching visual paradox that pervades the film. When Danny Witwer, a representative of the Attorney General to the USA, is sent to check out the viability of Pre-Crime, Anderton advises him that the Pre-cogs are merely ‘pattern recognition filters’ and ‘it is better if you don’t think of them as human’ thereby further emphasizing their lack of conscious agency. Even so, Agatha attempts to communicate with Anderton several times, each time asking him, ‘can you see?’ and appearing traumatized by the images of a drowning that transpires to be the aforementioned murder of her mother by Burgess. The suggestion of the Temple as uterine is reinforced later in the film when Anderton attempts to abduct Agatha from the unit. Despite using a drug that contorts his face beyond recognition, he is discovered in the Temple and pulls out a seal at the base of the pool so that he and Agatha are sucked out of its base. The overhead shot affords the whirlpool type imagery distinct childbirth connotations, furthering the abject signification of the setting. Narratively, this is initially to retrieve what Anderton believes is a minority report—an alternate version of the future—whereby he does not kill Leo Crow. Ultimately, however, no such minority report exists although, through her repeated visions, Agatha directs him to the minority report concerning her mother’s murder, which underpins the entire plot. Agatha’s visions of this consistently present her mother underwater with the same incoherence and distortion associated with other cerebral outputs. The theme of submersion recurs in Anderton’s nightmare about his son’s disappearance at a public swimming pool when underwater imagery of Anderton intercuts with low angle shots from his perspective looking up through the water toward his son. The preoccupation with fluidity and submersion apparent throughout the film arguably relates to its uterine connotations, particularly those concerning the Pre-cogs. Containment Department The repression and compromised subjectivity experienced by the Pre-cogs is paralleled in the ‘Containment Department’ where haloed individuals are stored. The department explicitly resembles a Foucauldian panopticon

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with a central tower occupied by Gideon, the sole prison sentry. However, the tower, where Gideon plays an organ (contributing to the film’s religious allusions), is not surrounded by cells but by cylindrical pods in which the prisoners are maintained in a state of unconsciousness. Just as in Foucault’s description of early prisons, the inmates are completely isolated. As Foucault notes, ‘[t]he first principle was isolation. The isolation of the convict from the outside world, from everything that motivated the offence, from the complicities that facilitated it. The isolation of the prisoners from one another’ (1991, 236). The prisoners are identically dressed in flesh-colored garments and are positioned with arms at their side and feet restricted, so that their uniformity is absolute. Their precise arrangement reflects Foucault’s commentary on the meticulous maneuvering of the body and although Foucault refers to specific actions and the most effective body positioning to achieve this (1991, 152), the exactitude is similar. At the same time, however, each detainee is attached to intravenous tubes via their arms, and various tubes exit from their abdomen. Close-ups reveal electrodes attached to their chest and a live medical scan of their interior chest cavity visualizes their beating heart and surrounding organs. Their bodies are therefore carefully regulated and if they exemplify the control and rendering of docile bodies described by Foucault (1991), they concurrently experience bodily transgression and an absolute loss of subjectivity. When Anderton first enters the department, he and Gideon stand on a mobile balcony that extends out toward the pods to allow closer inspection. As the mobile balcony moves frontally and laterally, the pods, stacked high on top of each other and framed in extreme long shot and subsequently from an extreme overhead shot (to emphasize not only the breadth of the incarcerated but also the depths to which they are stacked), move vertically up and down. Furthermore, the pods become illuminated as the balcony extends out toward them, corresponding to some extent to the lighting that Foucault describes in the Panopticon whereby ‘by the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible’ (1991, 200). Framing and lighting therefore enhance the massive scale of the prison which is orchestrated solely by Gideon. As Muir (2012) notes, there are therefore clear Foucauldian implications. However, because each prisoner is unable to move, speak or communicate, they are effectively returned to a pre-uterine situation—as Gideon informs Anderton, ‘they say that your life flashes before your eyes, that all your dreams come true,’ suggesting a state of permanent somnolence.

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Surveillance, Foucault and Abjection Beyond the Pre-Crime Department Following the Pre-cogs’ revelation that Anderton too will become a murderer, a number of further crossovers between Foucault and Kristeva occur outside of the institution, arising as a result of Anderton’s resistance to the processes of imprisonment. In other words, just as Foucauldian surveillance is disseminated beyond the Pre-Crime department, so too are the means of evasion and resistance which inevitably lead to abjection. This is triggered by the fact that Witwer breaks into Anderton’s apartment and discovers his drug-taking habits (indicating the unceasing and unscrupulous scrutiny of individuals). Anderton is soon eye-dented on the metro and thereafter his vehicle is traced, causing a ‘security lockdown,’ which leads him to abandon his car. In trying to evade capture, Anderton enters a car assembly plant and finds himself accidentally trapped inside a partially built vehicle that is in the process of being assembled. His pursuers are unable to reach him because of the threat of the piercing robotic arms that move in relentless trajectories through repeated identical pathways and so too echo Foucault’s aesthetics of precision in regard to movement. Subsequently, Anderton escapes in the newly assembled vehicle and travels to Iris Hineman’s home in order to determine the origins of the Pre-cogs. In imagery that is starkly antithetical to the automated robotics of the car assembly plant, he jumps over a garden wall and is attacked by writhing and venomous vines that are seemingly sentient and which poison him. In other words, the sequence visually echoes the aesthetic and narrative duality that characterizes the film. Learning of the existence of minority reports from Hineman, and particularly that Agatha is likely to be their source, Anderton decides to abduct her, leading to several further acts of resistance. To avoid further retinal recognition, the first and most significant of these acts involves an eye transplant. The relevant scene opens as he locates a back street surgeon in the Sprawl, away from the ‘eye-dent’ billboards of the city center. (Regardless, even as he appears to evade retinal detection in the Sprawl, an earlier discussion with Burgess indicates that the latter knows about Anderton’s visits there in the middle of the night to obtain drugs, suggesting that surveillance is even more pervasive than it appears.) A sense of disgust is established immediately: The surgeon, Dr. Solomon Eddie, has mucus dripping from his nose and wears a grubby vest beneath a stained white coat while the apartment is filthy— ground level close-ups reveal debris on the floor, and mice run freely. Canted angles convey both Anderton’s drug-induced state (the surgeon swiftly injects an anesthetic before Anderton realizes) and heighten the sense of threat. The incongruity between what one expects of a surgeon and the filth that Anderton encounters establishes the scene as abject. As Kristeva notes, ‘It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order’ (1982, 4). Such disturbance is furthered as the

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camera rests on Miss Van Eyck (the surgeon’s assistant), who is sitting on a toilet and is discernible through a flimsy gauze curtain. Thereafter, Dr. Eddie forces a device over Anderton’s head while the process of actually disengaging Anderton’s eyes is shown in a zoom to close-up as the surgeon clamps his eyes wide open—here he uses computerized software which automatically controls the removal of Anderton’s eyes and so specifically illustrates the intersection of the concepts of Foucault and Kristeva. This is because a highly automated and surveillant procedure (which is connected directly to the vision of both surgeon and patient) is juxtaposed with a transgressive act, that of ‘removing’ identity. The fact that the eyes are expressly aligned with identity and identification is indicated when Anderton is later recognized as ‘Mr Yakamoto’ when he returns to the city malls. Later, he wakes to find his eyes are bandaged and is instructed not to open them for twelve hours; otherwise, he will go blind. The threat of blindness, equating here to an absolute loss of identity, is therefore also an abject nuance. If the entire sequence has abject connotations in the change of identity, it occurs too in corporeal transgression, as well as physical revulsion. For instance, Anderton opens the fridge and because he is unable to see, accidentally eats moldy food and drinks sour milk, and promptly spits them out. As Kristeva notes, ‘Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms and vomiting that protect me. […] When […] the lips touch that skin on the surface of the milk – harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as nail paring – I experience a gagging sensation and, still further down, spasms in the stomach’ (1982, 3). While Anderton recovers from the surgery, however, the Pre-Crime department continues their search for him—they heat scan for ‘warm bodies’ and send in a group of ‘spyders’ (mechanical drones) to eye-dent the inhabitants of the apartment block where Anderton is hiding. Similar to the extreme overhead shots of the Pre-cogs in the Temple, an omnisciently motivated camera pans across the top of the apartment block looking down on its inhabitants as the spyders scan their eyes (therefore continuing the theme of intrusive surveillance). In order to avoid thermal detection and subsequent retinal scan (narratively because the requisite twelve hours for recovery has not yet elapsed), Anderton submerges himself in a bath of iced water—but the spyders detect the sound of an air bubble rising to surface and force him to remove his bandages to scan one of his eyes. As he slowly and cautiously opens one eye, he is framed in extreme close-up to accentuate the sense of pain, which is furthered by a facial grimace. The spyders obviously do not identify him as Anderton, therefore illustrating the intersection of abjection (his incoherent identity) and surveillance. Secondly, Anderton self-administers a paralytic enzyme drug given to him by Dr Eddie that temporarily alters his facial features with the intention being to abduct Agatha from the Temple in order to gain access to what he believes is the minority report about Leo Crow (Hineman advises him that this is

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where the report can be located). A low-angled camera perspective reveals his facial distortion and upon entering the Pre-Crime unit he uses his dissected eyeballs to pass through the retinal scans. However, because of their slimy nature, he accidentally drops them and they roll away—one becomes caught in a drain where a low angle shot from below frames the eyeball dangling by a sliver of flesh. Overall therefore, the dismembered eyeballs, which are related to identity, vision and surveillance, as well as resistance to capture, feature significantly, with frequent extreme close-ups to emphasize their abject nature. Following their escape from the Temple, Agatha gains more autonomy. Even so, her shaved head and the fact that she is unable to walk unaided and cannot talk coherently continue to suggest an infantile state and compromised subjectivity. However, she becomes progressively more humanized as Anderton buys her clothes, and she begins to speak more coherently and syntactically. (Nonetheless, because she sees the future, she can respond to and counteract Pre-Crime surveillance before it happens, and is essentially anti-Foucauldian). In order to extract the minority report from Agatha, Anderton takes her to a cyber-parlor, run by Rufus T. Riley, known as The Dreamweaver. The parlor enables clients to experience their most primal desires and dreams through cyber-simulation. For instance, one client wants to kill his boss. In connecting electrodes to individuals and interfacing them to equipment, they are effectively part-machine, part-human. If this erodes boundaries of humanness, it makes them more abject in the sense that they return to a semiotic state dictated solely by primary drives. This dichotomy of machine and human is illustrated when Anderton instructs Rufus to ‘hack into’ Agatha. She is regarded as a computer rather than a human, all subjectivity being negated. However, as the visions are projected, she once more becomes extremely anguished, displaying paroxysms of emotion. First, she visualizes Crow’s ‘murder,’ followed by the drowning of her mother. The fallibility of the system, already realized by Witwer, is that a murder can be set up, the suspect arrested, and then the actual murder carried out, with further previsions by the Pre-cogs merely perceived as an echo of the original and deleted. When Lara realizes that Burgess is responsible for Anne Lively’s murder, she uses Anderton’s remaining eyeball to illicitly enter the Department of Containment. ‘You’re not authorized’ Gideon tells her as she aims a gun at him. When he asks her how she gained entry, a cut to an extreme close-up as a note sounds on Gideon’s organ reveals a plastic bag containing Anderton’s bloody eyeball, symbolizing the crossover between Foucault and Kristeva.

Conclusion Minority Report is concerned with self-reflexivity in its repeated references to photographs, screens, billboards, previsions, holographs, the simulated activities at the cyber-parlor, and the visions of the prisoners. Clearly too, its

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themes of pre-emption, intrusive surveillance, and dehumanization are relevant to a post-9/11 zeitgeist. At the same time, however, the preoccupation with images is closely tied to subjectivity and identity. Indeed, central issues within the diegesis involve human error and human emotion—for example, Witwer seeks flaws in the Pre-Crime system which he considers are likely to be human. Ultimately, the focus on machinery, automation and lack of self (determinism) contrasts with human cognition which enables adaptation to new situations (free will). For instance, Agatha can see the future so can predict where to be and what to do in real time, and Anderton chooses not to kill Crow. Therefore, in an age of artificial intelligence, the film suggests that humanness is the preferred option. Concurrently, the orderliness and control implicit in the extreme version of Foucauldian surveillance in the Department of Containment and the Temple, as well as a more dispersed variant of the penal apparatus in the shopping mall retinal scans, are juxtaposed with instances of abjection, occurring through compromised, repressed or altered subjectivity, visual allusions to abjection, or more direct references to bodily organs, fluids and disgust. The analysis here contrasts with conventional considerations of the prison and monitoring of/for criminal activity and, rather than a move toward deinstitutionalization, involving a Deleuzean concept of a control society, indicates that the futuristic imaginary of Minority Report remains caught between Foucault and Kristeva.

References Buckland, Warren. 2006. Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster. London and New York: Continuum. Cornea, Christine. 2007. Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Negotiations. Translated by M. Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press. Dillman, Joanne. 2007. “Minority Report: Narrative, Images and Dead Women.” Women’s Studies 36, no. 4: 229–249. Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lyon, David. 2003. Surveillance After September 11. Cambridge: Polity Press. McAfee, Noelle. 2004. Julia Kristeva. London and New York: Routledge. Morris, Nigel. 2007. The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light. London: Wallflower. Muir, Lorna. 2012. “Control Space? Cinematic Representations of Surveillance Space Between Discipline and Control.” Surveillance and Society 9, no. 3: 263–279. Pheasant-Kelly, Frances. 2013. Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity and Psychoanalysis. London: I.B. Tauris.

526  F. PHEASANT-KELLY Weber, Cynthia. 2007. “Securitizing the Unconscious: The Bush Doctrine of Preemption and Minority Report.” In The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror, edited by Elizabeth Dauphinee and Cristina Masters, 109–128. London and New York: Palgrave. Wise, John Macgregor. 2016. Surveillance and Film. London: Bloomsbury.

Moral Ambivalence and the Executioner’s Hood: Averting the Retributive Gaze in Dystopian Fiction Francine Rochford

Introduction A diversity of punishments has been deployed by courts including, at various historical points, execution, imprisonment, flogging, branding, torture or arduous, purposeful labor, and banishment or exile. The physical banishment of the subject could either include or be replaced by social or legal banishment. This chapter reflects upon the notion of civil death—removal of the rights of citizenship—as a species of punishment and the techniques of distancing the state from the process of punishment. This motif recurs frequently in dystopian fiction, perhaps as a measurement of the breakdown of the moral authority of the state in the imagined dystopian future. The manner in which society treats its convicted criminals is a primary measure of the health of the institutions of governance. The ‘Rule of Law’ index treats an effective criminal justice system (including a correctional system) as ‘a key aspect of the rule of law’ (World Justice Project, n.d.). This is not to say that healthy systems of government may not implement different philosophical views of punishment. The English legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart notes that the views of the English penal system at the time of his writing, which could be represented as a matter of ‘social hygiene’ so that ‘the

F. Rochford (*)  La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_32

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reduction of crime or the protection of society’ (Hart 2008, 143) is the primary purpose, are in sharp contrast to Dostoevsky’s view [in Crime and Punishment] that ‘psychologically the criminal needed his punishment to heal the laceration of the bonds that joined him to his society’ (cited in Hart 2008, 143). Hart concedes that ‘any morally tolerable account of this institution [of criminal punishment] must exhibit it as a compromise between distinct and partly conflicting principles’ (Hart 2008, 36). He notes, despite the caveat that there will be context and situational variation in any application of general principle, that punishment is a ‘social institution of which the centrally important form is a structure of legal rules’ (Hart 2008, 37). There is no single notion justifying every application of ‘punishment.’ There may well be an optimal solution to the range of issues arising in a social context, but rarely an ideal one. Where literary or cinematic sources represent forms of punishment, they are often drawing upon historical legal realities. I will first consider the concept of civil death as it existed historically and as it is represented in fiction. This then extends to the metaphorical ‘taint’ which can extend both to the family and to the descendants of the criminal. My focus then shifts to the techniques used to shift and spread responsibility for the punishment inflicted on the criminal, perhaps as a recognition of the uneasy philosophical justification for the severe forms of punishment—aversion of gaze or responsibility from the moral consequences of state actions. The ‘transportation’ of the criminal, either bodily or by a separation of the mental and the physical corpus, allows the state to render the criminal invisible. Conversely, the psychic regulation of the criminal through the panoptic gaze renders the criminal inescapably and intolerably visible.

Civil Death The concept of civil death (civiliter mortuus) existed in Roman and Greek law and in medieval Europe. William Blackstone, an authoritative eighteenth-century writer on English legal history, noted that When sentence of death, the most terrible, and highest judgment in the laws of England, is pronounced, the immediate inseparable consequence from the common law is attainder. … the criminal is no longer fit to live upon the earth, but is to be exterminated as a monster and a bane to human society, the law sets a note of infamy upon him, puts him out of its protection, and takes no further care of him than barely to see him executed. He is then called attaint, attinctus, stained or blackened. He is no longer of any credit or reputation; he cannot be a witness in any Court; … he is already dead in law. (Blackstone 1769, 380)

The consequences of ‘civil death’ included the removal of all of the rights accorded as a citizen, such as the right to public office, the right to sue in the courts and the loss of all property. It also resulted in the ‘corruption

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of blood,’ so the family of the criminal was also cast out of the benefits of society (Prus-Grzybowski, Alexander v Everingham, Paul Anthony Edward [1983]). In cases of treason, the family of the attainted person was perpetually disinherited (Lander 1961). Postmortem sanctions are reported in early Roman law, where ‘persons executed (or justly murdered) had additional punishments imposed upon them after death, especially confiscation (or consecration) of their property, and the demolition of their houses (sometimes leaving the site uninhabited)’ (Lendon 1997). The property of those convicted was a substantial attraction for medieval monarchs ‘defining and prosecuting new treasons … as Parliamentary acts of attainder were used mainly to seize the property of convicted traitors and dead, captive or fugitive rebels’ (Head 1982). Some relics of civiliter mortuus remain. In the United States (Richardson v Ramirez 1974; Hunter v Underwood 1985; Ewald 2002, 1046), felons may be permanently disenfranchised, although civil forfeiture was abolished in all cases except treason (Reppy 1948).1 In the circumstances leading up to United States v Lovett (1946), the legal fraternity was alarmed by an Act which barred three American citizens from ever holding public office, an Act which was said to amount to a bill of attainder. Citizenship confers a ‘bundle’ of rights, and the circumstances and consequences of attainder vary. In Dugan v Mirror Newspapers (1978), the High Court of Australia held that attainder was part of the common law of England at the time of settlement in Australia and was thus part of the ‘received law’ (Morgan and Graycar 1995) and that as a consequence, an incarcerated felon was not able to sue for defamation in the civil courts. This restriction was subsequently removed by legislation (Felons (Civil Proceedings) Act 1981 (NSW)). Conversely, the High Court in Roach v Electoral Commissioner (2007) considered the constitutionality of the removal of voting rights from persons imprisoned for three years or more. The rationale for withdrawing the right to participate in the political process was expressed as a consequence of ‘rejection’ of some other obligations of citizenship: Citizens, being people who have been recognized as formal members of the community, would, if deprived temporarily of the right to vote, be excluded from the right to participate in the political life of the community in a most basic way. The rational connection between such exclusion and the identification of community membership for the purpose of the franchise might be found in conduct which manifests such a rejection of civic responsibility as to warrant temporary withdrawal of a civic right. (Roach v Electoral Commissioner 2007 [8] (Gleeson CJ))

1 Massachusetts had abolished forfeitures in 1641: Ancient Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay 147 (1814); New York followed in 1683: Charter of Libertyes and Privileges granted by His Royal Highness, the Duke of York 1 Colonial Laws of New York 115 (1894).

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However, the idea of ‘civil death’ in the form of permanent removal of the right to vote has no constitutional basis in Australia: ‘notions of “civil death” find no textual footing in the [Australian] Constitution’ (Roach v Electoral Commissioner 2007 [141] (Hayne J)). The removal of all or a subset of the civil rights attached to a person is a species of civil death. In its origin, however, the civil death—or ‘outlawing’—of a person is a natural consequence of submission to the Hobbesian view of society—that the state was founded on the social contract based on reciprocal obligations. These required submission to the authority and power of the state. The individual is said to ‘give up my Right of Governing my selfe … and Authorise all [the sovereign’s] Actions’ (Hobbes 1651, 227). In return for giving up these rights, the individual enjoys the benefits provided by the civil state—relative peace, the protection of property and the institutions of the law and political government. If the individual breaks the bargain, the natural consequence will be the removal from the protections and privileges of the state. In some variations of the penalty, they will be literally ‘outlawed,’ or out of the protection of the law, as by a Writ of Outlawry with the malediction caput lupinum. The offender is thrust into the Hobbesian natural state, the state before civil society, in which life is ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ Outlaws such as Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Ned Kelly and Ben Hall; and pirates and buccaneers such as William Kidd, Blackbeard and Black Bart, Anne Bonny and Henry Morgan could all be said to have been removed (or have removed themselves) from the protection of society. In some cases, the outlaw may have formed other ‘societies’ or subcultures with their own rules and protections, potentially more favorable than those of the society they have left. Captain Bartholomew Roberts is said to have claimed that ‘[i]n an honest Service … there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour’ (Mackie 2005). By comparison in piracy, there is ‘Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power’ (Schonhorn 1972): Every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; Has equal Title to the fresh provisions, or strong Liquors, at any Time Seized … Every Man to be called fairly in Turn, by List, on board of Prizes, because, (over and above their proper Share) they were on these Occasions allowed a Shift of Cloaths … No Man to talk of breaking up their Way of Living, till each had shared a 1000 l. If in order to this, any Man should lose a limb … he was to have 800 Dollars, out of the publick Stock, and for lesser Hurts, proportionably. (Schonhorn 1972, 2011–2012)

Fiorina 161, the outer space penal colony portrayed in Alien 3, demonstrates an outlaw society of this type, living out their own redemptive arc. The predisposition for anti-social behavior encoded in the genetic mutation shared by the inmates articulates the paradox of moral guilt in a non-Cartesian sense: Can guilt be ascribed to an individual physically predisposed to anti-social behavior? On ‘Fury,’ as the colony is called, all (male) inmates took a vow of celibacy and prayed ‘to endure’ as ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God’ (Alien 3, 1992).

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Still others, outcast, are little more than beggars in the wilderness or thieves in the night, cast entirely on their own protection. The depiction of Bartertown in post-apocalyptic Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1981) simplifies the transactional ‘social contract’; entry to the protection of Bartertown depends upon having something to trade. Max’s exile to the desert re-confers his outlaw status. In dystopian fiction, the ‘outlaw’ will frequently become the ‘anti-hero,’ as the state is the converse of the Utopian ideal (More 1551). In Serenity (2015) (and the Firefly [2002–2003] series), the Firefly harbors outlaws, those who fought against the Alliance and those who escaped it. The antihero cowboy/pirate Malcolm Reynolds holds together a small ‘society’ ‘on the raggedy edge’ (Serenity, 2015) of civilized space, bound by a code, but generally opposes the surveillance, oppressive forced homogeneity and unfair distribution of resources of the Alliance.

Tainted: A Monster and a Bane The staining or blackening of the criminal and its spread to the family of criminal is analogous to the diseased limb that has to be amputated, the cancer that must be excised or the illness that must be quarantined. The legal ‘disability’ is reflected in the ‘taint’ on the civil personhood. The diseased ex-citizen physically removed from ‘civilization’ is a form of ‘quarantine’ or cauterization to prevent the infection of the body-state. The ‘disease’ or ‘virus’ metaphor for criminality, common in public discourse (Thibodeau et al. 2009; Baltz Rodrick 1996), justifies exclusion of the criminal for the protection of society. As Tudor monarchs manipulated the circumstances triggering attainder in the sixteenth century, however, the ‘disease’ requiring cauterization can be manufactured: The potency of a ‘threat’ to a society depends on the inherent strength of that society. In dystopian societies, the severity of laws and penalties is in direct proportion to the instability of the state. In Escape from New York (1981), the amputation of Manhattan Island from the rest of the United States by the construction of a fifteen meter wall supplemented by mines and armed patrols represents the ejection of the prison population in its entirety; prisoners are not externally governed or supported, so they are literally outside the law but unlike Alien 3 (1992) are not provided a redemptive arc. The ‘contagion’ represented by the criminal aligns with the metaphorical association of criminals with ‘filth.’ ‘References to criminals as “dirt,” “slime,” and “scum” pervade the media and everyday conversation’ (Duncan 1994, 727). The fear of ‘contamination’ emanating from the morally diseased criminal justifies imprisonment and banishment to protect the ‘healthy’ and ‘pure’ citizens. The fear of contagion also affected the societies who received convicts—particularly in the established communities. ‘They viewed felons as a contagious blot on the landscape’ (Morgan 1987).

532  F. ROCHFORD The Governor of Jamaica, in the first year of transportation, accused imported convicts of quitting the island and inducing ‘others to go with them a pyrating,’ adding that ‘the few that remains proves a wicked, lazy and indolent people, so that I could heartily wish this country might be troubled with no more [of] them. (Morgan 1987, 417)

Averting the Retributive Gaze The executioner’s hood has long-standing ritual significance (Bridges 2001). It may not be a literal hood; it may be a statutory protection of identity, as in some of the American states (Bessler 1996, 710), or a black pen obscuring the executioner’s name. It may replicate the anonymity of the firing squad, so that no individual ‘executioner’ knows who has ‘fired’ the fatal shot. Bridges notes that in some American states, multiple ‘executioners’ are concealed behind a screen, and some of the buttons pressed activate harmless chemicals (Bridges 2001, 656), a technical equivalent of the blanks loaded into some of the guns in a firing squad. Davidson reports that a shortage of ‘execution’ drugs has prompted legislative protection of the identity of the pharmacies that compound those drugs (Davidson and Barajas 2014). The executioner’s ‘mask’ of anonymity is a recurring motif in the graphic novel. The ‘superhero’ is troublingly close to the executioner, a correspondence explored in Batman (Knowlton and Spivey 2008) (and more recently in Titans [2018]) and taken to its logical psychological conclusion in Watchmen (2009), precursors in the character of the Minuteman ‘Hooded Justice.’ In the Watchman movie (2009), Eddie Blake ‘The Comedian’ deployed a flamethrower in state-sanctioned genocide against Vietnamese and, masked, continued to act as a vigilante fighting crime. While in the alternative universe version of the Vietnam War portrayed Blake and Dr. Manhattan as state actors, Blake’s actions after the law were not expressly sanctioned. The mask or hood enables state deniability of the actions of the groups. The vigilantism of ‘masked’ crusaders such as Batman and the Watchmen and V for Vendetta (2005) is motivated by the lawlessness of the DC Universe, where, in the words of Rorschach, ‘the streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”’ (Gibbons and Moore 1986, 1). The Pax Vigilanticus (Allen 2004; Keller 2009) is a natural outcome of the ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 2005) portrayed in the DC Universe, which draws from both disordered states such as the ‘Wild West’ and the excesses of state action in the modern security state (Comerford 2015). The ‘mask’ hiding the state from the consequences of its own actions can also be seen in Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013). Khan and the other genetically engineered ‘supermen’ were forced into exile. The ‘punishment’ of

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Khan and his seventy-two occurred as a result of ‘state’ policy. They were created for war and unfit for peace—‘genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war. But we were condemned as criminals, forced into exile’ (Star Trek: Into Darkness, 2013). Whedon’s Firefly (2002–2003), considered below, considers similar aspects of state-sanctioned weapon development and use, with parallel concealment. As Foucault notes, modern carceral punishment is concealed: ‘justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice. If it too strikes, if it too kills, it is not as a glorification of its strength, but as an element of itself that it is obliged to tolerate, that it finds difficult to account for’ (Foucault 1995, 9). Similarly, Johnson notes that modern executions are highly bureaucratic jobs with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, and procedures. All behavior is spelled out by the prison authorities and occurs in the context of rigidly enforced bureaucratic routines…. Killing and dying are elemental activities, and so we thoroughly ‘encase’ them, as it were, within sterile but comforting bureaucratic procedures. The process is ritualistic. (Johnson 1990, 21)

The outsourcing of punishment, either to the anonymity of a bureaucracy or to a non-state actor, is a frequent trope, perhaps because it has a basis in reality. Rendition (2007) suggests a variation on this theme; although not framed as a punitive exercise, the removal of a person from one jurisdiction to another to allow interrogation which would otherwise be illegal is a manifestation of the aversion of the retributive gaze. In this case, it is telling that the dystopia is modern America and the case is based on a series of true events. Hart posits five central elements for the provision of state-sanctioned punishment, one of which is that ‘it must be imposed and administered by an authority constituted by a legal system against which the offence is committed’ (Hart 2008, 38). The ‘outsourcing’ of punishment is problematic in this sense because the ‘state’ or society whose laws have broken is not the one exercising the retributive force. The modern outsourcing and privatization of prison facilities and management elicit concerns about the validity and oversight of criminal justice (Fairfax 2010). A variant on this theme of the ‘averted gaze’ is the distancing of the state from punitive consequences by relegating the process to the market. In The Running Man (1987), the spectacle of execution is broadcast in game show format, evoking the Roman gladiatorial concept. Prisoners in this dystopia are deprived of a series of the rights due to a citizen, in a form of civil death, so that they are removed from the protection of the state. Gladiators in Rome, even if they were citizens (as opposed to free noncitizens or slaves), did not enjoy the full range of legal rights because they were infamis or ‘lacking in reputation’ (Edwards 1997, 66).

534  F. ROCHFORD Those who followed infamous professions were generally not permitted to speak on behalf of others in a court of law. Under most circumstances they were not permitted to bring accusations against others. They were debarred from standing for election to magistracies. Their bodies might be beaten, mutilated, or violated with impunity. (Edwards 1997, 66)

The creation of the gladiatorial spectacle is also said to have sociological advantages in the form of ‘channelling’ aggressive or punitive impulses of the citizenry. This represents the transformation of violence into spectacle to protect the community from its own impulses. Mimetic desire is a community’s way of transforming its violent desires into not only harmless, but even cathartic, public displays. In ancient Greece, theater provided a source of mimetic desire. In modern Western culture, laws that are the subject of media attention and television shows may perform the same function for the sources of moral panic. (Douard 2008, 44)

The same concept is explored in The Hunger Games (2012) series of movies. The philosophical basis for punishment as spectacle appears also to include the retributive aspect or aim of favored by earlier legal philosophers. Hart notes that ‘designating “Retribution” or “Expiation” or “Reprobation” as the justifying aim … either avoid the question of justification altogether or are … disguised forms of Utilitarianism’ (Hart 2008, 41). However, Sullivan considers that to be a fundamental deception and that ‘punishment – the revenge ritual – is the actual goal of the penal system’ (Sullivan 1990, 2). Reformers, he says ‘have attempted to ameliorate or cleanse society by reforming its deviants’ (Sullivan 1990, 2), while deceiving themselves that the goals of the penal system are ‘deterrence and rehabilitation’ (Sullivan 1990, 2).

Animus and Corpus Segregation of the animus from the corpus is a familiar trope in dystopian fiction, allowing consideration of the mind or soul as distinct from the body. The torture exercised upon the ‘body of the condemned,’ Damiens the regicide (Foucault 1995) can be concealed when inflicted upon the mind or soul. Foucault’s contention that punishment becomes ‘the most hidden part of the penal process…[entering] the abstract consciousness’ (Foucault 1995, 9). The threat of punishment acts upon the psyche, rather than the body. In Foucault’s terms, ‘the execution involved the use of the body in a ritual that taught the lesson of obedience to a power that could seize and explode the person’ (McGowan 1987, 652). The use of violence-as-spectacle in dystopian fiction is often used as a comparator. In Firefly (2002–2003) and Serenity (2005), the Reavers brutalize their own bodies and those of their captives, using corpses and blood to decorate their ships and engaging in ‘ritual’ mutilation. Significantly, however,

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the brutalization is a consequence of the psychic violence inflicted upon them by the Alliance. In an effort ‘calm the population’ and remove aggression, Pax—G-32 Paxilon Hydrochlorate—was added to the air processors. Eighty million people ‘let themselves die.’ A few had the opposite reaction: [Dr Caron] There are people… they’re not people… about a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased… beyond madness. They’ve become… they’ve killed most of us… not just killed, they’ve done… things. (Whedon 2010)

The brutality of the Reavers, presented as ‘outlaws’, is the inverse of the sterile, medical brutality of the Alliance—‘two by two, hands of blue’—operating in secret on River Tan’s brain to create a weapon and sending Jude to clean up the ‘loose end.’ The clinical ‘insidiously clean’ strain in Whedon’s depiction of Alliance inspectors and operatives aligns with Foucault’s reflection on the medicalization of control. Jude, the Government Man, is entirely controlled, elegant, and stylized in his violence, taking no pleasure in it, and neither knowing nor wanting to know why the Alliance sought River. The Alliance distances itself from the brutal consequences of its actions and ‘cleans’ the record. The memory of the actions, however, remains trapped in River Tan’s head—she is the body, the incarnation, of the guilt of the Alliance—the sin-eater. Conversely, the ‘incarceration’ of the ‘soul’ or animus, along with the aversion of the gaze, from the psychic consequence, is a frequently used trope. The ‘capture’ of the soul is represented in the pocket universe ‘the Phantom Zone’ in the Superman multiverses. The Phantom Zone parallels the biblical ‘hell’ (Kozlovic 2016) from which Krypton criminals General Zod, Ursa, and Non escape. Their incarceration in stasis, fully conscious and capable of observation but not interaction is a notional separation of body and soul and in the DC Universe is considered a ‘fate worse than death’—so that upon escape from the Phantom Zone, their immediate action is to seek revenge on Jor-El, who designed the punishment. Altered Carbon (2018) extends the theme by removing the animus (‘the cortical stack’) from the corpus, so that the body (the skin) is transferable, replaceable and disposable. The themes of punishment (which could involve hundreds of years in virtual stasis), outsourcing of the disciplinary function and the friability of the criminal law in terms of proportionality are further emphasized by the loss of aspects of individuality and the constancy of surveillance.

Panopticon: The Punitive Gaze Surveillance operates as a variant on psychic oppression. The constant gaze of the gaoler is a manifestation of the power of the state and, conversely, the powerlessness of the inmate. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon ‘arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognise immediately’

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(Foucault 1995, 200), and ‘the major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’ (Foucault 1995, 201). The Panopticon as a structure is evident in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and, of course, X-Men 2 (2003) in Magneto’s transparent prison, but modern surveillance potential dispenses with the need for a line of sight to ensure visibility. Citizen-consumers voluntarily submit to processes of registration and surveillance, paralleling the outsourcing of penal services to industry and the use of the market as a distractive tool.

Conclusion Dystopian fiction closely tracks issues of power, control and submission and thus provides significant and highly developed critiques of punishment and retribution, including in prison and in exile and banishment. Since, as Foucault suggests, the penal system can operate as a metaphor for society these considerations are translatable to wider contexts. Freedom, identity and agency, and the balance of those things that are to be submitted as the price of a social contract, deserve this scrutiny.

References Agamben, G. 2005. State of Exception (first published 2003). Translated by K. Attrell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Alien 3. 1992. https://sfy.ru/?script=alien3_hill. Allen, Frederick. 2004. A Decent, Orderly Lynching. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Ancient Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay (1814). Blackstone, W. 1765–1769. Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. Oxford. Charter of Libertyes and Privileges granted by His Royal Highness, the Duke of York (1894) 1 Colonial Laws of New York. Bessler, John D. 1996. “The ‘Midnight Assassination Law’ and Minnesota’s AntiDeath Penalty Movement, 1849–1911.” Wm Mitchell Law Review 22: 577. Bridges, Jonathan. 2001. “Hooding the Jury.” University of San Francisco Law Review 35: 651. Comerford, Chris. 2015. “The Hero We Need, Not the One We Deserve: Vigilantism and the State of Exception in Batman Incorporated.” In Graphic Justice Intersections of Comics and the Law, edited by Thomas Giddens. London: Routledge. Davidson, Sandra, and Michael Barajas. 2014. “Masking the Executioner and the Source of Execution Drugs.” St Louis University Law Journal 59: 45. Defoe, D. 1724 [1972]. A General History of the Pyrates, edited by M. Schonhorn. Douard, John. 2008. “Sex Offender as Scapegoat: The Monstrous Other within.” New York Law School Law Review 53: 31. Dugan v Mirror Newspapers (1978) 142 CLR 583.

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Duncan, Martha Grace. 1994. “In Slime and Darkness: The Metaphor of Filth in Criminal Justice.” Tulane Law Review 68: 725. Edwards, Catharine. 1997. “Unspeakable professions: public performance and prostitution in Ancient Rome.” In Roman Sexualities, edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner. Princeton: University Press. Ewald, Alec. 2002. “‘Civil Death’: The Ideological Paradox of Criminal Disenfranchisement Law in the United States.” Wisconsin Law Review 5: 1045–1132. Fairfax, Roger A., Jr. 2010. “Outsourcing Criminal Prosecution? - The Limits of Criminal Justice Privatization.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 2010, Article 10. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2010/iss1/10. Felons (Civil Proceedings) Act 1981 (NSW). Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin. Gibbons, David, and Alan Moore. 1986. Watchmen no. 1. DC Comics. Hart, H. L. A. 2008. Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Head, David M. 1982. “‘Beyng Ledde and Seduced by the Devyll’: The Attainder of Lord Thomas Howard and the Tudor Law of Treason.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 13, no. 4: 3–16. Hobbes, Thomas. 1651 [1968]. The Leviathan. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hunter v Underwood (1985) 471 US 222. Johnson, Robert. 1990. Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Process. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Code Publishing Company. Keller, Jared. 2009. “Pax Vigilanticus: Vigilantism, Order, and Law in the Nineteenth Century American West.” Honours Thesis Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. Knowlton, Steve, and Michael Spivey. 2008. “Anti-Heroism in the Continuum of Good and Evil.” In The Psychology of Superheroes, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books. Kozlovic, Anton K. 2016. “The Unholy Biblical Subtexts and Other Religious Elements Built into Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1981).” Journal of Religion & Film 7 (1). https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/ vol7/iss1/7. Lander, J. R. 1961. “Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453 to 1509.” The Historical Journal 4 (2): 119–151. Lendon, J. E. 1997. “Review: Social Control at Rome.” The Classical Journal 93 (1): 83–88. Mackie, Erin. 2005. “Welcome the Outlaw: Pirates, Maroons, and Caribbean Countercultures.” Cultural Critique 59: 24–62. McGowen, Randall. 1987. “The Body and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England.” Journal of Modern History 59: 651–679. More, Thomas. 1551. Utopia. London: Penguin Classic, 2003 ed. Morgan, Kenneth. 1987. “English and American Attitudes Towards Convict Transportation 1718–1775.” History 72 (236): 416. Morgan, Jenny, and Regina Graycar. 1995. “Disabling Citizenship: Civil Death for Women in the 1990s.” Adelaide Law Review 17: 49. Prus-Grzybowski, Alexander v Everingham, Paul Anthony Edward [1983] FCA 6; 45 ALR 468.

538  F. ROCHFORD Roach v Electoral Commissioner [2007] HCA 43; 233 CLR 162; 81 ALJR 1830; 239 ALR 1 Richardson v Ramirez (1974) 418 US 24. Reppy, Alison. 1948. “The Spectre of Attainder in New York.” St John’s Law Review 23 (1), Article 1. Rodrick, Anne Baltz. 1996. “‘Only a Newspaper Metaphor’: Crime Reports, Class Conflict, and Social Criticism in Two Victorian Newspapers.” Victorian Periodicals Review 29 (1): 1–18. Sullivan, Larry E. 1990. The Prison Reform Movement: Forlorn Hope. Boston: Twayne. Thibodeau, P. H., J. L. McClelland, and L. Boroditsky. 2009. “When a Bad Metaphor May Not Be a Victimless Crime: The Role of Metaphor in Social Policy.” In Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, edited by N. Taatgen and H. van Rijn, 809–814. Amsterdam: Cognitive Science Society. United States v Lovett 1946. 328 US 303, 90 L ed 1252. Whedon, J. 2010. Firefly Screenplay. http://www.mserenity.ru/files/scripts/Serenity190-initial-version.pdf. World Justice Project. n.d. https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/wjp-rule-lawindex/wjp-rule-law-index-2017%E2%80%932018/factors-rule-law/criminal-justicefactor-8.

Creative and Commercial Transformations: Dark Tourism in Dark Places

Dark Tours: Prison Museums and Hotels James C. Oleson

For most of human history, punishment has been corporal and public (Peters 1995). “[W]e may say that preindustrial people were familiar with the existence of public executions. These were part of life for them and on the whole were not considered as objectionable” (Spierenburg 1984, 87). Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people turned out to observe executions. Indeed, “parents in London regularly took their children to watch hangings. Upon returning home, the children would be whipped so that they would remember the spectacle” (Wilf 1993, 51). The whippings might have been superfluous: early public punishments were brutal and painful (Hinckeldey 1981), and therefore memorable (Camus 1961). The 1757 execution of Damiens the Regicide by drawing-and-quartering provides an illustrative (and graphic) example: The horses tugged hard, each pulling straight on a limb, each horse held by an executioner. After a quarter of an hour, the same ceremony was repeated and finally, after several attempts, the direction of the horses had to be changed, thus: those at the arms were made to pull towards the head, those at the thighs towards the arms, which broke the arms at the joints. This was repeated several times without success. He raised his head and looked at himself. Two more horses had to be added to those harnessed to the thighs, which made six horses in all. Without success. (Foucault 1979, 4)

To finish the job, Damiens’ joints had to be hacked apart. Iron pincers then peeled his muscles away from his bones, and finally he was reduced to ashes (possibly while still alive). The execution of Damiens was a brutal, sloppy J. C. Oleson (*)  University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_33

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affair, but it—and other public punishments like it—provided the public with a visual ceremony, a kind of morality play, that reinforced moral norms and enhanced social solidarity (Durkheim 1950). Yet in just a few decades, punishment was rapidly transformed from a system of public torture to a system of carceral punishments, carried out behind prison walls (Foucault 1979). When executions did occur, they were often conducted in the dead of night, with only a handful of witnesses in attendance (Madow 1995). The meteoric rise of the penitentiary was seen as a triumph of human compassion and the promise of rehabilitation, a victory of good intentions (McKelvey 1977), but today the prison is recognized as a failure (Friedman 1993; Nygaard 1995). This concealment of punishment might have left the pubic with an unsatisfied appetite for normative ritual (Oleson 2015). In place of the scaffold, the public has turned to the screen (Pizzato 2005). Today, although 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the USA (Walmsley 2018), most people have no direct knowledge of the criminal justice system and therefore rely on media representations (Cheliotis 2010, 178). The influence of popular representations greatly exceeds the influence of criminological scholarship (Rafter and Brown 2011, 2–3), and it shapes the public understanding of crime and punishment to a great degree (Jewkes 2015; Surette 2015). Even people who have never been arrested, much less spent any time in jail, often think they know what it is like to ‘do time’ in general population (Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, Oz, or Orange is the New Black), to be thrown into “the hole” (Papillon, Murder in the First), and to escape from prison (The Prisoner and Prison Break). Because they have seen In Cold Blood, Dead Man Walking, and The Green Mile, many people even have the audacity to believe that they know death row and—fantastically—what it is like to die in the execution chamber. (Oleson 2015, 602–603)

Although these representations distort the realities of punishment (Surette 2015), they allow us to participate in a mediated form of punishment ritual. Yet, consuming images of punishment might have unintended consequences. They might exacerbate fear of crime (Lowry et al. 2003), justify increasingly punitive sentences (Cheliotis 2010), and normalize as necessary an extraordinary thing: the deliberate caging of human beings (Mathiesen 2006). “No matter what the question has been in American criminal justice over the last generation, … prison has been the answer” (Zimring, in Schlosser 1998, 52). Consuming media images of punishment might also fuel an appetite for more authentic carceral experiences. But, given that prisons are inaccessible, closed institutions, how might a person obtain direct knowledge about prisons? There are six main pathways into the institution: active criminal confinement, prison employment, visiting operational prisons, unauthorized visits of derelict prisons, visiting prison museums, and finding accommodation in decommissioned prison hotels. Each of these options is described below.

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Active Criminal Confinement It is theoretically possible to enter an operational prison by engaging in a crime, being caught, prosecuted, and found guilty, and sentenced to a custodial sentence. In the USA, minor (misdemeanor) crimes are typically punished with fines, probation, or jail terms. Jails are used to detain defendants before trial and to incarcerate offenders (typically those sentenced to less than one year). Jails mostly “manage rabble” (Irwin 2013, 1)—typically, young and poor minorities from the underclass. But to go to prison, first-time offenders need to commit more serious, felony crimes. Felonies do not necessarily involve violence: acts of fraud, arson, perjury, and obstruction of justice all qualify. Destruction of federal property involving more than $100 damage can be punished by $250,000.00 in fines, up to 10 years in prison, or both (United States Department of Justice 2019, §1666). Convicted and sentenced to prison, individuals get the VIP, all-expensespaid, prison experience. Prisoners gain an emic ethnographic knowledge of prison life (Headland et al. 1990).1 This is why Robert Redford went undercover as a new warden in Brubaker (1980): to glimpse the reality of lived prison experience. The first-hand experience of imprisonment can allow a convict criminologist to overcome the myopia that plagues most academic penologists. “There is … something wrong when criminology/criminal justice research is dominated by government funding, conducted by academics or consultants who have had minimal contact with the criminal justice system, or by former employees of the law enforcement system (correctional, probation, parole, or former police officers)” (Ross and Richards 2003, 1). Although convict criminologists likely remain stigmatized by their former incarceration (Goffman 1963), their carceral experience also grants them phenomenological knowledge of prisons and helps to establish rapport with subjects of criminological study (Polsky 1969). A prison sentence can be a badge of honor. In some circles, it can confer status and privilege (Jankowski 1991). In some circles, surviving prison – perhaps especially a well-known prison – is a badge of courage and a mark of criminal distinction. If some prisons are hell, some are more hellish than others. Surviving these especially demanding prisons and living to tell about it, even to joke about it, is a sign of considerable strength of character, at least in the circles of those who know enough to appreciate the daunting challenges of prison life. (Johnson et al. 2017, 3)

Prison Employment Another way to see the interior of an operational prison is to take a job inside, either as a volunteer or as a correctional officer (e.g., Conover 2001). But corrections is not easy work (Bennett 2016). Heath Ledger’s suicide in Monster’s Ball (2001) speaks poignantly to the stresses of carceral

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employment. “No one plans careers as prison guards for their children, job turnover is high, salaries are low, and COs often fear for their lives” (Philliber 1987, 9). When Shane Bauer went undercover for Mother Jones as a $9-an-hour prison officer for the Corrections Corporation of America, he noted that his fellow private prison cadets “compare towns by debating the size and quality of their Walmarts. Most are young. They eat candy during break time, write their names on the whiteboard in cutesy lettering, and talk about different ways to get high” (Bauer 2016). Corrections work has been described as dehumanizing (for prisoners and correctional staff alike), but future job prospects are good (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019). Prisons remain big business. There is, of course, an inherent ethical question in the decision to work as a correctional officer. Although officers might tell themselves that they contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders, the role necessarily involves participating in the deliberate infliction of harm (Christie 1981). For this reason, some people will not be willing to take on such a role, no matter how curious they might be about the inner workings of prisons. But for those who are willing to accept the job, there is an opportunity to gain an understanding of management side of the prison—a perspective that eludes most armchair, academic criminologists.

Visiting Operational Prisons Although there is unquestionable value in prison ethnography (e.g., Drake et al. 2016; Fassin 2017), few individuals are willing to work as corrections officers or to be incarcerated as prisoners in order to obtain knowledge about prisons. Fortunately, another option exists: it is possible to visit. Lawyers frequently visit incarcerated clients (Oleson 2005). And although prisons are increasingly replacing face-to-face meetings with video calls (Sims 2017), in any given month about one third of state prisoners receive a visit from a loved one (Rabuy and Kopf 2015). But while a prison visit can reveal some qualities of the institution to a visitor (Braman 2007; Comfort 2007), the visitor’s gaze is limited to a handful of spaces: the front gates, the parking lot, the security checkpoint, the waiting room, and the visitation room. Most of the prison remains unseen. Sometimes, individuals with suitable credentials (e.g., usually university students of criminology or law) can join a carceral tour of an operational prison. There is a long history of carceral tours as spectacle in the USA. Prisons used to be major tourist attractions, charging the equivalent of a modern movie ticket (Cox 2009). Charles Dickens drew upon his experience with carceral tours when writing his 1842 American Notes (Dickens 1842; Grass 2000). The value of carceral tours is disputed, however: Some argue that they are voyeuristic (Adams 2001); others note they are carefully scripted and

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staged, thereby presenting a limited display of the toured institution (Piché and Walby 2010); and others point out that carceral tours privilege the voice of the administrators who lead the tour (and simultaneously marginalize the voices of those who are confined) (Dey 2009). Although carceral tours might offer spectators a simplistic fantasy of rehabilitation (Brown 2009), it is unclear whether they produce real knowledge. Wilson et al. (2011) adamantly defend carceral tours, noting that they have challenged their students’ stereotypes of both prison environments and prisoners and changed participating students’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors about the prison system. But we must be circumspect in assuming that carceral tours produce desirable downstream effects: they might normalize or glamorize incarceration. Indeed, research shows that scared straight programs, exemplified by the documentary, Scared Straight (1978),2 actually increase recidivism rates (Petrosino et al. 2013). Tours of operational prisons are usually restricted to educational groups, but one noteworthy exception has gained international notoriety: San Pedro Prison. Described in the book, Marching Powder (Young and McFadden 2003), San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia, is remarkable for two main reasons. First, the prison is largely autonomous, operating like a small city. “Prisoners were expected to earn a living inside and buy their cells as if they were real estate. There was a primary school for the prisoners’ children, who they brought to live with them, and in the most notorious twist of all, there was an in-house cocaine factory” (Baker 2017). Second, the prison is known as Bolivia’s “tourist prison” (Baker 2017). Although prison officials do not offer carceral tours, they turn a blind eye to the clandestine tours of curious backpackers and tourists led by San Pedro prisoners. These tours, although illicit, were regular enough to merit mention in Lonely Planet guidebooks. Although Brad Pitt’s film adaptation of Marching Powder stalled, the story of San Pedro Prison is recounted in Wildlands (2017).

Unauthorized Visits of Derelict Prisons Clandestine tours of operational prisons require the acquiescence of correctional officers, but it might be a straightforward matter to explore decommissioned prisons. Like other prohibited spaces (e.g., sewers, hospitals, factories, rooftops, and subway tunnels), derelict prisons sometimes attract so-called urban explorers (Ninjalicious 2005). Breaking into an abandoned building can be thrilling (Katz 1988) and the “ruin porn” photography of such locations has become a rising movement in contemporary art (Tate Britain 2014). But it can be risky. For example, when explorers sought to infiltrate the ruins of Romania’s Doftana Prison to take photographs (Bohemian Blog 2016), they had to overcome gates, guards, and dogs. Although they adhered to the urbex motto of “take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints, and avoid the latter if you can,” the explorers’ presence still constituted illegal

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trespass. Proj3ct M4yhem’s 2015 infiltration of the shuttered High Royds Lunatic Asylum in England was also illegal, but it produced eerie, atmospheric photographs (Proj3ct M4yhem 2015). And the surreptitious photographs of the crumbling Prison de Loos (Prison H15) in Lille, France, are striking and powerful (Behind Closed Doors 2019). In Estonia’s Rummu Quarry, intrepid urbex divers explore the underwater remains of a Soviet forced labor camp. Although their photographs are haunting and beautiful (Burgess 2018), the site is dangerous (Rummu’s icy waters are congested with barbed wire, sections of rebar and concrete, and sharp machinery edges) and visitors have drowned.

Visiting Prison Museums Most people with an interest in prisons will not go to prison as prisoner or correctional officer, will not join an educational tour, and will not engage in risky urbex trespass. Lots of people will, however, visit a prison museum. Indeed, Alcatraz National Park was named the number one tourist landmark in the USA (Forgione 2015), surpassing iconic sites like the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial. Prison museums can be found the world over, including—depending on one’s definition of prison museum (Oleson 2017)—in Antarctica. Ross (2012) estimates approximately 100 prison museums worldwide. Depending on what is counted (Oleson 2017), that number might increase to 200 or even 300. They can be found on most, if not all, continents. Australia’s rich penal history is represented in prison museums such as Fremantle Prison (Perth), Hyde Park Barracks (Sydney), Cascades Female Factory (Hobart), and Port Arthur Prison (Port Arthur). These museums constitute part of the constellation of 11 Australian convict sites recognized as world heritage treasures by UNESCO (Australian Department of the Environment and Energy 2010). Across Asia, visitors can explore Japan’s Abashiri Prison (Abashiri), Seodaemun Prison (Seoul), Kresty Prison (St. Petersburg), PERM-36 (Kuchino), and Qasr Prison (Tehran). In Africa, South Africa’s Robben Island (Cape Town) is probably the best known site, but there is also an old prison museum in Pietermaritzburg, Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, and there are plans to convert Ethiopia’s notorious Maekelawi prison (Addis Ababa) into a museum. In Europe, tourists can explore Kilmainhaim Gaol (Dublin), Het Gevangenismuseum (Veenhuizen), La Conciergerie (Paris), Mamertine Prison (Rome), Patarei (Tallinn), and the Clink (London). If POW camps and concentration camps also constitute prison museums, locations like Colditz Castle, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, and Thereseinstadt should be added to the European list. In North America, Alcatraz is joined by Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia: the first modern prison), Ohio State Penitentiary (Mansfield: film location for The Shawshank Redemption [1994]), and Iowa’s rotating Pottawattamie Squirrel

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Cage Jail (Council Bluffs), and dozens more. POW and internment campsites can be found in Georgia (Andersonville National Historic Site) and California (Manzanar National Historic Site). In South America, visitors to French Guiana can visit the Cayenne penal colony and glimpse the notorious Devil’s Island of Papillon (1973) fame (Cayenne), and visitors to Argentina can visit the Argentine Penitentiary Museum (Buenos Aires) and tour the prison at the bottom of the world: Museo del Presidio de Ushuaia (Ushuaia). Even farther south, on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, visitors can visit a museum containing penal artifacts (i.e., handcuffs). But if the carceral tour can be criticized for staging a particular vision of the prison (Piché and Walby 2010), this critique is doubly true for prison museums. Prison museums employ particular forms of display and positioning in order to foster particular perceptions (Brown 2009). This positioning is not value neutral. Welch describes the deliberate exercise of cultural power within prison museums: [T]he Clink prison museum invites tourists to actually handle instruments of torture, including the Scavenger’s Daughter, the Spanish Boot, and so forth. By doing so, visitors have safe contact with those devices, perhaps even imagining what it might be like to inflict pain and suffering on unwilling subjects. … Recall the spiked collar, a gruesome torture device that cuts into the neck, creating open wounds that get infected by the lead, resulting in lead poisoning. By way of “organized touching,” visitors are invited to feel the weight of the collar and visualize it locked tight around their neck. That form of safe contact gives tourists a tangible experience without feeling its negative consequences. (2015, 255–256)

Thus, while penal tourism has the potential to illuminate the relationship of punishment between the state and those it incarcerates, an engagement with sanitized, simplified representations of punishment also has the potential to undermine natural sympathies and justify narratives of state-imposed violence (Wilson et al. 2017).

Finding Accommodation in Decommissioned Prison Hotels Another way to have direct experience with a prison is to stay in a prison hotel. Many of the prisons constructed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are now obsolete, no longer fit for the purpose of confining criminals, and can no longer be employed as prisons. However, they often cannot be demolished: not only are they fortified and strong (Cox 2009), but they also have historic and cultural significance. One county supervisor explained, “There were people who thought this was a nasty area. We should just take these buildings down [and rebuild]. But they’re historic” (CarterConneen 2017). Prison museums provide one solution to the conservation challenge, but repurposing sites of incarceration provides another option.

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Around the world, a number of former prisons have been retrofitted into apartments, hotels, and hostels, all capitalizing upon the prison’s fundamental architectural strength: housing people. In Lorton, Virginia, about 20 miles outside of Washington DC, the former Lorton Reformatory was redeveloped into a community of residential, commercial, and retail properties. The old carceral dormitories were converted into rental units and rebranded—ironically—as Liberty Crest Apartments. Residents do not mind the penal features that have been retained (e.g., cell block markings, signs warning against unauthorized visitors) and explain that the apartments give inhabitants the best possible deal in the area for space and square footage (Carter-Conneen 2017). Across the Atlantic, the Netherlands has responded to a rapidly declining prison population by decommissioning a third of its 60 prisons in just three years (Bilefsky 2017). A number of these prisons have been repurposed to house asylum seekers. For example, the Koepelgevangenis, a massive panopticon prison in Haarlem, houses refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. Like the Liberty Crest tenants in Virginia, they do not mind occupying a prison cell. “I don’t feel that it is a prison. What matters is that we are safe here” (Sydney Morning Herald 2016).3 Penal tourists can stay in prison hotels across Europe, and at sites in North America, Asia, and Oceania (Weller 2017). Some of these hotels are hostels that offer budget accommodation. For example, the Unitas Hotel (Prague, Czech Republic), Långholmen (Stockholm, Sweden), Old Mount Gambier Gaol (Mount Gambier, South Australia), and Jailhouse Accommodation (Christchurch, New Zealand) all cater to backpackers. Other properties are luxurious, opulent establishments with sleek décor and modern amenities: The Four Seasons Sultanahamet (Istanbul, Turkey); Malmaison (Oxford, England); and the Liberty Hotel (Boston, Massachusetts). Many prison hotels retain carceral features, and some have prison exhibits. Both Stockholm’s Långholmen and New Zealand’s Napier Prison have museums that can be toured by the paying public as well as by guests. Surely, one of the most unusual prison museums in the world is the Karosta Cietums, located in Liepaja, Latvia. Like the Långholmen and Napier Prison, Karosta is a museum-cum-hotel. A former Soviet military prison, it features tours led by costumed guards and even offers an “extreme” prison experience to those who want to endure a night as a Soviet prisoner. Karosta has been hailed as “the most inhospitable hotel in the world” (Liepaja 2019). Guests can enjoy the “full prisoner experience” in Communist-era conditions - including death threats, warning gunfire and cries of despair from fellow inmates - for just $16 a night. But a night in the nick isn’t for the genteel - visitors have to sign a release form acknowledging that they will be treated as a prisoner, complete with verbal abuse and physical exercise. (Daily Mail 2013)

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The conversion of prison punishment (e.g., confinement, verbal abuse, physical exercise) into a form of amusement has clear implications for attitudes about prison. It is not difficult to imagine that a visitor to Karosta might think, “Prison is not so bad. I had to clean the toilets. I ate prison food. And I slept on a wooden plank. The guards yelled at me and ordered me to do push-ups. And I suffered all of this without complaint. Therefore real prisoners have no reason to complain.” But such a belief is rooted in a conceptual error4: The essence of carceral punishment is not tied to menial labor, substandard food, or sleeping on the floor; rather, carceral punishment is about the deprivation of liberty (Foucault 1979; Sykes 1958). And visitors to the make-believe prison at Karosta are not deprived of liberty. After all, these penal tourists choose, voluntarily, to stay in Karosta’s cells; they know their experience will last for just one night; they know that, unlike the real prisoners from Karosta’s past, they will not be beaten or killed; and they know that—if the experience really did prove to be too much—they could leave whenever they wanted.

Conclusion Mass incarceration creates a curious dilemma. Globally, more than 10.74 million people are incarcerated (Walmsley 2018), approximately a quarter of them housed inside US jails and prisons. It is natural that the public would want to know about any institution that affects so many. It is worrying if the public is not interested, if “[b]y and large, the public is uninterested in prison matters” (Morris 1974, 37). But prisons are generally closed institutions, concealing the administration of carceral punishment beyond the public’s gaze. So how can members of the public understand prisons? They can consume mass media: movies, television, news, music, literature, video games, and other representations (Cecil 2015). Such consumption of prison culture, however, might fuel the fear of crime (Lowry et al. 2003) and normalize the condition of incarceration (Cheliotis 2010). It might also stimulate an appetite for unmediated penal experience. It bears repeating that Alcatraz is the number one tourist landmark in the USA (Forgione 2015). To obtain knowledge of carceral institutions, people can enter prisons through two traditional channels: obtaining emic knowledge of prison culture as a prisoner or obtaining etic knowledge of prison culture as a working member of staff. But few people are so interested in prisons to seek employment in them. Even fewer—perhaps no one—is so interested to deliberately serve a prison sentence. So penal tourists have four principal alternatives: visiting operational prisons, either to see incarcerated loved ones or as part of a carceral tour; illicit exploration of derelict prisons; prison museums; and prison hotels. These four options have the potential to suggest something about the causes and effects of incarceration (Wilson et al. 2017), but they also have the potential to desensitize curious tourists to the realities of

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punishment (Sontag 2004), thereby normalizing incarceration as a necessary, even inevitable, response to crime (Johnson et al. 2017, 3) and justifying the deliberate imposition of pain by the state (Christie 1981). This can fuel penal populism and carceral growth, thereby insuring—ironically—a continuing supply of new penal tourism sites for these tourists to consume.

Notes 1. In 1997, I attended my first ASC conference and listened to a panel of convict criminologists. One panelist enjoined the audience—if we really wanted to know the American criminal justice system—to commit a victimless crime and go to prison. I have pondered the epistemological implications of his suggestion for more than 20 years. 2. In Arnold Shapiro’s Academy-Award-nominated documentary, a group of teenaged delinquents meet with a group of “lifers” from New Jersey’s Rahweh State Prison. The prisoners confront the teenagers in brutal, explicit terms—and try to deter them from a life of crime by telling their own stories. 3.  This touches upon the subjective-objective question of what constitutes a prison. In Refn’s 2008 Bronson, the titular character, Charles Bronson, explains, “You see, I do not see prison as a cage, a box. For me it was a hotel room.” In this sense, he echoes the musings of another, much earlier, antihero: Satan. Cast out from heaven and banished to hell, Satan ruminates, “The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (Milton 1667/2005, 9). 4. A full discussion lies beyond the scope of this chapter, but Plato’s theory of knowledge might serve as a useful framework for understanding prison tourism. In book five of The Republic, Plato distinguishes between knowledge (related to that which is), opinion (related to what is and to what is not), and ignorance (related to that which is not) (380 BC/1968, 159). Although penal tourists have enough information to generate opinions about carceral punishments, they lack sufficient phenomenological experience to constitute authentic knowledge.

References Adams, Jessica. 2001. “‘The Wildest Show in the South’: Tourism and Incarceration at Angola.” TDR/The Drama Review 45, no. 2: 94–108. Australian Department of the Environment and Energy. 2010. Australian Convict Sites. Accessed February 21, 2019. http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ places/world/convict-sites. Baker, Vicky. 2017. “Bolivia’s San Pedro ‘Tourist Prison’, 20 Years on.” BBC News, February 25, 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39074991. Bauer, Shane. 2016. “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard.” Mother Jones, July/ August 2016. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisonscorrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer/. Behind Closed Doors. 2019. Prison de Loos (Prison H15), Lille, France. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www.bcd-urbex.com/prison-de-loos-france/.

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Bennett, Jamie. 2016. The Working Lives of Prison Managers: Global Change, Local Culture and Individual Agency in the Late Modern Prison. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bilefsky, Dan. 2017. “A Space Issue in Dutch Prisons: Too Many Empty Cells.” New York Times, A8, February 12, 2017. Bohemian Blog. 2016. Storming the Bastille: A Look Inside Romania’s Doftana Prison, January 8, 2016. http://www.thebohemianblog.com/2016/01/storming-the-bastille-a-look-inside-romanias-doftana-prison.html. Braman, Donald. 2007. Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Burgess, Anika. 2018. “Diving into Estonia’s Abandoned Underwater Prison.” Atlas Obscura, March 7, 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ rummu-underwater-prison-pictures. Camus, Albert. 1961. “Reflections on the Guillotine.” In Resistance, Rebellion and Death. Translated by Justin O’Brien, 175–234. New York: Knopf. Carter-Conneen, Mike. 2017. “Historic Prison Retrofitted into Modern Apartments.” ABC 7, May 19, 2017. https://wjla.com/news/local/historic-prison-retrofittedinto-modern-apartments. Cecil, Dawn K. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture: From The Big House to Orange Is the New Black. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Cheliotis, Leonidas K. 2010. “The Ambivalent Consequences of Visibility: Crime and Prisons in the Mass Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 6, no. 2: 169–184. Christie, Nils. 1981. Limits to Pain. London: Martin Robertson. Comfort, Megan. 2007. Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conover, Ted. 2001. Newjack. New York: Vintage. Cox, Stephen D. 2009. The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison. New Haven: Yale University Press. Daily Mail. 2013. “Not Exactly a Relaxing Vacation: Inside the Hotel Converted from a Prison Where Guests Are Punished with Physical Exercise for the Full ‘Inmate Experience.’” Daily Mail, July 8, 2013. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-2358086/Karosta-Prison-Inside-converted-hotel-guests-verballyabused-sleep-concrete-floors.html. Dey, Eugene. 2009. “Prison Tours as a Research Tool in the Golden Gulag.” Journal of Prisoners on Prisons 18, no. 1/2: 119–125. Dickens, Charles. 1842. American Notes for General Circulation. Vol. 1. London: Chapman & Hall. Drake, Deborah H., Rod Earle, and Jennifer Sloan, eds. 2016. Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Durkheim, Emile. 1950. The Rules of the Sociological Method. 8th ed. Edited by George E. G. Catlin, translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller. New York: Free Press. Fassin, Didier. 2017. Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

552  J. C. OLESON Forgione, Mary. 2015. “America’s No. 1 Tourist Spot Is a Place Nobody Ever Wanted to Be: Alcatraz.” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2015. https://www.latimes.com/ travel/california/la-trb-tripadvisor-travelers-choice-landmarks-20150613-story. html. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage. Friedman, Lawrence. 1993. Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Grass, Sean C. 2000. “Narrating the Cell: Dickens on the American Prisons.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 99, no. 1: 50–70. Headland, Thomas N., Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris, eds. 1990. Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hinckeldey, Christoph, ed. 1981. Criminal Justice Through the Ages: From Divine Judgement to Modern German Legislation. Vol. 4. Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber, Germany: Mittelalterliches Kriminalmuseum. Irwin, John. 2013. The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jankowski, Martin Sanchez. 1991. Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jewkes, Yvonne. 2015. Media & Crime. 3rd ed. London: Sage. Johnson, Robert, Ann Marie Rocheleau, and Alison B. Martin. 2017. Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison. 4th ed. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. Liepaja. 2019. Wikitravel: Liepaja. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://wikitravel. org/en/Liepaja. Lowry, Dennis T., Tarn Ching Josephine Nio, and Dennis W. Leitner. 2003. “Setting the Public Fear Agenda: A Longitudinal Analysis of Network TV Crime Reporting, Public Perceptions of Crime, and FBI Crime Statistics.” Journal of Communication 53, no. 1: 61–73. Madow, Michael. 1995. “Forbidden Spectacle: Executions, the Public and the Press in Nineteenth Century New York.” Buffalo Law Review 43: 461–562. Mathiesen, Thomas. 2006. Prison on Trial. 3rd ed. Winchester: Waterside Press. McKelvey, Blake. 1977. American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith. Milton, John. 2005. Paradise Lost. Mineola, NY: Dover. Originally published 1667. Morris, Norval. 1974. The Future of Imprisonment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ninjalicious, 2005. Access All Areas: A User’s Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration. Toronto, Canada: Infilpress. Nygaard, Richard Lowell. 1995. “The Myth of Punishment: Is American Penology Ready for the 21st Century?” Regent University Law Review 5, no. 1: 1–12. Oleson, J. C. 2005. “Lawyer’s Visits.” In Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Institutions, edited by Mary Bosworth, 535–538. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Oleson, J. C. 2015. “Rituals upon Celluloid: The Need for Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Film.” Cleveland State Law Review 63: 599–743. Oleson, J. C. 2017. “Mapping the Labyrinth: Preliminary Thoughts on the Definition of ‘Prison Museum’.” In Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, edited by Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby, 111–129. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Peters, Edward M. 1995. “Prison Before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 3–43. New York: Oxford University Press. Petrosino, Anthony, Carolyn Turpin-Petrosino, Meghan E. Hollis-Peel, and Julia G. Lavenberg. 2013. “Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review.” Campbell Systematic Reviews 5: 1–55. Philliber, Susan. 1987. “Thy Brother’s Keeper: A Review of the Literature on Correctional Officers.” Justice Quarterly 4, no. 1: 9–37. Piché, Justin, and Kevin Walby. 2010. “Problematizing Carceral Tours.” British Journal of Criminology 50, no. 3: 570–581. Pizzato, Mark. 2005. Theatres of Human Sacrifice: From Ancient Ritual to Screen Violence. Albany: State University of New York Press. Plato. 1968. The Republic of Plato. 2nd ed. Edited and translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Originally published 380 BCE. Polsky, Ned. 1969. Hustlers, Beats, and Others. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Proj3ct M4yhem. 2015. Urbex: High Royds Insane Asylum AKA High Royds Hospital AKA West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Menston, Leeds, West Yorkshire—February 2015. Posted October 13, 2015. https://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/2015/10/13/urbex-high-royds-insane-asylum-aka-highroyds-hospital-aka-west-riding-pauper-lunatic-asylum-menston-leeds-west-yorkshire-february-2015/. Rabuy, Bernadette, and Daniel Kopf. 2015. “Separation by Bars and Miles: Visitation in State Prisons.” Prison Policy, October 20, 2015. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/ reports/prisonvisits.html. Rafter, Nicole Hahn, and Michelle Brown. 2011. Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture. New York: New York University Press. Ross, Jeffrey I. 2012. Touring Imprisonment: A Descriptive Statistical Analysis of Prison Museums. Tourism Management Perspectives 4: 113–118. Ross, Jeffrey I., and Stephen C. Richards. 2003. Convict Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Schlosser, Eric. 1998. “The Prison-Industrial Complex.” Atlantic Monthly 282, no. 6: 51–77. Sims, Shannon. 2017. “The End of American Prison Visits: Jails End Face-to-Face Contact—And Families Suffer.” The Guardian, December 9, 2017. https:// www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/09/skype-for-jailed-videocalls-prisons-replace-in-person-visits. Sontag, Susan. 2004. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

554  J. C. OLESON Spierenburg, Pieter. 1984. The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press. Surette, Ray. 2015. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images, Realities, and Policies. 5th ed. Stamford, CT: Cengage. Sydney Morning Herald. 2016. “Dutch Prisons Offer Asylum to Refugees.” Sydney Morning Herald, May 18, 2016. https://www.smh.com.au/world/dutch-prisonsoffer-asylum-to-refugees-20160518-goxubl.html. Sykes, Gresham. 1958. The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tate Britain. 2014. Ruin Lust: 4 March–18 May 2014. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/ruin-lust. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2019. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Correctional Officers and Bailiffs. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www.bls. gov/ooh/protective-service/correctional-officers.htm. United States Department of Justice. 2019. Criminal Resource Manual: 1666: Destruction of Government Property. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www. justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1666-destruction-government-property-18-usc-1361. Walmsley, Roy. 2018. World Prison Population List. 12th ed. Accessed February 21, 2019. http://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/ wppl_12.pdf. Welch, Michael. 2015. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment. Oakland: University of California Press. Weller, Chris. 2017. “16 Prisons That Have Been Transformed into Luxury Hotels.” Business Insider, July 19, 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/ prisons-transformed-into-luxury-hotels-2017–7. Wilf, Steven. 1993. “Imagining Justice: Aesthetics and Public Executions in Late Eighteenth-Century England.” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 5, no. 1: 51–78. Wilson, David, Roy Spina, and Joyce E. Canaan. 2011. “In Praise of the Carceral Tour: Learning from the Grendon Experience.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 50, no. 4: 343–355. Wilson, Jacqueline Z., Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby. 2017. “Introduction: Prison Tourism in Context.” In Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, edited by Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby, 111–129. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, Rusty, and Thomas McFadden. 2003. Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

“Pack of Thieves?”: The Visual Representation of Prisoners and Convicts in Dark Tourist Sites Jenny Wise and Lesley McLean

Introduction Port Arthur, a heritage convict site in Tasmania Australia, sells a deck of cards and an accompanying book entitled Pack of Thieves? 52 Port Arthur Lives. Each card details an individual prisoner with the aim of educating the public about the diversity of convict life. The aim of the deck, and its accompanying book, is to challenge: … simplistic views, which have depicted the mass of convicts as a pack of undifferentiated thieves … It tells the story of fifty-two prisoners who were sent to Port Arthur in the 1830’s … We hope in the process to show that behind every entry in the conduct record books of the Convict Department lies a different story of courts and long forgotten crimes, of work and unemployment in industrialising Britain and beyond, of separation and exile, disease and toil, of punishment and rewards, of collaboration, compliance and resistance. (MaxwellStewart and Hood 2010, 8)

One of the aims of Port Arthur is to educate the public about individual convicts. One of the ways they have done so is through the use of caricaturized images, where each preselected prisoner has been given a cartoon-like image. The process of “education” begins as the tourist enters the site (and receives a J. Wise (*) · L. McLean  University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. McLean e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_34

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Lottery of Life card token—one of the cards that can be found within the Pack of Thieves deck of cards), continues through the site (as the visitor can “find” their convict and read about their life and crime), and can even be taken home in the form of the entire pack of cards which is for purchase at the gift shop (the book is an optional extra purchase). While Port Arthur management has created a unique marketing strategy to sell a deck of cards, the site itself is very similar to other historic convict and prison sites such as the Old Melbourne Gaol, in that they too have chosen to use visual representations of people in prisons and/or convicts to educate visitors about the site, and also to sell them merchandise that will act as a reminder of their visit. This chapter explores how dark tourist sites use visual representations and individual stories of people in prison to engage, and ultimately to educate, the visiting tourist. Further, the use of visual representations of people in prison and convicts, as mechanisms to sell merchandise will also be investigated. This research analyzes photographs and notes taken from fieldwork at various sites across New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, as well as an analysis of brochures and booklets sold at the gift shops associated with these sites. Visual representations of people in prison, such as photos on brochures and postcards, are also easily converted into souvenirs that help to capture the story of the tourist site for the tourist to take home as a memento. According to Walby and Piche (2011, 452), “visiting a decommissioned prison or jail turned museum is now a common form of tourism and leisure,” and in the Australian context, “penal museums … are particularly popular cultural institutions, not only among tourists but locals with whom the museums resonate as part of a mythologized convict past” (Walby and Piche 2011, 454). In the case of convicts, the use of visual images, by both tourist sites and merchandising companies, has become trendy because our convict heritage has become more popular within our culture. Convicts are now viewed as Australia’s “reluctant pioneers” (Barnard 2010, 7) and as such are celebrated within our history. According to the “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” poster at the Hyde Park Barracks, a change to viewing the convict within the family as a badge of honor, rather than a “stain” occurred during the 1970s (see also Welch 2012: 597–598 for a more detailed discussion). The convict heritage is now something to be celebrated rather than shunned. Visiting penal museums as a form of leisure is often academically categorized as “dark tourism,” that is, travel to tourist sites that provide “representations of death, disaster or atrocity for pedagogical and commercial purposes” (Walby and Piche 2011, 452). For John Lennon (2017, 217), one of its early proponents, the popularity of dark tourism, hinges on our fascination, as humans, with our ability to do evil. Dark tourism sites, such as penal museums, enable visitors to “stare fixedly at photographic, filmic, or heritage artifacts connected with death” allowing such sites to become a commoditized leisure experience (Lennon 2017, 217).

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Dark tourist sites use a range of artifacts to “represent the record, the context and in some cases, the evidence of crime” (Lennon 2010, 225–226). There are a number of components within a dark tourist site that creates the overall narrative and experience for the visitor; this includes the physical built space (Yanow 1998), the artifacts presented, reenactments, video, audio, or other sensory-amplification devices (Walby and Piche 2011) and the visual representation of prisoners and the site. For Lennon (2017, 218), the relationship between the texts, histories, and imageries used at sites is complex; these mediums attempt to portray physical records, or “truths” of atrocity, crime, and tragic events, but are always open to interpretation and potential misunderstanding. It is this nexus between what is represented, how it is represented and then possible interpretations that we investigate. The visual representation of people in prison and convicts has become a central component of dark tourist sites as both dark tourism management and related companies routinely use these representations to sell their product. The point of displaying artifacts and visual representations of people in prisons is to instill in the visitor a sense of history (Walby and Piche 2011, 454), albeit, a version of history that is aligned with the curatorial interpretation. These narratives can, and do, change over time. This point is important in terms of visual representations—these are not truths, but narratives, and this may not be apparent to visitors of the site because the knowledge that most people have about imprisonment and punishment is usually limited to cultural representations of prison found in popular culture (see Brown 2009). The images of people in prison that curators select, and the type and level of information that accompanies these choices, provide selective vantage points that can actually sensationalize the reality of incarceration while purporting to present the “truth.” Lennon and Foley (2010, 162) recognize that in many dark tourist sites, inaccurate or inappropriate biases can be present, and only certain parts of history can be represented, or “historic revisionism” can be enacted (Walby and Piche 2011, 452). Similarly, by creating a particular narrative, certain aspects of the history of the site are likely to be erased (Walby and Piche 2011, 452; Strange 2000, 3) because the site chooses not to present that particular story or aspect of the site. One of the reasons a particular narrative or “truth” is presented may relate to Stone’s (2006) dark tourism spectrum which provides a framework accounting for variance across sites. The framework considers factors such as motivation; for example, is education the main purpose of the site or entertainment (or both?)? Did suffering or death occur in situ, or is it replicated as it is at a wax museum’s chamber of horrors, for example? Stone (2006) himself recognizes that there are problems positioning sites on this spectrum and that sites will likely move figuratively along the spectrum depending on what information is presented and the nature of the current political climate. Importantly, the visual representation of people in prison can affect where a dark tourist site is positioned along this scale. As such, curators who wish to

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offer a “lighter” tourist destination enabling families to visit may select visual representations such as caricatures or mannequins that are further removed from the reality of incarceration, compared to “mugshots” or death masks of people in prison which can make the site a “darker” place to visit.

Sites of Study A number of Australian dark tourist sites including Port Arthur Historic Site, Richmond Gaol, Hobart Convict Penitentiary, Hyde Park Barracks Museum, the Old Melbourne Gaol, and Old Dubbo Gaol are examined to highlight how different sites represent, and in essence “sell,” preselected people in prison and their stories of incarceration. Each of these sites, while exploring people in prison and convicts, has a very different story to tell. This is, in part, dictated by the sites’ unique histories, but also, in part, by curatorial choices and political constraints. As an example, the Hyde Park site (established in 1819) served a very different purpose to that of the Old Melbourne Gaol (the first cell blocks were opened in 1845). Where the former provided meals and secure accommodation for a large number of convicts involved in public works projects, the Old Melbourne Gaol became Victoria’s first, permanent, purpose-built prison. Commenting on the Gaol’s architecture, Welch (2012, 599) described it as “imposing”; reinforcing “its semiotic message about what exactly it [was] – a penitentiary.” Within its walls and especially in isolated prison cells, curators tell tourists stories about individual prisoners. Contrastingly, Hyde Park Barracks’ architecture is much more open plan. Communal living spaces signal the building’s historical use for purposes other than housing convicts, and this is reflected in the exhibits, which do not solely feature convicts or people in prison. For our purposes here, all of the sites nevertheless present visual images and information on selected people in prison. Some of the images represent petty thieves, and the narrative is designed to question why and how such people came to be in prison; in other contexts, prisoner images include those of murderers and violent offenders, and those who were executed at the gallows on site, especially at the Old Melbourne Gaol. In almost all cases, the individuals represented across all of the sites in this study had done something wrong, something illegal, and as such, their wrongdoings likely shape the viewpoints of visitors scanning the images. Visitors may feel pity for people in prison because of the social circumstances that led to their imprisonment, but it is likely that they nevertheless remain conscious of their lawbreaking. For some sites, the selection of people in prison is linked to the overall experience of the site (this is particularly the case for Port Arthur and the Old Melbourne Gaol), while the rationale for prisoner displays at other sites remains unclear. In the case of Port Arthur, the selection of individuals is aimed at demonstrating how each convict and their life story is different.

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Throughout the Separate Prison at the site, there are numerous stories about the people in prison that had been housed there. In addition, as already mentioned, Port Arthur selected fifty-two convicts to link tourists with the entrance to the site, the site itself and then to the merchandise. Upon entrance to the Old Melbourne Gaol, the visitor is exposed to a number of different “dark” visual representations. Death masks line the corridor and a lashing triangle and hanging scaffold are clearly visible. Throughout the exhibit, images, displays, models, and artifacts are intentionally used to visually unsettle the visitor, including original documents linked to specific people in prison, such as hand written accounts of offenses and details of prisoner punishment including numbers of lashes, as well as newspaper clippings about those who were executed. In the case of the Hobart Convict Penitentiary, the Richmond Gaol, and the Hyde Park Barracks, there is less emphasis on individuals, and a greater focus on the institution itself. In the Hyde Park Barracks, there are only a few photographic images, with the curators focusing instead on presenting silhouettes of people in prison. Similarly, Hobart Penitentiary and Richmond Gaol have selected a few different people in prison to present to the visitor; however, the level of visual display and information is different to the Old Melbourne Gaol and to Port Arthur in that there are far fewer images presented and far less information about specific prisoners. This may reflect a number of different issues. For example, Port Arthur and the Old Melbourne Gaol are likely to have far superior resources attached to their sites because of the notoriety associated with them and also because both were always much larger convict/prisoner sites than the Hobart Penitentiary and the Richmond Gaol. In the 1990s, $4.5 million was invested into Port Arthur in an effort to attract more customers (Strange 2000, 4); it has its own historic trust and is also listed on the World Heritage Convict Site list, which ensures continued monetary support for this site. Similarly, the Old Melbourne Gaol belongs to the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), which is a nonprofit organization that is supported by a large community base working toward conserving and protecting a range of heritage sites across Victoria (National Trust Victoria 2018, n.p.). As such, they will be more likely to conduct extensive research and have access to a greater range of artifacts. In contrast, while the Hobart Convict Penitentiary also belongs to the National Trust of Australia, there appear to be far fewer resources allocated to the site. Indeed, as of the October 12, 2018, the daily educational tours have been cancelled by the National Trust (Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site 2018, n.p.), and there are now four other experiences that are catered specifically to the dark tourist experience: the Hobart Convict Penitentiary Ghost Tour (this appears different to the old Ghost Tour of the same location); Pandemonium—“The Convict Film Experience”; the “Hobart Gallows Walk” (this includes walking through Hobart and then visiting the Penitentiary to view the gallows); and

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the Paranormal Investigation at the Hobart Convict Penitentiary (National Trust Tasmania 2018, n.p.). As such, there appears to be a shift in focus within this site, from a place of historical information to having a greater focus on the “darker” elements of the site. Photographs of these sites were taken by the researchers to document how these sites presented and portrayed imprisonment, punishment, and death to their audience. The researchers acknowledge, like Walby and Piche (2011, 456), that photographs and other visual artifacts do not “present fixed meaning” and tourists looking at the same exhibits may interpret them differently. Nevertheless, the visual sources used throughout these sites have been analyzed to understand the type of stories and “truths” that these sites have “sold” in relation to people in prison and convicts. The main limitation of the research is that tourists have not been included in this study to determine their interpretation of the same visual information at each site. As such, this research offers potential interpretations regarding the visual representation of people in prison and convicts, which are influenced by the researchers’ own agenda and knowledge of prison and people in prison in an Australian context.

Types of Visual Representations Each of the sites uses one or more of the following techniques to provide a visual representation of a prisoner: caricatures, silhouettes, photos, mannequins (often in period dress, although Port Arthur used a mannequin dressed in redesigned convict attire), and death masks. Accompanying these visual replications is informative text and, on some occasions, historical source evidence, such as newspaper articles and prison or court records. Table 1 highlights how different dark tourist sites tend to favor certain ways of presenting visual information about people in prison and convicts. For example, while the Old Melbourne Gaol uses many different visual aids to portray the prisoners, it is their use of death masks especially that emphasizes the site as one of suffering and death. Contrastingly, the Hyde Table 1  Images used at dark tourist sites Site

Type of images

Port Arthur Historic Site

Photos; silhouettes; interactive activities (images with stories); mannequins Photos; newspaper sketches; prisoner record sheets; death masks; dioramas/models; mannequins; silhouettes Silhouettes; projected images; sketches; dioramas/models Photos; prisoner record sheets; mannequins; picture of death mask Photos; newspaper sketches; mannequins; silhouettes Silhouettes; prisoner record sheets; mannequins

Old Melbourne Gaol Hyde Park Barracks Hobart Convict Penitentiary Richmond Gaol Old Dubbo Gaol

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Park Barracks displays many more silhouettes to tell their story of incarceration, suggesting a close relationship between a site’s approach to visual representation and their target audience. Hyde Park Barracks is packaged as a family friendly destination; they have a children’s scavenger activity booklet to engage children and interactive activities include lying in hammocks and trying on the traditional ball and chain convict attire. There is an absence of gory or perverse images at this site, positioning it more toward the lighter side of Stone’s dark tourism spectrum. The use of death masks at the Old Melbourne Gaol, along with their Hangman’s Night Tours and Ghosts? What Ghosts! tours (Old Melbourne Gaol 2018, n.p.), suggests a site that is, is essence, “darker,” catering to an older clientele. Photographic images: As seen in Table 1, photographic records of people in prison are the most prevalent visual representation of information. These images are usually accompanied with a summary of the prisoner’s life—their crime, length of time in prison, age, and aliases were known. As noted by Lennon and Foley (2010, 29), historical photographs and documentation transmit realities and effects that “words can rarely achieve”; they allow “the visitor to associate ‘photographic time’ and ‘the past’ with real time.” Photographic images of people in prison, coupled with detailed information, can connect the tourist with the photograph and force them to engage with the humanity (or lack thereof) of the prisoner or convict. The way that Port Arthur narrates individual prisoner stories represents a good example here. One way we might account for this connection between visitor and photographic image is through “punctum,” an idea explored by Derek Dalton in “Dark Tourism and Crime”, drawing on the work of Maria Elander and Roland Barthes. According to all three, “it is … the punctum… that pulls the viewer closer. Something in the pictures … punctures you, compels you, draws the viewer in, forces you to look closer” (Elander 2014, 53 cited in Dalton 2015, 66). While Dalton’s (2015) writing focused on photographs of victims of genocide, rather than those guilty of crimes, the concepts he explores are transferable to the image of the prisoner, and in particular the convict. Moreover, the photographs of people in prison and convicts are made compelling through the narration at the site regarding their personal story. Photographs at Dark Tourist sites or Penal Museums are a “record or a witness” to death or tragedy (Lennon 2018, 591) that allow us to confront our past. Viewers are both drawn in by such photographs and can be horrified by what they represent (this may be the crimes that occurred or the social conditions that led to people being incarcerated). In Dalton’s (2015) experience, viewers did not gaze long at the photographs of genocide victims, and he has argued that viewers would undoubtedly become haunted by those images. Experiences in the context of prisoners or convicts will likely differ

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for viewers who are aware that the person in the image were lawbreakers, and following from this may be less haunted by such images and feel less guilty about gazing at these images for a longer time (even where that person was eventually executed). As Wilson (2008, 333) claims, Australian penal museums by and large endorse the suffering of victims because it corresponds with the imagined representation of a prisoner, that is the “other” or the “wrongdoer”; convicts, in contrast, are to be treated with sympathy and compassion, although still without guilt. The passage of time between the events that were photographed and the tourist looking at them can alter how the tourist perceives the image. The use of photographic images must be used appropriately and in a balanced manner. According to Lennon and Foley (2010, 29), the recurrent use of photographs can make a display seem less real and can potentially trivialize the enormity of the issues that are being explored. Lennon (2017, 220) further questions the use of multiple, similar images which may lead to the tourist feeling less sympathy, reflecting a diluted response because it is seen as a repetitious blur. Curatorial decisions reflect this point. In the Separate Prison at Port Arthur, numerous photographs of prisons are displayed on a wall. However, instead of having the entire wall filled just with photographs, the site has alternated the images with black spaces and used lighting effects to emphasize different areas of the display. Photographs within these sites are a powerful medium through which to convey narratives and emotions to tourists. Photographs of individual people in prison, along with information about their lives, can help to demonstrate the historical reality of the location (Lennon 2018, 593), and imbue a sense of authenticity and truth value to the site (Welch 2013, 496). Yet it is important to remember that: What we observe in the images of tragic sites is the ‘tourist gaze’, visually choreographed and composed (Urry 1990), framed for consumption in a discourse of tragic heritage, memory and evidence of presence. (Lennon 2018, 593)

It is also important to consider the perspectives of the photographer when viewing such images. Upon looking at prisoner and convict images, it is often easy to forget that these people probably did not want their photograph taken. At Port Arthur, “‘ordinary’ transportees were ordered to sit for the camera in the early 1870s” (Barnard 2010, 7). The purpose of these photographs was to allow the State to survey and control these individuals. Now these photographs provide “us with a unique opportunity to explore the lives of convicts we can meet face-to-face. Seeing them, and realizing that we would hardly give them a second glance if we passed them in the street is, in itself, a revelation” (Barnard 2010, 7). While the ethics associated with the incarceration of people in prison and convicts clearly formed part of the dark tourist experience at many of the sites mentioned here, reflecting on images taken without consent was not so clear. We

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might also ask as Lennon did (2018, 587), does the fact that they are on display in a museum make them more aesthetically acceptable and attractive despite the suffering these individuals endured? Prisoner records and newspaper articles: At these sites, images of people in prison are often accompanied by information about their lives and crimes. Dark tourist sites use such visual representations to shape and create a narrative of truth to draw the tourist in. The Port Arthur Historic Site is open about this motive: As you explore the Site, the powerful, personal stories of convicts, soldiers, free people and their families will reveal themselves to you. Port Arthur’s tale is told in many ways. It will stay with you, long after you have left … Gain an insight into daily life at Port Arthur in the Convict Gallery and play the Lottery of Life to learn the personal story of a real Port Arthur convict. (Port Arthur Historic Site pamphlet n.d., 1, 4)

The desire of dark tourist sites is for the experience to stay with the tourist—to remember their visit to the site (and this concept will be revisited in relation to merchandise and gift shops at dark tourist sites). Prisoner records and newspaper articles are popular visual representations of people in prison because they often include not just an image but further context. In terms of prison records, visitors can read period handwriting describing, for example, the eye color and special physical features of individual people in prison that can enhance their viewing of the normally black and white photographs. They can read newspaper clippings describing the nature of the offender’s crime and their sentence. Both sources firmly reinforce the idea that the people, you are looking at, are indeed criminals. Caricatures: Only one of the sites in this study used caricatures as a central way to represent visually people in prison (there were, however, occasional caricature images within newspaper clippings or magazine covers that were included as part of a wider display at other sites, such as the Old Melbourne Gaol). Port Arthur’s Lottery of Life card token game (linked to the Pack of Thieves cards), and the associated activities at the site, used caricatures of people in prison as an identificatory device. According to Strange (2000, 6), identificatory devices are used to help visitors “relate to major historical events at an individual level.” As previously mentioned, upon entry into the site each visitor is randomly assigned a card that has a whimsical and novel image of a convict upon it, and the randomness of this is designed to reflect the random nature of the “uncertainties and injustices” of the prison system at the time (Strange 2000, 7). The tourist keeps this card and can then find additional information about the name and fate of their assigned prisoner through the Lottery

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of Life display in the interpretation gallery (this display is located under the gift shop and it is the intention of the site that tourists investigate this display first before proceeding outside to the ruins) or through purchasing the Pack of Thieves? 52 Port Arthur Lives book from the gift shop. For Dalton (2015, 135), the whimsical and playful nature of the card left him “unengaged and unmoved” and he argued that other visitors could have experienced similar feelings because there were numerous discarded playing cards on the ground. Dalton (2015) argued that these cards were not something that people felt obliged to keep because they held no emotional connection for the tourist; in contrast, Dalton had kept a similar card from the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles bearing a photographic image of a young Jewish woman murdered at Auschwitz because this held punctum for him. While a photograph is likely to hold more punctum than a caricature, it is important to note that the reasons behind using a caricature—“the fake to interpret the real” (Strange 2000, 1)—may again relate to Stone’s “dark vs light” scale of dark tourism, and the target audience for the site. The Port Arthur Historic Site has a number of dark elements; for example, the Separate Prison re-tells numerous tragic stories of the people in prison held within the site. In addition, the site incorporates the Isle of the Dead (the burial ground for Port Arthur) adding an additional level of “darkness” to the site. The use of caricatures as an identificatory device, rather than an actual photographic image, brings the site back toward the “lighter” side of Stone’s (2006) spectrum. In addition, it is more suited to the children who visit the site, as the site is marketed as offering “family events,” particularly during the school holidays. Events include making temporary tattoos, creating peg dolls (which children in the 1800s used to make), and making convict copper love tokens to take home (Port Arthur Historic Site 2018, n.p.). As such, ensuring the site is “lighter” and suitable to children is an important objective. Photographs of these particular convicts would also not have been available, given photos were only taken at Port Arthur from the 1870s onwards. The Lottery of Life card token game was designed to fit the new “interpretation gallery’s over-riding objective: to show that Port Arthur was not a place of misery for every man assigned there” (Strange 2000, 6). Rather, Port Arthur was a place where “some convicts fared poorly but others did rather well” (Strange 2000, 10) and that some convicts could prosper within the system. As such, the 52 convicts were chosen, not based on their crime or punishment, but by their work assignment while at Port Arthur. The focus on these people in prison is on their occupation, and so a large part of these convicts’ stories becomes muted. The focus is not on their punishment or how they were controlled in their “occupation”; for example, there is no mention that people who failed to work would be flogged or sent to solitary confinement, and part of this rationale is to make the exhibit suitable for “sensitive visitors” (Strange 2000, 22). Consequently, the Lottery of Life and the Pack of Thieves, while encouraging tourists to identify with particular convicts,

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silences most of the problematic and negative aspects of life as a convict. Unfortunately, this distorted view of convicts may be for some visitors what they take away from the site. Mannequins and silhouettes: The use of mannequins at jail-related dark sites is a contested issue among scholars. According to Dalton (2015, 143), while mannequins are often used by penal tourist sites because they evoke a sense of the former inhabitants, they nevertheless remain empty figures that do little to evoke emotion in visitors. Walby and Piche (2011, 462) argue that “… mannequins and cells are of a different symbolic register. While the cells are often where actual people in prison spent years upon years confined, the mannequins are meant to give the tourist visitor some sense of what it was like for a body to be held behind bars.” Acknowledging these concerns, the use of mannequins nonetheless may be more effective for younger audiences. Looking at the sites in this study, those that are geared more toward being inclusive of families, such as the Old Dubbo Gaol, use mannequins and silhouettes more frequently than prison portraits. Seeing life-sized mannequins is likely to have a more meaningful impact on younger viewers. For example, the sites dressed the mannequins in ways that were designed to reflect (gender based) convict or prisoner attire. The silhouettes used by dark tourist sites are also designed to reflect the realities of incarceration for younger audiences. As the Hyde Park Barracks guidebook tells us “Cut-out profiles by artist Heather Dorrough suggest the mood and gestures of Hyde Park Barracks’ men; they are based on recorded details of size, shape, crime and punishment” (Historic Houses Trust 2014, 37). Information about specific people in prison is detailed on each of the silhouettes, but there are no prisoner portraits that accompany this. As such, it is a very different visual representation to the photographic image of the prisoner. In contrast, the silhouettes used at the Old Dubbo Gaol used both the photographic image imposed on a silhouette that also seemed to reflect the physical shape of the person imprisoned (although these details were not provided); and detailed information about their crime, arrest, trial, and execution printed over this image. Death Masks: Death masks are used at “darker” tourist sites. As plaster casts of actual faces taken after the execution of the prisoner, these three-dimensional representations can engender in visitors’ feelings of horror and fascination, and sometimes outrage, but also, importantly, the realities of death in prison. According to the Old Melbourne Gaol Hangmen, Hunger and Hard Labour: Old Melbourne Gaol booklet (re-published in 2011 as The Inside Story: Old Melbourne Gaol [2011]):

566  J. WISE AND L. McLEAN The main reason for constructing these deathmasks was the nineteenth century belief in the pseudo-science of phrenology. It was thought that it was possible to determine facts about character and personality from the shape of a person’s head. Thus, if the deathmasks of enough violent criminals were collected, it should be possible to make generalisations about the shape of such heads. In this way society could be forewarned and be able to keep a closer watch on those with ‘suspicious’ head shapes. Phrenology was largely discredited by the late nineteenth century, but the deathmasks remain as fascinating insights into some of the occupants of the Melbourne Gaol. (Poultney 2003, 27; emphasis added)

As the quote suggests, the use of death masks has shifted over time, demonstrating how dark tourist sites can repurpose artifacts. Death masks were originally used to try to determine the character and personality of the individual; society was trying to identify criminals through the shape of their head. Now, they are used as a “fascinating insight,” not just adding visual representation to these criminals, but also providing further information and context about society at the time these people in prison were incarcerated. As Welch (2013, 501) notes, the information presented throughout this exhibit demonstrates skepticism over phrenology “by commenting that in the late 19th century its experts were consulted like palm readers and astrologers.” In such a way, while the curators are presenting historical material, they are adding an additional layer of commentary over the presentation to influence how the visitor views this display. Another interpretation is that death masks are displayed to reinforce to the viewer that deaths in prisons are a thing of the past. Walby and Piche (2011, 459) argue that museums displaying corporal punishment and deaths in custody exhibits are designed to encourage the thinking that people in prison have a much more humane experience of imprisonment than their historical counterparts because, we as a society, have moved away from death and torture within the prison setting. However, as Walby and Piche (2011, 459) expand upon, death by violence or neglect is still a common feature of the modern prison—yet it is not explored within the sites of this study. The use of the death mask firmly cements the concept of hangings within the darker periods of Australia’s prison history.

Brochures, Merchandise, and Souvenirs Most of the sites explored in this study offer tourists the opportunity to take home a memento of their visit and have a gift shop experience (the size and range of the gift shop varies greatly depending on the site). According to Cave and Buds (2018, 708), “most tourists collect souvenirs while visiting dark places to gather them as prized objects that mediate memories of places and experiences”; similarly, Gordon (1986, 135–136) claims that everyone is a collector of souvenirs as a way to prove where they went. Part of this

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process of selling imprisonment relates to the brochures given to tourists to allow them to navigate the site, and also the more detailed brochures or booklets that tourists can purchase providing additional information about the site. Tourists collect brochures at sites not just to guide them through the site, but also as souvenirs of their experience. As such, brochures are an important part of the narrative of a site—they indicate to the tourist the most important aspect of the site and they allow them to take this narrative home. As is apparent in Table 2, most of the sites’ brochures, pamphlets, or handbooks have included images of people in prison or convicts. There has been substantial criticism of gift shops attached to dark tourist sites. The presence of a gift shop and the type of merchandise, they sell there, are used as evidence of the site trading “off the memory of death and disaster” (Cole 2000 cited in Brown 2013, 272) and of c­ommercializing the “cultural” museum. As such, the shop must balance a number of competing interests. For example, the objects that it sells should reflect the site and the message that is being portrayed (Macdonald 2012, 43 cited in Brown 2013); in some sites, it is very important that the items are educational, rather than novel; for many, the items should be tasteful and “sellable” (Brown 2013). Brown (2013) has further argued that certain merchandise would not sell at dark tourist sites. For example, at “darker” tourist sites, such as Auschwitz, it is argued that highly commercial products would not sell, and as such, educational books are the only items Table 2  The use of images in site brochures Brochure/site

Image

Type of image

Visitor Guide Port Arthur Historic Site Port Arthur Historic Site pamphlet Hangmen, Hunger and Hard Labour: Old Melbourne Gaol (2003) The Inside Story: Old Melbourne Gaol (2011) Old Melbourne Gaol Crime and Justice Experience Hyde Park Barracks Museum Guidebook Hyde Park Barracks Museum Kids Trail activity booklet Hyde Park Barracks Museum Visitors Guide Hobart Convict Penitentiary Chapel • Guided Tours brochure • The Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site Richmond Gaol—free brochure • The Richmond Gaol … 1825 Old Dubbo Gaol

Yes Yes Yes

Photo Photo Photo; newspaper sketches; police record sheet; death mask

Yes

Death masks

Yes Yes

Silhouettes; sketches; models Silhouette

Yes

Silhouettes; prisoner photo

Yes Yes

Prisoner photo Prisoner photos

No Yes

Sketches Images are of actors (child prisoner and adult officer)

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available for purchase. There is also an element of “time” within the debate about what is acceptable (both for a gift shop and the site itself). Stone (2006, 152) recognizes that sites with a more recent history of death and tragic events “that may be transported in live memory through survivors or witnesses are perhaps ‘darker’ than other events that descended into the distant past.” Following Brown’s (2013) example, this chapter also argues that the type of items for sale in gift shops also affects where a site sits on Stone’s (2006) dark tourism spectrum. The “darker” tourist sites (which may also indicate a more recent connection with death and tragedy) tend to focus on selling “educational” merchandise, usually books on the topic (Brown 2013). However, in the context of penal museums, even the “darker” sites within this study sold souvenirs that were appropriate for children. For example, the Old Melbourne Gaol sold plush convict doll magnets (and indeed, this same souvenir was available at a number of sites visited—with each site “individualizing” the souvenir by stitching their site name to the back of the convict doll). What we draw from this is that while “lighter” sites are more likely to sell souvenirs suitable to children, who according to Gordon (1986, 138) are often the target audience for adults, this is not always the case. In addition, the sites in this study may be able to sell these child appropriate souvenirs because these atrocities largely occurred outside of living memory. In terms of leaving sites, Lennon (2017, 221) argues that despite the emotion that a site may have evoked, a tourist inevitably leaves to return to their normal life. The decision to buy a souvenir from a dark tourist gift shop allows the visitor to take home a part of the site, which may act as a catalyst for remembering something of the emotions they experienced. For Cave and Buds (2018, 720–721), souvenirs from Dark Tourist sites act as “touchstones of memory” which provide tourists with a way to “negotiate, channel, and reflect on the emotions felt at the site” upon returning home. Similarly, these “gifts” or “souvenirs” allow the tourist to generate conversations with their families and friends (within their normal day-to-day activities) about Australian history in an entertaining way. Images of people in prison and convicts are an easy way to begin these conversations. For example, if anyone brought out the Port Arthur “Pack of Thieves” playing deck, it would inevitably lead to a conversation about the different convicts displayed at the site, and possibly a direct conversation about which “convict” the tourist was assigned. Images of people in prison and convicts as merchandise are not limited to gift shops attached to dark tourism or penal museum sites. Indeed, the desire to capitalize on the romanticized notion of the convict or prisoner image (especially in relation to an iconic prisoner such as the bushranger Ned Kelly1) to sell merchandise can now be found in liquor shops around the world. For example, the wine company, “19 Crimes,” is selling wine with Augmented Reality labels featuring criminals who had committed one

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or more of the 19 crimes that were punishable by transportation to Australia from Britain. The 19 Crimes (2018a, n.p.) Web site states that convicts “survived the boat ride and the exile. Now their stories survive into the 21st century” preempting claims of exploitation or tackiness by suggesting the company is performing some sort of service for long dead convicts by perpetuating their names. Further, the site encourages you to “come face-to-face with the infamous convicts to hear their side of the story” (19 Crimes 2018a, n.p.). The site romanticizes the people in prison by stating that they were the pioneers who “forged a new country and new lives, brick by brick. This wine celebrates the rules they broke and the culture they built” (19 Crimes 2018b, n.p.). The interactive nature of these labels stimulates conversations about our convict history and encourages people to collect all 19 crimes (each cork features one of the 19 crimes and consumers are encouraged to try to collect them as they are randomly assigned). This marketing strategy thus informs the public, while still connecting to the romantic notions of Australia’s convict past. The repurposing of images of convicts and people in prison means that these images of people in prison “will never be entirely free of the relentless gaze of others” (Clark 2006, 3). Both dark tourism management and commercial companies are routinely using images of prisoners and convicts to sell their product. In doing so, these organizations are presenting particular information to consumers that provide selective vantage points that can often sensationalize the reality of incarceration. The use of prisoner and convict images in merchandise is also making it easier to disengage the images from their original context. As a society, we are comfortable drinking wine from a bottle that features a convict because the atrocities committed by the convict (and to the convict by the punitive system they were subjected to) occurred so long ago, and have now been romanticized as part of Australia’s colorful history.

Conclusion The visual representation of people in prison has become a central component of telling stories at dark tourist sites, and while educating visitors is a key driver in this process, the process itself is highly selective. Each dark tourist site in this study preselected a range of visual representations of people to provide compelling and selective narratives. Bowman and Pezzullo (2010) and Robb (2009) discuss differing reactions and emotions among visitors, linking them to reasons for visiting. For example, visitors may consider a site to be sacred, or desire to learn more about its history; they may have a personal connection to the site, or they may just be intrigued. These motivations will affect how visitors view and interact with the visual representations at these sites. Some may feel apathy or boredom, while others may be deeply moved by the images, or masks, or silhouettes. The level of emotion may also change depending on their experiences visiting

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other sites. For example, while Dalton (2015) remained unmoved by the Port Arthur playing card, visitors who had not seen the same strategy employed at another site may have been more moved by the tactic. As a result of this subjectivity, there can be disjuncture between the intended goals of the site and how the visitor then interprets the material/site (Robb 2009, 53). Dark tourist sites can also change the meanings associated with the visual representations. For example, the prisoner record sheet was once used to control the individual; however, in tourism contexts it is used as a souvenir, in the form of, for example, a poster or even placemats (the Port Arthur restaurant used such images and prisoner information to create placemats). Welch (2013, 481) has previously written about this metamorphosis in function and impact: “As objects become part of the collection, they undergo a cultural transformation, passing from use-value (in its initial incarnation) to its signifying-value (in its current incarnation).” This change in the use of an artifact will inevitably influence how visitors view and understand it. One response is that visitors can too easily disengage from the reality of these peoples’ lives who in some cases, committed horrendous crimes or suffered considerably throughout their incarceration. The different types of visual representations used can also affect where a dark tourist site sits on Stone’s spectrum. Some sites, such as the Hyde Park Barracks site (Welch 2013), consciously avoid engaging in “dark tourism.” These sites present the lighter side of Australia’s prisoner and convict history and avoid using images or artifacts that reflect on the cruelty inflicted on convicts and people in prison. Contrastingly, the Old Melbourne Gaol and the Old Dubbo Gaol focus on the darker sides of the dark tourism spectrum and actively engage the tourist in visual representations of those who were executed at the site. In essence, different forms of visual representation cater to different audiences and what they value in terms of education and entertainment. Visual representations seem to resonate with visitors at the sites, more so than the buildings or artifacts on their own. It is the visual image that draws the tourist into the narrative and provides a sense of historical context and “truth-telling” to the site. Visual representations are selected for display because they “produce meaning” (Welch 2013, 481). The visual image then becomes a medium “between what is mediated and how the subject is understood” (Lennon 2018, 599). Unfortunately, as museums tend to present information in “episodic elements,” the meaning can often be distorted or diluted (Lennon 2018, 598). The visual representation of people in prison and convicts is problematic because, although it attempts to connect the visitor to the past, it can, at the same time, disconnect them from that same past, and in particular the pain and suffering experienced by people in prison. This is particularly problematic for dark tourist sites such as prison museums because they are often viewed as authentic by virtue of being housed in a former prison (Welch 2013, 482–483). As such, the historical accuracy of these sites, or the information they are presenting, is rarely questioned.

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Tourists are being encouraged to encounter more morbid and, in some cases, more sinister forms of leisure, and the image of the prisoner can often play a vital part of these experiences. “The visual images in photography like a stone entering a pond creates ripples and rebounds with new and different connotations that move beyond their denotative level of significance” (Lennon 2018, 596). Through focusing on specific people in prison and convicts, dark tourist sites can present a variety of engaging material to the tourist. As the centerpiece for many exhibits, visual imagery along with accompanying information provides punctum for the visitor. Visual imagery, if done well, allows museums to communicate with a range of visitors despite their age and communication skills. Further, the commodified of such images (e.g., as posters or as labels on wine bottles) allows the tourist or consumer to continue to take this experience home and start new conversations with friends and family about the darker side of Australia’s carceral history.

Note 1. Kelly became a well-known bushranger in Victoria between 1878 and 1880, during which time he and his gang were declared outlaws and the public were given the authority to shoot the Kelly gang on site (Poultney 2011, 21). In 1880, Ned Kelly was apprehended by the police after the “Siege of Glenrowan,” where 60 hostages were held in a local pub. Kelly was housed and executed at the Old Melbourne Gaol. Ned Kelly remains a prominent display in the Old Melbourne Gaol, and much of the merchandise in the gift shop also relates to him.

References 19 Crimes. 2018a. “The Gang.” https://www.19crimes.com/?a=thankyou. 19 Crimes. 2018b. “The Crimes.” https://www.19crimes.com/en-au/the-19-crimes. Barnard, Edwin. 2010. Exiled: The Port Arthur Convict Photographs. Canberra: National Library of Australia. Bowman, Michael S., and Phaedra C. Pezzullo. 2010. “What’s so ‘Dark’ About ‘Dark Tourism’?: Death, Tours, and Performance.” Tourist Studies 9, no. 3: 187–202. Brown, Jane. 2013. “Dark Tourism Shops: Selling “Dark” and “Difficult” Products.” International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 7, no. 3: 272– 280. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCTHR-05-2012-0039. Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Cave, Jenny, and Dorina Buds. 2018. “Souvenirs in Dark Tourism: Emotions and Symbols.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies, edited by Philip R. Stone, Rudi Hartmann, Tony Seaton, Richard Sharpley, and Leanne White, 707– 726. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Clark, Julia. 2006. “Familiar Strangers, Strange Familiars.” In The Sin Eaters: Post Colonial Convict Portraits from Van Diemen’s Land, 3–7. Canberra: National Library of Australia.

572  J. WISE AND L. McLEAN Dalton, Derek. 2015. Dark Tourism and Crime. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Gordon, Beverly. 1986. “The Souvenir: Messenger of the Extraordinary.” Journal of Popular Culture 20, no. 3: 135–146. Historic Houses Trust. 2014. Hyde Park Barracks Museum Guidebook. Sydney: Sydney Living Museums. Lennon, John, and Malcolm Foley. 2010. Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. Andover, Hampshire, UK: Cengage Learning. Lennon, J. John. 2010. “Dark Tourism and Sites of Crime.” In Tourism and Crime, edited by David Botterill and Trevor Jones, 99–121. Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers. Lennon, J. John. 2017. “Dark Tourism Sites: Visualization, Evidence and Visitation.” Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes 9, no. 2: 216–227. https://doi.org/ 10.1108/WHATT-09-2016-0042. Lennon, J. John. 2018. “Dark Tourism Visualisation: Some Reflections on the Role of Photography.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies, edited by Philip R. Stone, Rudi Hartmann, Tony Seaton, Richard Sharpley, and Leanne White, 585–602. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish, and Susan Hood. 2010. Pack of Thieves? 52 Port Arthur Lives. Port Arthur, TAS: Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority. National Trust Tasmania. 2018. “Tours and Bookings: Hobart Convict Penitentiary.” https://nationaltrusttas.rezdy.com/catalog/44174/hobart-convict-penitentiary. National Trust Victoria. 2018. “Welcome to the National Trust of Australia (Victoria).” https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/vic/. Old Melbourne Gaol. 2018. “Night Tours.” https://www.oldmelbournegaol.com. au/night-tours/. Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site. 2018. “Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site: Day Tours.” http://www.penitentiarychapel.com/html/daytours.htm. Port Arthur Historic Site. 2018. “Family Activities.” https://portarthur.org.au/ event/family-activities/. Port Arthur Historic Site. n.d. Port Arthur Historic Site Pamphlet. Hobart, TAS: Print Applied Technology. Robb, Erika M. 2009. “Violence and Recreation: Vacationing in the Realm of Dark Tourism.” Anthropology and Humanism 34, no. 1: 51–60. Stone, Philip R. 2006. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” Tourism 54, no. 2: 145–160. Strange, Carolyn. 2000. “From “Place of Misery” to “Lottery of Life”: Interpreting Port Arthur’s Past.” Open Museum Journal 2 (Unsavoury Histories): 1–33. Poultney, Trevor. 2003. Hangmen, Hunger and Hard Labour: Old Melbourne Gaol. Melbourne, VIC: National Trust of Victoria. Poultney, Trevor. 2011. The Inside Story: Old Melbourne Gaol, Former City Watch House and Old Magistrates’ Court. Melbourne, VIC: National Trust of Victoria. Walby, Kevin, and Justin Piche. 2011. “The Polysemy of Punishment Memorialization: Dark Tourism and Ontario’s Penal History Museums.” Punishment & Society 13, no. 4: 451–472. Welch, Michael. 2012. “Penal Tourism and the ‘Dream of Order’: Exhibiting Early Penology in Argentina and Australia.” Punishment & Society 14, no. 5: 584–615.

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Welch, Michael. 2013. “Penal Tourism and a Tale of Four Cities: Reflecting on the Museum Effect in London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires.” Criminology & Criminal Justice 13, no. 5: 479–505. Wilson, Jacqueline Z. 2008. “Transgressive Decor: Narrative Glimpses in Australian Prisons, 1970s–1990s.” Crime, Media, Culture 4, no. 3: 331–348. Yanow, David. 1998. “Space Stories: Studying Museum Building as Organizational Spaces While Reflecting on Interpretive Methods and Their Narration.” Journal of Management Inquiry 7, no. 3: 215–239.

The Legend of Madman’s Hill: Incarceration, Madness and Dark Tourism on the Goldfields David Waldron

First established in 1864 during the gold rush era of western Victoria, Australia, the Ararat Lunatic Asylum has long stood as a gothic edifice on the crest of the ominously named “Madman’s Hill,” overlooking the regional city of Ararat. Built in the Victorian Italianate style, the now abandoned lunatic asylum complex has become the site of a thriving dark tourism industry feeding off public fears of both mental illness and the plight of the incarcerated patients as manifested through folklore, urban legends, media reports and, of course, the ubiquitous legacy of the asylum in popular culture (Fig. 1). The complex is the focal point of mnemonic battles over representations of the site. To some it is a symbol of gothic horror and unjust incarceration. For others, its role provides a profound window into the history of psychiatry and the lived experiences of patients and staff. Similarly, for members of Friends of J. Ward, the site is a symbol of lost community industry and family heritage. Overwhelmingly, contemporary representations of the site are dominated by a flourishing ghost tour and ghost-hunting industry through which over 20,000 tourists per year visit the site. These representations draw on the folklore of haunted experiences tied to the trauma of the former men and women incarcerated at the asylum, yet they are primarily mediated through expectations rooted in the horror and gothic genres of cinema, novels and video

D. Waldron (*)  Federation University, Ballarat, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_35

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Fig. 1  Front view of the lunatic asylum Ararat (c.1880)

games. This paper will examine the process by which this network of popular, folkloric and populist depictions has shaped representations of “Ararat Lunatic Asylum” as a significant heritage site in the history of the incarceration of the mentally ill in Australia. Perhaps rumors of the supernatural are true. If such ghastly occurrences were to exist, surely it would be the result of 130 years of mass physical and mental abuse. Surely such atrocities would scar the very souls of victims and push them to wander the empty halls of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum—unable to escape even after death. Alternatively, the speculations of beings from the afterlife haunting this facility could ruminate from the imagination of local tour guides, keen to cash in on the undeniable curiosity the supernatural evokes. Either way the history of Ararat, disturbing as it may be, is worth considering. Only then can we understand just how tough the mentally ill of history had it and hope that such mistakes are never repeated.1

Overlooking the city of Ararat on the bleakly named Madman’s Hill stands the crumbling ruins of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum, once home to nearly

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three thousand patients and staff, a self-contained town within a town. The former asylum’s main entrance is approached via a long road a few miles from the regional city of Ararat, passing by a “villa rustica” Italianate gate lodge through a small pine plantation. Ascending the hill, a visitor is welcomed by the imposing Victorian-era administration building before traversing the remains of what was once a spectacular garden with fountains and ponds. Constructed in 1867 in the Victorian Italianate style, the enormous buildings with their accompanying neglect create a remarkably gothic impression. The former asylum is today a crumbling labyrinth of dozens of abandoned buildings in various states of disrepair. The original design, overseen by public works architect John Clark, was inspired by the Kirkbride Asylum system modeled on the British Asylum of Colney Hatch, yet it also featured several innovations such as large airy out-courts for patients, “ha-has” or sunken walls and an orange gate lodge (Bonwick 1996, 62). Since then, numerous additions, cottages, corridors and facilities have been built onto the complex, creating a confusing array of architectural styles and complex thoroughfares, a chaotic maze for the contemporary visitor to navigate. Today, the former Ararat Lunatic Asylum/Ararat Mental Hospital/Aradale complex is a major focal point for heritage and tourism. In 2015, the site was heritage listed for its architectural significance and, perhaps more importantly, for “its physical manifestation of the changing approaches to the treatment of mental illness in Victoria from institutional confinement to treatment and rehabilitation, and in architecture from a system of barracks through to a network of wards and cottages” (Victorian Heritage). The one hundred and thirty years of patient care, in a sense, give a window into the history of Australian psychiatric treatment; the buildings are remarkable examples of Victorian Italianate architecture, so reminiscent of approaches to the design of the Victorian asylum. Since 2008 the site has also been utilized by a community organization of former staff and their descendants, the Friends of J. Ward, associated with the former asylum for the criminally insane based in Ararat’s former Victorian-era gaol complex. More recently, the site has become the home of an extremely successful ghost tour and haunting industry run by the Ballaratbased company Eerie Tours which takes thousands of guests through a variety of dark history and ghost-hunting tours each year. This chapter will examine the mnemonic battles surrounding competing representations of this remarkable heritage site between former patients, former staff and the ghost tour industry, and how these have intersected with the legacy of mass media and gothic horror-driven representations of asylums in popular culture. The Aradale complex finally closed in 1998 as part of a general state-wide policy of deinstitutionalization; however, there had been a slow drawn out process of closure and shifting to community care since the early 1990s. Another important issue regarding the significance of the lunatic asylum as a heritage site is its overwhelming importance to the economy and society of Ararat and the surrounding region. For 130 years, the asylum was the

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primary source of employment and generated enormous income for the town. Employing thousands of people from the region over the course of its history, the asylum’s social and economic significance to the district defies overstatement. The implications for the community of so many people being closely involved in the industry of incarceration and mental illness are enormous. Inasmuch as the site represents a manifestation of the history of psychology and the treatment of mental illness, it also represents a history of the town of Ararat itself. Since 2015, the grounds have been used by Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) as a campus facility for the Australian College of Wine, while the original building complex has become a heritage tourism site for the Friends of J. Ward who organize daytime heritage tours, and the Eerie Tours franchise who guide tourists and paranormal investigators on ghosts, dark history and supernatural investigation tours in the late evening. One of the most vividly apparent aspects of representations of the Ararat Asylum is the extent to which they are extraordinarily polarized in the narratives framed by the Friends of J. Ward and Eerie Tours. In the first case, the site is represented as a locus of the community while conversely the night tours transform the institution into a place of horror and trauma. The tours during the day feature anecdotes of patient life, friendly stories of staff and cricket matches as well as mentioning a few risqué episodes such as a nurse being caught smuggling her boyfriend through a laundry chute. Some mention is made of more infamous patients, such as the self-mutilating Garry David, but by and large the focus of the story is on the asylum as a site of community. These tours cater predominantly to the friends and family of former staff and patients, with negative experiences being cast as peripheral aberrations from the norm. Indeed, deinstitutionalization and the closing of the asylum are represented as a community tragedy with a J. Ward spokesman commenting that, People are still quite bitter about the closing of the place. I think it had to be. A lot of people felt this place was doing a great job and it had a place in Ararat society and in the society of Victoria for that matter. Aradale was a major employer in Ararat for decades and holds a special place in the community.2

At night however, the buildings become a site of gothic horror in which guests are taken on lantern guided tours that feature stories of horrific abuse, ghostly visitations and neglect. Crucial to this reconfiguration is the notion of Aradale (being the later informal term for the Ararat Lunatic Asylum) being a “haunted site” with a vast array of multi-media representations of the asylum complex as “Australia’s Most Haunted Building.” These contrasting stories are the source of considerable friction in the Ararat community as the descendants of former staff and patients compete with the ghost tour industry in shaping the narratives associated with Aradale as a heritage site.

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This polarized representation of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum has been closely reflected in media coverage of the location since its inception. In particular, print media over the past 130 years has tended to alternate between glowing depictions of the institution as a place of caring and healing for the disadvantaged and damaged and exposures of instances of abject horror, murder and sexual abuse. The initial discussions of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum in the Argus, for example, feature glowing commendation for the building’s sophistication of design, self-sufficiency and ingeniousness that would surely create an ideal environment to care for the mentally ill and avoid the chaos of Bedlam (Bethlem Mental Hospital in London).3 One also senses community pride regarding the enormity of the project. Similar articles praising reform, the care of the doctors and accounts of the benefits to patients are also commonly found in newspaper reports; however, other stories recounted in the print media illustrated quite a different image of the location, featuring staggering examples of patient mistreatment, sexual assault and neglect. In particular, the 1883 case of Matilda Cutler who was released into her husband’s custody after considerable time at the Ararat Lunatic Asylum was reported in detail in Australian newspapers. Her story, as reported in the Argus, Ararat Advertiser and other newspapers, revealed shocking examples of abuse, including regular beatings and lacerations, involuntary confinement, use of freezing water and restraints as punishment and the horrific tale of a woman who died as the result of a nurse ramming a metal spoon down her throat. Similarly, newspaper reportage of the Asylum also routinely featured examples of patients who engaged in murders, violence and sexual assault. In one example a woman, evidently suffering from severe post-natal depression, became so filled with anxiety over her inability to prevent her child crying that she slit its throat and as a result spent the rest of her life in the asylum.4 Even the more recent reports have been divided between representations of the site as a place of healing and a place of horror. The Herald Sun in 2014, for example, publicized a several page article on the asylum entitled “Victorian psychiatric patients’ grim fate in hellish 1800s hospitals,” with disturbing stories brought forward from Asylum records.5 Similarly, public reporting on inquiries into has tended to be divided between sensationalist stories into “horror hospitals” and those which advocate the site as a maligned place of healing and care. Of import into the site’s closure as a mental hospital, the widely publicized 1991 investigative task force into cases of abuse within the asylum read as a litany of horrors. While the overall findings were of systemic neglect and corruption, with 20–50% of food not finding its way to patients, widespread theft, patient confinement and a culture of dependency, the team did not find evidence of systemic sexual and physical abuse in relation to specific allegations, but concluded that the culture of dependency and boredom created an environment in which such events could occur with relative impunity. Nevertheless, the scale of specific allegations made by former staff

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and patients was of such horror as to beggar belief and the corresponding response by management and local police could not help but create the impression of deliberate ignorance of such occurrences. In one example, an accusation that female patients were being pressed into prostitution for a small group of volunteers in exchange for cigarettes, with a vivid depiction of a violent sexual assault, was met with the claim by police that “the issue of consent was confused, given the women were allegedly asking for cigarettes as payment for intercourse.”6 Irrespective of the truth of the claim surrounding the exchange of cigarettes, such behavior speaks to a horrendous culture of boredom, neglect, violence and systemic dependency. A review of staff disciplinary actions7 does discuss a comparatively small number of these sorts of allegations featuring assaults, sexual assaults and neglect which are disciplined according to policy, yet as research on the Kew Asylum by Monk has shown, when compared to records of patient injuries and other documentation, there is undoubtedly a high degree of underreporting of such incidents in the Ararat asylum’s history (Monk 2007). Likewise, an evaluation of the seclusion register reveals some disturbing indicators, such as a woman placed into seclusion for the maximum time per day of 8 hours for over four months under the heading “spirited.”8 These stories, the folklore they represent, and the rather limp responses to such extraordinary allegations by management and local police undoubtedly contributed to Aradale’s negative reputation in the broader community and media representation. Yet articles discussing aspects of darker history can often be met by polarized public responses, on the one side from former staff and their descendants, defending the institution, and on the other, those decrying claims of horrid conditions and treatment of patients. The following comment is illustrative of public responses in defense of Aradale’s legacy. My question is, do the people who are running the Aradale Ghost Tours and posting this comparison actually have any personal experience of working in the institution before its closure? While Aradale in its early years may have been like many other similar institutions at the time, as times and trends in care changed, so did the way those in Aradale were cared for. Many people who follow this page have family members and friends who worked at Aradale or indeed worked there themselves and find the comparison appalling! I’m not saying every staff member was perfect however the overwhelming majority were hard workers who genuinely cared for those they were caring for. Don’t believe every rumour you may have heard about conditions in Aradale, It’s an insult to those who worked there and genuinely cared.9

These divisions in representation persist to the present day and there are deep scars in the community wrought by both the asylum itself and its legacy and the economic damage inflicted when such a large employer closed its doors with devastating impact on the town’s economy. In George’s research into Penhurst, she argues that disability activists attempted to achieve a

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“sanctification” of the heritage site by redefining the story of the closure as a symbol of progress in the rights of the mentally ill through community-based activism. This is certainly the case with Aradale regarding popular representations of deinstitutionalization at the site, despite protests from the Friends of J. Ward to the contrary. Paradoxically, this version of the narrative requires a representation of the site as a symbol of repression, abuse and neglect of patients and draws upon caricatures of the asylum in gothic horror, thus providing fertile fodder for the current use of the site as a haunted attraction. In contrast, Friends of J. Ward focused their narrative on memories that represented Aradale as a symbol of the community, public service and genuine care for patients. To this group, these darker narratives were inherently threatening as they compromised local community views of the town’s history and the memories associated with the thousands of townsfolk and their relatives who were employed at the Asylum in its 130-year history. There would also be a similar concern raised by families who had relatives incarcerated there and felt the need to defend their actions. Like Penhurst, the public representation of the site was controversial and divided because the closure of the institution itself was controversial. It represented a profound attack on the local economy as well as fundamentally compromising people’s familial and personal sense of values and identity.10 Indeed, a review of letters to the editor in the local papers and social media indicated that many members of the local public believed the institution should not have been closed and were personally very threatened by the notion of sanctifying the story as an example of progress or recasting Aradale as the locus of an attraction rooted in gothic horror. Sociologist Zerubavel referred to these kinds of public conversations as mnemonic battles in which communities engage in conflict over representations of the past, how their stories should be memorialized and who has control over the representations (1996, 283). The representation of the Aradale site has been shaped by the result of these conflicts between former patients, staff and the ghost tour industry. This mnemonic battle of representations has been waged through mass media coverage shaped by the intersection of popular culture, history and folklore. In particular, the tension revolves around the intersecting issues of positive and negative representations of the site and its heritage as well as concerns that the publicization of traumatic experiences by patients has been commercialized and colored by the ghost tour industry and reduced to a tormented image shaped by popular notions of asylums in gothic horror. As George (2014, 205) argues in her dissertation on the commodification of the Pennhurst Asylum via dark tourism, “the stories of journalists and advocates, which were intended to expose real suffering and injustice, unintentionally paved the way for the attraction’s parody of Pennhurst.” This was further complicated by advocates for patients who experienced abuse in the asylum, who found their narratives entwined and appropriated for use in gothic tourism. With regard to the use of history, ghost-hunting programs, horror films and dark history/ghost tour

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models applied to the Ararat Asylum follow common patterns to other representations of historic sites in popular culture. Foote argues that this pattern of appropriation may lead to the process of “obliteration,” as the artifacts of history become reconstituted as examples of folklore and popular culture (2003, 25); following in the footsteps of Jameson’s hypothesis that in the era of late capitalism, genuine historicity becomes supplanted by commodified images within the broader framework of consumable culture (1989, 19). The former Ararat Asylum has now been used as a site of haunting by numerous television programs and films such as Haunting Australia, Mystical Guides to Haunted Australia and the forthcoming international horror film Tujuh Bidadari. These films, drawing on the unique visual qualities of the site and its history, have also been deeply enmeshed in broader representations of the asylum and mental illness from gothic literature and popular culture. They also draw on a broader folkloric mythology of spirits as a romanticized memorialization of trauma. The narratives associated with the site have thus become a complex, mutually formative web of history, traumatic experiences, commodification and popular culture serving the interests of diverse sectors of the community making claim over the site and its heritage. This mixture of popular culture, history and folklore tends to provoke strong, if divided, responses to engagement with the past. These responses can, in one sense, be characterized as dangerous, distasteful, inaccurate and exploitative, an example of what George referred to in her comment that “popular culture is a wasteland of ignorance and hegemony, especially when it comes to the way the public abuses history” (George 2014, 9). Yet on the other hand these representations and their use of imaginative and evocative symbolic depictions of the traumas of the past can also become integral to the formation of community identity, emotional connection to the past and reconciliation, all of which can become ideological statements of identity (Waldron 2008, 228). There is also implied in this division between an empirical “genuine historicity” and an imaginatively negotiated past shaped by folklore and popular culture, the notion that the public are passive receivers of mass messaging, as opposed to being communities actively engaging, negotiating and creating meaning within their own shared cultural experience (Hariman and Lucaites 2003, 35; Hooper-Greenhill 2007, 76). In the case of the former Ararat Asylum, this is complicated by the already deeply ambivalent competing narratives in popular culture surrounding insane asylums as sites of both healing and incarceration, where patients are represented both as passive victims and dangerous predators. An underlying issue through these representations is the construction of the asylum in popular culture via literature and cinema. A key feature in this construction is the macabre overtones of the building itself and the gothic imposing imagery of the architecture and geographic isolation. The very location of the former Ararat Asylum, on a hill overlooking the town, its relative isolation, the imposing labyrinth of buildings with the enormous Victorian

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administration block dominating the skyline, combines to give a uniquely ominous quality to the complex. Clark argues that in literature the Ararat asylum came to inherit the literary legacy of other remote and magnificent structures in gothic and horror fiction as symbols of depression, torment and the unknown, and here they create an uncanny liminal space for expectation and supernatural encounters (Clark 2015, 58). In this literature, the asylum acquired an uncanny dimension in which sensationalized portrayals of life within these institutions fused with ghosts of a traumatic past, monsters and inhuman experiments and sadism on the part of patients and attendants. In a sense, the asylum, and the very real public concerns which emerged through public inquiries and newspaper coverage, became the receptacle in which older archetypal mythic fears could be projected. Canonical horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft used the asylum as the focal point of madness as the result of human realization of the indefinable horrors that lurk below the surface of a superficially mundane world whereas Stoker portrayed mental institutions as hopeless sites of neglect for incurable patients and the hunting ground of the vampire count. Others drew upon sensationalized depictions of horror and brutality to depict the asylum as a place of torment and fear, the tortuous fate of a female protagonist at the hands of family. This narrative drew on public fears surrounding the female lunatic, especially those with “moral insanity”; it threatened gendered norms and was configured as both a moral and physical threat to society which demanded incarceration (Ashton and Wilson 2014, 3–7). These fictional and artistic representations existed in a mutually formative relationship with mass media coverage, drawing on sensationalist reportage while at the same time constructing the popular notions of the asylum in which these reports were written and interpreted (Clark 62). The resultant matrix of representations is inherently cyclical, in which the fictional representation generates interest in dark tourism at asylums while the history of the sites continues to inform popular culture. This mutually formative process fundamentally underlies the use of ghostly, horrific stories of incarceration and abuse by popular culture as vehicles for memorializing trauma at these sites, as is clearly apparent at Aradale, a contemporary dark tourism site in which the crumbling buildings become a focal point of horror, through stories of abuse and neglect and through fear of the lunatics themselves as potential perpetrators of antihuman practices. Further to this point is the popular perception of ghosts and the notion of a site, like that of Aradale, as a “haunted” site. This is the underlying context behind the use of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum for a very successful business of ghost tours and haunting experiences. Ghost stories and the haunting experience are primarily focused on the notion of trauma. They bind communities together through the act and ritual of storytelling and the rituals and symbols of the haunting experiences. They also, even if not literally true, refer to sites of horror, anxiety and social tension through their symbolic representation

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in folklore. They are given emotional poignancy in the act of retelling the experience or tale and work to symbolically connect the people of the present with traumatic experiences of the past. There are parallels here, in this respect, between “dark tourism” and the ghost tour industry and those of other sites such as Port Arthur or even Auschwitz. As Gordon argues, the ghost and the haunted experiences are multi-layered symbols that refer to loss, trauma and injustice. They refer to powerful taboos surrounding death, fear, torment and sexuality that are fundamentally uncanny and blur the boundaries of reason and human experience (Gordon 2008, 45). In a sense, the “haunting effect” and the terror of ghosts draw attention to these sites of trauma and undermines our attempts to rationalize them away through the overwhelming and unsettling nature of the uncanny experiences they engender (Waldron and Waldron 2016). There are many well-established ghost stories associated with the Ararat Asylum, and these have been recorded in local papers and social media commentary by tourists. They have been carefully cataloged by the manager of Eerie Tours for use in tours. Some of the examples cited were claims the administration building was haunted by the ghost of Dr. Mullen, the superintendent who suicided with cyanide in his office in 1912.11 Another was that in the women’s ward, staff would see a woman in nineteenth-century costume on level two accompanied by the sound of high heeled steps. Some customers on ghost tours had taken blurry pictures of a distant figure and posted these on social media. There were stories of people claiming to be scratched while in the women’s hospital; some women claimed they felt as if they were pregnant. People reported seeing a ghostly figure on the steps of the main hall and others, a man on the stair-well, despite the stairs having long since rotted and collapsed. In the cellar, people on tour claimed to suffer from inexplicable bloody noses and it is a common site of panic and hyperventilation. There are also claims that the strong scent of formaldehyde permeates the hospital building and mortuary. In the men’s ward, women on tour claimed to be choked, punched and sexually assaulted by unseen hands, leading to some tourists “losing their shit” and needing to be removed from the tour. There is a claim that people hear running and see ghostly figures on the site. Windows in the men’s ward are reputed to show faces which promptly disappear with echoed screams heard late at night.12 Alongside these were more comforting stories of mistaken identity and skepticism. Given the site has also been used as temporary ad hoc shelter for local homeless, it is hardly surprising that strange noises and figures are sometimes seen late at night. On one occasion, former staff told the story of several ghost tour operators closing the site after seeing a pale woman with no shoes and a white dress slowly making her way across the courtyard at a staggering gait. They called out to her to no avail and began to feel uneasy as they approached her nervously and increasingly “wigged out.” Upon reaching the woman the remaining tour guide, who had plucked up enough courage to speak to her, realized she was

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a straggler from a tour and was “absolutely wasted” and looking for one of her shoes that had fallen off on tour. He reflected that if he had lacked the courage to approach her, he would have been utterly convinced he had seen a ghost that night.13 What is particularly pertinent here is the way in which asylums have become closely associated with horror, oppression and the dehumanization of marginalized people. In popular culture, they are sites of people deemed horrific by their supposed anti-human practices and thus a threat to the vulnerable public, but also sites of horror where the patients themselves become the victims of anti-human practices and monstrous designs by the institutions and staff. These are representations projected by people who, for the most part, may never even have experienced an actual asylum. In this sense, they have become a symbolic representation of the horrors associated with the anti-human that the asylum has come to represent. Even so, the purpose of the asylum cannot be separated from the impact it has had on both the people associated with it and on the way that society views mental illness. This complex weaving of people and space has serious implications for tourism at a defunct site. The social boundaries of the asylum are far more pervasive than any physical divide they might feature and the fictional expression of the asylum provides an orientation in society of the concerns, both historic and contemporary, surrounding such institutions (Mol and Law 1994, 643). The boundaries of the asylum are thus not fixed but fluid, with borders that act as “a gradient rather than a cut-off point” (659). While the narrative of the asylum is hosted by physical locations such as Aradale, it is also carried by those who have dwelt inside as patients or staff. The space of the asylum thus moves with them about society. It is carried with them in records and documentation, personal histories, and a variety of other sources. And beyond those directly associated with the physical asylum itself, the narrative’s fluid movement is affixed to those visible signs of deviance, physical or mental differentiation. The asylum and its literary characterization and associated fictional tropes reflect the long, publicized, history of such structures along with sociological concerns regarding mental health. However, while this is certainly the case pertaining to the folklore surrounding ghosts and ghost stories within communities and assorted representations in popular culture, there are tensions with this hypothesis when the process of the haunting experience is mediated and motivated by a consumer-based industry deriving representations from popular culture as well as local history. There is also the danger of relegating the experience of the voiceless to that of an objectified vicarious freak show for public consumption. In a sense, the positive and negative representations of the site, as demonstrated by both the Friends of J. Ward, popular cultural narratives and the “dark tourism” industry, maintain the voice-lessness of the oppressed and, in a sense, objectify their experiences for the purview of others

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within a polarized discourse of “madness” as represented through literary and cinematic fiction. In neither case do we hear the voices of those who were patients and those who were targeted by the use of asylums as a vehicle for social control and incarceration, nor do we hear the deeper critiques of the asylum system which led to the process of deinstitutionalization. These questions are particularly pertinent when examining the problem of authenticity in representations regarding the lived experiences of those who lived within the institution as against the desire for tourist markets to have visiting experiences which fit within popular representations of asylums in fiction and local community ownership of a site. These considerations indicate the importance of balancing the interests of stakeholders in a community and the importance of continued negotiation and recognition of the sensitivity of a complex like Aradale as a site of social conscience. The re-branding of Aradale as a site of conscience would increase the focus of future conservation management plans on the intangible values. It would also raise the primary significance to the international significance of the site for public awareness and tourism, creating new opportunities for the development of visitor numbers which could be incorporated within the established infrastructure of stakeholders and already financially successful tourist and community organizations.

Notes



1. Cansdale, Dominic. ‘Ararat Lunatic Asylum: Where 13000 Australian’s Died.’ Moustache Magazine, October 23, 2014, http://www.moustachemagazine. com/2014/10/ararat-lunatic-asylum-where-13-000-australians-died/. 2.  h ttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-21/looking-back-in-time-atararats-mental-asylum/9072024. 3.  Argus, December 14, 1866, 6. 4.  Bendigo Advertiser, August 17, 1894, 3. 5.  https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victorian-psychiatric-patientsgrim-fate-in-hellish-1800s-hospitals/news-stor y/c7928ebe8a9f 527a941cce86e0990fef. 6.  VPARL 1988–1992, no. 198, https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/ govpub/VPARL1988-92No198.pdf. 7. Register of Complaints Against Staff VPRS 18303. 8. Seclusion Register VPRS 18137. 9.  https://www.facebook.com/AradaleGhostTours/, accessed January 17, 2019. 10. George, Kelly. The Birth of a Haunted ‘Asylum’, iv. 11.  Hamilton Spectator, August 12, 1912, 4. 12.  Social media review from trip-advisor, https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ Attraction_Review-g495045-d10792434-Reviews-Aradale_Lunatic_AsylumArarat_Grampians_Victoria.html; the Ararat Lunatic asylum facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/AradaleGhostTours/;personal, communication with the managing director of Eerie Tours and other staff, November 10, 2018. 13. Personal communication with Eerie Tour staff, October 10, 2018.

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References Ashton, Paul, and Jacqueline Wilson. 2014. Silent Systems: Forgotten Australians and the Institutionalization of Women and Children. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Bonwick, R. 1996. The History of Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum. Masters diss., University of Melbourne, Melbourne. Clark, Emily. 2015. “Mad Literature: Insane Asylums in Nineteenth-Century America.” Arizona Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4: 42–65. Foote, K. E. 1997 [2003]. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press. George, Kelly. 2014. The Birth of the Haunted Asylum: Public Memory and Community Storytelling. PhD diss., Temple University. Gordon, A. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Hariman, R., and J. L. Lucaites. 2003. “Public Identity and Collective Memory in U.S. Iconic Photography: The Image of ‘Accidental Napalm.’” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20, no. 1: 35–66. Hooper-Greenhill, E. 2007. “Interpretive Communities, Strategies and Repertoires.” In Museums and Their Communities, edited by S. Watson, 76–94. New York: Routledge. Jameson, Fredric. 1989 [1991]. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Mol, Annemarie, and John Law. 1994. “Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology.” Social Studies of Science 24, no. 4: 641–671. Monk, Lee-Ann. 2007. “Made Enquiries, Can Elicit No History of Injury.” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 6: 11–22. Victorian Heritage Database. https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/28. Last updated in 1999. Waldron, David. 2008. The Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Waldron, David, and Sharn Waldron. 2016. “Playing the Ghost: Ghost Hoaxing and Supernaturalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Victoria, Australia.” Folklore 127, no. 1: 71–90. Zerubavel, E. 1996. “Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past.” Qualitative Sociology 19, no. 3: 283–299.

Three Related Danish Narratives: The Film R, the Penal Museum at Horsens and the Replacement Prison of East Jutland Jack Dyce

Introduction In Elsebeth Egholm’s novel, Three Dog Night, a character (Peter Boutrup), having served sentences in both the now-closed Horsens State Prison and Enner Mark Prison, its replacement, reflected on his experience as being “an impersonal sojourn in the shadows” (Egholm 2013, 241). To the world beyond, incarceration is often a shadowy experience, undertaken by people we imagine to be different from mainstream society, and hidden behind solid walls or fine-meshed fences. In this chapter, I focus on narratives of imprisonment in the Horsens area through the lens of different media: the museum built on the decommissioned site; a docu-style drama filmed there, using former staff and prison residents as actors and drawing on their recent experience of incarceration; and architectural background material and a novel about the replacement prison close by. I ask, in what ways do these cast light into the shadows? The old prison at Horsens in Jutland, Denmark, was instituted in 1853, intended initially to house what the authorities regarded as the “worst” prisoners (Pedersen, n.d.), though, after a “correctional” facility was opened in 1875, it housed lower category prisoners. After its closure in 2006, after being judged no longer fit for purpose (a combination of building unsuitability and shifts in penological policy), a new prison, Enner Mark or (originally) J. Dyce (*)  Scottish United Reformed and Congregational College, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_36

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Statsfængslet Østjylland was opened about 10 km from the original prison and was declared to be amongst the most secure of prisons as well as most technologically advanced. On the site of the closed Horsens Prison, there was developed a prison museum, Fængslet [The Prison] using the site and its buildings (with such adaptation appropriate to its new role) and many artefacts, for “visiting a decommissioned prison or jail turned museum is now a common form of tourism and leisure [and they] are popular tourist stops the world over” (Walby and Piché 2011, 452). The links between these elements make this a meaningful grouping to study. More interesting still is the different media with potential to produce different narratives. In summary (as I shall explore in more detail shortly): • The Horsens Prison Museum employs an extensive range of media (sound, text, videos, shadow projection, artefacts, photographs, architectural space, personal and family stories and letters, interactive spaces, official records, news media items). Ancillary but important additional material for our study included marketing and informational materials, and Internet sites. • On those premises, a Dogme-like Danish “prison” film was produced [production company: Nordisk Film, 2010]—“R. Hit first, Hit hardest”, created and directed by Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer. Though the plot and characters are fictional, the action occurs within the old Horsens Prison, the casting drew very significantly on former staff and residents, and the writers/directors asserted that the film learned from their experience. Alongside the film itself, the principal other materials were critic reviews and writer/director interviews. • For the new and new-generation prison at Enner Mark, there are publications from the Prison directorate and the consultant architects and an academic research comment (Petersen 2016) on “The Social Choreography of the State Prison of Eastern Jutland”. A different perspective comes from a crime fiction novel written by Elsebeth Egholm Three Dog Night (Egholm 2013) in which two chapters in particular make significant mention of the new prison. This extensive and rich resource contrasts with prisons often being amongst the most veiled institutions in most societies. My purpose here then is to explore these resources for what they might say about prisons and penology (primarily in Denmark) but also about “prison-focused” media.

Sleeps the World, Hid from Sight This quotation from the gentle hymn of the nativity of Jesus Christ, Stille Nacht, Hellige Nacht, somewhat re-contextualised for our purposes, expresses a truth about prisons; they are institutions created so that

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“we” might sleep safely in the shared conviction that those who might harm us are locked-up, securely apart from society, “in a place of banishment where ‘bad people’ are sent to keep ‘good people’ safe” (Rodgers 2016, 2) hidden from our view (and indeed silent) behind high prison walls. Whatever be true in this belief, the corollary is that those walls also ensure that prison life and conditions lie “hid from sight” and are “ston[ily] silent” (Strange and Kempa 2003, 402). A common, if crude, distinction in the labelling of prisons is as either open or closed, describing differing (but sometimes remarkably similar, even “uniform” [see Scharff Smith and Ugelvik 2017, 4]) institutions—their buildings, regimes and relationships. Yet, generally speaking, prisons are perhaps “the last great secretive institutions in our society” (Coyle 2005, 6). They are closed, shut off, from our gaze, “separating [the inhabitants] from the ‘mass’ of the population” (Barrett 2011, 113). The gates keep some inside, and others outside, apart. We are not unaware of these institutions’ presence, for, like the old Horsens Prison, they are often situated in prominent locations, perhaps originally intended as a warning. Their walls were high, however, and the architecture served not only to contain its residents but to conceal them and their life and to propagate institutional mystique. By contrast, the replacement prison at nearby Enner Mark was situated according to a different perspective. Whereas the old prison of Horsens was placed on a hill in the vicinity of the city of Horsens and acted as a landmark of the city and its authority, the new prison is placed low in the terrain outside the city and out of sight for the general public [my italics]. When seen from a distance across the landscape, the State Prison of Eastern Jutland does not draw much attention to itself (Petersen 2016, p. 18), as if it were keeping itself out of the public gaze.

Even those who have some access to prisons, for instance professionals and visitors, have their access strictly controlled, restricted, conditional, supervised, affording, even over time, only partial glimpses of life within. In at least some jurisdictions, even researchers can find their requests encountering resistance or refusal (Gentleman 2015; Wilson 2017). The majority of the population in most countries remain wholly outside the walls of places of incarceration, but there are narratives of prisons (such as through the news media) circulating within the wider community, whose “lack of knowledge” (Ross 2017, 952–953) and indeed misinformation (Mason 2007, 481–496) has been facilitated and shaped by those media. “[M]ost people’s understanding of how [prisons] ‘work’ is largely derived from the mass media”, reallife, fictionalised and fictional (Marsh 2009). One of the creators of a prison movie on which we will focus in this chapter [Tobias Lindholm, writer and director of “R”] reported that

592  J. DYCE A childhood friend of mine was incarcerated … He started to write letters and I went to visit him. I had no idea what was going on in Danish prisons. [my italics] (Kramer 2011)

The partial nature (in both senses: limited in scope and skewed in perspective) of many of these narratives help to (mis-)shape our perceptions of prisons but they are not the only “sources” that can inform and influence us. In looking at a former prison which is now a prison museum, a fiction film set in that former prison (and linked to it in other ways) and a crime novel with scenes in and commenting on the replacement (and new generation) prison, we are engaging with material generally considered to be “popular”, in terms of both style and primary audience. Though the primary focus is Denmark, let me offer a starting point from years ago in the UK. One of the most popular, widely viewed, now long remembered, “prison” sitcoms was Porridge1 (the title using the slang term for spending time in prison) which ran on BBC TV from 1974 to 1977. The central character was a man sentenced to five years of imprisonment and played by a prominent British comic actor. Humorous scenes and dialogue drove the series and more graphic and potentially distressing aspects of prison life were not evident, though perhaps occasionally hinted at, such as psychological damage, brutality, drugs and violent hierarchies. Perhaps, however, the strongest and most enduring impact on popular understanding of prisons came from the initial sequence. Unusually, the initial title sequence throughout the series was not accompanied by theme music but by ambient noise of the loud slamming of the stern gates of the (fictional) H.M. Prison Slade, together with a voiceover of the judge’s sentencing, and then with views of the halls accompanied by loud, echoing sounds of keys, of locking, of doors slamming and measured footsteps. Opening credits are generally an important means by which the viewer is introduced to the narrative, to the concept, to the setting, to the principal characters, to the tone of the drama, and are designed to ensure that these things are impressed on, and long remembered by, the viewer (Stanitzek 2009, 44–58). The opening credits sequence may be peritext, but should not be marginalised, any more than the covers of books through which publishers communicate key messages to their (potential) readers (Broomé 2014, 269–282). “It’s not so odd that our common impression of prisons is that of clanking steel doors and long, echoing galleries lined with crowded cells watched over by blue-uniformed ‘screws’” (Glancey 2001). If theme tunes are often remembered and revisited in humming and whistling, the clanging keys and heavy doors and steady footsteps were no less imprinted on viewers’ consciousness as typical of the prison setting and prison experience. By contrast, one of the key aspects of the new-generation prisons, such as we encounter in Enner Mark, has been a commitment to noise reduction, for its own sake but also as a signal of departure from traditional prison characteristics (Petersen 2016, 16). The audience were being invited to laugh and were scarcely

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challenged to question and yet the opening of each episode would not let us forget that this was set in a prison, and prisons were about involuntary incarceration. ‘We visited Brixton Prison and met with the governor, [recalled Ian La Frenais, the writer]. But after being shown around the place we felt really deflated, thinking we’d definitely picked the wrong pilot.’ Their apprehension didn’t ease any after visiting Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth Prisons, either. … ‘We came out of the prisons and said to each other: “How the hell do we make a whole series based in prison funny?” At the end of the day prisons are grim’. [my italics] (Laurence 2003)

Prison museums (and other forms of darker tourism), it has been said, “tend to invert the Disney experience, becoming the antithesis of ‘the happiest place on earth’” (Williams 2007, 99). This assertion of the pervasive grimness of prisons and prison life, made in Porridge for the UK context, is also, in “R”, a critical appraisal of Danish prisons and penology and practice and a challenge to the common assumption and assertion that Scandinavia (the quote originally referred to Sweden in particular) is noted for “sensible, effective and humane treatment of offenders” (Nilsson 2017, 49) but more widely to the whole notion of “Scandinavian exceptionalism”.

Scandinavian Exceptionalism? “Scandinavian Exceptionalism” is used … to describe the distinctive features of the Nordic welfare state models. The concept implies a perception of something common to the Nordic countries: a distinct model of society based on a particular arrangement of the relations between individual, family, state and market. (IASS 2018)

Indeed, it has, as Hilson suggests, “attracted the attention of countless scholars and policy makers, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century remains one of the most enduring stereotypes about the Nordic countries” (Hilson 2008, 87). This exceptionalism, the so-called Nordic model, is perhaps most commonly linked to the welfare state, to the development and maintenance of the folkhem [the people’s home, an expression of the universal care provided by the state], but is a broad and not necessarily coherent notion. The contexts are extensive, though the overlaps are evident, perhaps most in terms of underpinning values. It commonly yokes together different parts of the alleged “Nordic” way—the welfare philosophy and system, democratic governance and regard for human rights, a holding together of individualistic and communitarian norms, regard for the environment, an expectation of compliance with agreed standards of behaviour, and a reading of non-conforming behaviour as being something that can be unlearned or treated [according to educational or therapeutic models] and replaced by socially acceptable conduct.

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Against many of these, the Nordic nations are generally regarded by others, and see themselves, as being world leaders (Tunkrova 2008, 27), heavyweights (Kirk 2016), frontrunners (Hoff 2018, 49), a supermodel (The Economist 2013), a global elite (Marklund 2013, 263; Nordic Council of Ministers 2017), even norm entrepreneurs (Ingebritsen 2002). “Exceptionalism” suggests distinctiveness but also something exemplary—a model in the sense of having something to teach others (Browning 2007) and indeed is a rhetoric “to critique harsher prison systems” (Reiter et al. 2017, 93–94, quoted in Drake 2018, 5). A risk of the exceptionalist narrative is that “this tells one particular story, and in doing so, omits other narratives that might nuance or even contradict this story” (Hennig et al. 2017, 1) and can inhibit critical examination and radical activism. There is, however, something of the Nordic model that is importantly aspirational. It “provided the state with the means to create the good society” (Hilson 2008, 101); perhaps indeed work progress towards it, for “the notion of a perfectable society is still part of the Norwegian national psyche”, suggests Staalesen, the Norwegian novelist and creator of Varg Veum. “I think [Staalesen says] that the generation to which I belong (I was born in 1947) still has a dream about an ideal society, a functioning democracy based on welfare and society” (Forshaw 2011, 2012, 124), where “The welfare state promised to be the remedy for all social ills, including crime” (Tapper 2011, 23), even though the roots of Nordic Noir, in the “Beck” novels of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, challenge that social narrative. We are concerned here, of course, with a particular context of exceptionalism—in penal philosophy, policy and practice. Scharff Smith and Ugelvik (2017, 18) suggest that “The notion of penal exceptionalism seems to fit well with Scandinavian self-perceptions in general”. Acknowledging the penal area as a distinctive one does not imply that it is unconnected to other Nordic models, in particular the welfare model and its perceived “softening effect on criminal justice policy” (Bondesen 2005, 197–198). Scharff Smith and Ugelvik (2017, 18–19) note that in 2012 the then Norwegian Minister of Justice, Grete Faremo, concluded, “We are administrating the world’s best prison service (…) we have good reason to be proud” (Faremo 2012, 14). A former Danish Minister of Justice, Lene Espersen, made a similar, though slightly more modest, claim in 2017 when she affirmed that the Danish prison service was “one of the best in the world” (Espersen 2007). A former Director of the Danish Prison service explained to his employees that “the Danish prison service is considered to be amongst the best in the world” (Rentzmann, n.d., 11). When it comes to Sweden, “there is little doubt that […] a positive self-image and self-understanding has played a role in marketing Swedish penal practice internationally” (Nilsson 2012). Expressions of pride might readily be what Østergaard calls “humble assertiveness”: “We know that we are the best, therefore we don’t have to brag about it. So never mistake Danish or Scandinavian humbleness for real humility. It often conceals a feeling of superiority” (Østergaard 2000, 92).

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Olesen (2017, 271) asserts that “the Scandinavian countries are still acknowledged for their stable penal policies and by some categorised as the epitome of ‘Scandinavian penal exceptionalism’” (Pratt 2008; Lappi-Seppälä 2007). What, however, might be the suggested distinctions of the Nordic penal model? On what grounds might it be claimed that “prisons in Scandinavia exhibit significant differences when compared to institutions elsewhere” (Scharff Smith and Ugelvik 2017, 4). Briefly, it has been suggested variously that they might comprise: • Relatively mild Danish sentences (Olesen 2017, 272). • An understanding of deprivation of liberty being the punishment in incarceration, not extending into other elements (Engbo 2017, 328; Betænkning nr. 1181/1989 1989, 105). • Humane conditions and treatment (Nilsson 2017, 49). • “Denmark doesn’t treat its prisoners like prisoners – and it’s good for everyone” (Reiter et al. 2017, 4). • A focus on rehabilitation and reintegration—normalisation (Minke and Smoyer 2017, 354). • Relatively low levels of prison population rate per 100k of the national population. • Mixed gender prisons (Mathiassen 2017, 380ff.). • Exceptions to ‘the international rule of convergence towards an increasingly punitive and neoliberal model characteristic of the Anglophone countries’ (Scharff Smith and Ugelvik 2017, 7–8; citing Lacey 2008; Pratt 2008; Pratt and Eriksson 2011; Wacquant 2009), albeit that Nordic societies are now heavily under the influence of neoliberalism. Such assertions are not without ambiguity (Engbo 2017, 327) and contradiction and ambivalence (Barker 2012, 5; Minke and Smoyer 2017, 354).

Fængslet: The Prison Museum at Horsens The idea of a “prison museum” may be “curiously slippery” (Olesen 2017, 121); is it defined, for example, by former use of the building, penal narratives, artefacts? But Fængslet at Horsens is situated on the estate of the former prison, a repurposing of the buildings, retaining its penal architecture; it is filled with prison furniture and artefacts, most of which came originally from the Horsens State Prison; its exhibits and curatorial texts and audio-visual materials and the interactive experience it offers are focused on and purport to represent the prison experience. Fænglset falls, then, clearly within the first category of prison museums proposed by Walby and Piché (2015) and quoted in Rodgers (2016, 36), a “fully dedicated museum” housed within a “decommissioned carceral location” (Walby and Piché 2015, 484) with “their architecture and spatial organization remain[ing] largely the same as when

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they were decommissioned” (Walby and Piché 2015, 486). The museum sits in a complex housing also a cultural facility, a sleep-in accommodation, a café, conference and business space, and a church. These other elements may be distinct but they are marketed together and there is a certain amount of overlap between the facilities; for example, the sleep-in is promoted as an add-on to the museum experience: Would you like to try a night behind bars? Sleeping in an authentic prison cell? … combine a good night’s sleep [presumably not necessarily the authentic experience of those who were imprisoned there!] with a unique experience. … The prison feeling is intact’ (Fængslet marketing leaflet).

This pattern of multiplex provisions within a shared unit is more and more common for museums, which have: adapted to the increasingly consumerist nature of visitors (and society), expanded to include museum shops, cafés, cinemas, and restaurants, meeting Thomas Kren’s formula for the twenty-first century museum: ‘great collection, great architecture, a great special exhibition, a great second exhibition, two shopping opportunities, two eating opportunities, a high-tech interface and economics of scale via a global network’ (Krens 1999). Kren’s view is, in fact, close to what many people now experience in the contemporary museum, and reflects – if paradoxically – the values for which the new museology stands. (Barrett 2011, 5)

One encounters much of this at Fængslet, initially the building itself, approached from a distance, on a slight incline out of the town centre. It is imposing, stark, big, solid, bold, dominant, impressive, grim (these were the words that came to my mind when I visited). Even before entering the courtyard, one is likely to be struck by the imposing façade (Welch 2015, 45), responding to the intentionality of the original design. This is “architecture parlante” (Kaufman 1955), architecture that speaks of its identity and purpose. “Architecture matters because it lasts”, suggests Sudjic (2006, 23). In addition, “The physical environment is frequently more resilient than the social environment. Buildings often last longer than people, after all” (Salonen 2015, 83). Though Horsens State Prison has had “intensive work … to transform the prison into a museum” (Scandihotels.com, n.d.), the external structure is unchanged from its period of active use as a prison, its “architecture and spatial organization remain[ing] largely the same as when … decommissioned” (Walby and Piché 2015, 486). This continuity is an affirmation of its enduring historic character (in comparison with the extensive use of presentational technology) and, “through its sheer size, scale and symmetry”, an assertion of order (Welch 2015, 6). The core of a museum has been traditionally the artefacts on display carefully curated, set apart from the visitor in glass cases, with largely factual

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descriptive and contextual tagging. Fængslet museum’s “plan your visit” website gives some sense of how different its presentation (of over 10,000 items) is: Using modern technology, the prisoners and guards have moved in again and you sense them out of the corner of your eye when they pass by as shadows through the halls, rustle silently on the stairs or knock on the heavy call doors. You can also see and hear them on screens, in telephones and over intercoms where they tell stories about the big and small things of prison life … There [are] also furnished cells where one can explore and try prison for a moment. Inspect the cells for graffiti or hidden objects together with the prison guards or lie down as an inmate – and let your nightly thoughts fly in the company of the former prisoners. [my italics]

The presentations “tell stories”, indeed multiple stories. There is a narrative of chronology, artefacts and information representing different periods and their penal practices and philosophies. Sometimes, the contrasts are more explicitly set before the visitor: the doctor’s consultation from the 1930s and the nurses’ office from 2006. Perhaps more implicit but evident nonetheless is the narrative of progress, perhaps common to many museums with their claims to “progress, rationality, technology, and science” (Welch 2015, 4). These claims are consistent with Nordic self-understanding and global understanding as “prototypical modern” societies (Marklund 2013, 275). The availability in the museum of a leaflet on the new-generation prison nearby potentially extends the narrative of progress: the old prison ceased to be fit for purpose; the new prison is an exemplar of new prison philosophy and practice (though we shall consider the veracity of this narrative and its alternatives when we come to look at Enner Mark later in this chapter). Personal narratives form a significant part of the presentation. Prominent are the stories of notable persons such as Jens Nielsen, the last person executed by decapitation there, and Carl August Lorentzen, a persistent escapee (through whose “tunnel” one exits the museum and in whose “honour” the café is named). These names might be known within Denmark, less probably outwith, but the figures of the executed and the escapee are recurrent in museums and the curator with an eye to engaging the visitor may well not ignore “remnant-themed iconography” (Welch 2015, 5). This museum, however, is filled with stories of the many (often anonymous), as through sound clips and in other ways, the visitor encounters the stories not only of former residents and staff but also of families, including children, separated from the imprisoned family member. “How do you grow up when your dad is never around to celebrate your birthday? Who do you play football with, when he is never home?” (Jutlandstation, n.d.). Material was sourced from and sometimes voiced by former prisoners at Horsens (and there is an interesting parallel with the film R which also drew on direct experiences of that prison and used its ex-prisoners as actors) and as such “the

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prison officers and inmates [are] telling their own true stories” (Anstey 2015). This approach has many strengths: • It asserts an authenticity (real people, real lives, real consequences) and that truthfulness is something we often seek in and from museums. This is “what it was really like” we perhaps want to believe (Rodgers 2016). • It brings the past into the present. “The prisoners and guards have moved in again and you sense them out of the corner of your eye when they pass by as shadows through the halls, rustle silently on the stairs or knock on the heavy call doors” (Fængslets plan-your-visit website). There is an immediacy to the experience and this has dramatic effect. “We have brought prisoners and guards to life”, suggests Fængslets information leaflet. • It has impact, not least at an emotional level. If we are encountering real accounts, then the distance between the original experience and us is shortened (even though distancing, making us safe, from the harsh realities of prison life is also part of the museum experience). • It is arguable that it may offer “visibility … to carceral subjects” (Pedersen 2017, 137) and voice to the “historically voiceless” (Wilson 2008, 215). Visiting Fængslet, like many museums, is a channelled experience, “organised walking” (Welch 2015, 46), a “directed itinerary” (Bennett 1995, 6). Even without taking an organised tour, one is “led” (Jutlandstation.dk, n.d.) through the prison by directional signs, “on the journey through the old penitentiary” as the plan-your-visit website describes it. The procedural nature of the visit seems to mirror the procedurality of the real prison experience, an “industrialised process” (Von Mueller 2010, 97). On admission, one is no longer free to determine whither one goes (and that loss of freedom of movement is at the core of incarceration). Two of the most significant points in the museum visit are entering and exiting. The initial elements of the itinerary are significant as one (perhaps with a sense of following in the footsteps of those committed to prison) enters by the guardhouse, crosses the courtyard into the central prison area and then through the admission facilities, collecting a tag with one’s new (but self-chosen in the visitor’s case) identity, before following a predetermined route. Like those convicted and indeed their visitors, one enters through the admission facilities: “you immediately find yourself in a whole different world” (Jutlandstation, n.d.). One is being invited to “step inside” (Welch 2015, 101). The sense of transition into a context of which one is perhaps dimly aware and an appreciation of the degree of dehumanisation may be palpable. The exit routing too is more than simply a means of egress. The last stop on the itinerary is the prison church, Vestermark Kirke. It is a reminder not only that enforced churchgoing was the norm and legally required until the

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1920s and 1930s, but that the church was not primarily a provision to meet spiritual needs but “together with hard discipline and isolation, the impressing of religion” was to be formative for prisoners (Horsens Museum leaflet on Vestermark Kirke 2012). In English, the same word is used for the living space of prisoner and monk alike—a cell—and suggests a point of possible commonality, a reflective space in which “nightly thoughts fly” (Fængslet’s plan-your-visit website). The Horsens Museum leaflet, however, suggests a distinctive role for the church. In religion lies also hope – in forgiveness, release from guilt and the right to the love of God. In church all people are equal [my italics], only God is above us. Even if one does not believe in God, the room with its aura and the priest with his pledge of silence offered a pause from punishment. (Horsens Museum leaflet on Vestermark Kirke 2012, my translation)

The layout, however, denied the affirmation of equality before God and marked the distinctions between staff and prisoner with separate, curtained pews for officers and their families and a false altar for inmates at the back “from which one could not see the real altar down on the floor” (National Museum of Denmark, n.d.). The light and airy church space can allow the visitor, after spending time in the more dismal areas of daily prison life, both a transition back into the outside and also a reflective space to ponder on what they have experienced, and “important questions concerning liberty and standards of custodial treatment” (Duffy 2004) and beyond that on the social circumstances behind incarceration. The transition back is through the tunnel area dug by escapee Lorentzen but that leads now into the gift shop (Welch 2015, 96), where the stock includes the conventional “trinkets, momentos, souvenirs, … and books” (Ross 2017, 960). Apart from serving an obvious economic purpose towards funding the museum (Ross 2017, 947–967), such shops can provide means by which reminders of the experience are taken home, bringing back thoughts that can foster further reflection. Nonetheless, they restore the visitor to being what, in reality, they have always been—a consumer—with further purchasing opportunities afforded at the café.

R A museum will rightly be concerned with issues of historicity, but this quest for authentic experience also lies at the heart of the film R. If in the case of museums there may be an assumption that their professional standards for curatorial work ensure that attention is paid to scholarly accuracy of information, we may not make necessarily make the same assumption of films, sometimes sitting on some border between fiction and documentary. As bell hooks suggests, however, “whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people” (hooks 1996, 2), as “an influential source

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of information (and misinformation) on what goes on beyond bars” (Rafter 2000, 127). Whatever the qualifications, it would be foolish to imagine that prison films have “nothing to say about prison … that might inform our understanding of penal issues” (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 90). R’s writers/directors, Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer, intended to render an “authentic” work, being as true as they could be to the essential nature of prison life at Horsens State Prison. Lindholm affirmed: “We did this film as documentary as possible’ [in order] to give the film a documentary flavour and get rid of what makes fiction stiff and unrealistic” (Kramer 2011). It was filmed entirely within the former State Prison (before it was re-purposed and re-fashioned as the prison museum). The iconography of prison life (Kehrwald 2017) is evident. The closed-ness of prison is reflected in filming that creates a claustrophobic environment (Birchenough 2011). Following practices akin to the Dogme rules, using hand-held cameras (Holden 2011), they shot in a harsh docu-realist style (Brooks 2011). Music (rather than something more akin to an industrialised buzzing sound) is eschewed. Noer has indicated that the violence was “as realistic as possible” (Kramer 2011). One film critic observed, in his view, “it’s a triumph of naturalistic storytelling” (Robertson 2010). Though the central character, Rune, was played by Pilou Asbæk, who has come to prominence internationally as an actor in the television series, Borgen and 1814, and such films as Hijacking, many of the parts in R (at least 75, Lindholm suggests) were played by people who had been inmates or staff at Horsens Prison (IFFR 2010). We put an ad in the paper, and the ones who showed up for casting were ex-inmates or guards. The prison emptied out a half year before we started shooting, so a lot of guys we hired spent time there. They showed us how they behaved in jail. (Kramer 2011)

They also served as important sources of information and reference points for checking veracity (e.g. the person who played Mason “was in prison for years and was our advisor for these sort of practical matters” and Dulfi [Dulfi Al-Jabouri who played Rashid], a Muslim, was apparently able to correct aspects that were not consonant with its cultural norms (IFFR 2010). “Thus do fiction and reality intertwine” (Rafter 2000, 121). The brutality of prison films can run the risk of becoming voyeurism. R does not avoid the brutal (though its realism keeps the film from slipping into prison “porn” [Parker 2010]), from the initiation test requirement for Rune to beat up another inmate to the violence at the hands of wardens and other prisoners, to the murder of Rune himself and the practice of “hot coffee” where oil and sugar are boiled and thrown over a victim. Violence permeates and hovers over the film. Against the myth that Danish prisons were “not as brutal as in other countries”, the film testifies that Horsens was “as dangerous and violent” (Kramer 2011). We are drawn into a concern for the two Rs, we

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observe and perhaps judge their behaviour, but the film is not about them: “the genre doesn’t take its name from its principle [sic] character. … Simply put, we do not watch prisoner movies; we watch prison movies” (Kehrwald 2017, 9). In other words, it is the institution, the system, that is under scrutiny. The brutal actions of all, staff and inmates, are rooted in the brutal and brutalising nature of the system. The prison system’s orderly dominance portrayed in the museum gives way here to a fluidity here. The inmate population breaks down into factions, but the struggles to move up the hierarchies and the demands of commerce undermine any sense of solidarity—even the two Rs friendship is destroyed. The disorder lies less in the violent disturbances and more in the flux in loyalties. The “Danes” (white, European, ethno-culturally Danish citizens) and the “Asians” are held in separate halls (wards in R’s English language subtitles), though there is interaction and a football match between these “sides”. Of this, Noer observes that they had to make this prison “a mini society” and indeed the issue of integration and social solidarity between ethno-cultural groups is a live and continuing issue in Denmark. He notes too that “Rachid’s character is a bit of a mystery. ‘He’s from a culture we don’t know enough about in Denmark’ (Kramer 2011), for penal systems have become an instrument of segregation (Wacquant 2009, 155–156) and prison mirrors the apartheid of much of Danish urban life. The caged bird football scene (actually between two little birds) is a suggestion that beyond the prison cage there are possibilities, but otherwise there is little to indicate any optimism that outside society has any more of a handle on resolving these tensions. Rather, it may be a suggestion, given that in the prison ‘Danes’ bully other ‘Danes’, that the problem of inhumanity is inherent in incarceration as such. Alternative behaviors may occasionally be apparent, as in the friendship between the two Rs and in the desire of the warder who hears Rachid’s admission of his drug activity and his knowledge of Rune’s killing to see him not frustrate his finishing of his sentence and his release, but they are soon crushed. The argument that imprisonment is a school for criminals, an expensive way of making bad people worse” (Liebling and Crewe 2012, 900) is not refuted. Nordic Noir literature and cinema have challenged Scandinavian societies to acknowledge that the Nordic model has not realised its societal ideals, certainly not crime (Tapper 2011, 23), but R does not concern itself in any meaningful way with what has brought Rune or others to be in prison. “You couldn’t even call it a protest film about prison conditions” comments Holden (2011), and indeed, there is no explicit questioning of the Danish prison system or of incarceration as a response to crime. Yet, the closing, lingering, shot of the old iconic Horsens Prison building in all its grimness may be assertion that all that it stood for and indeed incarceration itself underpins all the harm what we have watched.

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If there is a call for a response, it is directed to the viewer. From the very outset, the buzzing music, there also as the film closes, makes it apparent that the intention is to disturb us, the audience. Neither Rune nor Rachid survives the experience, but what of us? “Could I survive in such a brutal environment, and if so, how?” (Holden 2011). If our answer is that we would be overwhelmed by it, then how can it be right to expect others to survive and even grow healthily under its crushing pressures? At the least, this questions the nature of forms of incarceration and maybe even its legitimacy at all.

Enner Mark Prison and “New-Generation” Incarceration Visually, the old and new prisons could scarcely be less alike. The old, as we find it in the Prison Museum, is an imposing large grey institutional building, “on a hill … [acting] as a landmark of the city and its authority” (Petersen 2016, 18) with a set of traditional prison halls with galleries and cramped cells, communal uncurtained washing facilities, its interior spaces hidden from gaze and inhibiting an outward gaze, an internal yard, the residents largely anonymised. After 153 years, it is unsurprising that “prisons officials described these facilities as simply replacing older, outdated facilities” (Reiter et al. 2017, 504). If the museum had, in part, been a narrative with an underlying chronology marking a trajectory from archaic forms of punishment (including corporal punishment and the practice of decapitation) incrementally to more recognisably “modern” penal practices (yet in “Denmark’s …, by many accounts, “hardest” prison [Reiter et al. 2017, 492], as dramatically portrayed in R), the new prison marks a further step change. Prison architecture reflects and implements penal policy (Johnson 2007) and it is to be expected that “a new prison [would say] much about what a prison system is attempting to accomplish, its priorities and where it may be heading” (Warner 2009, 161). The old prison had indeed been architecture parlant, the message of its austerity and institutionalism being an unmistakable signal that incarceration there would be itself austere. Enner Mark, with its low lying buildings (a common Danish architectural form), in native brick, in a more “village” formation (Petersen 2016, 16), is intended to convey “a message to those arriving … that they are worth something and entitled to treatment that is respectful and humane, … as to those working there that they are guarding fellow human beings” (Fikfak et al. 2015, 29, citing Baroness Stern, in Simon et al. 2013). A leaflet on Enner Mark Fængsel gives prominence to work experience and educational facilities, behavioural support, leisure and childcare. These reflect the three Danish penological cornerstones (normalisation, openness and exercise of responsibility [Rentzmann 1992]). The importance of acknowledging the emotional pressures and ongoing responsibilities of parenthood is apparent in the group support (Fædregruppe)

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and child play facilities and child-friendly spaces at Enner Mark (see also the directorate’s new film on being a father in prison—Far er i fængsel [Father is in prison]—press release and video at https://www.kriminalforsorgen.dk/ om-os/nyt-og-presse/#/news/far-er-i-faengsel-359078). The website of Friis and Moltke A/S, the architects, indicates the brief to which they worked: One of the goals was to tone down the institutional character of the institution and create an environment, which supports the intention of targeting the prison term at subsequent life outside the walls. The clear structural division and position in the landscape also accommodate a requirement for sectioning options, spending time outdoors and recreational opportunities for the inmates … The new conditions provide both staff and inmates with a brighter, more spacious and more humane environment. (Friss and Moltke 2019)

The tone is somewhat different from a formal description of a penal establishment and more descriptive of a holiday resort or real estate: “The facility is located in the open hilly landscape of Enner Mark west of Horsens, surrounded by fields, grazing cattle, hedges and scattered farm buildings – and with expansive, uninterrupted views” (Friss and Moltke 2019), summarised by Warner as “a more pleasant and ambient location for the prisoners” (Warner 2009, 161). This emphasis on spaciousness reflects the belief that a feel of openness (the second cornerstone [Rentzmann 1992] of Danish penal policy) is important for well-being and perception (Vasiliski 2013, 4), somewhat contrasting with the imprisonment being intentionally confining, cutting off from the external environment. Access to a view of the free outside might of course be more frustrating than not having it. In our consideration of Horsens, we turned to the cinematic drama R; in our consideration of Enner Mark, we turn to a novel, Three Dog Night by Elsebeth Egholm (Egholm 2013, orig. 2011), in which one of the characters has served prison sentences in both Horsens and Enner Mark. He had spent two years in the new East Jutland Prison after the closure of the old Horsens Prison. Cold and damp and outmoded though it had been, it was a lot less frightening than the new, modern, escape-proof facility where everything was so impersonal and computerised that even the warders seemed like robots. He hated the place. (Egholm 2013, 220) ENNER MARK, AKA East Jutland Prison … was situated in a barren and hostile icy landscape. A glacier where no life could grow. But there was life here. … Not a happy life, but a life, one that fitted the place the way it looked today, with the wind howling and the snow blowing in Arctic gusts across the open terrain. Low yellow buildings lay like oversized Lego bricks … The homepage promoted the prison’s numerous facilities as though it were a five-star hotel … However, a stay at Enner Mark guaranteed no sunshine …

604  J. DYCE No heavy bundles of keys here. … Artificial, sexless and claustrophobic. He was led through long corridors to the visitors’ section, where the pale wooden furniture was upholstered in blue, which brought him back with a bump to his time in the carpentry workshop. Naturally enough the interior was furnished with its own products and the result was a clumsy, autocratic, institutional attempt to create cosiness. (Egholm 2013, 241–242)

These narratives of imprisonment in the Horsens area in many respects follow a line of progress in penal practice (the executioner’s axe is an iconic reminder of harsher times), but it is a more ambiguous narrative. ‘There is no reason to doubt the intention to create a new prison that corresponded closely to the penal philosophy of the Danish New Generation prisons: sectioning, normalization and re-socialization’ (Petersen 2016, 17), a humane home for those incarcerated there. Yet, realities do not always match blueprints, unintended consequences follow from initially and broadly humane intentions, and new pressures and political directions emerge that frustrate those intentions. Prisons are political products; they are shaped by political concerns and responses. The choreography of control changes, but prisons ultimately remain prisons, at heart places of restriction. Hard or soft, or a combination in balance, or living with the ambiguities of the reality, a stay (as Peter Boutrup suggests) in prison guarantees no sunshine.

Note 1. Writers: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais; Producer: Sydney Lotterby. BBC Comedy. Initial one-off show in a series of pilot comedy shows in 1973, followed by series 1974–1977 (BBC Comedy 2014).

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606  J. DYCE Glancey, Jonathan. 2001. “Within These Walls.” The Guardian, February 1. Accessed February 9, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/feb/01/prisonsandprobation.artsfeatures. Hennig, R., A.-K. Jonasson, and P. Degerman, eds./intro. 2017. Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment. London: Lexington Books. Hilson, Mary. 2008. The Nordic Model. London: Reaktion Books. Hoff, Jens. 2018. “The Green ‘Heavyweights’: The Climate Policies of the Nordic Countries.” In The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, edited by Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel. London: Routledge. Holden, Stephen. 2011. “Life in the Big House: The Danish Experience.” Movie Review | ‘R’, New York Times, June 16. Accessed December 12, 2018. https:// www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/movies/r-pilou-asbaek-in-film-about-danishprison-review.html. hooks, bell [Gloria Jean Watkins]. 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge. IASS. 2018. Call for Papers, The International Association of Scandinavian Studies (IASS) 32nd Conference at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics European of the University of Copenhagen from 7 to 10 August 2018. IFFR. 2010. [International Film Festival Rotterdam] “Interview: Tobias Lindholm & Michael Noer—R,” February 3. Accessed February 5, 2019. https://iffr.com/en/ blog/interview-tobias-lindholm-michael-noer-r-0. Ingebritsen, Christine. 2002. “Norm Entrepreneurs: Scandinavia’s Role in World Politics.” Cooperation and Conflict 37, no. 1: 11–23. Johnson, Norman. 2007. Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Jutlandstation. n.d. Horsens Prison Museum. Accessed January 20, 2019. http://www. jutlandstation.dk/horsens-prison-museum. Kaufman, Emil. 1955. Architecture in the Age of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. London: Wallflower. Kirk, Lisbeth. 2016. “Obama Brings Together Nordic Leaders.” EU Observer, May 13. Accessed July 28, 2018. https://euobserver.com/nordic/133417. Kramer, Gary. 2011. “Interview: Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer Talk R.” Slant, June 14. Accessed February 5, 2018. https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/ interview-tobias-lindholm-and-michael-noer/. Krens, T. 1999. Quoted in Judith H. Dobrzynski, “Hip V. Stately: The Tao of Two Museums.” New York Times, February 20, p. 20. Lacey, N. 2008. The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lappi-Seppälä, T. 2007. “Penal Policy in Scandinavia.” Crime and Justice 36, no. 1: 217–295. Laurence, Marcus. 2003. “Porridge: Inside and Out.” Television Heaven. Accessed February 9, 2019. http://televisionheaven.co.uk/porridge_inside_and_out.htm. Liebling, Alison, and Ben Crewe. 2012. “Prison Life, Penal Power, and Prison Effects.” In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, edited by Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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608  J. DYCE February 9, 2019. https://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/institutter_centre/isk/ forskning/forskningspublikationer/rask/issues/39/trine+brun+petersen. Pratt, J. 2008. “Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess. Part I: The Nature and Roots of Scandinavian Exceptionalism.” British Journal of Criminology 48, no. 2: 119–137. Pratt, J., and A. Eriksson. 2011. “‘Mr Larsson Is Walking Out Again’: The Origin and Development of Scandinavian Prison Systems.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 44, no. 1: 7–23. Rafter, Nicole. 2000. Shots in the Mirror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiter, K., L. Sexton, and J. Sumner. 2017. “Negotiating Imperfect Humanity in the Danish Penal System.” In Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice, edited by T. Ugelvik and P. Schaff Smith. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rentzmann, W. 1992. “Cornerstones in a Modern Treatment Philosophy: Normalisation, Openness and Responsibility.” Prison Information Bulletin 16: 19–23. Council of Europe. Robertson, Andrew. 2010. “R: Hit First, Hit Hardest.” Eye for Film, June 23, 2010.  https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/r-hit-first-hit-hardest-film-reviewby-andrew-robertson. Rodgers, James. 2016. “Prison Museums: Learning Punishment.” PhD thesis, University of Auckland. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 2017. “Why and How Prison Museums/Tourism Contribute to the Normalization of the Carceral/Shadow State: The Primacy of Economic Realities.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, edited by Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, and K. Walby. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Salonen, Tapio. 2015. “The Necessity of Socio-dynamic Analyses of the City.” In Social Transformations in Scandinavian Cities, edited by Erica Righard, Magnus Johansson, and Taio Salonen. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Scandihotels.com. n.d. A Captivating Day at Fængslet. Accessed January 29, 2019. https://www.scandihotels.com/hotels/denmark/adventures-in-denmark/fangslet. Scharff Smith, P., and T. Ugelvik. 2017. “Punishment and Welfare in Scandinavia.” In Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice, edited by T. Ugelvik and P. Scharff Smith. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Simon, J., N. Temple, and R. Tobe. 2013. Architecture and Justice: Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm. London: Ashgate. Stanitzek, Georg. 2009. “Reading the Title Sequence.” Translated by Noelle Aplevich. Cinema Journal 48, no. 4: 44–58. Strange, Carolyn, and Michael Kempa. 2003. “Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island.” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 2: 386–405. Sudjic, D. 2006. “Engineering Conflict.” New York Times Magazine, May 21, pp. 23–33. Swensen, Grete. 2016. “Through the Lens of Affect—Interpreting Prison Buildings of the Past as Heritage in the Present.” In Heritage, Democracy and the Public: Nordic Approaches, edited by Torgrim Sneve Guttormsen and Grete Swensen. Farnham: Ashgate. Tapper, Michael. 2011. “Dirty Harry in the Swedish Welfare State.” In Scandinavian Crime Fiction, edited by Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

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Women on the Screen

Can Prison Be a Feminist Space?: Interrogating Television Representations of Women’s Prisons Jessica Ford

In a 2017 article for the Huffington Post, journalist Zeba Blay writes, “‘Orange Is The New Black’ has become a feminist utopia on our ­television, tablet, and laptop screens.” Blay contends that Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019) is “a blueprint for how to do women on television the right way.” Orange Is the New Black, like other women-centric television series, depicts a pro-woman space where the stories of many different kinds of women are told and respected; however, the idea of prison as a “feminist utopia” contains many contradictions. Prison, by its very nature, is a space that intentionally dehumanizes and depoliticizes individuals, therefore, to assert the “feminism” of a prison-set television series may seem counterintuitive. Prison, however, has long been a popular site for television depictions of women’s lives and stories. The appeal of prison as a setting for women’s stories is obvious, insofar as it is one of the few homosocial spaces for women that is not geared toward the nurturing of men and children. While many women-centric stories on television feature women in either the home or in the workplace, in women-in-prison series, the prison is both a domestic space and a workplace. The single-gender prison setting provides a unique opportunity to tell a wide range of women’s stories. Incarceration, however, does not erase the economic, cultural and institutional disadvantages experienced

J. Ford (*)  The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_37

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by women, rather it highlights them. In the single-gender setting of prison, gendered divisions of labor and power are not as clearly drawn as in other mixed-gender workplaces and domestic spaces. As such, issues of race and class can come more clearly into focus in this space. Prison is a liminal space that contains many contradictions. While penitentiaries generally operate outside of traditional understandings of neoliberalism and the market, at the same time they are a symptom and product of neoliberal culture. This chapter focuses on recent scripted fictional television representations of incarcerated women. Media depictions of incarceration and incarcerated people can reflect reality, but their job is not necessarily to accurately or with fidelity recreate the experience of prison. Rather representations of womenin-prison often reflect and negotiate larger cultural and institutional issues as they pertain women, such as sexuality, labor conditions, systems of power, femininity, violence and many others. Women-in-prison narratives are about women who happen to be incarcerated, rather than women’s incarceration. As such, they are a key site for the negotiation of feminisms and women’s issues. This chapter explores why fictional scripted women-in-prison narratives often circulate as and are read as feminist. As such, I consider how feminism can and does operate in this fictional space. This chapter argues that the feminism of women-in-prison narratives can be found in the characters and discourses, but not necessarily in the infrastructure of the prison. The single-sex space of the prison enables stories to be told that have a particular feminist sensibility. I will explore how feminism can and does function through women-in-prison narratives and what it means to call a television series feminist in the past and today. Through three women-in-prison series from different global contexts—Dead Boss (2012) from the UK, Orange Is the New Black from the USA and Wentworth (2013–present) from Australia—I will grapple with the question: Can depictions of women in prison be feminist?

Feminism and Women-in-Prison Narratives Women-in-prison films and television series have long been a site of feminist interest and intervention. Jack Halberstam notes that, “women in prison films always allow for the possibility of an overt feminist message that involves both a critique of male-dominated society and some notion of female community” (1998, 201). Sociologist Debra Ferreday argues that “queer and feminist imaginings have excelled in using prison as a starting point” for exploring subversive ideas (2015). This is perhaps why television creators from around the world continue to return to the setting, as seen with Prisoner: Cell Block H (1979–1986), Women in Prison (1987–1988) and Bad Girls (1999–2006). Some scholars use the term “genre” to identify film, television and books centered on women-in-prison, while others classify it as a subgenre, cycle or narrative. I use women-in-prison narrative, because the tropes and conventions of this narrative operate across genres, cycles and mediums.

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Women-in-prison narratives are one of the most enduring and subversive forms within exploitation genres (Clark 2013, 87). As journalist Chelsea G. Summers argues, “Prisons are the rare setting where women can be made to have sex and to be disciplined for having it, and women-in-prison films offer the theoretically guilt-free marriage of penal pleasure and punishment” (2015). This idea of prison as an erotic space is seen in many womenin-prison narratives, from exploitation films, like Girls in Prison (Dir: Cahn, 1956), Caged Heat (Dir: Demme, 1974) and Chained Heat (Dir: Nicholas, 1983), to more recent television series, including Bad Girls, Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth. While many women-in-prison narratives have explored its erotic potential, there is a clear distinction between lesbian sex presented for the enjoyment of the male gaze, and lesbian sex performed to further the narrative in the series. While they span the globe and adopt vastly different genres and tones, Dead Boss, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black are strikingly similar in particular ways. All three series center on a young naïve seemingly innocent white woman who must serve time behind bars. Upon entering prison, the young woman is stripped of her personal belongings and then hazed by the other inmates until she is accepted as one of them. This character operates as the audience’s entry point to life in prison and provides a convenient way to explain the rules of life behind bars. In her examination of women-in-prison narratives, Ann Ciasullo notes that, “there is nearly always a shower scene, a catfight (customarily in mud), and often a suicide or death of a lesser-known character” (2008, 197). Common narrative features of the women-in-prison narrative also include the “protagonist’s horrifying prison experience, from being thrown in the ‘hole’ (solitary confinement) to being sprayed with fire hoses for punishment” (Ciasullo 2008, 197). Despite (or possibly because of) the repetition of clichés and the overuse of tropes, women-in-prison narratives have considerable transgressive potential. As Kathleen A. McHugh outlines, “An exploitation staple, the women in prison genre has also produced brilliant feminist interventions” (2015, 18). These feminist interventions can operate through character and characterization, theme, genre, style and aesthetics. The women-in-prison narrative appears across film, television and literature and spans many genres, including comedy, drama, dramedy and documentary. This chapter takes Dead Boss, Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth as exemplars of recent scripted television series set in a women’s prison. Using different strategies, each series subverts and challenges what a contemporary rendering of the women-in-prison narrative is. Ultimately, however, each of these series adheres fairly close to the women-in-prison narrative and their associated tropes. Dead Boss is a short-lived British situation comedy created by Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh. The series centers on Helen (Horgan), a young white woman who is accused and found guilty of killing her boss, with whom she was also having an affair. While Helen maintains her innocence, she enters Broadmarsh prison, which is run by Governor Margaret

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(Jennifer Saunders). It is the most overtly comedic of the three series I discuss in this chapter and functions similarly to a workplace comedy. There are two workplaces at the center of the series: the prison and Helen’s former workplace. Despite its short run (only six episodes in total), Dead Boss is a significant example of how the women-in-prison narrative operates in the comedy genre. While Dead Boss is a half-hour workplace comedy, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black are hour-long ongoing series with a more dramatic tone. Wentworth is a contemporary retelling of the cult series Prisoner, but it is also an Australian drama in the “quality” television tradition. Wentworth is as much an homage to Prisoner as it is a reinterpretation of the 1980s cult series. Characters from the classic series have been reimagined for a contemporary context and we are introduced to characters at different stages. For instance, in the original Prisoner Bea Smith (Val Lehman) is the prison-hardened ruthless Top Dog of Wentworth Prison; however, Wentworth’s Bea enters Wentworth Prison after attempting to kill her abusive husband. Wentworth has aired six seasons and during this time many different characters have featured beyond Bea. Like Wentworth, Orange Is the New Black follows a white female protagonist into prison, but both series quickly shift focus to the women-centric ensemble. Orange Is the New Black centers on the naïve Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), who enters Litchfield Prison and like Bea and Helen she is hazed, before being accepted by the other prisoners. Orange Is the New Black is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name authored by Piper Kerman. While Wentworth is a drama, Orange Is the New Black employs both drama and comedy tropes and it primarily circulates as a dramedy. These scripted women-in-prison series from different national contexts and genres are clearly pro-woman and women-centric, but they are also circulate and are read as feminist.

What Is “Feminist” Television? “Feminist television” is by no means a recent phenomenon. There have been various cycles of feminist-inflected scripted television (drama and comedy) over the last 60-plus years. Feminist television is both a theoretical category, created and curated by feminist television criticism, and an industrial category. In her discussion of 1970s female-centric situation comedies, Lauren Rabinovitz highlights that “a generic address of ‘feminism’ became an important strategy” for television producers, “because it served the needs of American television executives who could cultivate programming that could be identified with target audiences whom they wanted to measure and deliver to advertising agencies” (1999, 146). Calling or labeling television “feminist” is not particularly easy or straightforward; however, there is a long history of feminist television scholarship on television produced in the UK and USA.

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“Feminist” is a designation that shifts meaning depending on who and/ or what is assigning the label and the object that it is attached to. Despite the lack of stable meaning, feminist television has been used historically to describe series that have been marketed as or have diegetically associated themselves with feminist ideology or the women’s liberation movement. These series often feature characters that openly identify as feminists and have an unequivocal connection to a broader feminist moment and/or movement. This can be seen in recent series like The Good Wife (2009–2016), Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) and UnReal (2015–2018) where characters explicitly reference feminism through dialogue and ideology. It can also be seen in earlier series, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), Maude (1972–1978), Rhoda (1974–1978) and Cagney and Lacey (1982–1988), where characters invoke second-wave feminism and the US women’s liberation movement through their exploration of issues that are the center of these movements, such as reproductive rights, equal pay and domestic violence. A feminist sensibility inflects television series in various ways. Julie D’Acci’s book Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney and Lacey (1994) provides a model for thinking through how feminist politics operate and circulate on scripted US network television. D’Acci highlights three modes of feminism at work in Cagney and Lacey: explicit general feminism, women’s issue feminism and “ambiguous” or “tacit” feminism (1994, 164–165). The identifying features of explicit general feminism include: “dialogue and scenes that straightforwardly addressed discrimination against women in both public and private spheres, stories structured around topical feminist causes, and the use of unequivocal feminist language and slogans” (1994, 147). D’Acci’s second feminist modality, women’s issue feminism, frames the characters’ feminist actions in terms of particular social problems (1994, 155). Characters are not necessarily located or identified explicitly as feminists, but issues compel them to occupy a feminist subject position temporarily. D’Acci describes “ambiguous” or “tacit” feminism as pro-woman, in that individual experiences inform a pro-woman perspective rather than gender politics (1994, 161). D’Acci uses these categories to outline how the feminism of Cagney and Lacey becomes less explicit as the series continues, however, these descriptors can also be applied to the different ways feminism is present on scripted television more broadly (1994, 165). This includes television series that are marketed as feminist, have been read as feminist by scholars and audiences, or engage with popular feminisms and/or representations of feminism in US television history. Many television series that have been identified as “feminist” by scholars and/or in popular culture, or in marketing and publicity, have used each of D’Acci’s modes of feminism in different ways. Rabinovitz writes, “Although the boundaries for woman-centered topics have expanded considerably over two and a half decades, feminist sitcoms’ strategies for defining feminism have remained structurally the same” (1999, 145). Common narrative strategies for performing feminism include focusing on female friendships and women in the workplace.

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The phrase “feminist television” is largely used to describe series that are marked as “feminist” either textually or extra-textually, for instance The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Good Wife. However, there are many series that address feminist issues and discourses that are not immediately identifiable as “feminist,” such as Sex and the City (1998–2004) and Big Love (2006–2013). Not all woman-centric television series circulate and are understood as feminist. For instance, Sex and the City is in conversation with popular media feminisms of its time, but it is rarely considered feminist television. Increasingly, however, contemporary Anglophone television series are engaging with popular feminisms and they share an awareness of the paradox of postfeminism. Whether accurate or not, it appears that more and more television series are circulating as and are being read by audiences and critics as feminist. This is perhaps no more prominent than in women-in-prison narratives. Feminist discourses operate through and in the telling of women’s stories and experiences. Women-in-prison narratives enable marginalized women’s stories to be told and for them to be heard, by the other characters and the audience. McHugh argues that the prison setting permits a rejection of neoliberal postfeminist markers of success (2015, 18). The prison setting largely erases the neoliberal conditions that underpin and guide many postfeminist performances of individuality and individualism. Within the prison system, the trappings of postfeminism are largely erased because heterosexual desirability and consumerism do not function as modes of empowerment. Instead, the characters must rely on (and exploit) each other in order to survive within the oppressive prison system. Prisons, however, are also a symptom of neoliberal culture. While many of the characters that are central to women-in-prison series do not identify as feminist, the series’ approach to its characters is often feminist-inflected. Owing to the systemic oppression experienced by the women both inside and outside the prison, the characters of Dead Boss, Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth are constantly faced with issues that they must address. Some of these issues are central to feminist debates, such as access to health care, domestic and emotional labor and systemic inequality. The characters debate these issues, and each of their voices and perspectives is given a platform, even if particular voices are privileged. While there are many ways to “do” feminism on scripted television, I will explore some of the ways that women-in-prison series Dead Boss, Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth perform feminism and why they are read as feminist.

Dead Boss: Feminist Character, Characterization and Authorship One way that Dead Boss performs its feminism is through character, characterization and authorship. Feminisms on scripted television, both in the past and today, are often associated with or articulated through a well-known author,

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star and/or character. Much of the critical discussion of feminist voice in US female-led television identifies the feminist intervention as taking place at the level of performance (see Mellencamp 1992). Comedic series such as I Love Lucy (1951–1960), Murphy Brown (1988–1998, 2018) and Grace Under Fire (1993–1998), and dramatic series, such as Cagney and Lacey, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993–1998) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), privilege the articulation of feminist ideas through performance and character. Feminist television criticism has primarily focused on comedies that feature female television stars who function as advocates for feminism and women’s issues. In this instance, the “feminism” of the television movie and series is anchored by extra-textual elements, such as casting and authorship. Bonnie J. Dow draws a clear thematic, political and performative link between Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) and Murphy Brown (Candace Bergen), in order to highlight the feminist tradition that Murphy Brown is working within (1992, 144–145). Each of D’Acci’s modalities articulates feminist ideas through character, characterization and stars. Television scholars have identified how feminist voice is often embodied in particular female character types, such as the “single mom” (Rabinovitz 1989), the “unruly woman” (Rowe 1995), the “warrior woman” (Heinecken 2003) and the “new woman” (Deming 1988; Lotz 2006). Performers and stars are often conflated with their characters in critical popular discussions of feminism on television. Both myself (Ford 2018) and Rowe (1995, 65–67) note how Roseanne Barr’s comedic persona authorizes the feminist politics of Roseanne (1988–1998, 2018). Historically, feminism on television is more likely to be recognized and valued when it is spoken through a star. For instance, Mary Tyler Moore was often conflated with her on-screen alter-ego television producer Mary Richards. The conflation of Moore’s character and star image builds on and, in many ways, solidifies the modus operandi of the feminist television star. Richard Dyer coined the term “star image” to describe how film star’s on- and off-screen appearances merge to forge a specific cohesive image of a particular star (1986, 2–7). While Dyer’s work focuses on film stars, this concept resonates with the conflation of television characters with portrayers and/or authors. In feminist-inflected television, we can see this at work on two levels: the conflation of the author-star and the merging of the character and star. Dead Boss author-star Sharon Horgan is working in this tradition. She co-created the series with Holly Walsh and occupies the series’ lead role of Helen. Horgan is an Irish actor, writer, comedian and producer known for television projects with an ironic cynical tone told from a woman’s perspective. She rose to prominence with Pulling (2006–2009), which she starred in and co-created with Dennis Kelly. Horgan’s character in Pulling, like Helen in Dead Boss, is an irresponsible narcissist who is unaware of how she is perceived or how her actions affect others. Since Dead Boss, Horgan co-created and stars in the romantic comedy series Catastrophe (2015–2019) with Rob

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Delaney, and created the HBO series Divorce (2016–present). Horgan’s characters all share similar traits that are also part of Horgan’s off-screen persona. They are humorous with sharp edges and a general disregard for courtesy and social norms. Helen, the protagonist of Dead Boss, is dim and clueless, as are the series’ other characters. Helen/Horgan’s voice is emphasized through Dead Boss’ voice-over, which in the diegesis is Helen’s letters to a male inmate in another prison, but extra-diegetically operate as narration. Horgan’s authorial voice and feminist approach extends beyond the character of Helen, as it is embedded in the series’ tone. As a comedy, Dead Boss uses different generic strategies to dramas or dramedies, but there are similar issues at the center of each series. Dead Boss, Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth all position the guards as antagonistic toward the incarcerated characters. While the guard/inmate dynamic is couched in fear and menace in Orange Is the New Black and Wentworth, in Dead Boss the guards and governor are grotesque caricatures. The guards often answer the women’s complaints with the question: “is this really the worse place to be?” This is always followed by high-pitched off-screen screams and wails, which underline both the absurdity of the question and the guards’ lack of empathy. The guards regularly mistreat the inmates and they wield an unreasonable amount of power. The violence between the women is played for comedy not menace, but when the guards enact or threaten violence it’s depicted as intimidation. Dead Boss uses humor to highlight the mundanity and the absurdity of the prison setting by using the tropes of the sitcom in conjunction with the women-in-prison narrative. The feminism of Dead Boss operates through Horgan’s authorship and performance. While Helen does not identify as feminist, the character is informed and authorized by Horgan’s authorship, which the series highlights.

Orange Is the New Black: Intertextual Feminism Orange Is the New Black performs its feminism through intertextual references. The series’ makers are conscious of its place within the US scripted television landscape and popular culture. Through overt and implicit references to earlier female-focused and feminist-inflected television, various recent series place themselves in conversation with feminists and feminisms of the past. Women-centric series often “talk back” to their iconic predecessors, which include I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl (1966– 1971), Maude, Rhoda and Cagney and Lacey. In a season nine episode of Roseanne, after having a fight with her husband, Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) reclines on the couch and imagines herself as “television’s first feminist” Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) from That Girl, sassy genie Jeannie (Barbara Eden) from I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970) and single working woman Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Roseanne inhabits each of these roles as a way to express her frustration with her husband and in doing so

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Roseanne talks back to its feminist-leaning predecessors. More recently, the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock authored series’ 30 Rock (2006–2013) and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019) explicitly reference The Mary Tyler Moore Show through dialogue, costuming and musical interludes. The characters of Orange Is the New Black frequently make intertextual references to a wide range of television series, books and films. Orange is the New Black locates itself in relation to exploitation films Stranger Inside (2001), Caged (1950) and Girls in Prison (1956). Kathleen McHugh argues that Stranger Inside is “a clear precursor if not direct influence on Orange is the New Black” (2015, 18). Orange is the New Black is cognizant that it is in conversation with earlier women-in-prison films and television series. In the third season, Piper says, “I think that women’s prison feeds into the whole ’70s exploitation fantasy for men. It’s like we’re all in Caged Heat or Cellblock Sisters and all we do is have lesbian sex and strip searches.” The characters acknowledge that although they do participate in some of these tropes, namely lesbian sex, but their incarcerated lives are far more complicated than those depicted in these films. In addition to referencing women-in-prison films, Orange Is the New Black also includes intertextual references to iconic US feminist television series. The series exhibits a great admiration and nostalgia for many earlier feminist television series that take female friendship seriously. For example, a group of older inmates is called “the golden girls” in reference to the iconic 1980s feminist-inflected series. In a season one episode, The Cosby Show’s (1984– 1992) Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) is referenced when the inmates are given an acting opportunity to perform their criminality for a group of at-risk youth. It is part of a program that aims to scare the young people into turning their lives around. While the other inmates are excited by the opportunity, Suzanne Warren (Uzo Aduba) is disappointed saying, “I wanna play a role, like Desdemona, or Ophelia, or Claire Huxtable.” For Suzanne, The Cosby Show matriarch and 1980s television symbol of middle-class liberal feminism is an iconic female role in the same milieu as Shakespeare’s characters. Claire is known for giving rousing speeches where she calls out the sexism of her daughters’ boyfriends (Bailey 2014). Claire was a successful, Black, college-educated lawyer with a large family, which is in direct contrast to Suzanne’s upbringing. Suzanne was adopted by white parents, and in flashbacks we learn that she felt disconnected from her family from a young age. References to earlier feminist television series appear throughout the series, such as Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Leyva) describing Marisol “Flaca” Gonzalez (Jackie Cruz) and Maritza Ramos (Diane Guerrero) as “Lucy and Ethel without the charm.” The characters exist within a world in which these iconic feminist series are acknowledged and incorporated into their worldview but, perhaps more importantly, they are remembered and valued. These intertextual references situate Orange Is the New Black within a lineage of feminisms on film and are one reason why Blay may have read the series as a “feminist utopia.”

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Orange Is the New Black draws on popular and historical feminist discourses and in doing so it produces its own feminist position. As such, the series participates in and contributes to contemporary conceptions and articulations of fourth-wave feminism.

Wentworth: Women’s Issue Feminism Wentworth has a more tacit and less explicit articulation of feminism than Orange Is the New Black. Wentworth employs a kind of women’s issue feminism (as coined by D’Acci), whereby symptoms of a patriarchal system are rendered as an issue or situation that needs to be dealt with, such as domestic violence, pay equality or sexual harassment (D’Acci 1994, 155). This mode of feminism allows characters to occupy a feminist position and articulate feminist ideas in opposition to an issue or situation, without identifying or being identified as feminists. Television series that employ women’s issue feminism often draw on, mirror or exploit topical issues in order to engage with the popular feminisms of their time. While equal pay was a prevalent concern in 1970s female-focused sitcoms, in the 1990s sexual harassment lawsuits were an ongoing issue for many professional women. In the same way that the increased presence of women in the workplace in the 1970s informed the television of that era, the introduction of sexual harassment laws in the 1990s reframed televisual representations of women in the workplace. D’Acci explains how in Cagney and Lacey these feminist issues often had an exploitation dimension (D’Acci 1994, 155). As a police procedural, the titular characters often dealt with survivors of sexual assault, sexual harassment and wife-battery, and the same can be said of women-in-prison narratives. Wentworth continues in this tradition, with its dramatic exploration of the lives of incarcerated women. A 2013 article on UK-based news site Independent outlines the parallels between the injustices experienced by the women in the fictional Wentworth Prison and incarcerated women in the UK. Journalist Rachel Roberts notes that Wentworth (and its predecessor Prisoner) emphasize the underlying causes of some women’s incarceration, which includes “sexual and physical abuse, poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, mental health problems, self-harm and bullying” (2013). In women-in-prison television series, such as Wentworth ultimately the “issue” that is explored is incarceration. Furthermore, the issues explored each episode are couched in and framed by the understanding that the characters are incarcerated. Meaning, that in Wentworth all of the issues explored in the series, including access to health care, parenting, drug and alcohol addiction and gendered violence, are understood and framed by incarceration. In Wentworth, feminist discourses are relationally positioned, meaning that the series and a character nominally occupies a feminist position in relation to the issue at hand.

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Gendered violence is a central and reoccurring issue in Wentworth. In Wentworth, violence is a constant threat and it lingers outside the frame at all times and is lurking around every corner. Violence is used as a means of control and power between the women and it is largely inmate on inmate violence. In this sense, Wentworth is more similar to the male-centric HBO prison drama Oz (1997–2003), rather than Orange Is the New Black. In Oz, almost every interaction between inmates, or even between inmates and guards, is laced with the threat of physical violence. The extra-diegetic narration by Augustus (Harold Perrrineau Jr.) is deliberately used to elevate the series’ style, and provide exposition in a whimsical, yet menacing way. Oz uses dynamic camera movements and a high-paced style of filmmaking and storytelling that makes prison look dangerous and exciting. Like Oz, Wentworth is operating in the model of prestige television and as such violence is an ever-present danger and concern. Wentworth begins both its first and third season with a riot. In season three, the riot is initiated by Bea who is in solitary confinement. The riot is carried out by Maxine (Socratis Otto), Boomer (Katrina Milosevic) and the other inmates, as they take up weapons against the guards and set prison property on fire. The riot is a show of strength from Bea (then-Top Dog) against then-Governor Joan Ferguson (Pamela Rabe). Both the season one and three riots are very violent with numerous deaths and injuries to inmates and guards. Yet these violent riots are shown as just another issue faced by incarcerated women. They are not depicted as a symptom of a broken system, but rather as an issue that needs to be solved. This enables Wentworth to perform a kind of implicit feminism that does not call attention to itself but is centered on issues.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the question of whether scripted television depictions of women-in-prison can be feminist. In response to Blay’s contention that Orange Is the New Black depicts a “feminist utopia,” this chapter considers how feminism is performed on scripted television and how and why women-in-prison television series may be read as feminist. While the prison space aims to dehumanize and depoliticize people, feminism can be and is still articulated through and in this space. Dead Boss, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black all depict pro-woman woman-centric prison spaces where feminist issues and discourses are present in different ways. Feminism can and is articulated on television through a range of strategies, including through character, characterization and authorship, in relation to issues and situations, through narrative, theme and aesthetics and through intertextual reference. While Dead Boss, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black use all of these strategies to differing degrees, they rely on some more heavily. Dead Boss conveys much of its feminism through Horgan’s authorship and the conflation

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of Horgan with her character Helen. Orange Is the New Black engages with a wide range of feminist issues using various techniques, including intertextual references that place the series within a feminist television lineage. While all the women-in-prison series discussed here use D’Acci women’s issue feminism, Wentworth relies on this strategy to situate its characters in relation to feminist issues without actually wholly embracing a feminist ideology. Placing Dead Boss, Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black within a history of feminism on television and feminist scholarship on television highlight why the series circulate and are read as feminist and how feminism operates in these fictional women-in-prison narratives.

References 30 Rock. 2006–2013. Created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. USA: NBC. Bad Girls. 1999–2006. Created by Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus. UK: ITV. Bailey, Jason. 2014. “The Other Huxtable Effect.” Slate, September 18, 2014. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2014/09/clair_huxtable_feminist_hero_the_cosby_show_wife_revisited_on_30th_anniversary.html. Big Love. 2006–2013. Created by Will Scheffer and Mark V. Olsen. USA: HBO. Blay, Zeba. 2015.“How Feminist TV Became the New Normal.” The Huffington Post, July 19, 2015. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/06/18/how-feministtv-became-the-new-normal_n_7567898.html?ec_carp=3398940911566885682. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1997–2003. Created by Joss Whedon. USA: The WB, UPN. Caged. 1950. Directed by John Cromwell. USA: Warner Bros. Caged Heat. 1974. Directed by Jonathan Demme. USA: New World Pictures. Cagney and Lacey. 1982–1988. Created by Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday. USA: CBS. Catastrophe. 2015–2019. Created by Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney. USA: Amazon Prime, UK: Channel 4. Chained Heat. 1983. Directed by Paul Nicholas. USA: Jensen Farley Pictures. Ciasullo, Ann. 2008. “Containing ‘Deviant’ Desire: Lesbianism, Heterosexuality, and the Women-in-Prison Narrative.” The Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 2 (April): 195–223. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00499.x. Clark, Randall. 2013. At a Theater or Drive-in Near You: The History, Culture, and Politics of the American Exploitation Film. New York: Routledge. The Cosby Show. 1984–1992. Created by Ed Weinberger, Michael Leeson and Bill Cosby. USA: NBC. D’Acci, Julie. 1994. Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney and Lacey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Dead Boss. 2012. Created by Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh. UK: BBC Three. Deming, Robert H. 1988. “Kate and Allie: ‘New Women’ and the Audience’s Television Archive.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 6, no. 1: 145–168. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-6-1_16-154. Divorce. 2016–present. Created by Sharon Horgan. USA: HBO. Dow, Bonnie J. 1992. “Femininity and Feminism in Murphy Brown.” Southern Communication Journal 57, no. 2: 143–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10417949209372860.

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Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. 1993–1998. Created by Beth Sullivan. USA: CBS. Dyer, Richard. 1986. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: Macmillan Education. Ferreday, Debra. 2015. “Orange Is the New Black Is Fast Becoming a Feminist Classic.” The Conversation, June 11, 2015. https://theconversation.com/ orange-is-the-new-black-is-fast-becoming-a-feminist-classic-40353. Ford, Jessica. 2018. “Rebooting Roseanne: Feminist Voice Across Decades.” M/C Journal 21, no. 5. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/ article/view/1472. Girls in Prison. 1956. Directed by Edward L. Cahn. USA: American International Pictures. The Good Wife. 2009–2016. Created by Michelle King and Robert King. USA: CBS. Grace Under Fire. 1993–1998. Created by Chuck Lorre. USA: ABC. Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press. Heinecken, Dawn. 2003. The Warrior Women of Television: A Feminist Cultural Analysis of the New Female Body in Popular Media. Los Angeles: Peter Lang. I Dream of Jeannie. 1965–1970. Created by Sidney Sheldon. USA: NBC. I Love Lucy. 1951–1960. USA: CBS. Kerman, Piper. 2011. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. New York: Spiegel and Grau. Lotz, Amanda D. 2006. Redesigning Women: Television After the Network Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. 1970–1977. Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. USA: CBS. Maude. 1972–1978. Created by Norman Lear. USA: CBS. McHugh, Kathleen A. 2015. “Giving Credit to Paratexts and Parafeminism in Top of the Lake and Orange Is the New Black.” Film Quarterly 68, no. 3 (Spring): 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2015.68.3.17. Mellencamp, Patricia. 1992. High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age and Comedy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Murphy Brown. 1988–1998, 2018. Created by Diane English. USA: CBS. Orange Is the New Black. 2013–2019. Created by Jenji Kohan. USA: Netflix. Oz. 1997–2003. Created by Tom Fontana. USA: HBO. Parks and Recreation. 2009–2015. Created by Greg Daniels and Mike Schur. USA: NBC. Prisoner. 1979–1986. Created by Reg Wilson. Australia: Network Ten. Pulling. 2006–2009. Created by Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly. UK: BBC Three. Rabinovitz, Lauren. 1999. “Ms.-representation: The Politics of Feminist Sitcoms.” In Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, edited by Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz, 144–167. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 1989. “Sitcoms and Single Moms: Representations of Feminism on American TV.” Cinema Journal 29, no. 1 (Autumn): 3–19. https://doi. org/10.2307/1225298. Rhoda. 1974–1978. Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. USA: CBS. Roberts, Rachel. 2013. “Wentworth Prison and the Real-Life Parallels for Locked-Up Women.” Independent, August 28, 2013. https://www.independent.co.uk/ voices/comment/wentworth-prison-and-the-real-life-parallels-for-locked-upwomen-8788174.html

626  J. FORD Roseanne. 1988–1997, 2018. Created by Matt Williams. USA: ABC. Rowe, Kathleen. 1995. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sex and the City. 1998–2004. Created by Darren Star. USA: HBO. Stranger Inside. 2001. Directed by Cheryl Dunye. USA: HBO. Summers, Chelsea G. 2015. “Can ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Jailbreak ‘Caged Heat?’” New Republic, June 26, 2015. https://newrepublic.com/ article/122161/,can-orange-new-black-jailbreak-caged-heat. That Girl. 1966–1971. Created by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. USA: ABC. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 2015–2019. Created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. USA: Netflix. UnReal. 2015–2018. Created by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro and Marti Noxon. USA: Lifetime. Wentworth. 2013–present. Created by Laura Radulovich, David Hannam, and Reg Watson. UK: Channel 5; USA: Netflix. Women in Prison. 1987–1988. Created by Katherine Green. USA: Fox.

Women in the “Prison Movie” Genre and Carceral Masculinities Gwenola Ricordeau

Prison has fascinated cinema since its beginning (Griffiths 2016). In the early age of cinema, prison has often been used in comedies (Chaplin in The Adventurer; Buster Keaton in Convict 13; Laurel and Hardy in The HooseGow) while the 1930s have been coined the “golden age of prison films” (Cecil 2015, 30). This chapter examines the “prison movie” genre that can be loosely defined as the movies “which are primarily concerned with, or at least include significant scenes within prisons” (Querry 1973). Such a definition implies that filmographies for prison movies can be quite extensive and include hundreds of films (see Querry 1973; Crowther 1989; Parish 1991; Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). The chapter draws upon a corpus of nearly 70 popular prison movies made by Western filmmakers1 and released since the 1930s onwards. The corpus does not include “women-in-prison” movies, considering that they form a distinct genre. It includes films about prisoners of war, military prisoners and penal colonies, escape and the death penalty, although it is arguable whether each forms its own subgenre. Films to be excluded from this chapter are those about juvenile institutions, fugitive movies, science fiction movies about futuristic prisons (such as Fortress or Cube), and movies that use prison as a metaphor (Alber 2011).

G. Ricordeau (*)  California State University, Chico, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_38

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The prison movie genre has accumulated stock plots around escapes and riots and its stereotyped characters (the “new fish,” the “magical negro,” and so forth). While there is already a strong scholarship on women in movies (Haskell 2016), but also on the “women-in-prison” movie genre and on women in prison in popular culture and movies (Cecil 2007; Bouclin 2009), little attention has been paid to women in “prison movies.” What are the recurring female characters in prison movies? How do they serve the plot and the male characters? What do they say about prisons and women? This chapter analyzes women in the prison movies genre in order to question how prison masculinities are represented. It focuses on narratives about women (outside) and how they relate to men (inside) rather than on filming techniques. It also encompasses the whole prison movies genre (as in Rafter 2006) and subsequently ignores its periodization as suggested by Cheatwood (1998).2 This chapter elaborates on two fields of research. First, cultural criminology (Ferrell and Sanders 1995) and visual criminology that have not only analyzed the prison movie genre, but also the rise of the “culture of punishment” (Brown 2009) in western countries since the 1970s. Second, film studies that have analyzed women and the “male gaze” (Mulvey 1975) in popular culture productions, specifically in various cinematographic genres. This chapter articulates these two fields of research with the broader scholarship on prison, gender and sexuality (Sabo et al. 2001; Kunzel 2008; Ricordeau and Schlagdenhauffen 2016). The Chapter 1 describes how women are marginalized in prison movies through the rare and stereotypical roles they are assigned. Then, it argues that women, while having supporting roles, are often more than a plot device, since men may be in prison because of a woman or want to escape from prison for a woman. Then, it describes three types of femininity found in prison movies. Finally, the chapter elaborates on homoeroticism, heteronormativity, and masculinities in the prison movie genre.

Not a Place for Women The existence of a “women-in-prison” genre signals that prison movies are essentially about men. Roles women play in these movies are little diversified and women are either invisible or appear as anomalies in the prison environment. Women in Supporting Roles and on Display Escape from Alcatraz, with two actresses credited, is an exception: prison movies rarely include more than one woman in the credit list and very few of them pass the Bechdel test.3 The Last Castle is fairly typical of the genre, with only two women (Kristen Shaw and Mary Jean Bentley) listed among the 38

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leading actors of the movie and both playing one single scene (as a clerk and as a visitor). In many movies, women only make a cameo appearance, as in The Great Escape where women are only seen on screen after the escape itself. In some cases, no woman is even credited, as in Animal Factory (despite a woman in white uniform who is filmed close-up) and Le Trou. However, most posters of prison movies include a woman—usually the love interest of the protagonist (see below). For example, The Last Gangster’s poster opposes the couple Paul North (James Stewart) and Talya Krozac (Rose Stradner) to the ex-husband of the later, Joe Krozac (Edward G. Robinson). Posters may even exaggerate the role the woman is actually given in the movie and may sexualize her. For example, the poster of Riot shows a woman wearing only a bra in the foreground, but Mary Sheldon (Clifford David) is far from playing a key role in the movie. Not only are female roles rare and stereotyped as much as male roles (see above), most of them are closely related to the protagonist, a man who is in prison: They may be his wife, his mother, or his daughter. They are sometimes prison employees (in particular guards and health professionals4) or volunteers,5 and, in some cases, lawyers. They may also be related as wives or daughters or be assistants or secretaries to male employees (guards or the warden6) or lawyers. In many movies, there is only one noticeable female role: in Cool Hand Luke, it is Arietta (Jo Van Fleet), Luke’s mother, who only appears in one scene; in Brubaker, it is Lillian Grey (Jane Alexander), who is the assistant of the governor, and in Celda 211, it is the wife of a guard turned prisoner. In contrast to their limited time onscreen, women are often talked about by prisoners, in particular after visits, when they receive letters from them, or when they write to them, or when they bring food or clothes to the prison. In addition, women often appear on tattoos, pornographic materials read by prisoners, and pictures sent to prisoners or onscreen when prisoners watch movies. They are also displayed on posters on cell walls (e.g., in Brute Force)—the most famous example being in Shawshank Redemption: Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) covers the hole he will escape through with pin-up posters. Considering how women are talked about and on display, in addition to being seen in flashback sequences (Bouclin 2009, 21) and dreams (such as Riot), prison movies commonly show women deprived of any form of agency. Invisible Women and Women as Anomalies In prison movies, women are often filmed in places that do not belong to the prison, such as flashbacks and dreams. They are usually seen from a distance, usually outside, through cell bars (e.g., The One That Gone Away) or from prison vans (Animal Factory). Probably the most famous scene of that type is the one of Joy Harmon washing her car near prisoners doing hard labor in Cool Hand Luke.

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Women are also seen in visiting rooms—places that are materially inside the prison but symbolize the outside. They may just make cameo appearances there while the protagonist is visited by a male, as during the visit of Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) by his lawyer in Brute Force. When visiting the protagonist, women are often seen behind a Plexiglas sheet or a wire net (even if contact visits may have been authorized at the time of the film’s action): for example, in Le Trou, Nicole (Catherine Spaak, who is not credited) is the only woman to appear on screen and she is only seen behind a wire net. Despite their rare appearances onscreen, women often play a critical role in structuring the narrative by visiting the prison and appearing in the prisoners’ dreams. In fact, these sequences are often used as a way to mark the time the protagonists (men) have spent in prison. In addition, many prison movies draw upon the fact that prison is a “man’s world” or, more precisely, a “world without women.” It is precisely in these words that 20,000 Years in Sing Sing was advertised on posters with the tagline “Men without women… Men without hope…” In many movies, the final scene gives a sense of return to normalcy, when the hero reunites with his wife or love interest, even if he then discovers she has been unfaithful (La bonne année). The reunion is often emotional, such as the one between Karel Hasek (Michael Redgrave) and Celia (Rachel Kempson) in The Captive Heart and usually happens in a romantic setting, as with Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel) and Frank Leone (Sylvester Stallone) in Lock Up. In that respect, Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 108) note that The Shawshank Redemption is unusual with its “ending without women” that stages the reunion of two ex-prisoners. Since women supposedly do not belong in prison, they appear as anomalies that other characters do not pay attention to—just like the pin-up posters in The Shawshank Redemption. This assumption allows Jimmy Dworski (James Belushi) to enter a prison dressed as a woman in Taking Care of Business. More commonly, this invisibility allows men to escape when they are disguised as women. For example, Bill Smith (Albert Burdon) and Nick (Charles Hawtrey) in Jailbirds or Darly Randall (Arthur Treacher) and Chipper Morgan (Preston Foster) in Up the River or Rory Schultebrand (Georg Stanford Brown) in Stir Crazy. Women being viewed as anomalous in the prison movie genre is also exemplified in the recurring scenes of trans women or male prisoners performing in drag for their fellow inmates (Jailbirds, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Up the River, Riot). Transvestites and trans women are also recurring characters in prison movies, as Queenie (Michael Greer) in Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Lady Di (Rodrigo Santoro) in Carandiru, Bon Bon (Johnny Depp) in Before Night Falls or Jan the actress (Mickey Rourke) in Animal Factory. They may be ridiculed and highly sexualized, but, significantly, in the most nuanced portrayals that are made of them, they are the ones who often introduce the protagonist to the rules of the prison and/or prison sex.

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More Than Plot Devices? In his study of Hollywood prison movies in the 1990s, O’Sullivan (2001) notes that “women are either conspicuous by their absence and/or used in entirely conventional ways. ‘Women motivate men to action’ is a standard convention in Hollywood cinema and is a convention that is maintained in these films.” It is notable that, although often assigned to supporting roles with little agency of their own, female characters are often pivotal to the narrative: Men may be in prison because of a woman or they may want to escape from prison for a woman. In Prison Because of a Woman In many prison movies, leading male characters are incarcerated because of women. The most telling example of such a trope is found in Brute Force: all the men in the cell R17 are in prison because of a woman they have loved or still love. Three common scenarios can be found in prison movies. The rarest one is the case of prisoners who have victimized a woman (but never sexually). However, some exceptions can be cited: Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington), in He Got Game killed his wife and Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel) in Le Trou, was incarcerated for attempting to murder his wife. The second scenario is more frequent: A woman is indirectly responsible for the incarceration of a man, usually because of a violent dispute over her. In some cases, men are even sentenced to death, as Olaf Thyson (Maxwell Reed) in Daybreak or Cocky Tommy Connors (Spencer Tracy) in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. The woman responsible for the man’s incarceration can also be a “bad girl” who causes fights and confusion. For example, Martel Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy), in Penitentiary (1979) (discussed elsewhere in this collection), is incarcerated after a fight with two bikers over a prostitute. Another example is Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds), in The Longest Yard, who ends up in prison after fighting with his girlfriend and stealing her car. In some cases, a woman is even directly responsible for the protagonist’s incarceration because she snitched on him. For example, in The Criminal, Maggie (Jill Bennet) tips off the police over Johnny Bannion (Stanley Baker) and in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Marie (Glenda Farrell), the wife of the hero, snitches on him because of her jealousy towards another woman, Helen. But women’s intentions may be good, as in the case of Mabel Alden (Priscilla Lane) in Dust Be My Destiny: She reports on Joe Bell (John Garfield), a fugitive, because she is convinced that he will be granted a fair trial. But men can also be reported to authorities by women they are not even related to, as Franz Von Werra (Hardy Kruger) in The One That Gone Away whose escape is reported by female bystanders.

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In the third scenario, a man is incarcerated because of an honest woman he took risks for or that he wanted to protect or avenge. In The Glass House, Jonathan Paige (Alan Alda) is in prison for assassinating the reckless driver who killed his wife. In Murder in the First, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) ends up in Alcatraz after he stole five dollars from a post office for him and his starving sister. In The Jericho Mile, Rain Murphy (Peter Strauss) serves a life sentence for the killing of his father who was martyrizing his young stepsister. To Serve Time or to Escape for a Woman Numerous prison movies show men enduring prison life for a woman they love. In rare cases, they just serve their time to be able to reunite with her, as with Colin Briggs (Clive Owen) who is deeply in love with Primrose Woodhouse (Natasha Little) in Greenfingers. More generally, their sincere feelings may help them to cope bravely with all the challenges associated with prison life, as the concentration camp escapee and then prisoner of war Karel Hasek (Michael Redgrave) in The Captive Heart who falls in love, through letters, with the widow of a dead British officer whose identity he assumes. In most prison escape movies, the hero wants to escape for morally justified reasons that often include a woman. For example, in Up the River, Chipper Morgan (Preston Foster) and Darly Randall (Arthur Treacher) escape to help the mother of their cellmate Tommy Grant (Tony Martin) who is about to be conned. In Cool Hand Luke, Luke (Paul Newman) wants to escape to attend the funeral of his mother, Arletta (Jo Van Fleet). In Brute Force, Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) wants to escape because his wife, Ruth (Ann Blyth), does not want to undergo a much-needed surgery without him beside her. However, it is uncertain whether they want to escape to ensure happiness for the women they love or only to conform to gender expectations of men as unbreakable and/or saviors.

Three Types of Femininity Due to the small number of female characters and their stereotyped roles, femininity in prison movies can be easily typified into three categories. Although this categorization may be over-simplistic because it overall ignores the race and class of female characters, it adequately reflects how femininity is commonly either glorified (i.e., women are loyal and honest and worth doing time or escaping for) or demonized (i.e., women are troublemakers and may endanger the male hero). While largely in agreement with Bouclin (2009, 21) who notes that women in prison movies are either “supportive wives, girlfriends, mothers, and/or deceitful vixens that coerce, frame, or seduce men into lives of crime,” I argue that some female accomplices can occupy a rare in-between position.

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Self-Sacrificing and Sacrificed Women Many prison movies stage female characters (especially mothers) who are virtuous, understanding, loving and caring. They passively wait for their beloved one to be released from prison and try to comfort and support him (in particular, by visiting him regularly) while he is experiencing terrible difficulties (riots, escapes, fights, etc.). Fay Wilson (Bette Davis) in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, Rebecca Morgan (Cicely Tyson) in Sounder or Stella Johnson (Betty Field) in Birdman of Alcatraz are good examples of these type of women. In the same vein, some women are portrayed as playing a key role in the prisoners’ rehabilitation, such as Mary (Barbara Hale) with Steve Davitt (Elroy Hirsch) in Unchained, and they can even help the male hero to find redemption, as Camille (Barbara Luna), the blind leper in The Devil at 4 O’Clock. But women have also to endure the consequences of the poor choices of their loved ones: They may be arrested and framed as being “guilty by association” because they are seen crying at the gate of the prison or in the visiting room. In addition, they may become prey to other men, as in the case of Mary (Bernice Claire) who waits for the innocent Raymond Hackett in Numbered Men, but is also lusted-after by a dangerous escapee, Ralph Ince. Women may be victimized for being related to a prisoner. Kidnapping is a common fate: It happens to Suzanne (Margit Saad), the girlfriend of the leading role, Johnny Bannion (Stanley Baker), in The Criminal, who is in prison or to Ann (Mary Maguire), the daughter of one of the male protagonists, in Alcatraz Island. The Female Troublemaker Women may be involuntary troublemakers in the pretty tedious prison life. For example, in White Heat, Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) goes berserk when he learns about his mother’s death and he has to be sent to the infirmary. In Birdman of Alcatraz, Stoud fights with cellmates over a picture frame of his mother Elizabeth Stroud (Thelma Ritter) and later kills a guard when her visit is denied.7 More frequently, women are troublemakers because of their romantic life. In The House Across the Bay, Brenda, the wife of the incarcerated protagonist, lives as a couple with Tim and that motivates the protagonist to escape to exact his revenge. In The Last Gangster (loosely inspired by the life of Al Capone), Talya (Rose Stradner), the wife of the hero, gives birth to the imprisoned man’s son and remarries another man. During the rest of his sentence, the hero fights to get his son back. San Quentin tells the love story of the prison Yard Chief Stephen Jameson (Pat O’Brien) and May Kennedy (Ann Sheridan), but her brother, Joe Kennedy (Humphrey Bogart) is incarcerated and gets mad at the relationship. Women may also be troublemakers by breaking prison rules and hierarchies, particularly the strict divide between prisoners and prison employees.

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For example, Helen (Nedda Harrigan), the wife of the commander of the penal colony in Devil’s Island, helps Charles Gaudet (Boris Karloff) to escape after he saved the life of his daughter Colette (Rolla Gourvitch). In The Criminal Code (and its remakes Penitentiary [1938] and Convicted), the daughter of the Warden falls in love with a prisoner. Although an accomplice, the female character can still be a troublemaker who brings confusion. For example, in Breakout, Ann (Jill Ireland), the wife of Jay Wagner (Robert Duvall), helps him to escape, but she ends up being romantically involved with Nick Colton (Charles Bronson). This is similar to the plot of House of Numbers in which Ruth Judlow (Barbara Lang) tries to help her husband to escape, but falls in love with his brother. The Female Accomplice Even if female gangsters on screen is quite a recent phenomenon, women have for decades been portrayed as assisting their male partners involved in criminal activities, especially when it comes to prison escapes. For example, Virginia (June Storey), in Train to Alcatraz, helps her boyfriend in his attempt to escape while en-route for the infamous penitentiary and in You Only Live Once, Joan (Sylvia Sidney) contributes to the escape of her husband Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) from death row. In Black Tuesday, Hatti Cumbest (Jean Parker) kidnaps another woman, Joan Ellen (Sylvia Findley), who is the daughter of a guard, to help her partner to escape. Women typically use their femininity as their best weapon. Elisa Burnell (Anna Lee), in Prison Warden, gets married to a warden to assist her boyfriend, Al Garner (Harlan Warde) who is incarcerated. It is noteworthy that women are seldom masterminding the escape plan or physically contributing to the escape itself.8 The French movie La Fille de l’air is an exception in the genre, since it shows Nadine Vaujour (Béatrice Dalle) piloting a helicopter to free her imprisoned husband. The role of women in men’s escapes in prison movies reflects the reality of the gendering of prison escapes: Men are rarely involved in helping women escape from prison. With regard to that, the French movie Pour elle is remarkable, since it depicts a man who plans a breakout for his incarcerated wife.

Homoeroticism, Heteronormativity and Masculinities Despite being rarely present onscreen in the prison movie genre, women’s roles illustrate these movies’ heteronormativity, despite their homoerotic content. Homoeroticism and Heteronormativity Popular representations of prison are often highly sexualized, as suggested by their use in gay and straight pornography (Mercer 2004). Kunzel (2008, 103) notes that “beginning in the late 1940s, […] prison sex – often implied,

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sometimes explicit – was featured in virtually every popular genre of the day.” In addition, prison movies usually include—or suggest—a rape scene (Eigenberg and Baro 2003). But prison is sexualized not only because of sex scenes, but also due to the fact that prison movies naturally include scenes of male intimacy (such as collective shower rooms and dormitory or on bunk beds). This is especially true because prison cells can be viewed as domestic spaces, where men are seen doing laundry, cooking and other quotidian tasks. In addition, recurring scenes of men exercising and being body-searched offer opportunities to closely film men being naked (or nearly naked) in explicit view of other men (Cool Hand Luke, Hunger, etc.). By nature, the prison movie genre provides voyeuristic pleasure9 to its audience because it shows what is normally unseen. Cool Hand Luke makes this voyeurism obvious through the prison guard Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward), who is called “the man with no eyes” by prisoners. While his eyes are always covered by a pair of mirrored sunglasses, they relentlessly reflect the male submission he is watching. In the case of Hunger, Garden (2016) has even argued that the filming of male prisoners’ bodies echoes “the male gaze often used to police and objectify the female body.” Not only are confinement and homoeroticism often associated, but as noted by Rafter (2006), many prison movies rely on the homoerotic friendship between an innocent prisoner and an experienced/older one. Many prison movies address how carceral hierarchies are articulated with heterosexuality, virility and gender roles (Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Carandiru, among others). By contrast, marginalized characters such as gays and transvestites reveal the implicit heteronormativity of prison social relations. In that respect, female characters and especially romance with a woman outside—or a trans woman incarcerated in a male unit10—help to situate the hero as heterosexual, virile, and powerful. That explains why women’s bodies are often over-sexualized (close-up filming or fetishism with dreams). As an example, in Midnight Express, the memorable scene played by Irene (Miracle Sarons), the wife of the hero Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), is her visit to him during which she shows him her chest.11 The use of women to situate the hero as heterosexual is also blatant in the genre cliché of the ending with the reunion of the hero with his love interest (see above) that appears—as suggested by Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 173)—“as reward for male decency.” Prison Movies or Buddy Movies? The prison movie genre describes prison as a place where manhood is at risk. Usually the narrative is about male prisoners, but it is notable that the guards are not out of the picture either. In that respect, the urinary infection suffered by a prison guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), in The Green Mile, is far from being anecdotal. The highly predictable scenes of the welcome speech from the warden and prisoners confronting the “new fish” usually

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set the tone for the rest of the movie: The male prisoners have to fight or be physically challenged to prevent their masculinity from being degraded through strip searches and physical punishments—Cool Hand Luke being a telling example of such an ordeal. While female bodies are often sexualized, this type of experiences contribute to de-sexualize male characters’ bodies and to situate them as men. In most prison movies, men are shown serving time for or because of women they love and that they want to protect, but their sentences are framed as personal adventures or spiritual journeys. It may be argued that some prison movies (such as Shawshank Redemption) are in fact not about prison and not really “prison movies” (O’Sullivan 2001, 330), but about manhood or friendship. The prison movies genre being obviously geared for a masculine audience and addressing specifically masculinity, it has lot in common with buddy movies genre.

Conclusion The prison movie genres analyzed in this chapter broadly describe women as deprived of any form of agency. However, they also show the roles expected from them and how they can be framed as “guilty by association.” Prison movies also give a glimpse of the gender-specific experience and punishment of women who have beloved ones behind bars. Meanwhile, the specific sentences served by women who have loved ones in prison are seldom treated by cinema (an exception being the French movie Qu’un seul tienne et les autres suivront). Analyzing women in prison movies shows that despite their supporting roles, they are often pivotal in narratives about men in prisons. Actually, prison movies tell us as much about prison itself as about manhood. While they tend to glorify women by showing that men serve their time or escape for them, they also indicate what is expected from women (loyalty and support). While they suggest how women can be sacrificed and suffer forms of victimization by criminals, they ignore their most frequent type of victimization (sexual abuse). Several popular TV series take place in prison, such as Oz and Prison Break, and it is notable that several series (the US Orange is the New Black, the Quebec Unité 9 or the Australian Wentworth) are about women in prison while distancing themselves from the “women-in-prison” genre. Despite the emergence of women characters in roles typically reserved for men in prison dramas (Buonanno 2017), whether prison TV series, have renewed the representation of women remains open. However, rape and sexuality in Oz (Wlodarz 2005) or the heterosexual romance of the leading role with a prison doctor in Prison Break strongly suggest that contemporary series may mostly conform to the prison movie genre with respect to masculinities.

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Studying women and femininities in prison movies shows the need for solid research on supporting roles, but also for the treatment of trans women in cinema to go beyond simply noting they are recurring characters (Ginibre 2005, 236–243). As stated in the introduction, this chapter has focused on the narratives of the prison movie genre and it implies that understanding how women are filmed and the use of filming techniques are still relatively unexplored questions. Finally, directions for further research on masculinities and prison movies may focus on the reception of these movies by male and female spectatorship and situating them with respect to the history of masculinities. Acknowledgements   I am grateful to Michael Ennis for his reviewing of an earlier version of this chapter.

Notes

1. It includes movies about non-Western prisons (a subgenre of prison movies). 2. The Depression Era (1929–1942), the Rehabilitation Era (1943–1962), the Confinement Era (1963–1980), and the Administrative Era (since 1981). 3. To pass the test, a movie must meet three criteria: There are at least two female characters; they speak to each other; they are not discussing about a male character. 4. Usually a nurse (Duffy of San Quentin, Buried Alive, etc.)—the character of a female dentist, Rachel Clifford (Julia Ormond), in Captives being a noticeable exception. 5. As a nun (Dead Man Walking) or a gardener (Greenfingers). 6. As noted by Wilson and O’Sullivan (2004, 108), the warden’s daughter is a recurring character in the 1930s/1940s prison movies. 7. The movie is based on the true story of Robert Stroud, who killed a guard after his brother (and not his mother) was denied a visit. 8. On gender and prison escape movies: Ricordeau (2018, 296–297). 9.  Un Chant d’amour is a good example of that type of use. 10. As Cleopatra (Jim Bailey) in Penitentiary III. 11. This scene is iconic enough to be parodied in The Cable Guy.

References Alber, Jan. 2011. “Cinematic Carcerality: Prison Metaphors in Film.” The Journal of Popular Culture 44, no. 2: 217–232. Bouclin, Suzanne. 2009. “Women in Prison Movies as Feminist Jurisprudence.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 21, no. 1: 19–34. Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press. Buonanno, Milly, ed. 2017. Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cecil, Dawn K. 2007. “Looking Beyond the Caged Heat: Media Images of Women in Prison.” Feminist Criminology 2, no. 4: 304–326.

638  G. RICORDEAU Cecil, Dawn K. 2015. Prison Life in Popular Culture: From the Big House to Orange Is the New Black. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Cheatwood, Derral. 1998. “Prison Movies: Films About Adult Male Civilian Prisons: 1929–1995.” In Popular Culture, Crime and Justice, edited by Frankie Bailey and Donna Hale, 209–231. Belmont: Wadsworth. Crowther, Bruce. 1989. Captured on Film: The Prison Movie. London: B.T. Batsford. Eigenberg, Helen, and Agnes Baro. 2003. “If You Drop the Soap in the Shower You Are on Your Own: Images of Male Rape in Selected Prison Movies.” Sexuality and Culture 7, no. 4: 56–89. Ferrell, Jeff, and Clinton Sanders. 1995. Cultural Criminology. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Garden, Alison. 2016. “Proving Their ‘Virility’? Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Transgressive Masculinity.” In Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema: Gender, Sex, and the Deviant Body, edited by Joel Gwynne, 57–71. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Ginibre, Jean-Louis. 2005. Ladies or Gentlemen: A Pictorial History of Male Crossdressing in the Movies. New York: Filipacchi. Griffiths, Alison. 2016. Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prison in Early TwentiethCentury America. New York: Columbia University Press. Haskell, Molly. 2016. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kunzel, Regina. 2008. Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mercer, John. 2004. “In the Slammer: The Myth of the Prison in American Gay Pornographic Video.” Journal of Homosexuality 47, nos. 3–4: 151–166. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3: 6–18. O’Sullivan, Sean. 2001. “Representations of Prison in Nineties Hollywood Cinema: From Con Air to The Shawshank Redemption.” The Howard Journal 40, no. 4: 317–334. Parish, James Robert. 1991. Prison Pictures from Hollywood: Plots, Critiques, Casts, and Credits for 293 Theatrical and Made-For Television Releases. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Co. Querry, Ronald B. 1973. “Prison Movies: An Annotated Filmography 1921–Present.” Journal of Popular Film 2: 181–197. Rafter, Nicole. 2006. Shots in the Mirror: Crime, Film and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricordeau, Gwenola. 2018. “Prisons, Jailbreaks and Escapees in Two Popular TV Series: The Prisoner and Prison Break.” In Toward a Sociology of Prison Escape, edited by Tomas Max Martin and Gilles Chantraine, 291–310. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ricordeau, Gwenola, and Régis Schlagdenhauffen. 2016. “Approaching Sexualities in Prisons.” Champ Pénal/Penal Field 13. https://doi.org/10.4000/ champpenal.9499. Sabo, Don, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London, eds. 2001. Prison Masculinities. Temple University Press: Philadelphia. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press. Wlodarz, Joe. 2005. “‘Maximum Insecurity: Genre Trouble and Closet Erotics in and out of HBO’s Oz.” Camera Obscura 58: 59–105.

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Filmography 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. Directed by Michael Curtiz, 1932. Alcatraz Island. Directed by William McGann, 1937. Animal Factory. Directed by Steve Buscemi, 2000. Before Night Falls. Directed by Julian Schnabel, 2000. Birdman of Alcatraz. Directed by John Frankenheimer, 1962. Black Tuesday. Directed by Hugo Fregonese, 1954. Breakout. Directed by Tom Gries, 1975. Brubaker. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, 1980. Brute Force. Directed by Jules Dassin, 1947. Buried Alive. Directed by Victor Halperin, 1939. Captives. Directed by Angela Pope, 1995. Carandiru. Directed by Héctor Babenco, 2004. Celda 211. Directed by Daniel Monzon, 2011. Convict 13. Directed by Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton, 1920. Convicted. Directed by Levin, Henry, 1950. Cool Hand Luke. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, 1972. Cube. Directed by Vincenzo Natali, 1997. Daybreak. Directed by Compton Bennett, 1948. Dead Man Walking. Directed by Tim Robbins, 1995. Devil’s Island. Directed by William Clemens, 1939. Duffy of San Quentin. Directed by Walter Doniger, 1954. Dust Be My Destiny. Directed by Lewis Seiler, 1939. Escape from Alcatraz. Directed by Don Siegel, 1979. Fortress. Directed by Stuart Gordon, 1992. Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Directed by Harvey Hart, 1971. Greenfingers. Directed by Hoel Hershman, 2001. He Got Game. Directed by Spike Lee, 1998. House of Numbers. Directed by Russell Rouse, 1957. Hunger. Directed by Steve McQueen, 2008. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1932. Jailbirds. Directed by Oswald Mitchell, 1940. La bonne année. Directed by Claude Lelouch, 1973. La Fille de l’air. Directed by Maroun Bagdadi, 1992. Le Trou. Directed by Jacques Becker, 1960. Lock Up. Directed by John Flynn, 1989. Midnight Express. Directed by Alan Parker, 1978. Murder in the First. Directed by Marc Rocco, 1995. Numbered Men. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1930. Orange Is the New Black. Created by Jenji Kohan. 2013. Oz. Created by Ton Fontana. 1997–2003. Penitentiary. Directed by Janaa Janaka, 1979. Penitentiary III. Directed by Fanaa Janaka, 1987. Penitentiary. Directed by John Brahm, 1938. Pour elle. Directed by Fred Cavayé, 2008. Prison Break. Created by Paul Scheuring, 2005–2017. Prison Warden. Directed by Seymour Friedman, 1949. Qu’un seul tienne et les autres suivront. Directed by Lea Fehner, 2009.

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640  G. RICORDEAU Riot. Directed by Buzz Kulik, 1969. San Quentin. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, 1938. Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont, 1994. Sounder. Directed by Martin Ritt, 1972. Stir Crazy. Directed by Sidney Poitier, 1980. Taking Care of Business. Directed by Arthur Hiller, 1990. The Adventurer. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, 1917. The Cable Guy. Directed by Ben Stiller, 1996. The Captive Heart. Directed by Basil Dearden, 1946. The Criminal Code. Directed by Hawks, Howard, 1931. The Criminal. Directed by Joseph Losey, 1960. The Devil at 4 O’Clock. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1957. The Glass House. Directed by Tom Gries, 1972. The Great Escape. Directed by John Sturges, 1963. The Green Mile. Directed by Frank Darabont, 1999. The Hoose-Gow. Directed by James Parrott, 1929. The House Across the Bay. Directed by Archie Mayo, 1940. The Jericho Mile. Directed by Michael Mann, 1979. The Last Castle. Directed by Rod Lurie, 2001. The Last Gangster. Directed by Edward Ludwig, 1937. The Longest Yard. Directed by Robert Aldrich, 1974. The One That Gone Away. Directed by Roy Ward Baker, 1957. The Quare Fellow. Directed by Arthur Dreifuss, 1962. Train to Alcatraz. Directed by Philip Ford, 1948. Un Chant d’amour. Directed by Jean Genet, 1950. Unchained. Directed by Hall Bartlett, 1955. Unité 9. Created by Danielle Trottier, 2012. Up the River. Directed by Alfred Welker, 1938. Wentworth. Created by Lara Radulovich, David Hannam, and Reg Watson, 2013. White Heat. Directed by Raoul Walsh, 1949. You Only Live Once. Directed by Fritz Lang, 1937.

Is Yellow the New Orange? The Transnational Phenomenon of Female Prison Dramas Julia Echeverría-Domingo

Prisons usually feature in popular media as narrative ecosystems detached from the outside world. The self-sufficient universes of these narratives have often resulted in a rather formulaic genre, generally criticized for its deeprooted conservatism, especially in the case of US commercial cinema (Jarvis 2004, 171). One of the main arguments for such criticism has been the male-centeredness of the genre. Classic prison films such as The Great Escape (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979), as well as the string of popular films released in the 1990s, like The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dead Man Walking (1996), and The Green Mile (1999), all confirm the fact that this has traditionally been a genre that, in Brian Jarvis’s words, “consistently marginalizes women” (2004, 174). In the last few years, however, this tendency seems to have been subverted by the emergence of a number of stories that take place inside women’s prisons. The Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019) might be the most significant instance of this trend. Despite Netflix’s secrecy over audience rates, the streaming platform recognized it being its “most-watched original series” by the end of its second season (Littleton 2016). The series’ international success has indeed triggered an unprecedented interest over the women-in-prison genre. Documentaries and reality shows like Women in Prison (Investigation Discovery 2015), Girls Incarcerated (Netflix 2018), and

J. Echeverría-Domingo (*)  University of Zaragoza, Saragossa, Spain © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_39

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the British Women Behind Bars with Trevor McDonald (ITV 2013) and Killer Women with Piers Morgan (ITV 2016–2017) all feed on the growing fascination over what had previously been a marginal subgenre. But Orange Is the New Black is far from being the first television series set in a female prison. In fact, the transnational impulse of this subgenre is patent not only in the global success of a US product like the Netflix show, but rather, in the corresponding stories that such varied countries as Australia, the UK, Mexico, and, as I will explore here, Spain have produced and exported over the years. The groundbreaking Australian soap opera Prisoner (aka Prisoner: Cell Block H, Network 10), set in the fictional female prison of Wentworth, was aired from 1979 to 1986, and was distributed in seven countries, becoming particularly popular in the UK (Deans 2002). The series’ exploration of such issues as lesbianism and sexual identity, as well as “the absence of a ‘male gaze’ in its portrayal of women” (Turnbull 2017, 185), makes it, despite its soap quality, a transgressive forerunner of the genre. For its part, the UK produced its own TV prison dramas, Within These Walls (ITV 1974–1978), mainly centered around the lives of the prison’s staff, and Bad Girls (ITV 1999–2006), the latter influenced by the success of the Australian show. Cappadocia (Cappadocia, HBO 2008–2012) was Mexico’s take on the genre. More recently, the critically acclaimed Australian series Wentworth (SoHo/Showcase 2013–), an updated reimagining of the original Prisoner, came out merely two months before the release of Orange Is the New Black, and has also been broadcast in more than twenty countries (Batty 2014). Wentworth provides a much cruder look into prison life, portraying, like its US counterpart, underexplored models of femininity. It is amid this flux of prison texts that the Spanish television series Vis a vis (Locked Up, Antena 3/Fox 2015–2019) has emerged. Like most of its counterparts, the series focuses on naïve newcomer Macarena Ferreiro (Maggie Civantos), an upper middle-class young woman who is accused of misappropriation after having been manipulated by her boss and lover into embezzling the company’s funds. Macarena is, like the staple “fresh fish” of prison narratives, “ill-equipped for prison life” (Jarvis 2004, 167), a fact that prompts the spectator’s identification with her. It is through Macarena’s incarceration that we get access to a rich panoply of racially, sexually, age, and class-diverse characters. Not unlike Piper (Taylor Schilling) in Orange Is the New Black, whose showrunner Jenji Kohan referred to as the “Trojan horse” that allowed the show to explore underrepresented identities (Tan 2016), the normative white middle-class character in Vis a vis is the pretext for the series’ introduction of a varied cast previously unseen in Spanish television. As this chapter will discuss, Vis a vis is representative of the current process of internationalization that local televisions are undergoing as a result of the proliferation of streaming platforms and shifting global markets. Vis a vis, like other recent Spanish shows, has revitalized the trite terrain of low-quality

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television series of Spain’s recession years by importing foreign ideas and production values which, in turn, have been exported abroad. The show adheres to the rules of the popular women-in-prison subgenre, a popularity that can be inscribed within what scholar Milly Buonanno has called the recent “antiheroine” trend in global television (2017, 3). Morally ambiguous characters seemed to be reserved for male antiheroes in the so-called third “Golden Age” of US television (Martin 2013). Vis a vis, like its Australian and US counterparts, subverts that norm with its all-female cast of morally dubious characters. This chapter aims to understand Vis a vis as a hybrid, “glocal” product. The Spanish show is influenced, on the one hand, by global tropes and standards of television-making while at the same time retaining some of the national stereotypes that have haunted the Spanish television landscape. The chapter will first situate Vis a vis within the Spanish television production context and its upgrade into a more quality, global-oriented medium. Secondly, it will provide a close analysis of the series focusing on the transgressive microcosm that the prison space enables. As the show proves, the prison genre manages to transform a claustrophobic space into a haven of diversity and, paradoxically, of liberty, serving as self-reflection on the internationalization of the medium.

The Rise of Spanish TV Unlike Spanish cinema, which has generally been regarded as a serious object of study and has generated a fair amount of academic literature outside Spain, Spanish television has long been dismissed as an inferior, low-quality form of mass entertainment, especially among Spanish people themselves (Smith 2006, 1). The origins and development of Spanish television parallel those of the country’s recent history. The first channel, the state-owned TVE, was born in 1956 under Franco’s dictatorship and was highly centralized and at the ideological service of the regime (Bustamante 2013). This monopoly would continue during the whole dictatorship, with the addition of a second public channel ten years later. It was not until the Transition period to democracy, after Franco’s death in 1975, that several laws like the Statute of Radio and Television (1980) were passed to reform the state-owned television. These measures included the launching of new regional channels, which aimed to decentralize public television and adapt it to the new democratic era (Maxwell 1995, 8). A decade later, in 1990, private television started its journey. Pay channels like Canal+ and the two free-to-air private channels Antena 3 and Telecinco were launched, expanding the television market and, in the case of the last two, becoming the most-watched channels in the country until today (Barlovento 2019, 17). The transition to the digital terrestrial television, which started in 2005 and was completed in 2010 with the so-called apagón analógico

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(“analogue switch-off”), opened the way to a wider and more diversified TV offer. New free-to-air private channels were launched with niche-oriented contents. Cable television also continued expanding, even though its levels were still far below those of the US and other European countries (García-Guardia and Estupiñán-Estupiñán 2011, 106). However, this apparent renewal was drastically curtailed when the global economic crisis hit the country in 2008. Both public and private televisions suffered the cuts in public expenditure and advertising. Some regional public channels closed down and other private ones were absorbed into the two main media production companies, Mediaset and Atresmedia. The economic recession had a major negative impact on the quality and creative content of fiction series. As García de Castro and Caffarel Serra sustain (2016, 190), the Spanish television series from 2010 to 2015 period reveal the stagnation of the industry and the lack of “risky” original ideas on the part of producers and screenwriters. The fiction series of the crisis years have mainly consisted of period soap operas, comedies of customs, and “sentimental intrigues,” all targeting a homogeneous family audience and revolving around local manners and stereotypes (García de Castro and Caffarel Serra 2016, 189). It is certainly problematic to determine what “quality” television means. Robert Thompson ventured to define the features of quality TV series in 1996 by alluding mainly to the artistic, literary values to which certain products aspire. According to Thompson, these include sophisticated overlaying narratives that develop along different episodes, complex characters, a striking visual style, and “careful attention to detail,” both in form and content (1997, 35). Following Thompson’s criteria, García de Castro and Caffarel Serra argue that, while the US and the public Scandinavian televisions were enjoying a golden age, the Spanish series of the crisis period were characterized by local naturalism, an excess of affective romantic plots, stereotyped gender, age, and social class roles, and Manichean moral judgments (184). The authors see this as a clear regression to a conventional, low-quality model of Spanish television that is far away from acclaimed international trends. Yet, in the last few years, this situation seems to have drastically reverted. Álex Pina, co-creator, executive producer, and scriptwriter of Vis a vis, might be the best paradigm of that turnaround. Pina has a relatively long career in Spanish television. He worked for the production company Globomedia for twenty years, creating popular series such as Periodistas (Telecinco 1998–2002), Los Serrano (Telecinco 2003–2008), and Los hombres de Paco (Antena 3 2005–2010), all of them falling under the above-mentioned model of localism and family-oriented content. In 2014, the failure of his series Bienvenidos al Lolita (Antena 3) made him realize the need to regenerate the prevailing model of national television. As he claims, that flop was a turning point in his career, after which he took a break and started looking into series like Breaking Bad (AMC 2008–2013) as points of reference and inspiration (Ruiz de Elvira 2018a). Pina points out that, in an era

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where serialized fiction has reached an unprecedented artistic momentum, even surpassing literature and cinema, a new type of spectator, well-versed in international series, has arisen, demanding more specialized quality content (Ruiz de Elvira 2018a). Vis a vis was born out of this pivotal realization. As Pina recounts, Atresmedia, the owner of the private channel Antena 3, presented a report to the production company Globomedia about the transnational trend of the women-in-prison genre, asking them to develop an idea around it (Jabonero 2015). Pina claims they were soon immersed in the project, taking inspiration from foreign series, especially Wentworth (Marcos 2015), and releasing the first two seasons in Antena 3 from 2015 to 2016. Initially, the series was inevitably compared to the comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black. Both presented naïve lookalike protagonists who were forced to leave their welloff lives for a life behind bars. Both protagonists initiated similar journeys of transformation into tougher women. Both series explored issues of homosexuality, race, drug abuse, sexual harassment, and violence. The only thing distinguishing them at first sight appeared to be the orange and yellow suits of the inmates. Yet the Spanish show offered a darker, more violent tone and a thrilleresque narrative that was, indeed, more in tune with the Australian series Wentworth, especially in Bea’s (Danielle Cormack) comparable rise into the jail’s “top dog.” Vis a vis can be said to comply with the parameters that Thompson uses to describe what constitutes a quality series. The most conspicuous aspect is the sophisticated visual style that shies away from the conventional cardboard studio sets and plain lighting of traditional Spanish series. Miguel Amoedo, its cinematographer, was determined to upgrade the production values of national television and equip them with a more cinematic look (Aunión 2019). Amoedo had been previously fired from other Spanish projects for wishing to use fixed focal length lenses instead of the widespread zoom lens used in television series, and in Vis a vis, he had to stand against Globomedia in order to explore new photographic venues (Aunión 2019). In Vis a vis, Amoedo was able to experiment with alternative camera angles, mobile cameras, and fixed focal length lenses. The series was also entirely shot on location, using a refurbished industrial unit as the prison so as to make it more realistic. The result is a series that feels more cinematic than any previous Spanish one. Dark lightning and, especially, the aesthetic use of a yellow color palette infuse the prison with a mysterious and appealing mood that adds a quality layer to the narrative. Secondly, the series introduces a group of morally questionable characters that also elude any sentimentalized characterization. Even though there are certain prototypical and heteronormative romantic relations, especially between Macarena and a male warden, Fabio (Roberto Enríquez), the series attempts not to wallow in their comings and goings. Instead, much more narrative prominence is given to Maca’s conflicted exploration of her

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sexual identity through the lesbian relationship she establishes with her cellmate Rizos (Berta Vázquez). Although this is not the first Spanish series to include lesbian characters, former representations usually eluded any references to their sexual lives, adhering to “prude,” non-threatening portrayals of lesbianism (Calvo and Escudero 2009, 43). Vis a vis knocks down those barriers by normalizing onscreen lesbian sex, even though Macarena’s sexual choices seem to be constantly justified by her loneliness and need of affection. The series’ cast also stands out among traditional Spanish television. It is probably the most diverse, multicultural cast ever shown in a Spanish series. The fact that it is mostly made up of unknown actresses reinforces the show’s realistic aspirations. The exception to this is renowned actress Najwa Nimri, who has a prestigious career especially in the independent film industry, having worked with such filmmakers as Julio Medem. With the hiring of Nimri, the series replicates the current model of US television, attracting cinema talent to what was previously considered to be an inferior medium. Nimri herself affirms that Spanish television is living its most energetic and creative momentum, just like the 1990s independent cinema, a fact that persuaded her to join a TV series for the first time (Losinterrogantes 2018). Her tremendous success as prison villain and comic-like icon Zulema has actually reinvigorated her career after years of stagnation, further indicating the drive of contemporary television. Finally, in narrative terms, and following Thompson’s criteria, the series develops an overarching storyline that surpasses each individual episode. In season one, for instance, the main plot is the hunt for a nine-million-euro loot for which Macarena and her family get entangled with the dangerous criminal Zulema. Macarena’s family evolves from being a normative upper middle-class family to breaking the law trying to help Macarena from the outside in a Breaking Bad-kind of tribute that even involves an RV. Yet, this narrative line is arguably the weakest point in the series, and Macarena’s family’s conundrums reinstate the “costumbrist” camp values of traditional Spanish television. The prison, on the other hand, becomes the most alluring scenario and the place where the most elaborate relationships are built. One of the most original touches of the series is the addition of documentary-type asides breaking the fourth wall in which the inmates directly address the camera relating their experiences in jail and the crimes that brought them there, a technique that serves the function of the flashbacks used in previous prison series like Orange Is the New Black. These asides not only grant realism and more prominence to secondary characters but also pay an ironic self-conscious homage to the popularity of real-crime documentaries and of the prison genre as a whole. With its flaws and virtues, Vis a vis opens a new path for television-making in Spain. Álex Pina describes Vis a vis as an enormous test-bed where he was able to flirt for the first time with a new narrative style more akin to US cable fiction (Sanguino 2018). The levels of violence, nudity, and realism set

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it apart from any previous Spanish series and, especially, from the bland family sitcoms that used to pervade Spanish free-to-air channels like Antena 3. The series was indeed a bold move on the part of the network, and one that called for a much more restrictive target audience. Thus, it came as no surprise to Pina when Antena 3 decided to cancel the show after its first two seasons. Despite its remarkable beginnings, the series could not compete with the massive audience rates of other prime-time products like reality shows (Sanz Ezquerro 2016). Nevertheless, Vis a vis carved out a devoted cult following that gave themselves the name of “La marea amarilla” (“The Yellow Tide”) in honor of the color of the inmates’ uniforms. The two seasons were exported and adapted to many countries in Latin America and Europe (Morel 2018), where they gained an equally enthusiastic fan base and received outstanding critiques. This was especially the case of the UK, where it became the first Spanish series to be broadcast by the public free-to-air network Channel 4 (Lawson 2017). After the series’ cancellation, La marea amarilla led a strong campaign on social media demanding its continuation. In an unprecedented move, the cable network Fox España bought the rights to Antena 3 and produced, together with Globomedia, two more seasons, which aired in 2018 and 2019, providing closure to the story. The unexpected revival of the series, and its change from free-to-air to cable, confirmed the renaissance of national fiction. It was the first time Fox produced a Spanish show, and the cable network attempted to maintain the series’ essence, although there were inevitable changes to its production values. Fox adjusted the old free-to-air canons to more international standards. The series acquired an even darker and more sordid tone with its new distributor, as the pressure to attract a large audience was no longer so critical. Also, the length of each episode was cut down from seventy to less than fifty minutes, following international television standards.1 The series’ new showrunner, Iván Escobar, praised this change, as it allowed them to cut unnecessary “filling” plotlines (Ruiz de Elvira 2018b), getting rid altogether of Macarena’s family. In the transition, part of the original creative team was lost, as well as part of the cast, including its main actress, Maggie Civantos, due to professional commitments, a fact that also had an impact on its narrative coherence. Álex Pina, the former heart of the series, had left Globomedia in 2016 after the cancellation of Vis a vis and had founded his own production company, Vancouver Media, taking part of his team with him. It was with his new company that Pina started working on what was going to be the major hit of his career, La casa de papel (Money Heist), also released initially by Antena 3 and later by Netflix. La casa de papel can be said to be the epitome of the global renaissance of Spanish television. Like Vis a vis, the series enjoyed a second life thanks to the streaming platform, which also rearranged the episodes’ duration and relaunched them internationally. Pina’s series has become the most-watched non-English speaking series on Netflix (Dams 2018), and Pina himself has been the first Spanish showrunner to be exclusively hired by the platform.

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Vis a vis embodies the transition of Spanish television from localism to a more international and ambitious type of art form. The audiovisual crisis suffered during the economic recession provided creative stimulus to take risks and look for formulae beyond Spanish borders. At the same time, the emergence of new ways of watching serial fiction, and the birth of streaming platforms, has favored the global fluctuation of national products despite the geographical limitations and territorial licensing that still partially hinder these services (Lobato 2017, 183). The success of Vis a vis and of other Spanish series reflects what scholar Milly Buonanno calls the “international television flows” that are able to de-territorialize audiences and foster their encounter with “cultural otherness” (2008, 105). The prison space becomes the ideal place to recreate this encounter with the Other, as the following section will explore.

The Prison as Cosmopolitan Space Ever since Macarena sets foot in Cruz del Sur, Vis a vis’ fictional private prison, she encounters a universe that is far from her conventional white upper middle-class background. Her brother is about to marry a well-off judge, her parents are a retired police officer and a housewife, and she works for an important company she has just embezzled, following the directions of her boss (and lover). Macarena’s conservative and normative upbringing, as well as her meek and submissive personality, clash with an intimidating atmosphere that transgresses any set of moral codes. Right from the beginning, the prison is presented as a site of excess. The women in prison behave in an overtly sexual manner and address Macarena with vulgar language, subverting the stereotypes of refinement and restraint which Macarena incarnates. The prison is coded both as a perilous and yet liberating space. The lawbreaking that the female characters represent enables the series to explore an unorthodox universe with its parallel set of rules, its own hierarchy, and its own system of justice. Crimes like murder, drug smuggling, slavery, and extortion routinely take place inside, applying the conventions of the typically male-centered crime genre to a feminine context. In order to survive, Macarena needs to take an active role and learn to play by the prison’s rules, undergoing a process of empowerment and open-mindedness with which she progressively deconstructs her previously learned systems. The imprisoned women constitute a wide cross-section of society, a mixture of different social classes, ages, races, sexualities, nationalities, and body types that diverge from Macarena’s restricted sociocultural background. The coral panoply of characters includes Zulema, played by the half-Jordanian half-Basque actress Najwa Nimri, who in the series is coded as Muslim, usually dubbed “reina mora” (“Moorish queen”); Zulema’s lesbian and gypsy sidekick Saray (Alba Flores), played by the granddaughter of flamenco legend Lola Flores; Macarena’s black lover Estefanía (Berta Vázquez); her Cuban

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cellmate Sole (María Isabel Díaz); drug addict Tere (Marta Aledo); and the Romani woman Antonia (Laura Baena). From season three onwards, new characters are introduced coinciding with the inmates’ transfer to the high-security prison Cruz de Norte. These include a corrupt politician, Mercedes (Ruth Díaz); the overweight and brutish Goya (Itziar Castro); Luna, played by the transgender actress Abril Zamora; and two new wardens, Altagracia and Antonio, played by Mexican Adriana Paz and Chilean Benjamín Vicuña, respectively. With its diverse, multiethnic cast, the show not only provides visibility to underrepresented body types and racial and LGBT+ minorities but also constructs a fictionalized cosmopolitan space that fosters, through Macarena’s normative focalization, the spectator’s close encounter with the “other.” Unlike Orange Is the New Black, where characters form mostly racially based ghettoes, Vis a vis introduces a cross-cultural “community” where diversity is almost normalized, and where, except for some blatant cases that bring to mind the stereotyping of traditional Spanish television,2 the women inmates are not “labeled” or defined according to these markers. The prison is portrayed, hence, as a liberating and thrilling space, far-removed from the stifling and mundane lives of people like Macarena’s family. Yet, at the same time, the series underscores the idea that the domineering heteronormative and masculine forces of the outside keep interfering with that supposed liberty. In the case of Macarena, it is due to her lover’s deceit that she is kept imprisoned. And some of the male workers, like the prison’s doctor, Sandoval (Ramiro Blas), sexually abuse the inmates on a regular basis. These repressive outside forces are made especially evident through the character of Saray Vargas. Saray needs to confront her traditional Romani family, who deny her lesbian sexuality, arrange her marriage with a gypsy man, and repudiate her for life when they discover she is pregnant with another man, without knowing that Saray’s pregnancy is the result of having been raped by the prison’s doctor. Saray’s mother visits her in jail to tell her that, once the baby girl is born, they want to take her away from her so that the child can live free outside in their community. In a passionate monologue (Season 3, Episode 6), Saray says: Free? What for? Free so that you can de-school her and make her work as a child? Free so that you can arrange her marriage after her first period? Free so that it is forbidden for her to fall in love with a woman if she wants to? Free so that she cannot even smoke in dad’s presence? Nor get her driver’s license? No, free to act as your human shield every time dad hits you. No, mom, my Estrella is going to be freer here inside with me than out there with you. It is you who live in a prison, not me.3

Saray’s monologue encapsulates one of the series’ main tropes. Despite the drama of being incarcerated, the women in Vis a vis are able to shake off the prejudices and the imposed social conventions that govern their outside world. Through the example of an orthodox Romani

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family, the series underlines the collision of two worlds, the prison standing for a progressive universe that, though tainted by its violence and by these underlying structural forces, offers a diverse and promising scenario. The sisterhood forged between these women eventually stands out among their discord. They support each other in the clashes with the most traditionalist structures—Zulema defends Saray’s sexuality in front of her parents; Saray avenges the woman she loves, Rizos, when she is raped by a warden; and, in the end, all the women organize a riot in order to stop Sole’s transfer to another prison because she is suffering from Alzheimer’s. In the final riot, the women circle the prison’s doctor (now also the prison director), Sandoval, and kill him all together in a symbolic act that suggests the ending of these traditionalist, abusive structures. The series confirms in that way its insistence on diversity and female (re)action against heteropatriarchal structures and, symbolically, against a traditional television fiction, and a prison genre, that are customarily cliched and male-dominated.

Conclusion Through its emphasis on diversity, Vis a vis makes a comment on its own nature as a product in transition from the old stereotyped television to a more inclusive, transnational scenario. The series reaches its most self-conscious point in its final episode, tellingly titled “La marea amarilla.” In it, Sole gets to the prison’s microphone and addresses her prison mates. However, as we soon realize, Sole is not only addressing her friends; she is also speaking to us, “la marea amarilla,” on behalf of the creative team and of the series. Sole explains that she has lived her best moments with each of her friends, stating: “In prison I’ve been much happier and much freer than I ever was out there, and I owe that to you, la marea amarilla.” She then continues to bid farewell by saying that she is leaving, but that she leaves feeling loved, and looking straight into camera, she adds: “I also love you a lot, my girls.” The series’ farewell is, at the same time, a recognition of the new television that is starting to liberate itself from the old precepts that burdened its production values. With the prison of Vis a vis, the creative team seems to acknowledge having felt freer than with any previous projects, opening thus the path to a new way of making television. Vis a vis blends together the international standards of television-making— including the women-in-prison genre—with a culturally rich and diverse Spanish context. This hybridity is nowhere clearer than at the end of the final episode, where the series’ main theme, the English-language song “Agnus Dei,” is merged with the Spanish lyrics of well-known singer La Mala Rodríguez. The series reclaims in that way its position as a crossbred product, a product influenced by global trends while at the same time contributing to them. With its call for diversity and its almost all-female cast, the series partakes in a wider movement that is opening the way to national televisions and to complex, ambiguous female characters that are taking control of the story.

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Notes 1. Free-to-air television in Spain is well-known for its lengthy shows that finish late at night due to excessively long publicity cuts and to a “prime time” that gets progressively delayed, starting at around 22:50, the latest in Europe (Ruiz Jiménez 2017). 2.  There are notable exceptions to this normalization. First, the plotline of Zulema’s boyfriend, “The Egyptian,” a fugitive who tries to help her escape, epitomizes the “Islamic menace,” offering a sketched view of Islamic religion. Secondly, there is an ongoing in-joke on the deaths of inspector Castillo’s (Jesús Castejón) stereotyped assistants, the former, Ling Chun (Marcos Zan) being called “El Chino” (“The Chinese”), the second, a Mexican, being nicknamed “Jalapeño” (Hugo Guzmán), and the latter Nerea Rojas (Irene Anula), a lesbian who is also killed. Finally, in season three, a group of Chinese mafia women rules the prison, constituting a blatantly underdeveloped and offensively stereotyped set of characters whose only function is that of presenting a menace to the character of Zulema. 3. My translation.

References Aunión, J. A. 2019. “La reinvención de las series españolas.” El País. Accessed January 17, 2019. https://elpais.com/especiales/2019/series-espanolas/. Barlovento Comunicación. 2019. “Análisis Televisivo 2018.” Accessed January 18, 2019. https://www.barloventocomunicacion.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ analisis-televisivo-2018-BarloventoComunicacion.pdf. Batty, Craig. 2014. “Why Wentworth Is Raising the Bar in Australian TV Drama.” The Conversation, May 5. Accessed January 4, 2019. https://theconversation.com/ why-wentworth-is-raising-the-bar-in-australian-tv-drama-25598. Buonanno, Milly. 2008. The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories. Translated by Jennifer Radice. Bristol: Intellect. Buonanno, Milly. 2017. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, edited by Milly Buonanno, 1–24. Bristol: Intellect. Bustamante, Enrique. 2013. Historia de la radio y la televisión en España. Barcelona: Gedisa. Calvo, Mónica, and Maite Escudero. 2009. “We Are Family? Spanish Law and Lesbian Normalization in Hospital Central.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 13, no. 1: 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380560802314151. Dams, Tim. 2018. “‘Money Heist,’ ‘Apple Tree Yard’ Among Intl. Emmy Nominees Proving Peak TV Has Gone Global.” Variety, November 16. Accessed February 4, 2019. https://variety.com/2018/tv/awards/2018-international-emmys-moneyheist-apple-tree-yard-peak-tv-global-1203024922/. Deans, Jason. 2002. “Cult Prison Drama Heads for America.” Guardian, October 8. Accessed October 12, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/ oct/08/broadcasting.

652  J. ECHEVERRÍA-DOMINGO García de Castro, Mario, and Carmen Caffarel Serra. 2016. “Efectos de la crisis económica en la producción de contenidos de ficción televisiva en España entre 2010 y 2015.” Zer 21, no. 40: 177–193. García-Guardia, María Luisa, and Oscar Estupiñán-Estupiñán. 2011. “Historia y transformación de la televisión de pago en España. un recorrido tecnológico desde el vídeo comunitario hasta el vídeo online.” Vivat 117: 91–110. Jabonero, Daniel. 2015. “Álex Pina (Vis a vis): ‘Clonar éxitos y hábitos del pasado a veces no sale bien.’” Bluper, April 20. Accessed January 19, 2019. https:// www.elespanol.com/bluper/noticias/alex-pina-clorar-exitos-habitos-pasadoveces-no-sale-bien. Jarvis, Brian. 2004. Cruel and Unusual: Punishment and US Culture. London: Pluto Press. Lawson, Mark. 2017. “Why Locked Up Has Become Spain’s Biggest Breakout TV Hit.” Guardian, April 27. Accessed January 25, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/27/locked-up-spain-biggest-breakouttv-hit-prison-drama. Littleton, Cynthia. 2016. “Orange Is the New Black Renewed for Three Seasons by Netflix.” Variety, February 5. Accessed December 27, 2018. https://variety.com/2016/tv/news/orange-is-the-new-black-renewed-3-seasons-netflix-1201698227/. Lobato, Ramon. 2017. “Streaming Services and the Changing Global Geography of Television.” In Handbook on Geographies of Technology, edited by Barney Warf, 178–193. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Losinterrogantes. 2018. “Vis a Vis Temporada 3: Najwa Nimri y María Isabel Díaz (entrevistas).” YouTube, April 23. Accessed January 20, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiM2a_u7b60. Marcos, Natalia. 2015. “‘Thriller’ en la cárcel de mujeres.” El País, April 20. Accessed January 19, 2019. https://elpais.com/cultura/2015/04/17/television/1429298733_401920.html. Martin, Brett. 2013. Difficult Men: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. New York: Penguin Press. Maxwell, Richard. 1995. The Spectacle of Democracy: Spanish Television, Nationalism, and Political Transition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Morel, Vincent. 2018. “L’adaptation de Derrière les barreaux sera portée par Élodie Fontan sur M6.” Le Figaro, October 19. Accessed February 3, 2019. http:// tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/l-adaptation-de-derriere-les-barreaux-sera-porteepar-elodie-fontan-sur-m6_b2474e10-d371-11e8-8881-439875b4060d/. Ruiz de Elvira, Álvaro P. 2018a. “Álex Pina: ‘Hay que hacer avances en la ficción, el espectador es cada vez más experto.” El País, July 13. Accessed January 18, 2019. https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/07/12/television/1531403342_602750.html. Ruiz de Elvira, Álvaro P. 2018b. “‘Vis a vis’ abrirá en Fox su nueva cárcel en primavera.” El País, January 10. Accessed January 20, 2019. https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/01/10/television/1515589475_236562.html. Ruiz Jiménez, Eneko. 2017. “El ‘prime time’ que no llega hasta las 22.50.” El País, October 3. Accessed January 21, 2019. https://elpais.com/cultura/2017/09/28/television/1506618937_903923.html.

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Wentworth and the Politics and Aesthetics of Representing Female Embodiment in Prison Cornelia Wächter

Introduction The boundary between prison and outside world supposedly demarcates “normality” from criminal “deviancy,” and the prison thus not only contains those deemed deviant but also marks them as deviant. In Jennifer Turner’s words, “these binary geographies between inside and outside are registered as ideological obfuscations that serve to hide the crucial role of prisons in current society” (2016, 28). This obfuscation works in part by the curtailment of knowledge, to the effect that “what we read in the newspapers and what we see on movie and television screens becomes the primary source of our ‘knowledge’ about who prisoners are and what life in prison is ‘really’ like” (Yousman 2009a, 16). What Erica R. Meiners observes regarding HBO’s Oz (1997–2002) holds equally true for the series under discussion in this article, namely that it “offers audiences the feeling and the belief what life is like” in prison (Meiners 2007, 23). How an object, in this case the prison, “impresses (upon) us” is contingent upon “affective economies, where feelings do not reside in subjects or objects, but are produced as effects of circulation” (Ahmed 2014, 8). Affect, according to Sara Ahmed, can have both bridging and separating effects when it comes to the constructions of collective identities, since “emotions create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place” (Ahmed 2014, 10). The cultural politics of emotion influence how the lines between us and them are being drawn, C. Wächter (*)  Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_40

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and media representations, especially in the case of the prison, are crucial in this. Such representations always and inevitably—explicitly and/or implicitly—assume a position vis-a-vis the institution and those living and working inside. This may, at one end of the spectrum invite empathy with those confined behind prison walls and concern for their well-being and thus bridge the us-them divide. At the other end of the spectrum, via what Ahmed calls “past histories of association” (2014, 66) it may invite fear and aversion and the desire to keep precisely these individuals behind prison walls. Australia, as John Docker points out, has historically had an ambivalent attitude toward imprisonment-as-punishment with, on the one hand, an anti-authority tradition deriving from its past as a penal colony and, on the other hand, a decidedly anti-prisoner stance where so-called hardened criminals are concerned (1994, 263). This ambivalence is even more pronounced in the case of female offenders: “While an influential image of women is that they are less violent than men, less a danger to society, another common one is that women who transgress, who end up in prison, are somehow more foul, more corrupt. […]” (Docker 1994, 263). For women in prison, being “more foul” or “more deviant” entails more than criminality. Ahmed avers that “the reproduction of life itself, where life is conflated with a social life (‘life as we know it’) is often represented as threatened by the existence of others: immigrants, queers, other others” (Ahmed 2014, 144). Women in prison are such “other others,” potentially threatening “the reproduction of life itself” not just by being construed as the opposite of the law-abiding citizen but also by violating gender norms (cf. Moore and Scraton 2014, 53). How representations impact upon the way in which people in prison are “impressed upon” society at large becomes all the more important in the current climate of punitivism and mass incarceration that dominates the Western world. In Australia specifically, the prison population increased by 33% between the December quarter of 2013 and the same period in 2018 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018), with the increase rate for women at 40% significantly higher than that for men at 32% (ibid.). The present chapter explores the representation of (cis and trans) women in the Australian pay television series Wentworth (2013-present), a contemporary “re-imagining” of Prisoner (1988–1995) produced by Lara Radulovich and David Hannam for Foxtel. It examines the series, and tangentially also its predecessor, through the prism of the cultural politics of emotion and, specifically the nexus of violence and affect, since violence features prominently in the “global economies of fear” (Ahmed 2014, 71) that fuel mass incarceration. Brian Walsh, Foxtel Executive Director of Television, claims that they “have told producers to push all boundaries and honestly depict life on the inside as it is in 2012” (qtd, in Knox 2012, n.p.). Wentworth indeed addresses several of the concerns women face in a prison system that, by and large, treats them as an afterthought. These concerns include, for instance, the trials of motherhood in imprisonment, the specific health issues and stigmatization

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faced by trans women, or intersections of gender and race. I argue, however, that Wentworth, instead of rendering a faithful, complex and differentiated depiction of female embodiment in prison, ultimately stigmatizes the incarcerated women and thus caters to the justification of the prison industrial complex, as well as to the stigmatization of women whose gender and/or sexual identity does not meet heteronormative ideals.

Violence in Wentworth Tellingly, Judith Mayne casts the opening of her chapter on the womenin-prison film in Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture (2000) in affective terms: “There is much to love, and much to hate, about the women-in-prison film. Much to love in the sense that these films offer spectacles of female bonding, female rage, and female communities, with strong doses of camp and irony. Much to hate in the sense that scenes of rape and torture are staples of the genre, and no matter how campy the films are, they still play on the helplessness and victimization of women” (2000, 115). What holds true for the WIP film is equally characteristic of the WIP series. I would add that among the features audiences have loved is the woman who is willing and able to inflict violence; and its flipside can be the depiction of women in prison as “an animalistic, uncontrollable mob” (Balint 2010, 2). In fact, much of the ambivalence surrounding the genre hinges upon the assessment and the depiction of violence. Whether within or beyond the prison context, representations of violence tend to create controversies. As Jane Stadler points out, “[v]irtually all films contain instances of violence that send mixed ethical messages and can be interpreted as destructive or instructive” (2012, 127). This ambivalence is especially pronounced when it comes to the figure of the violent woman. Hillary Neroni argues that “[o]ur simultaneous condemnation of and fascination with the violent woman stems from [the] disruptive position she occupies. On the one hand, we want to preserve our society against the threat of the violent woman, but, on the other hand, her threat excites us because it involves overturning the ideological structures (most especially those involving gender) that regulate our experiences” (2005, x). As far as the depiction of violent women in prison is concerned, it can generate and/or perpetuate fear of “the other” and thus fortify the prison-outside boundary. On the other hand, violence can be conceived of as an emancipatory force in the face of structural injustice. Neroni even calls violence “an integral part of changing gender expectations” (2005, ix), thus potentially interpolating women in a collective “we” that bridges the prison-outside divide. It was predominantly for the latter reason that Prisoner quickly obtained cult status. In the words of Alan McKee, “it appears that the success of the program can be attributed to the way in which it represents women – to the fact that this is television that presents women crushing each other’s hands

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in steam presses” (2001, 166). The steam press metonymically represents a degree of female agency—including the willingness and capacity to hurt— that was still rare on television in and beyond Australia in the late 1970s and 1980s (McKee 2001, 166). What was even more rare—and what continues to be rare—was the fact that these women were “unglamorous” (McKee 2001, 166; Balint 2010, 2) or “homely” (Zalock and Robinson 1996). Prior to Prisoner, female characters may have been capable of and willing to fight and may even have assumed a central place in the narrative, but they “still had to purchase such centrality by glamour and sexiness. They had to be looked at while they fought” (McKee 2001, 176). That this new type of female character was able to acquire enormous and lasting popularity can be illustrated by the fact that in 2015, Michael Hogan lists Prisoner’s “Queen” Bea among “The 10 best prisoners on screen” (2015, n.p.). Wentworth, while still claiming investment in “strong female characters” (Jo Porter, FremantleMedia Australia Director of Drama Knox 2012, n.p.) and drawing characters with a high degree of agency and the willingness and capacity to hurt, resorted back to lookism. The Wentworth cast does also include women of all shapes and sizes and of various types of attractiveness, rather than only those in line with the narrow definitions of beauty that dominate mainstream media, but for the main plotlines, very conventionally attractive actresses were cast. What remains is that, like the female characters in Prisoner, the women depicted in Wentworth “are not fragile. These women are not constrained by thinking of themselves as helpless, and their bodies as being in need of protection” (McKee 2001, 179). The violence they commit, however, is far more graphic and more pervasive. From the onset, what drives the plot most of the time is the struggle about the “top dog” position and the allegiances that form and re-form around it. This emphasis on violence and infighting provides a slanted picture of women behind prison walls. First of all, “relative to incarcerated males, female inmates are much less violent toward each other” (Ferraro and Moe 2003, 81); in fact, physical violence among women in prison is comparatively rare (Irwin and Owen 2005; Levan 2012, 47). For that reason, “hierarchical structures are considered unnecessary, as female prisoners organize themselves into communities that mimic familial structures […]” (Levan 2012, 47). Viewed in this light, it is perhaps unsurprising that female bonding and the creation of “families” inside is characteristic of many prison films (Herman 2003, 152). As Kyra Hunting points out, however, in Wentworth (as well as in the British series Bad Girls [1999–2006]) this potential is subverted by “the emphasis on violence and power struggles […]” (2016, 123–124). I moreover subscribe to Hunting’s assertion that in Wentworth (as in Bad Girls) “violence is not momentous but mundane; it is part of how the prison normally operates and from the first episode is a central and regular feature of the plot. [In both these series] violence is an important way in which the women address grievances and exert power and the prison is depicted as a place of regular violence” (2016, 121).

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This criticism does of course not mean to say that violence among women in prison does not exist; it does mean to draw attention to the fact that violence is overemphasized and that this has an impact on actual women in incarceration and the ways in which they “impress” on society at large. In prison films and prison series, physical violence has always assumed more narrative space than it would have in a “faithful” depiction (Clowers 2001, 24). As Clowers sardonically remarks, “if violence occurred with even half the frequency of the extent to which it occurs in prison films, all of the inmates would be dead or in solitary” (Clowers 2001, 25). In terms of the affects which depictions of violence are likely to provoke, not only frequency and duration matter but also and crucially how this violence is narratively framed and aestheticized. Aesthetically, the new series bears closer resemblance to HBO’s Oz (1997–2003) than it does to Prisoner. Oz was frequently criticized for its pornographic depiction of violence (Wlodarz 2005, 60) or its “hyperviolent spectacle” (Yousman 2009b), which “may serve to cultivate fear in its viewers who have few alternative representations of inmates to draw on” (Yousman 2009a, 169). I argue that, like Oz, in spite of the complex drawing of characters, Wentworth equally ultimately turns violence into a spectacle that demonizes criminals. For the remainder of this chapter, I am going to tease out some of the particularities of these depictions of violence and the implications for women suffering carceral violence, women who have suffered abuse prior to their conviction, trans women and lesbian women.

Violence and Empathetic Identification: Bea Smith The show opens with a sequence of eyeline matches consisting of close-ups of Bea Smith’s (Danielle Cormack) face in a moving vehicle, showing her wistfully gazing through the barred window at scenes of everyday life passing by. The camera then follows her gaze down to her hands clenching up in their shackles. This “scene of empathy” (Plantinga 1999, 239) invites emotional identification with a woman deprived of her freedom. Following Jane Stadler, I understand cinematic (or, in this case, televisional) empathy to mean “an emotional process that occurs when audience members perceive, imagine, or hear about a film [or series] character’s affective and mental state and, in so doing, vicariously experience a shared congruent state” (2017, 317). The episode sustains this invitation for vicarious experience when Bea enters the prison. Low-angle shots depict the prison looming large and menacingly over Bea as she enters. A series of eyeline matches show close-ups of Bea’s terrified face as she is taking in the omnipresence of objects, such as surveillance devices, metonymically representing the oppressive power of the prison. When, having been reminded of her daughter during the registration procedure, Bea jumps to her feet and expresses the desperate need to speak to her daughter, the proverbial noose quickly tightens around her neck. In what, again, clearly constitutes an empathy scene, we see her on CCTV being pinned to the floor,

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and a series of eyeline matches shows her terrified face combined with low-angle point of view shots of a group of uniformed strangers hovering above her, injection poised, until her vision becomes blurred and goes dark. The scene highlights that, in the words of Bree Carlton and Emma Russell, “[t]he prison is a violent institution. It is predicated upon and sustained by the constant threat and occurrence of coercive violence” (2018, 5). Whereas in this first episode, carceral violence looms large, and with it the implicit criticism of this violence, it progressively fades into the background to give way to a focus on violence committed by the incarcerated women. The entire first episode is intercut with a series of flashbacks that successively reveal that Bea has a history of verbal and physical abuse by her husband, which culminated in her attempt to kill him—the reason for her imprisonment. The first episode moreover emphasizes that this is an experience common to many incarcerated women. This draws attention to the fact that, compared to incarcerated men, a much higher percentage of incarcerated women have been subject to abuse, both in childhood and adulthood, and while only a minority of women are convicted for violent crimes, such violence often occurs in the context of violence committed against them by intimate partners, and it is usually a one-off event (Australian Government: Australian Institute of Family Studies 2012, n.p.; see also Penal Reform International 2013, A3). Accordingly, the beginning invites us to condemn the violence perpetrated by the institution and by abusive male partners, whereas Bea’s attempt to kill her husband can be read as self-defense. It might moreover suggest the activation of a collective female “we” that transcends the prison-outside boundary. This bridging, however, is countered in two significant ways: Firstly, this potential reading is explicitly taken up by the series in that Bea causes a media stir and inadvertently inspires organized vigilantism on behalf of abused women. The radical group The Red Right Hand, headed by Karen “Kaz” Proctor (Tammy McIntosh), is depicted as so extreme that Bea herself distances herself emphatically from their actions. Kaz’s character profile on FOXSHOWCASE revealingly describes her as “a perfect example of a dangerous effect just waiting for a cause. Damaged by a dysfunctional upbringing with a violent and sexually abusive father, further scarred by experiences with angry boyfriends, she’s come to believe that all her problems stem from the violence that men inflict on women” (2019, n.p.). Secondly, Bea does precisely not metonymically represent the female prison population in general. Like so many male and female protagonists before her, she is in fact juxtaposed with the larger prison population. Narrative depictions of the prison tend to construct a shared sense of “us” on the outside, represented by a convicted person that is included in that construction, who enters the “otherworld” of the prison. The usual focalizing instance of the prison film or series is either a character who is (presumed to be) innocent, such as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption (1994); the

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protagonist’s deed is somehow within the realm of a comparatively minor offense which inadvertently turned into something serious as in the case of Tobias Beecher in Oz; or, as in the case of Bea, the crime may be read as an act of self-defense or is otherwise narratively justified to a certain extent. Moreover, these figures of identification (as in all these examples) tend to share the following features: They are white, middle-class, cisgendered, heterosexual, normatively sized, and conventionally attractive. Accordingly, the problem is who is construed as “normal” as opposed to whom in terms of class, race, gender, ability, or sexuality. Reg Watson, for instance, declared regarding his intentions for Prisoner: “I’d like every housewife to look at this and say, ‘That could be me in there’, because it could be. The only thing different about them is that those inside went through with a crime a lot of other women have contemplated … They’re just members of the public inside” (qtd. in Balint 2010, 6). Whom he regards as “just members of the public,” however, is heavily biased, most obviously in terms of race and ethnicity. Similarly, to return to Walsh’s claim that Wentworth was to “honestly depict life on the inside as it is in 2012” (qtd, in Knox 2012, n.p.), race is a crucial respect in which this fails. Even though Wentworth has a diverse case in various respects, especially when considering whose perspectives are privileged, whose stories are most prominent and how much screen time is given to them, the series does not nearly represent an adequate mapping of women incarcerated in Australia today. It fails to take account of the fact that, as Rashad Shabazz phrases it, “race informs and structures incarceration and carceral punishment [and] carceral power is deeply interwoven with racism” (2015, 5–6). In Australian prisons, this becomes readily apparent in that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People are considerably overrepresented (Australian Law Reform Commission 2017, 21), women even more so than men (Australian Law Reform Commission 2017, 22). Bea and her fellow Anglo-Australian characters may be set alongside characters of other races and ethnicities, notably Doreen “Dor” Anderson (Shareena Clanton), but prior to the entrance of Rita Connors (Leah Purcell) and Ruby Mitchell (Rarriwuy Hick) in Season 6, Doreen remains virtually alone in being given a significant amount of screen time. Accordingly, the empathy invited on behalf of Bea Smith with regard to carceral violence and domestic abuse and the narrative justification of her own act of violence does not extend to the prison population at large.

Trans Women in Prison: Maxine Another minority group that is disproportionately represented in prison are trans women. Marginalization first of all entails an increased likelihood of imprisonment, especially for trans women of color, for example, via involvement in prostitution; trans women (especially trans women of color)

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are disproportionately victims of transphobic violence; and within prison, “transgender and gender-non-conforming people […] experience egregious and often specific forms of violence—including sexual assault, rape, medical neglect and discrimination, and humiliation based on transphobic norms […]” (Bassichis et al. 2011, 33). Wentworth gives a comparatively central role to a trans woman (albeit a white woman) and addresses some of the issues cited above. Nevertheless, as I will argue in the following, her representation ultimately caters to the stigmatization of trans women in and beyond women’s prisons and which renders them vulnerable to violence. First of all, the way in which Maxine Conway (Socratis Otto) is introduced contrasts sharply with the depiction of Bea entering the prison. Instead of an empathy scene, we see the prison van arriving, and there is significant build-up before Maxine becomes visible. First, the officer about to open the doors announces with a sneer “I’ve got a lovely new bunch for you today” (S2 E04 00:09), then we see, in quick succession, Officer Matthew “Fletch” Fletcher’s (Aaron Jeffrey) reaction, uttering “Oh, Jesus” and turning away in disgust, Vera Bennett’s quizzical look, and only then a medium shot (significantly no close-up) of Maxine in the back of the van panning up from her skirt to her blouse and only finally to her face. The camera thus not only cites the tradition of panning female bodies with the face coming last into view—it uses this technique to reveal this face as “wrong” in the sense of explaining the officers’ reactions. Maxine is set up as a sensation. This is of course also a scene about the rampant transphobia in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, the visual distance and the sensational setup make it just as much a scene that is complicit in transphobia and sensationalism, and the same type of representation continues throughout the first episode. Maxine’s position among the prisoners gradually changes once she has saved Bea, and several of the women grow to like and accept her. As for the viewers, at least one source reports that Maxine was especially popular with the audiences (Lindsay 2015, n.p.). Nevertheless, Maxine’s representation remains problematic. For one thing, as an author for AfterEllen’s “Wentworth recap” points out, “[e]very single scene with Maxine is about her difference, her otherness. And I’m actually fine with the rest of the characters saying shitty things to her that reduce her to her anatomy–they’re not the most enlightened people ever—but the camera seems to treat her with the same crassness as the inmates” (‘Wentworth Recap 2.4 Booby Traps’ 2014, n.p.). That is to say, carceral violence that specifically affects trans women is addressed, but the series not only maintains empathetic distance but is actually complicit in this violence. Secondly, the narrative persistently throws Maxine back upon the biological sex she was assigned at birth. First, this happens, quite simply via the casting of a cis male actor for her role. As actress, producer, and trans activist Jen Richards points out, casting men for trans female roles suggests that “underneath it all, it’s still a man. […] And that’s true for those men playing these

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parts, but it’s not true for actual trans women” (2019, 00:11). Richards and other trans advocates argue that this has far-reaching consequences in that reaffirming the notion that “underneath it all, it’s still a man” can lead to violence against actual trans women if heterosexual-identified men attempt to avert the danger of being read as homosexual by “reassert[ing] their masculinity through violence” (Richards 2019, 00:10). Moreover, in prison, we find the equivalent of the “bathroom debate” in which trans women who have not undergone “bottom surgery” are frequently cast in terms of male perpetrators entering all-female spaces (cf., e.g., Sims 2018; Burden 2019). This entails that biological sex assigned at birth appears to take precedence over the normality-deviancy divide. The notion that, underneath, Maxine is somehow “really a man” or that at least her body remains “really male” is corroborated by the fact that she is persistently cast in terms of this body—and the series does nothing to indicate that this is a problem. On her first day in the laundry, Officer Fletcher’s transphobic attacks proceed from the refusal to use female pronouns, to asking Maxine—as a “man”—to help him move a particularly heavy sewing table. And it is precisely this “male physique” and the corresponding capacity for violence that stirs Franky’s (Nicole da Silva) interest in her and finally leads to Maxine becoming Franky’s (and later Bea’s) “bouncer” in exchange for access to hormone treatment, once that has been withdrawn in punishment for an attempted escape. It is a capacity for violence that, to Susan “Boomer” Jenkins’ (Katrina Milosevic) great frustration, at least in Franky’s estimation appears to outstrip any cis woman’s capacity. And, again, the series gives no indication to the contrary. Considering that Wentworth does depict how carceral violence bears on Maxine specifically as a trans woman, notably in using hormone replacement therapy as leverage against her, it can be assumed that the producers intended to give a faithful and ultimately positive depiction of trans women in incarceration. I therefore consider Wentworth to be a case of what Morgan Bassichis et al. describe as a prevailing form of “public education” that “relies on sexualization, voyeurism, sensationalism, and fetishization to get its point across. In general, there is a focus on graphic descriptions of people’s bodies (specifically their genitals), sexual violence, and the humiliation they have faced” (2011, 33).

Lesbians in Prison: Franky and “The Freak” The last minority group I would like to consider are lesbians. As Heather Love reminds us, “[t]hrough the criminalization of homosexuality, prisons have served as holding cells and correctional facilities for gender and sexual outsiders. But they have also served as dream worlds, sites for the production of fantasies about sexual excess and disorder, desire, and domination” (2014, n.p.). What there is to love and what there is to hate here frequently lies

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particularly closely together. The stereotypical lesbian that populates the WIP genre is deviant in her gender performance (i.e., “too masculine”) and, ostensibly related to that, she is sexually predatorial and violent (Millbank 2004, 156, 160). Ann Ciasullo traces the coalescing of criminality and deviance in the lesbian back to the early sexologists and their “complex web of associations – inversion, masculinity, criminality […]” (2008, 198). Prisoner was no exception in this respect. Balint, for instance, calls the original Franky (Carol Burns) “one of the most memorable examples of this link between illicit sexuality and violent, anti-feminine behaviour” (Balint 2010, 2–3). In 2003, Didi Herman still points out that in the WIP genre, “[l]esbianism is usually either marginalized, pathologized, or at best situational, and lesbian characters usually face grim futures or suffer violent deaths […]” (2003, 3; cf. also Ciasullo 2008, 206). She therefore applauds Bad Girls for disrupting the genre by “foreground[ing] lesbian heroines who have happy endings” and that “the normalization of lesbianism occurs outside as well as within the prison” (2003, 3). In that respect, Wentworth certainly follows suit in one case: By the end of Season 6, Franky is released and appears to have found lasting love with Bridget Westfall (Libby Tanner). Nevertheless, as Kyra Hunting complains, “the most significant lesbian character in the series is depicted as violent and manipulative” (2016, 116). I would argue that it is the two most significant lesbian characters—Joan Ferguson (Pamela Rabe) and Franky—who are violent and manipulative, even though Franky is “fully reformed” by the end of Season 5. In fact, Ferguson is one of the most violent and certainly the most vicious character of the series, so she begs closer examination. Ferguson’s depiction is best characterized by excess. The Telegraph evocatively describes Pamela Rabe’s performance of “The Freak” in Wentworth as “a triumph of camp, lip-quivering menace in a glass-walled cell” (O’Donovan 2016, n.p.). Whereas the original Frankie and “the Freak” provided opportunities for televisual identification for the lesbian community that were very rare in the 1980s (Beirne 2009, 27), the new version of “the Freak” may be a welcome antiheroine who serves to challenge the representational “double standard [which] implies and ensures that disruption of the order of things by badly behaving women is particularly disquieting because female transgressive agency – all the more so when it comes to illegal or criminal moves – does not just break social norms but violates and subverts the natural properties of true womanhood” (Buonanno 2017, 11). In the prison context, however, I argue that the camp excess which Ferguson represents, in spite of her enthusiastic reception in the gay community, has highly problematic corollaries, which I am going to illustrate by means of a scene in the first episode of Season 5. Bea Smith is dead, Allie has just returned from the hospital, and Ferguson is released back into the general population. When Ferguson enters the laundry, the cameras are immediately veiled and everyone expects Kaz to punish her. Instead, however, Kaz declares: “From now on, there’ll be no women

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committing acts of violence against women in this prison. […] The violence ends now” (S5E1 00:25). When Ferguson enters the exercise yard, though, Allie attacks her and other women soon join in, giving release to their accumulated hatred, and Ferguson fights back ferociously. The excess that characterizes Ferguson here takes the shape of the clearly discernible trope of the “criminal as animal.” Ferguson is depicted with wild eyes, bared teeth, blood pouring from her mouth, and whereas Allie shrieks, Ferguson clearly growls and roars (S5E1 00:27–00:29). I follow Ahmed in arguing that metaphors and other figures of speech “are crucial to the emotionality of texts” and this emotionality “is one way of describing how texts are ‘moving’, or how they generate effects” (2014, 12–13). The “criminal as animal” metaphor, when it comes to people in incarceration, is all too familiar in the production of fear that justifies dehumanizing treatment and mass incarceration (Morin 2018, 7–8). To quote Karen M. Morin: “The process of ‘animalization’ […] subjugates both certain humans and certain nonhumans into hierarchies of worthiness and value” (2018, 7). The scene moreover reproduces the “[h]egemonic imagery of insanely aggressive lesbians” which, as Jenny Millbank points out, “produces real material effects on how lesbians are treated within the criminal justice system” (Millbank 2004, 156). While being equally wary of the “tyranny of positive images,” I also share Millbank’s “grave concerns about what it means to represent lesbians in a context in which they are presumed to be inherently violent” (2004, 157), and I am even more concerned when women in prison, more generally, are depicted in animalistic terms.

Conclusion Sue Turnbull reads Wentworth as part of what Milly Buonanno has identified as an emergent trend of antiheroine narratives that allow female characters on television to “[behave] badly” (Buonanno 2017, 3; Turnbull 2017), and there is certainly a point to be made here. The female characters in Wentworth, as one blogger remarks, are all complex: “Everyone, and I mean everyone, is complex and fully fleshed out and as morally grey as ever” (Kate 2013, n.p.). In general terms, I consider it be a positive development if more and more female characters in film and television, whether cis or trans, gay or straight or anything in between, are allowed to “behave badly” (ideally without having to be conventionally attractive in the process). However, in the current climate of punitivism and mass incarceration, the unprecedented numbers of incarcerated women are not just any group of women, and in this particular context, I am convinced that other standards need to apply. The overwhelming presence of violence that characterizes the day-to-day interactions in Wentworth and that repeatedly veer into animalistic depictions of women in custody play into the hands of a system that incarcerates growing numbers of women. I therefore consider at least the first five seasons of the series to be highly problematic.

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Things take a more positive turn in Season 6. As noted above, the series begins to map more faithfully the distribution of ethnicities across the prison system—and not only in terms of minor characters but now also in major roles. Moreover, the series takes a more negotiated and more explicit look at violence. One aspect of this is that, like Orange Is the New Black (Schwan 2016, 478) and perhaps inspired by it, Wentworth increasingly includes meta-commentary on the WIP genre and its depiction of violence. Thus, for instance, the second episode of Season 6 opens with a fight among the women that not only visually draws upon Fight Club (1999), with the updated addition of smartphones recording it for the “dark web,” but these illegal boxing matches are actually called “fight club” by the women who engage in them (S6E2 00:17). Moreover, when Ruby, a professional boxer, is shown these fights, she asks “Who’s gonna pay to watch these fuckin’ hacks?” (S6E2 00:17), and is told “A real prison fight? Are you kidding? Everyone” (ibid.). This can be read as “a critical meta-commentary on what is regarded as salable to the media and popular audiences” (Schwan 2016, 478), which can explain the all-pervasive violence in Wentworth but does not justify it. Kaz’s ambiguously presented decision to allow fight club to continue, albeit with proper rules, so as to provide the women with a release valve might open up a space for reading violence among the women as an effect of carceral violence rather than as expressive of their “animalistic” traits. Whether the series will indeed evolve like that, the next season will show.

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Burden, Elizabeth. 2019. “Letting Criminals Self-Identify Gender ‘Putting Women at Risk’”. The Times, March 14, sec. Scotland. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ letting-criminals-self-identify-gender-putting-women-at-risk-8560wzkqt. Carlton, Bree, and Emma K. Russell. 2018. Resisting Carceral Violence: Women’s Imprisonment and the Politics of Abolition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ciasullo, Ann. 2008. “Containing ‘Deviant’ Desire: Lesbianism, Heterosexuality, and the Women-in-Prison Narrative.” The Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 2: 195– 223. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00499.x. Clowers, Marsha. 2001. “Dykes, Gangs, and Danger: Debunking Popular Myths About Maximum-Security Life.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 9, no. 1: 22–30. Docker, John. 1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Ferraro, Kathleen J., and Angela M. Moe. 2003. “Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance”. In Women in Prison: Gender and Social Control, edited by Barbara H. Zaitzow and Jim Thomas, 65–94. London: Lynne Rienner. FOXSHOWCASE. 2019. “Kaz Proctor”. Accessed March 28. https://www.foxshowcase.com.au/shows/wentworth/character/wentworth-kaz-proctor/. Herman, Didi. 2003. “‘Bad Girls Changed My Life’: Homonormativity in a Women’s Prison Drama.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20, no. 2: 141–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180302779. Hogan, Michael. 2015. “The 10 Best Prisoners on Screen”. The Guardian, June 5, sec. Culture. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jun/05/ the-10-best-prisoners-on-screen. Hunting, Kyra. 2016. “All in the (Prison) Family: Genre Mixing and Queer Representation.” In Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black: Thirteen Critical Essays, edited by April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne M. Trier-Bieniek, 111–127. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Irwin, John, and Barbara Owen. 2005. “Harm and the Contemporary Prison”. In The Effects of Imprisonment, edited by Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna, 94–117. Cambridge Criminal Justice Series. Cullompton, Devon, UK; Portland, OR: Willan. Kate. 2013. “10 Reasons Why Your Next Favorite Lesbian Prison Show Is ‘Wentworth’”. Blog. Autostraddle, September 2. https://www.autostraddle.com/10-reasons-why-your-next-favorite-lesbian-prison-show-is-wentworth-193341/. Knox, David. 2012. “Foxtel to Remake Prisoner”. TV Tonight, March 3. https:// tvtonight.com.au/2012/03/foxtel-to-remake-prisoner.html. Levan, Kristine. 2012. Prison Violence: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions. Solving Social Problems. Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Lindsay, Duncan. 2015. “EXCLUSIVE Wentworth Prison Star Socratis Otto Discusses Playing Transgender Maxine”. Metro, July 22. https://metro. co.uk/2015/07/22/exclusive-wentworth-prison-star-socratis-otto-discusses-playing-transgender-maxine-and-the-caitlyn-jenner-effect-5306346/. Love, Heather. 2014. “Made For TV”. Virtual Roundtable on ‘Orange Is the New Black’. https://www.publicbooks.org/virtual-roundtable-on-orange-is-the-new-black/ #love.

668  C. WÄCHTER Mayne, Judith. 2000. Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McKee, Alan. 2001. Australian Television: A Genealogy of Great Moments. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Meiners, Erica R. 2007. “Life After Oz: Ignorance, Mass Media, and Making Public Enemies.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 29, no. 1: 23–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410601097824. Millbank, Jenni. 2004. “It’s About This: Lesbians, Prison, Desire.” Social & Legal Studies 13, no. 2: 155–190. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663904042550. Moore, Linda, and Phil Scraton. 2014. The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Morin, Karen M. 2018. Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals. Routledge HumanAnimal Studies. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. Neroni, Hilary. 2005. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. SUNY Series in Feminist Criticism and Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press. O’Donovan, Gerard. 2016. “Wentworth Prison: The Aussie Prison Drama Better Than Orange Is the New Black—Review”. The Telegraph, June 27. https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/06/27/wentworth-prison-the-aussie-prisondrama-better-than-orange-is-t/. Penal Reform International. 2013. “UN Bangkok Rules on Women Offenders and Prisoners”. Penal Reform International. https://www.penalreform.org/resource/ united-nations-bangkok-rules-women-offenders-prisoners-short/. Plantinga, Carl R. 1999. “The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film.” In Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, edited by Carl R. Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, 239–255. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Richards, Jen. 2019. “On Matt Bomer, Anything, and Casting Cis Actors in Trans Roles.” YouTube Video. Accessed March 23. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=nLzM7BuNdIo&feature=youtu.be. Schwan, Anne. 2016. “Postfeminism Meets the Women in Prison Genre: Privilege and Spectatorship in Orange Is the New Black.” Television & New Media 17, no. 6: 473–490. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476416647497. Shabazz, Rashad. 2015. Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago. New Black Studies Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sims, Paul. 2018. “Transgender Prisoner ‘Sexually Assaulted Four Female Inmates’”. The Sun, July 17. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6804433/transgender-lagsexually-abused-four-female-prisoners-days-after-arriving-at-west-yorkshire-jail/. Stadler, Jane. 2012. Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics. New York: Continuum. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord. aspx?p=1752364. ———. 2017. “Empathy in Film.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy, edited by Heidi Lene Maibom, 317–326. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Turnbull, Sue. 2017. “Top Dogs and Other Freaks: /Wentworth/ and the Re-Imagining of ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’.” In Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, edited by Milly Buonanno, Kindle edition, 182–198. Bristol, UK; Chicago, IL, USA: Intellect.

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From the Stony Ground Up: The Unique Affordances of the Gaol as “Hub” for Transgressive Female Representations in Women-in-Prison Dramas Stayci Taylor, Tessa Dwyer, Radha O’Meara and Craig Batty

Introduction In 2018, the authors of this chapter convened the international conference, Wentworth is the New Prisoner, at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia—the very home of the shows Prisoner (Cell Block H) (1979–1986) and Wentworth (2013–). This chapter draws on our papers from this conference, and our wider research on screenwriting, feminism and the screen industry, to suggest that the unique appeal of women-in-prison

S. Taylor (*)  RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] T. Dwyer  Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. O’Meara  University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. Batty  University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_41

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series—such as Wentworth and its antecedent, Prisoner—is broader than a general fascination with life on the inside. Indeed, we contend that the prison as series “hub” serves to complicate and reiterate female representations in the mainstream and can enrich understandings of female transgression on television. To make this argument, we look to practices of screenwriting, script editing and serial drama development, and through the lens of historical transformation in television distribution, branding and taste cultures. We first discuss how the prison-as-hub does much of the work of facilitating the internal logic of the interconnected lives and storylines of the characters in serial drama. We then argue that in the case of women-in-prison dramas, the setting necessitates a cast of mostly female-identifying characters, who then fill most (if not all) of the archetypal characters that comprise a typical cast. From a screenwriting practice research perspective, we discuss how the prison hub functions within script development processes. Given that such drama series are developed within an industry awash with debates surrounding gender diversity on screen, we also draw conclusions around the wider function of the female hub as a catalyst for industry change, especially at the level of series commissioning. By focusing on gender in relation to script development processes, we hope to augment and deepen concurrent discourse on gender representation and participation, particularly in the television series.

The “Hub” in Television Script Development One of the major considerations in creating a premise for an enduring television series is choosing what is variously termed the “hub” or “precinct.” In screenwriting more generally, the notion of the “story world” drives development discussions (see Batty 2012; Taylor 2017a, b); in television in particular, especially series with returning characters and scenarios, “hub” or “precinct” is the more dominant discourse. With the form of serial drama and soap demanding a constant generation of narrative, the prison hub is ideal for servicing story, given its legitimate reasons for comings-and-goings. Yvonne Grace writes about such series as dramas that are open-ended, with returning characters, and where the “backdrop remains the same and is returned to each week” (2014, 37). This idea of “return” is key for the prison drama in the context of script development; mostly the characters do not so much return as remain. In other words, when characters are confined to the “backdrop” (hub, precinct) the series storyliners (those developing character arcs and plot) do not need to fabricate reasons to keep them “coming back.” New characters can be introduced at any time and mainstay characters can be dispatched with little narrative contrivance, because the prisoners’ lack of control over their own movement is a central theme in this setting. Further, the benefits of a single building where central characters remain for long periods extend beyond storylining and into budget; for example, Prisoner was

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notoriously cheap to make because of the limited sets and scant requirements for outdoor shooting, largely utilizing the red brick Channel 10 Studios building and surrounds at Nunawading that would later double as external locations on Neighbours (1985–). These affordances have seen many television series creators explore the possibilities of detention for both men and women, generating a list of prison-set television series including Oz (1997–2003), Prison Break (2005–2017) and Porridge (1974–1977); those with a prison camp as their hub; and the specific women-in-prison series that we go on to discuss, including international remakes of Prisoner and Wentworth. The prison is a setting that has been deployed by centuries of dramatists, with rich thematic possibilities including the opportunity to “challenge the authority of the prison, especially where it is represented as a place that encourages rather than deters the corruption of its inmates, or as a place run by corrupt and incompetent governors” (Anhert 2012, 36). In short, the prison hub comes inbuilt with drama, rivalries, collusions, hierarchies and forced interactions between characters, while also delivering conditions for authentic conflict in a confined setting. Characters in prisons are always strongly invested in genuinely lifechanging (sometimes life-threatening) situations, with much at stake in each dramatic conflict: They may lose their freedom, social position, familial ties and even their lives. It is perhaps these factors that pave the way for the “greenlighting” (put into production) of prison-set, female-centered series such as Wentworth, Prisoner, Bad Girls (1999–2006) and Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) (2013–), which, as we go on to argue, possess transformative possibilities for gender representation and industry practice. Simple sets, such as a prison corridor, can readily become sites for compassion or conflict; for solidarity or riots. In Wentworth, for example, a queue of women waiting to use the public telephone easily slips into hierarchical games among inmates, teary connections with loved ones or scenes of brutal violence. The extreme stakes and emotional power of melodrama are never far from the surface in the prison-as-hub, even in series such as OITNB, which combines high-stakes drama with lots of humor. It is useful to note, then, the critical interest in Wentworth, a re-­imagining of Prisoner from creators Lara Radulovich and David Hannam and head writer Pete McTighe, produced in Australia by FremantleMedia. Wentworth has been praised in one review (Doyle 2015) as “a striking example of how to make strongly dramatic, addictive TV using a confined setting” in a series that is “dark, tense and fully female-centric.” That the female centrality is noteworthy speaks to ongoing discussions around marginalized female screen representations. Such discussions often draw on the statistics produced by the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. These are well-known and oft-quoted, but it is pertinent here (when considering how the prison-as-hub may serve to

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counter such deficits) that their most recent study revealed 23.3% of screen protagonists to be female, with 30.9% female speaking characters (Smith et al. 2014, 4). As we are Australia-based researchers, focusing here on two Australian screen works, it is interesting to note that Australian figures were slightly higher in the sample: 29.8% female characters and 40% lead or co-lead characters (Smith et al. 2014, 3). Screen Australia’s “Gender Matters” initiative responds to more localized studies which reveal that while “TV tends to do much better than features in its representation of women on screen, where many long-running series feature strong female protagonists” (2015, 2), still “many women fail to make the leap from emerging practitioner to sustained careers and positions of influence, which leads to under-representation” (2015, 2). To situate Prisoner and Wentworth in this context highlights the shows’ significant contributions to the women of the Australian television industry— the Annenberg research also reported a 7.5% increase in female representation “with the inclusion of one or more female writers” (Smith et al. 2014, 23). An earlier study also reported an increase “when at least one female is involved in the directing or writing process” (Smith et al. 2013, 7). We might also contend that these series inform gendered screen representations more broadly (given Wentworth’s global reach and Prisoner’s cult status internationally). From these studies, we can understand the prevailing cultural conditions in which creators pitch their series concepts and begin to appreciate the apparent obstacles in advancing the development of shows centered around a female protagonist, let alone a predominantly female ensemble. As Susan Liddy has written, screen creators may become wary of even pitching such stories when “[s]tereotypes held by development executives can also impinge on the kinds of female characters that individual writers wish to spotlight” (2017, 24). That the prison hub so readily facilitates the narrative demands of serial drama, and that the gendered segregation of correctional facilities is inherently understood, may prompt less resistance to a womenin-prison concept in traditional development hierarchies than other “female-centric” propositions—wherein, as Suzanne Walters points out, “[e]ven in an era of a supposed renewal of feminist energies, one is hard pressed to find many cultural representations that speak to a wide range of female identities and pleasures” (2017, 201). As Walters goes on to note, entrenched (and non-negotiable) cultural imperatives for “likeability” from female characters make for a paucity of female antiheroes on the small screen, or at least means that such characters have a “limited range of representational options” (2017, 201) relating to their disinhibited sexuality or flawed parenting. As screenwriting scholar and story consultant Helen Jacey notes: “writers tell me that they have the most issues with female protagonists in development because of the likeability factors affecting agency, traits, speech, sexuality, age” (2017, 16). In other words, not only does the prison-as-hub facilitate increased representation

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for women on screen, it also inherently demands a greater breadth of female characters simply because the archetypes required to populate the setting in particular, and serial drama cast design more broadly, must be predominantly filled by women. For a prison drama, these archetypes will invariably include “the corrupt and repressed warden, the naive new inmate, the mad/bad lesbian stirrer, as well as the kind-hearted and the wise and worldly ‘top-dog’ who rules the roost” (Zalcock and Robinson 1996, 90–91). More broadly, soaps and serial dramas host a range of archetypes (complicated villains through to “golden” couples) which, in the women-in-prison genre, are able to be played by female characters.

Women-in-Prison Writing about Orange Is the New Black, Walters (2017) continually underlines the significance of its women-in-prison setting. For Walters, this femaledominant setting is crucial. It fascinates and liberates, enabling diversification on multiple levels and providing a basis for thinking non-reductively about how the prison hub challenges the nature of representational debates by insisting on the importance of quantity as well as quality. As Walters details, OITNB stands out as a series based around “a multiracial, class diverse, sexually variant group of women who primarily relate to each other and not to men” (2017, 137). The diversity and variety of the women it depicts are where its politics come most forcefully into play. In this way, Walters is arguing for the need to move beyond discussions of quality alone and debates about the merits, or otherwise, of OITNB’s diverse characters. These principles are amply demonstrated in other women-in-prison series, including Wentworth. In the first season of Wentworth, the prison functions as a kind of narrative centripetal force, drawing the characters toward their incarcerated state. The causes of the inmates’ custodial sentences are dramatized for the audience via flashbacks so that we see their various positions in society before they become equalized as prisoners. Bea Smith is an average suburban wife and mother who was driven to the attempted murder of her abusive husband; Lizzie Birdsworth had married into a wealthy family, but could not quite meet their expectations and accidentally drove a tractor over her mother-in-law; Jacs Holt is the matriarch of an organized crime family and presumably a career criminal. From a script development standpoint, this demonstrates another way in which the prison-as-hub inherently serves the creation of a sustainable premise, namely, that characters occupy (or are drawn into) a world in which they have clear rules and logics to navigate. In later seasons of Wentworth, the prison functions as a kind of centrifugal force as the narrative follows selected characters trying to establish new lives on parole. Some characters are released and never heard from again, but important characters might feature on both the inside and the outside.

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For example, we see Lizzie Birdsworth released on parole to a halfway house in which she must deal with violence and theft, and Franky’s attempt to establish a legal career features over two seasons. Although the characters’ trajectories seem to reverse as the seasons unfold, Wentworth Detention Centre remains the controlling force at the core of their lives. Even the prison staff, such as correctional officers Vera Bennett, Matthew Fletcher and Will Jackson, seem to have trouble leaving the institution, and when we do see them in their own worlds, it is always in the context of their work life (i.e., the prison). The sheer number of female central characters in Wentworth is unusual in the context of contemporary popular television: Most seasons of Wentworth feature approximately ten main women and three main men. This number allows for a diversity of women to be represented in the main cast, with characters from various ages, ethnicities, social classes, body shapes, genders, religions and sexualities. Wentworth also features several main characters who are Indigenous Australians: Doreen Anderson, a drink-driver who wants a baby of her own, featured in seasons 1–5; Rita Connors, a tough bikie, and her younger sister, Ruby Mitchell, feature in seasons 6 and 7. Despite recent success in representing a greater proportion of Indigenous Australians on television, it is still rare to see more than one Indigenous character in the main cast of an Australian television series (Screen Australia 2016). Significantly, Doreen and Rita were White Australian characters in Wentworth’s antecedent series, Prisoner, but have been recreated as Indigenous in the reboot, and these characters are all played by Indigenous actors. Wentworth also featured loyal enforcer Maxine Conway, a transgender woman, throughout seasons 2–5, one of the longest-running transgender main characters ever seen on Australian television. Maxine’s storylines also allowed the show to problematize the strict gender binary usually enforced within the diegesis of a women’s prison, once again reinforcing the point that prison-as-hub in Wentworth facilitates gender transgressions. The women’s prison-as-hub disrupts social norms, power dynamics and gender categories. With women mostly filling the range of roles and character types on offer in a given drama series, diverse characters and narratives can be explored. The characters in Wentworth are broadly divided into two spheres—inmates and officers—with women outnumbering men on each side. Further, each group has its own power structures, and women are commonly featured at the top of these hierarchies. Many narrative threads across Wentworth’s seven seasons (to date) chart the struggle between women to attain and retain the position of “Top Dog” among the inmates. The Top Dog has become a character type in prison-as-hub dramas, notable for her ruthless wielding of social power and investment in social hierarchy. The Top Dog is typically supported by a team of enforcers or minions, who do her dirty work to maintain the social order among the inmates. All of these characters in Wentworth are women. The staff are stratified by clear ranks,

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from officers to Deputy Governor, Governor and Regional Director of the Department of Corrections. The Governor holds the position of institutional authority over the prison, a position that is inhabited by a series of women in Wentworth: Meg Jackson, Erica Davidson, Joan Ferguson and Vera Bennett. The only male to perform this role was Derek Channing, who was only briefly “Acting Governor” in season 5. The string of women in powerful roles shows an array of leadership styles, personalities, attitudes, experiences and challenges. Davidson is an educated careerist; Ferguson is a sadistic psychopath; and Bennett is a shy woman learning to “lean in” (Sandberg 2013). The women’s prison-as-hub also disrupts pervasive social norms and relations, such as heteronormative sexuality. Many of the central characters in Wentworth are lesbian or bisexual, allowing for a diversity of queer women, experiences and narratives to be represented over the seasons. The women’s prison is (at least in the cultural imagination and on the small screen) a space where homosexuality is arguably normalized, or more readily accepted, both within the story world and by the television audience. When inmate Franky and her psychologist Bridget develop a strong relationship in season 3 of Wentworth, the forbidden couple becomes a fan favorite, known as “Fridget.” The series regularly shows lesbian sexual interactions in a variety of ways, sometimes explicitly: from affectionate kisses to quick fucks; from long-term relationships to rapes. In the first season, Franky proudly declares herself a “vagetarian.” The frequency of representing taboo and marginalized sexualities is no doubt a major contributing factor in the enduring appeal of women-in-prison dramas as a mainstay within exploitation cinema (see Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 120) and also correlates with the niche programming of television’s post-network era (Lotz 2010). As years of exploitation cinema have made clear, the female hub of the women-in-prison genre is inherently intriguing for the way it upturns social norms and entrenched power dynamics. Prisoners are some of the most marginalized, oppressed people in our society, but they play an outsized role in the cultural imaginary. Incarcerated women, even more so than incarcerated men, are commonly perceived as serious transgressors of the social order. This is part of the fascination women in prison hold for television audiences, and also the foundation of their radical political potential. Further, an institution ruled by and for women offers an alternative vision of social organization. By contrast, a television series set in a male prison only serves to heighten male bias and dominance throughout society and the media, because it reinforces, even exaggerates, patriarchal norms rather than offering any intervention. The women-in-prison scenario makes for compelling drama because it is inherently destabilizing on social and political levels, while also bucking enduring norms of representation and employment in the media industry. Ultimately, Walters argues in her analysis of OITNB that she is, “less interested in the ‘realism’ debates (this is, after all, TV where even so-called ‘reality’ is scripted and orchestrated) than in the types of identities, bodies,

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solidarities engaged in and through the series” (2017, 139). Walters’ emphasis is on the number of bodies, the number of types, the sheer number of women being represented in OITNB, and this is something that is specifically serviced via the prison hub. The extent of this diversity of representation is something directly enabled by the women-in-prison concept, as with other gendered sites or settings such as convents, boarding schools and brothels— all of which are replete with their own extensive “representational baggage” (Walters 2017, 138). In this way, Walters reveals a path for thinking about the female-centric hub as a political, conceptual tool that destabilizes and reframes representational debates, enriching levels of engagement with transgressive women on TV. In fact, the female hub disrupts norms in the media industry as much as it does in the realm of representation, allowing starring roles for numerous female performers, as well as key creative roles for women. In the production of Wentworth, women perform key creative roles such as Script Executive, Director of Photography and Art Director—roles that are commonly dominated by men.

Industry Context: Post-network TV Some important considerations for engaging with the women’s prison as TV series hub include, firstly, its historical lineage and representational antecedents; and secondly, its current proliferation within the evolving, convergent landscape of post-network television and streaming media. As Walters (2017) and others (Zalcock and Robinson 1996) detail, the women-in-prison trope is a long-enduring staple of pulp fiction and exploitation cinema. The current popularity of this inherently destabilizing setting, or precinct, is a fascinating, noted phenomenon that brings with it new significations and interpretative politics worth exploring in some depth. In this final section, we consider the current industry context for the greenlighting of such potentially transgressive, female-centric series as Wentworth, Orange Is the New Black and Women in Prison (2015). In particular, we focus on whether or not such shows provide a catalyst for industry change and diversification. Amanda Lotz (2007) has usefully sketched broad historical shifts in television’s industrial frameworks, from an era dominated by a handful of networks offering limited viewing choices watched in the home, through a multi-channel transition of proliferating content and platforms, to an era of industrial and technological convergence where individual audience members exercise greater choice and control. Television comedies and dramas have often used a prison setting as social hub throughout these eras, for many of the reasons outlined above, from drama to budget. Series such as Prisoner and Porridge were popular in the network era, lasting many years and attracting audiences across numerous territories. Prisoner screened on weeknights on commercial television for its local audience in Australia, aimed at a popular, mainstream audience. In this context, Prisoner was remarkable for attracting good ratings

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domestically, international sales, and niche audiences around the world. It was considered ground-breaking for its representation of (relatively) diverse women and storylines focused on women’s experiences. Prisoner often addressed contemporary social issues such as sexism, sex work and prisoner rehabilitation. Further, it brought many queer characters into suburban lounge rooms and garnered an international cult following, especially among gay and lesbian communities. In the 1980s, Prisoner was produced primarily for a domestic Australian audience and so its international popularity was a happy outcome of keen international sales; in the 2010s, however, its cable (Foxtel) re-imagining, Wentworth, was produced with global, niche audiences clearly in sight. Although the distribution and audience contexts for Prisoner and Wentworth are radically different in terms of industrial employment and mentoring for women on screen and behind the scenes, both shows had significant, long-term impact on careers and production ecologies. The current, post-network era of TV seems to have enabled a greater proliferation of prison-hub series. This era is marked by many distinctive features, with perhaps the most fundamental being its revenue model and distribution via new, online video streaming services. The post-broadcast TV environment is largely built around forms of pay-TV, whether subscription-based (such as Netflix) or transactional (such as Apple iTunes). Here, revenue is drawn directly from viewers, or users, rather than advertisers. As a result, viewers are now clients, which have set in motion a huge raft of subsequent changes. The very term “post-network” speaks to the seismic disruption that has occurred in relation to distribution. The emergence of online video streaming means that TV is no longer solely distributed by a small monopoly of broadcast networks or channels. TV distribution is now thoroughly diversified through innumerable online services and platforms, with flow-on effects for production and reception. TV audiences in the post-broadcast era have become drastically smaller and more fragmented. Where once TV was aired by a few to the masses, it is now often described in terms of niche narrowcasting (Lotz 2007, 56). Now TV is distributed by increasing numbers of channels or sites to decreasing audiences, and the industry is characterized foremost by abundance rather than scarcity (see Robinson 2017). Among this competitive marketplace, women-in-prison series seem to be standing out from other genres. Notably, the current proliferation of women-in-prison TV dramas (as well as reality series, documentaries and docudramas) has largely occurred on subscription services such as Netflix and Foxtel. This is significant as it points to some of the changes that “nichification” or narrowcasting bring, particularly in terms of transgression and branding. As has been much discussed within Television Studies, the hugely competitive distribution sector (now thoroughly entangled with production) has led to a diversification of both content and audience, something that the industry has been quick to

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promote and exploit; for example, streaming service Netflix has branded itself as an edgy disruptor free from the tyranny of mass audiences and “least objectionable programming” (see Lotz 2010, 23). Post-broadcast distributors, from HBO to Netflix, promise new creative freedoms with content targeting diverse, non-mainstream audiences. In this new industry landscape, there has been much celebration around the diversity gains that post-broadcast platforms have facilitated. Due to audience fragmentation and niche programming, TV series no longer need to “play it safe” in the hope of attracting mass audiences and can proactively target diverse, non-mainstream and/or minority groups while still remaining commercially viable. Along with shifts in the patterns and practices of television consumption, the post-network era has witnessed significant shifts in television taste cultures. “Quality” television has attracted critical acclaim for representing marginalized characters, communities and issues. Indeed, depiction of social transgression has become a branding feature of “Quality” television series, which define themselves as “beyond the mainstream” (see McCabe and Akass 2007). Critically acclaimed series of the new century, such as The Sopranos (1999–2007), The Wire (2002–2008) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013), display their transgressive aesthetics through realist depictions of frequent sex and violence, distinguishing themselves from the sanitized shows of broadcast television. Prison series have an obvious place within this context—as edgy, controversial, transgressive, salacious and gritty. Accordingly, Oz was one of HBO’s first flagship original dramas and OITNB launched Netflix’s branding in original content production. OITNB and Wentworth both show how such market positioning relates to diversity: A female hub places women in the majority of characters and at the center of the narrative, creating opportunities for real industry change and reaching beyond mere branding. On-screen diversity has been buoyed by the cultural prestige bestowed upon post-broadcast TV brands, with their reputation for edgy, innovative programming not subjected to the same regulations and restrictions as broadcast TV (McCabe and Akass 2007). In this way, diversity has become a selling point and key mark of difference for post-network programs and platforms, which offsets the smaller niche audiences that shows now attract. Despite this “monetization” of diversity via branding, recent reports by industry watchdogs such as Stacey Smith and colleagues USC Annenberg, the Geena Davis Institute and the GLAAD Media Institute point to substantial gains in the numbers of women and minorities now being represented on US television screens (see Smith et al. 2014; and Hunt et al. 2019). According to the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, “women’s share of broadcast scripted leads increased 4 percentage points … from 35.7 percent during the 201516 television season to 39.7 percent in 2016-17” (Hunt et al. 2019, 16). Women’s share of digital scripted leads was higher again at 42.8%, just slightly down on the previous year’s 43%. Over this period, people of color also gained a greater share of lead roles on broadcast (18.7–21.5%), cable

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(20.2–21.3%) and digital scripted television (12.9–21.3%). Nevertheless, women and minorities are still underrepresented and the UCLA report states that people of color would have to nearly double their 2016–2017 shares across all three television categories to reach representation proportionate with the US population (Hunt et al. 2019, 15–17). Moreover, these gains in representation are not necessarily mirrored behind the scenes of scripted television, where women comprise only approximately 22% of broadcast show creators, depicting no increase over the last three years; and with minorities directing less than 11% of episodes for more than three quarters (78.2%) of digital scripted shows, a step backwards from the previous year (74%) (Hunt et al. 2019, 31). Notably, in broadcast, cable and scripted television, both black and white women trailed their male counterparts with respect to lead roles (Hunt et al. 2019, 26).

Conclusion Achieving equitable diversity in the television industry and on television screens remains an uphill battle. While shifts in television distribution and economics do seem to be enabling some progress, gains are incremental and major disparities remain. In this context, the benefit of a predominantly female and/or minority ensemble as serviced by the prison-as-hub concept becomes clear. Women’s prison series can achieve effective and lasting change on and in television, as has played out with post-network dramas Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black. In both these series, the women’s prison hub ensures a level of intersectional gender and racial diversity normally unseen and unachievable on broadcast, cable or digital TV. In this way, these dramas strategically leverage the branding caché of streaming platforms as industry disruptors and innovators. Moreover, as Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black demonstrate, the female-dominated setting of the women’s prison-ashub can also support diversity at the level of production, with women and minorities filling some key creative roles as with showrunner Jenji Kohan (Orange Is the New Black) and key creator Lara Radulovich (Wentworth). Here, we observe the wider function of the female hub as a catalyst for industry change, especially at the level of series commissions. When discussing the notion of “hub” in a television series, we are reminded that “the physical setting is but one factor influencing the developing story’s world, alongside such considerations as social context, cultural conditions, historical moment and the narrative perspective” (Taylor 2017b, 173). As we have seen, television creators of women-in-prison dramas are harnessing the unique affordances of the hub to explore diverse and often previously unexplored cultural and social contexts for their female characters. Because the world of the women’s prison serves to inherently facilitate the narrative conditions required for hooked, committed and ongoing viewership—as Wentworth head writer McTighe told an interviewer, “it’s a great device to slam characters

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together and create/build tension between them” (Lindsay 2014)—proposals for television shows centering upon this hub present a compelling prospect for commissioners perhaps otherwise unwilling to support such female-centric ensembles. Therefore, the hub serves not only to fuel the demands of commercial episodic drama and to interest audiences, but it also raises the representation of diverse and transgressive women on the small screen, as well as boosting opportunities for the women filling those roles, writing their stories and producing these series.

References Anhert, Ruth. 2012. “The Prison in Early Modern Drama.” Literature Compass 9, no. 1: 34–47. Bad Girls. 1999. Television Series, UK. Shed Productions. Created by Maureen Chadwick, Ann McManus, and Eileen Gallagher. Batty, Craig. 2012. Screenplays: How to Write and Sell Them. Harpenden: Kamera Books. Breaking Bad. 2008. Television Series, USA. High Bridge Productions and Gran Via Productions. Created by Vince Gilligan. Doyle, John. 2015. “Prison Drama Wentworth Delivers Superb Storytelling.” The Globe and Mail. Accessed April 2, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ arts/television/john-doyle-prison-drama-wentworth-delivers-superb-storytelling/ article26281789/. Grace, Yvonne. 2014. Writing for Television Series, Serials and Soaps. Harpenden: Kamera Books. Hunt, Darnell, Ana-Christina Ramón, and Michael Tran. 2019. Hollywood Diversity Report 2019: Old Story, New Beginning. Los Angeles: UCLA College Social Sciences. Jacey, Helen. 2017. “An Interview with Helen Jacey.” Gender and the Screenplay: Processes, Practices, Perspectives, Networking Knowledge Special Issue 10, no. 2: 14–18. Liddy, Susan. 2017. “In Her Own Voice: Reflections on the Irish Film Industry and Beyond.” Gender and the Screenplay: Processes, Practices, Perspectives, Networking Knowledge Special Issue 10, no. 2: 19–31. Lindsay, Duncan. 2014. “Wentworth Prison: Exclusive Interview with writer Peter McTighe.” PauseLiveAction, weblog. Accessed March 16, 2018. https:// pauseliveaction.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/wentworth-prison-exclusiveinterview-with-writer-pete-mctighe/. Lotz, Amanda. 2010. Beyond Prime Time: Television Programming in the Post-Network Era. New York: Routledge. Lotz, Amanda. 2007. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: New York University Press. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. 2007. “Introduction: Debating Quality.” In Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 1–12. New York: I.B. Tauris. Neighbours. 1985. Television Series, Australia. Grundy Television and Fremantle Australia. Created by Reg Watson.

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Orange Is the New Black. 2013. Television Series, USA. Tilted Productions and Lionsgate Television. Created by Jenji Kohan. Oz. 1997. Television Series, USA. Rysher Entertainment and The Levinson/Fontana Company. Created by Tom Fontana. Porridge. 1974. Television Series, UK. BBC. Created by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Prison Break. 2005. Television Series, USA. Adelstein-Parouse Productions, Dawn Olmstead Productions, Adelstein Productions, One Light Road Productions and Prison Break Productions. Created by Paul Sheuring. Prisoner. 1979. Television Series, Australia. Grundy Television Productions. Created by Reg Grundy. Robinson, M. J. 2017. Television on Demand: Curatorial Culture and the Transformation of TV. London: Bloomsbury. Sandberg, Sheryl. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Screen Australia. 2015. Gender Matters: Women in the Australian Screen Industry. Accessed March 4, 2019. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/f20beab8-81cc-4499-92e9-02afba18c438/gender-matters-women-in-the-australian-screen-industry.pdf?ext=.pdf. Screen Australia. 2016. Seeing Ourselves: Reflections on Diversity in Australian TV Drama. Accessed March 4, 2019. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/157b05b4-255a-47b4-bd8b-9f715555fb44/TV-Drama-Diversity.pdf. Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofield and Katherine Pieper. 2013. Gender inequality in 500 popular films: Examining on-screen portrayals and behind-the-scenes employment patterns in motion pictures released between 2007–2012. Industry Report, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Viewed March 18, 2019. http://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/gender-bias-without-borders-full-report.pdf. Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Pieper. 2014. Gender Bias Without Borders: An Investigation of Female Characters in Popular Films Across Eleven Countries. Industry Report, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Viewed March 18, 2019. seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/full-study-gender-roles-andoccupations-v2.pdf. The Sopranos. 1999. Television Series, USA. Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Created by David Chase. Taylor, Stayci. 2017a. “Screenwriting Melbourne/s: The Challenges of Re-presenting and Re-creating Melbourne Within a Screenplay’s Flipped-Reality Narrative.” Senses of Cinema 85. http://sensesofcinema.com/2017/screening-melbourne/ screenwriting-melbourne-s-challenges-re-presenting-re-creating-melbourne-within-screenplays-flipped-reality-narrative/. Taylor, Stayci. 2017b. “Text and the City: The Teaching and Practice of Scripting cities for the Screen.” Studies in Australian Cinema 11, no. 3: 172–183. Walters, Suzanne Danuta. 2017. “Lesbian Request Approved: Sex, Power and Desire in Orange Is the New Black.” In Television Anti-Heroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, edited by Molly Buonanna, 199–215. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wentworth. 2013. Television Series, Australia. FremantleMedia, Australia. Created by Lara Radulovich and Reg Watson.

684  S. TAYLOR ET AL. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press. The Wire. 2002. Television Series, USA. Blown Deadline Productions. Created by David Simons. Zalcock, Beverly, and Jocelyn Robinson. 1996. “Inside Cell Block H: Hard Steel and Soft Soap.” Continuum 9, no. 1: 88–97.

The Pleasure Politics of Prison Erotica Nicoletta Policek

Introduction The space female bodies occupy in prison is mediated by the performance attached to the application of Mulvey’s (1997) work where gazes—here through the prison cell—can be determined as rational, voyeuristic, sadistic, controlling and controlled. Incarcerated female bodies, but also female bodies who act within the prison confinement, are viewed in the filmography examined as objects that excite viewers leading to the reinforcement of the variegated neo-liberal ideologies all supporting the spectacle of imprisonment (Chesney-Lind 2017), where violence often though sex is enacted and justified (Cecil 2007). Putting forward a different understanding of prison pornography and erotica, this contribution subsequently contends that Nietzsche’s (1887) proclamation that in punishment, there is so much that is festive paves the way for the carnivalesque understanding of punishment already depicted by Foucault (1975). Yet it is not the carnal punishment, nor the spectacular execution, that constitutes the carnivalesque moment for Foucault, but rather the event of substituting the punishment-asspectacle with what is perhaps best characterized as punishment-as-carnival (Aching 2010). Moving away from Foucault, the concluding section of this contribution looks at the act of sexualizing the prison cell, as the possibility, albeit not always through choice, that incarcerated women have of colonizing and occupying the space of the prison (Bouclin 2009). A final glance is on the

N. Policek (*)  Associate Professor in Policing & Criminology, University of Cumbria, Institute of Business, Industry & Leadership, Carlisle, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_42

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lesbian and heterosexual imaginary of prison erotica and the politics of pleasure and on how an adherence to a masculine, heteronormative “pornoscript” structures the possible ways in which sexual pleasure is enacted and visualized (Humphries 2009).

Women in Prison Women who inhabit the prison either as offenders or as women who are employed in a prison establishment are subject to the spectacle of imprisonment (Dobash et al. 1986; Snell and Morton 1994), where violence often though sex is endorsed and validated. Prison-set movies in general play a crucial role in the depiction of offenders, deciding whether to reproduce negative notions of criminality and sensationalize the image of the “bad” minority through concepts of violence (Cheliotis 2010). In conducting a content analysis of 297 prison-set movies about women in prison, findings indicate that although some of the critical issues facing incarcerated women are presented (Girshick and Sharp 1999), the movies examined still highlight factors that excite viewers, including violence and sex, thereby creating a sensationalized and damaging image of women behind bars. This observation is in line with Richie’s (2018) who believes that society does not want to confront the issues surrounding women’s imprisonment like substance abuse, poverty, and unemployment; rather, society still wishes to be entertained with distorted/inaccurate images of women in prison as Cecil (2007) has already pointed out. A priori choice has been made to exclude from this study TV series such as Prisoner: Cell Block H or Orange Is the New Black, because TV dramas tell story over a period of time (Easthope 2014; Creed 2015). Movies are more immediate both in terms of message they sell and how they can reach an audience. Movies in this study have been chosen because of the content through keyword searches conducted using the Power Search feature on the IMDb, an online movie reference Web site. Several keywords and keyword pairings have been included in the search process specifically, women in prison and female prison guards. Once this list of films has been compiled, a theoretical sampling approach has been subsequently used to identify and select relevant films. Prison-set movies have been then divided according to subthemes involving different scenarios. The themes identified are: rape, consensual bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadomasochism, fetishist acts,1 and romantic/sexual lesbian relationship. Said themes have been intersected with Rafter’s (2017) depiction of the earliest knowledge of imagery in the media about female offenders. She has identified six themes which encapsulate a description of female criminals in prison: biologically inept, impulsive/illogical, passive, gullible, masculine, and purely evil (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 2005).

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All the movies examined rest on the dichotomy bad or sad/mad which is generally based on assumptions on race. Typically, African-American women are “bad” and deserve punishment. They are frequently demonized and “masculinized,” as dangerous and aggressive. From an intersectional standpoint (Crenshaw 1991), the reality of women’s incarceration is challenging because society and mass media are integral to their subordination (Humphries 2009) and the movies examined further reiterate the notion that only racial/ethnic minority females are violent villainous women (Lane 2014). The label of violence attached to African-American women in prison is part and parcel of a history of castration, rape, lynch mobs, being beaten beyond recognition, and sold from auction blocks, reproduced by prison-set movies, to mirror the experience of many African-American women who have never entered a prison establishment. African-American women outlaws in movies are “interesting characters” (Gaines 2007), because they are masculinized to be like the macho monsters in male prison movies (Elsaesser and Hagener 2015). Simultaneously, “black bodies” are a source of pleasure for the white masculine gaze (hooks 2003), thus mimicking and perpetuating colonizing discourses highlighted by Crenshaw (1991) who argues that individual identities of race and gender make qualitatively different experience for non-marginalized and marginalized people. Marginalized groups, she adds, understand the necessity of diversity, representations, and visibility in the media although historically have faced inaccurate representations that are akin to stereotypes and caricatures. Representational intersectionality is the guiding light behind this research, because movies have the potential to affect incarcerated women with depictions, yet the women have no recourse or power to change their representations. Intersectionality as crisscrossing systems of oppression, i.e., race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and age, which compound to shape experiences, social location, and power to create change, challenges hegemonic power. The hegemonic domain of power is created through the various stimuli viewers use, respond to, and believe in, and it is maintained also through prison-set movies about women in prison. The movies examined can easily redirect attention of the viewer, casting a shadow of doubt on a “bad” woman’s guilt, based on her mental history, making her “mad/sad.” They excuse “mad/sad” women, usually white, for their criminal acts by hyper-focusing on their mental state, feminine appearance, and ability to reform. This neutralizes and downplays “mad/sad” women’s crimes providing a favorable non-culpable slant. This at the same time further highlights the perception of culpability that viewers have of white and African-American women (Girshick and Sharp 1999). The overwhelming theme that emerges when watching movies about women in prison is that women imprisoned are “bad” and fall into categories of devil women, the lesbians as “villains,” teenage predators, and super-bitch killer beauties, to paraphrase some of the titles of the movies considered. These unidimensional films are created by and for the male gaze, running the

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gambit from sexually explicit and provocative to violent women equated to men once imprisoned. The reproduction of these themes always ends with violent rages, again stereotyping women imprisoned as violent and uncontrollable (Carroll 1990; Creed 2015). Most of the movies scrutinized can be defined as “sexploitation” films (Jensen 2007) which sexualize every aspect of incarceration. They focus heavily on sex in prison, taking two forms: women seeking comfort in sexual relationships or women as sexual predators like lesbians as “villains” or prison guards as sexual hunters who abuse their power to sexually and emotionally exploit other women. The format seems to be excessive and unnecessarily violent and always intermixed with sensational sex scenes. “Black bodies” seem to figure extensively, reinforcing the fetishization of the black female body (Pollock and Pollock-Byrne 2002). Female prisons are misconstrued as institutions teeming with dangerous women, and the lack of genuine portraying on prevalent issues such as motherhood, abuse, health concerns, and prison life is staggering. In two movies, out of 297 examined, there are feeble segments about motherhood, and women are blamed for leaving their children. Family separation is the most difficult experience for mothers who are in prison (Ravagnani and Policek 2015), since most women are the primary caregivers; in their absence, children are in the custody of family members and foster care but movies about women in prison seem to circumvent this issue. Indeed, movies about women in prison reiterate a criminological common sense that sees parental role models as key factors in a woman’s path to delinquency or conformity (Ravagnani and Policek 2015). The narratives explored mirror commonplace understandings of crime and delinquency as causally connected to “broken families” and thus partake of socially conservative worldview that favors the nuclear family structure as the instrument par excellence of social control over children. Furthermore, movies about women in prison neglect to consider the real experiences of women at the same time avoiding the stark reality of health issues, whether mental or physical. They do not provide representative depictions of real life in prison for women; rather, they point to health issues as the basis for women deserving prison as punishment (Rafter 2017).

Caught Looking at the Prison Cell Whether they are “bad” or “mad/sad,” when gazing through the prison cell, female bodies are sexualized. Gramsci (1917) has already warned of such transformation when in a short paper about a fashionable actress, Lydia Borelli, he refers to the actress whose only language is the human body with its endlessly refreshed plasticity. However critical of Borelli and her sex appeal, Gramsci makes a valid point when he highlights the status of bodies, especially of women’s bodies in cinema (Kaplan 2012, 2013). Notwithstanding that the meaning of sexual characteristics is socially constructed (Mifflin 2013)

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and evolves according to the times, signifying alternately innocence or wickedness, purity or shame, weakness or strength, sexuality has always been a key component of prison-set movies (Mason 2006). In this way, the viewer caught looking at the prison cell always sees sexualized female bodies, as if historical time (in Foucauldian terms) can stand still. No other form of entertainment has ever made its spectator watch so closely, lengthily, and openly at sexualized bodies. To paraphrase Baudrillard (2001), the scenes that the movies scrutinized are depicting are the illustration of a power which, reaching its extreme point, no longer knows what to do with itself—a power henceforth without aim, without purpose, without a plausible enemy, and in total impunity (Agard-Jones 2013). It is only capable of inflicting gratuitous humiliation where the shame and the discredit are the ultimate symptoms of a power that no longer knows what to do with itself (Girshick and Sharp 1999). The numerous scenes of consensual and non-consensual sex which characterize the content of the prison-set movies dissected call for the distinctive approaches available for the criminologically oriented analysis of films (Jewkes 2013). While content analysis adopts a formal and quantitative strategy for mapping textual content, both ideology theory and postmodernism (Mirzoeff 2002) focus more upon the meaning of narratives, images, and characters. However, these latter perspectives diverge significantly, insofar as ideology approaches aim to uncover the dominant and prescribed understandings that serve to reproduce power relations, while postmodernists focus upon the diversity and indeterminacy of meaning, stressing the impossibility of deriving any coherent ideology from films (Peelo 2013). The suggestion here is for a most fruitful avenue for developing a fully fledged cultural criminology of prison-set movies, combining close textual reading of individual “sites” of meaning production with an appreciation of the wider social and political contexts that shape cultural frameworks. Prison movies do play a significant role in constructing a “criminological common sense” (Peelo 2013) that is bound up with existing institutional practices and political relations, a sort of popular imaginaries that seek pleasure through the action of gazing at the prison cell. As such, prison-set movies about women offer a position into which the (male) viewer can willingly transpose himself, vicariously partaking of the delights that are usually offered only to the “lucky few” (Smyth 1990). Such imaginaries, however, cannot and should not be reduced to any monolithic ideology that is strategically constructed by powerful social actors. In other words, prison-set movies are not part of a conspiracy of the state apparatus against the public, but, rather, they draw upon the sensibilities and meaning systems of culture, also inflecting and shaping them in sometimes new and unexpected ways (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004). This is to say that prison-set movies about women could also open the door to discussions about sex as pleasure for both heterosexual and lesbian women (Goddard 2000; Roach 2017). In other words, when caught looking at the prison cell, the viewer has the opportunity to watch

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movies which become sites within which the meanings of crime and criminality, sex and sexuality are simultaneously articulated, explored, and negotiated (Schwan 2016). Foucault (1975) has famously argued that the beginning of modernity marks the transition from a society of spectacle to one of surveillance. Much criticized in this regard, he is, in fact, addressing the notion that a unitary notion of power has ignored the expansion of disciplinary and surveillant techniques. Elsewhere, much more like Nietzsche (1887), Foucault (1990) mentions an array of punitive tactics, classifiable into four main types: exile, compensation, marking, and confinement. They are all found in the premodern classical period, and, though confinement is the privileged form in our own time, he by no means excludes, despite the rhetoric of Discipline and Punish, the other kinds of tactic. All such tactics are present in the movies inspected, where the prison cell is the place where not only, and always, metaphorically bodies are tortured in a process that would “seize hold of the body and inscribe upon it the marks of power” (Foucault 1975, 93). Recalling Nietzsche’s (1887) characterization of punishment as essentially “festive” (Daofu 2002), it is worth reiterating here that the entertainment value afforded by prison-set movies invests society’s fascination with crime and desires for punishment where the spectacle is also a festival and a sensual and sexual carnival. Indeed, it could also be possible to suggest that such carnival has taken an increasingly predatory and punitive turn (Lachmann et al. 1988). The movies examined support the claim that society’s most recent punitive turn is making more use of visual punishment, where sexualities are paramount (Manlove 2007). The sexualization of the prison cell calls therefore for a variety of arguments that helps deconstruct the meaning and relevance of pornography. The sexual social influence of pornography (if any) depends on the scripts for sexual behavior pornography presents. Sexual scripts provide individuals with rules for determining which sexual behaviors and partners are desirable or undesirable and/or appropriate or inappropriate. Weaver (1991), however, argues that pornography ignores the basic social and relational aspects of sexual activity instead adhering to the view that sex is for fun alone. Similarly, it is possible to argue that pornographic scripts dwell on sexual engagements of parties who have just met, who are in no way attached or committed to one another, and who will part shortly (Malamuth 2014). This is to say that most of the focus is on physical attributes and activities (rather than emotional or relational elements), and the female role is especially clear. Most commonly, the portrayals are of female nudity and of men having casual sex with numerous, easily accessible young women. The movies examined have as main characters women in both a passive and active sexual role. There are only 7 instances in which women in prison are having sexual intercourse with male prison guards. Such scenes are of particular violent nature, with women being subjected to torture and violence for the exclusive pleasure of men. Although it should be stated that pornography per se does not cause violence

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against women (Beckmann 2009), it should be highlighted here that pornography rather represents a symptom of patriarchal power relations (MacKinnon 1985). Such relations are often reproduced by women too and therefore are important to always distinguish how subordination can be eroticized. By the same token, it should be noted that the eroticizing of inequality is not necessary to lesbianism since the inequality of sex class is not the basis of the sexual relationship. It is difficult to imagine how heterosexual desire—considering the role playing in just about every relationship—could possibly be egalitarian (Lehman 2006). As the prison remains a highly eroticized all male environment (Struckman-Johnson et al. 1996), even when inhabited exclusively by women, this is the arena where the active/passive dichotomy of pornography is staged and re-staged (Van Wormer and Clemens 2000). The significances of the prison as a movie set are multiple: Prison scenarios take many shapes in heterosexual and lesbian pornography (Williams 1989, 1991) such as the dominatrix penitentiary, the military brig, or the fantasized dungeon of the female prison guard. All these scenarios are performing an important function by offering the prison as idealized space for the acts of voyeurism, narcissistic display, and active/passive role-play (Yousman 2013).

Prison Pornoscript A major tenet of the study of the prison and those who inhabit the prison is the process of prisonization. Popularized by Clemmer (1940), the notion of the prison as a self-contained world that is vastly different from the rest of society refers to the process of adjusting to the prison environment, which has its own set of morals, laws, rules, social relations, patterns of behavior, and problems. Within this frame, prison pornoscript can take shape. It is well established in the literature on prisonization (Dobash et al. 1986) how the focus is on the conditions of incarceration, the prison subculture, individual prisoner characteristics, and the behavioral patterns of prisoners. Underlying Clemmer’s (1940) notion of prisonization is a stimulus of deprivation that results in a patterned response. The response of many prisoners is to develop and perpetuate the prison subculture to cope with the deprivations imposed by incarceration. Evolving from the early work on the prison community and prisonization, two competing theoretical models were developed to explain the prison subculture and the patterns of inmate behavior. These models are the deprivation (Pollock and Pollock-Byrne 2002) and importation models (Girshick and Sharp 1999). Although Clemmer (1940) is more encompassing in his approach, deprivation and importation researchers provide more focused insight by identifying the specific factors that lead to the development and maintenance of the prison subculture and resulting patterns of prisoner behavior that make up the prison pornoscript. The deprivation model, which is an extension of the prisonization hypothesis, assumes that particular characteristics of prison life affect a prisoner’s attitude, self-image, values, and

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behavior, which once changed produce a unique culture that embodies certain behaviors and viewpoints. The prison environment deprives individuals in prison of certain needs, and it is believed that the absence of these needs leads to behavioral changes in the prisoner, known as modes of response. This is what Sykes (1958) calls the pains of imprisonment, referring to the loss of basic needs such as the loss of liberty, goods and services, relationships, autonomy, and security. The loss of these basic needs results in an array of behavioral responses, most of which involve the adherence to a prison code, which opposes the institutional authority of the prison staff. As a result, the prisoners’ modes of response often entail the internalization of deviant normative prescriptions, a feature of the prison social system that carries special importance when trying to dissect the formation of a prison pornoscript. It is the adherence to the prison code that helps individuals in prison neutralize the pains of imprisonment, become prisonized, survive, and cope with incarceration (Sykes 1958). Although deprivationists believe prison changes people and view prison as radically different from society, importationists view prison as simply an extension thereof. In both approaches, the prison pornoscript is suggested and supported by values that are imported into prison from the outside world (Sweeny 2006). Importationists argue that criminals foster certain attitudes in society and these tendencies remain intact when the criminal is incarcerated and guide his or her behavioral responses to imprisonment. Irwin (1970) claims that prisoners’ behavior is not merely a reflection of the unique deprivations of imprisonment but an extension of the behavioral patterns of the prisoners prior to incarceration. In other words, the preprison characteristics, behaviors, and experiences are imported into the prison with the prisoner. Irwin (1970) has identified three sexual roles that prisoners import into prison: the homosexual who is likely to continue to partake in homosexual liaisons, the punk who is submissive and likely to be preyed upon, and the wolf who needs to sexually dominate others. Prisoners playing each of these roles may import their lifestyles and continue to be involved in such behaviors inside prison. The prison pornoscript as emphasized in the movies examined is the result of the many different manners in which female prisoners become prisonized and respond to the deprivations of imprisonment (Novek 2009). Some become partners in coercive relationships, and others respond to the deprivation of security by trying to appear tough to avoid becoming the target of victimization (Ravagnani and Policek 2015).

Conclusion Prison-set movies about women challenge the interpersonal domain of power. The lack of bonds between women in prison as society as a whole disconnects them from their place in prison as they become the recipients of subordination and oppression which are legitimized through a popular and

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populist gaze that wants women in prison as pathologized sexual deviant (Beckmann 2009). Structural domain of power comes from control, and women imprisoned are powerless both in prison and outside prison as the most disenfranchised member of society. The disciplinary domain of power would be incarcerated women’s ability to mask or highlight their oppression through organizing and controlling society’s routines, but they have access to neither hegemonic nor structural power. Imprisoned women on the spectrum of power are at the bottom, overall unable to negotiate and exert power through representations, interpersonal relationships, disciplinary acts, and the structure. Therefore, it is important that society makes a concerted effort to represent women incarcerated accurately through media’s representations. Only through prison narratives which are faithful and non-judgmental can incarcerated women take a critical reflexive stance in determining, creating, and expressing their own representations. Future research should focus on conducting an analysis of media effects on a sample population. Negative representations are only harmful if they have an impact on society; it would be relevant to understand what is being communicated and established about women’s prison to non-justice involved populations. This would provide knowledge on the impact of depictions to an audience, but also, how viewers perceive women incarcerated based on media. Conducting an intersectional analysis would provide information on hegemonic power and its ability to communicate accurate or inaccurate stimuli through the media, specifically through prison-set movies, to society and the ramifications of this perception. Studying how their perception of incarcerated women shifted and in what direction, as in positive or negative, is therefore of paramount relevance. While Mulvey’s (1997, 2001) contribution may have set up an equation between mainstream cinema and male privilege which had diverted the attention of feminist scholars, it also seems to have provided an “out” for them—introducing an interest in the spectator into contemporary film theory (Hodge 2014). From there, questions about the class, race, and gender of the spectator have inevitably arisen. The articles in this section suggest that the very questions Mulvey did not address have become the most compelling: Is the female spectator restricted to viewing the female body on the screen from the male point of view? Is narrative pleasure always male pleasure? Various strategies of re-appropriation imply that the female “look” can cancel the male point of view and that textual reading can actively “resist” the flow of classical narrative (Kaplan 2013; Smelik 1998). This contribution has sought to present an overview of the pleasure politics of prison erotica where the qualitative-oriented content analysis of prison-set movies about women can provide a valuable perspective to the diverging assumptions about the place of women who are in prison in society as such. There is a multiplicity of meanings that can be read into every single prison-set movie about women examined (meaning is either monolithic

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and overarching, or irretrievably fragmented and indeterminate), and this is because the cultural and academic understanding of women and crime should be embedded in the attempt to recognize power relations in society. The advantage of this strategy is that it enables us to appreciate the richness and diversity of prison-set movies, while concurrently differentiating the ways in which they play a role in the wider politics of law, order, and punishment (Girshick and Sharp 1999; Rafter 2017).

Note 1. It is worth noticing that sexuality is viewed here as a social construct and that in using these terms, there is the acknowledgment of the limits imposed by the linguistic legacy that pathologized “deviant” sexuality (Beckmann 2009; Foucault 1990). Dominance and submission here are shorthand for a wide range of acts such as consensual and non-consensual humiliation, bondage, flogging, and foot worship.

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696  N. POLICEK Mulvey, Laura. 2001. “Unmasking the Gaze: Some Thoughts on New Feminist Film Theory and History.” Lectora: revista de dones i textualitat 7: 0005–14. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1887. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft: “The Gay Science”. E.W. Fritzsch. Novek, Eleanor. 2009. “Mass Culture and the American Taste for Prisons.” Peace Review 21, no. 3: 376–384. Peelo, Moira. 2013. “Crime and the Media: Public Narratives and Private Consumption.” In Questioning Crime and Criminology, 35–51. Cullompton: Willan. Pollock, Joycelyn M., and Joycelyn M. Pollock-Byrne. 2002. Women, Prison, & Crime. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning. Rafter, Nicole. 2017. Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control. London: Routledge. Ravagnani, Luisa and Nicoletta Policek. 2015. “Beyond the Politics of Detention: Incarcerated Mothers in Italy.” In Sociological Studies on Imprisonment: A European Perspective, edited by C. Damboeanu. Bucharest: Tritonic. Richie, Beth. 2018. “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face as They Return to Their Communities: Findings from Life History Interviews.” In Women Prisoners and Health Justice, 23–44. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Roach, Catherine M. 2017. “Erotica.” In The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality, 107–116. London: Routledge. Schwan, Anne. 2016. “Postfeminism Meets the Women in Prison Genre: Privilege and Spectatorship in Orange Is the New Black.” Television & New Media 17, no. 6: 473–490. Smelik, Anneke M. 1998. And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. London: Springer. Smyth, Cherry. 1990. “The Pleasure Threshold: Looking at Lesbian Pornography on Film.” Feminist Review 34, no. 1: 152–159. Snell, Tracy L., and Danielle C. Morton. 1994. Women in Prison. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. Struckman‐Johnson, Cindy, et al. 1996. “Sexual Coercion Reported by Men and Women in Prison.” Journal of Sex Research 33, no. 1: 67–76. Sweeny, Robert W. 2006. “Visual Culture of Control.” Studies in Art Education 47, no. 4: 294–307. Sykes, Gresham M. 1958. The Society of Captives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Van Wormer, Katherine S., and Clemens Bartollas. 2000. Women and the Criminal Justice System. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Weaver, James B. 1991. Responding to Erotica: Perceptual Processes and Dispositional Implications. In Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes, edited by J. Bryant and D. Zillmann, 329–354. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Williams, Linda. 1989. “Power, Pleasure, and Perversion: Sadomasochistic Film Pornography.” Representations 27, no. 1: 37–65. Williams, Linda. 1991. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly 44, no. 4: 2–13. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester, UK: Waterside Press.

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Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2005. “Re-Theorizing the Penal Reform Functions of the Prison Film: Revelation, Humanization, Empathy and Benchmarking.” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 4: 471–491. Yousman, Bill. 2013. “Revisiting Hall’s Encoding/Decoding Model: Ex-Prisoners Respond to Television Representations of Incarceration.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 35, no. 3: 197–216.

Let’s Have Redemption! Women, Religion and Sexploitation on Screen Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes

Introduction The incarceration of females has been of commercial value to filmmakers and a thrill for audiences for decades. Hollywood first brought women in prison onto the big screen in the silent era and thereafter in notable contributions such as Caged! (1950) and Women’s Prison (1955) while significant early British efforts include The Weak and the Wicked (1954) and Yield to the Night (1956) (Kehrwald 2017, 44; Morey 1995). Some of these films were earnest and high-minded works; many other films about women in prison are subsets of the sexploitation cycles. These had a particular heyday in the 1970s (Hunter 2008), where the approach was overtly prurient. On the big screen, the exploitation cycle of women in prison films generated Caged Heat, Hot Box and Jackson County Jail, among others. British horror contributed House of Whipcord (1974). The small screen paralleled this interest in women prisoners. The serious-minded drama Within These Walls (1974–1978) was an earnest exploration of the lives of women in prison. The Australian drama Prisoner (aka Cell Block H, 1979–1986) was campier and more sensational

M. Harmes (*) · B. Harmes · M. Harmes  Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] B. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] M. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_43

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(Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 123). Certainly, there were women in prison on the screen before and after the 1970s sexploitation cycle. Turn the Key Softly placed Joan Collins in Holloway and Yield to the Night (1956) put Diana Dors in the condemned cell in the same prison. The threat of incarceration in a borstal hung over the unruly schoolgirls in The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s (1960) and the portals of Holloway Prison featured as a location in The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery. More recently, the interest in women in prison resonated in Bad Girls, Orange Is the New Black and Cell Block H’s reboot Wentworth. This chapter explores two “women in prison” films that are mirror images of each other, both being mid-1970s sexploitation women in prison features. One is Caged Heat (1974), Jonathan Demme’s feature debut starring Barbara Steele, and other is the British offering House of Whipcord (also 1974), one of a series of 1970s horror films lensed by Pete Walker and starring Sheila Keith essaying the part of a brutally deranged older woman. These both exploit the nudity, lesbianism and violence typical of a film cycle that also included The Big Doll House, Black Mama White Mama, Ilse, She Wolf of the SS and Reform School Girls (Kozma 2012). They are not “social problem” films like their 1950s predecessors, films that had also followed several classical narrative patterns of redemption and respectability and which showed incarceration succeeding if women were released into respectable matrimony (Bouclin 2009, 24; Morey 1995). The sexploitation features eschew high mindedness and intersect with preoccupations articulated in quasi-academic works like Wilma Y. Cleevandar’s Lesbians in Prison from 1969, which spoke of “whispers of perversion” coming from women’s prisons (Ciasullo 2008, 210). These B features, intended primarily for drive-in audiences, found ample creative potential in these whispers (Bouclin 2009, 22). However, a nation’s cinema is a key means to illuminate and debate elements of public life, including incarceration, and they are not devoid of influence (Cecil 2007, 305). Sexploitation films justify themselves commercially, with the titillation they provide to drive-in audiences being the reason for their existence. Questions can arise about the worth of these films in contributing to academic study of prison. They are cheap, prurient and explicitly exploitative of women, and arguably, their makers hardly took their own work seriously. The films highlight lesbianism, strip searches, invasive procedures, nudity, whippings and all other aspects that combine to make these sexploitative in their narrative and direction (Ciasullo 2008, 197; Bouclin 2009, 25). Yet the films do repay serious study of how they brought questions about incarceration into public discourse in novel ways. A nation’s cinema is a key means to illuminate and debate elements of public life, including incarceration. These are undoubtedly exploitation films but that does not mean they resist critical analysis. As Ian Hunter points out, A Clockwork Orange was controversial but also critically successful (2007), and it is also

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on a continuum with the exploitative women in prison films. It displays both female and male full frontal nudity and scenes of extreme sexual violence. Cinema, even cheap cinema, is a product of a culture, inherent to, rather than divorced from it. Even exploitation films are not drained of all other meaning, especially when their makers intend to subvert as well as titillate. While the films’ makers exploit sexuality, the characters within them attempt moral reform. They also portray a charged relationship between the redemptive and exploitative and the ecclesiastical and the sexual. They are products of a decade in which some prison researchers and sociologists lost faith in the possibility of rehabilitation; long-established ideas about incarceration were overturned. It is therefore striking that the films flirt with, display or in other ways show prison authorities seeking alternative ways to redeem corrupted women. Both the Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault had pinpointed the exploitative potential in the monastery and convent as well as the prison. In 1970s exploitation films, the ecclesiastical and the sexual reappear together in sexploitation films showing prison authorities seeking the redemption of unruly women and struggling with the meaning, impact and outcomes of their imprisonment.

Going to Jail in 1970s Cinema: England By the mid-1970s, Pete Walker was established among a newer generation of horror directors working outside the stable of Hammer Film Productions, the company that had dominated British horror cinema since the 1950s. After making pornographic shorts and features during the 1950s and 1960s, Walker moved to making horror features and House of Whipcord was his sixth feature since 1971. Whipcord’s protagonist Ann Marie di Verney arrives at a large isolated building deep in the English countryside, believing she is visiting the home of her new boyfriend’s mother and expecting to spend a nice weekend in the country. After she has been forcibly stripped by stern wardresses, de-loused in a cold shower, had her clothes confiscated and been locked in a cell and flogged, she realizes that she is not in fact in a private home but in a private prison. Although not a film to have courted or received critical acclaim, House of Whipcord has elements of artful construction. As the film historian Fryer points out, the film actually fails to deliver what the “tits and whips” audience may have hoped for or which the title and lobby posters may have promised (Fryer 2017). Nudity is kept to a minimum, and precisely, because the young women are imprisoned in basic conditions, beaten, abused and unable to wash, they gradually become less and less glamorous. The wardress Walker grimly promises that de Verney will become ashamed of her body and carries through on the threat, as de Verney metamorphoses from a fashionable young woman to a filthy and battered hag wearing sackcloth. In one

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especially powerful scene, Walker comes to de Verney and in an exchange based entirely on body language with no dialogue, produces a mirror and forces de Verney to see herself in her degraded state. In a generally grim movie, there are even moments of humor regarding the culture clash between the fashionable young French woman and the frumpy middle-class women running the prison. The sadistic wardress Walker is genuinely bemused by di Verney’s fashionable platform shoes, but the moment also conveys that the young French woman is being physically and mentally degraded for the mere fact of being young and fashionable as much as for any other reason.

Going to Jail in 1970s Cinema: The USA The mirror image of the unofficial prison in Whipcord is the state penitentiary in Caged Heat. Obviously indebted to the 1950s film Caged but adding in the title the sexploitative potential of women’s films, the 1974 film is set in a state penitentiary. The young first time criminal Maggie is sent down for participating in a robbery and the grievous wounding of a police officer and is locked away in a prison run by McQueen, a disabled superintendent. Like House of Whipcord, the prison’s official status is unstable and subject to slippage in meaning and status. While Warden McQueen and her prison are official and the inmates have been sentenced by actual courts of law, deep inside the complex the prison doctor is conducting both official (Corrective Physical Therapy or CPT) and unofficial medical experiments, lobotomizing and sexually assaulting the prisoners.

Comparisons and Contrasts The 1990s films The Shawshank Redemption and American History X have been described as the “mirror images” of each other, and the idea is equally suitable to conceptualize the implication of placing House of Whipcord and Caged Heat side by side. They are very similar but have important points of distinction. Study of these two films allows for close analysis of complementary but also contrasting approaches to the incarceration, punishment and hoped-for redemption of deviant women. House of Whipcord and Caged Heat share their year of production and their contribution to the prevailing sexploitation cycle. When put side by side, they also highlight a complex interplay between aspects of imprisonment. One aspect is the licit or illicit nature of punishment (one is set in an official prison but with illicit and illegal practices taking place; the other is an illegal private prison that seeks to restore lost standards) and the return to old-fashioned methods in one and the use of advanced science in another, as well as the contrasting British and American approaches to sexploitation, with a degree of chintzy middle-class fustiness in the British film at odds with the forthright and raw sexuality of the American film.

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Sources of Authority The American film does posit serious failings in the carceral system, but the jailing of the women is official and legitimate. The prison is an actual organ of the state. The prison in Whipcord is the opposite, a “private” prison. The function and identity of this private prison are unstable. The prison “staff” comprises a retired High Court judge and three former prison wardresses, but none now have an official role. The judge who apparently presides over the prison declares that it operates under a “private charter” but that claim is specious and the whole outfit is illegal rather than official, despite the wardresses’ uniforms, the routine and the general atmosphere of officialdom which prevails throughout, such as scrupulous record keeping. In writing of the punishment through labor which took place at the women’s workshop at Clairvaux, Foucault quoted from a contemporary account of the “strictest silence” that prevailed and an atmosphere where “the very air breathes penitence and expiation” (1977, 243). But these convent-factories which kept women silent and busy were not stand-alone. One of the key notions to come from Discipline and Punish was the “principle of relative continuity,” whereby the discipline meted out in the convent-factory was but one part of a chain of surveillance and punishment overseen by institutions linked to each other across a person’s lifespan from the orphanage to the reformatory, penitentiary, battalion, prison and penitentiary convent, among others (1977, 299). This insight helps understand the status of the “private prison” in House of Whipcord. It is not just that it is unofficial and illicit, it is also stand-alone. Over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that the judge, the matron and the wardresses have all previously held, but lost, their posts in official institutions, from the High Court to a women’s prison. Now, their private institution is a one-off rather than part of a linked and contiguous series of institutions. The arrest, remand, trial, imprisonment, parole hearing and execution take place in one bastion. House of Whipcord delineates an unofficial prison established by a coterie of moral reformers exasperated by the perceived failings of official prisons and their attempt to recreate and reimpose what they regard as appropriately stringent carceral standards. They run their prison effectively, keeping inventories of stock and maintaining clearly articulated rules (e.g., a threestrikes rule is strictly enforced, the penalty for the third offense being death by hanging). There is an obvious demarcation between staff and inmates; uniformed wardresses are addressed as “madam” by the inmates. The vision here is small. The prison seen on screen has only the four people in (illegal) authority and six inmates. It is also its own integral inner world where rules must be obeyed, even though they are based on legal fictions. Thus, an execution can only proceed if the judge has signed the appropriate warrant; the matron, Mrs. Wakehurst, may dupe the blind judge by getting him to sign the warrant by pretending that it is a release form, but she is still obeying the bureaucracy and officialdom that governs her unofficial prison. The prison

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also runs on consciously old-fashioned lines, in line with the implications of the “legal death” inherent in the Forfeiture Act of 1870 (Mason 2006, 254). The reverse is apparent in Caged Heat. The prison is official, yet within it, unlicensed and unofficial experiments are taking place. Official attempts at redemption are taking place alongside the taming of unruly women by lobotomy. There is accordingly a striking interplay between official and unofficial punishment between the films, which represent both incarceration and its institutional and moral deficiencies in a number of ways. In the end, the official or illicit becomes drained of meaning; instead, while the films exploit sexuality, the characters within them attempt to reform. They also portray a charged relationship between the redemptive and exploitative. Efforts to pinpoint moral deviance and attempts to reimpose moral order take precedence over the official or unofficial status of the punishment.

Female Authority House of Whipcord portrays an unofficial prison that is seeking to restore high standards lacking in official incarceration. Caged Heat depicts incarceration that is official and sanctioned and overseen by a puritanical warden, but undercut by unofficial transgressions and harmful experiments within the prison walls. Unintentionally but meaningfully, the films speak to each other in how they deconstruct authority. In both, the ostensible authority figure in the jail is disabled; Warden McQueen is in a wheelchair and the ex-High Court judge is blind. Their disability brings onto the screen their vulnerabilities and limitations, and both remain unaware of breaches in care and procedure taking place in their institutions. Both films also posit worlds which are largely female spaces. Other British horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s used the old dark country house as a disturbing site of “patriarchal violence” (Hunter 1996), but in Whipcord, the establishment in the countryside is a place of female power and violence. In both, women are inmates and victims of coercion and abuse, but women are also the drivers of authority and power. In a small but telling moment, the blind judge is playing chess and remarks that he cannot tell the king from the queen. The gender confusion briefly alluded to here is taken up elsewhere in the film when Mrs. Wakehurst, mad but able bodied, begins to usurp more and more functions and privileges previously exercised by the judge. The prison, already powerfully female in its authority, becomes even more so.

Exploitation Before either film entered production, Goffman’s 1968 study Asylums had proposed the dichotomy of the place of punishment being a place of rehabilitation. Goffman referred to the “series of abasements, degradations,

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humiliations and profanations of self” (1968, 24) that took place inside regimes based on “institutionalized operational policies and routines” (Moore and Scraton 2016, 548). Goffman’s study of the asylum opens an analytical space for understanding the exploitation of females. Extradiegetically, the filmmakers exploit the actresses and models they cast as the inmates, objectifying them through filming nudity and bodily violence. Prisoners fight each other in the showers and rip each other’s clothes off. When new prisoners arrive at the prison in Caged Heat, the male prison doctor oversees their reception, including ordering them to strip in front of him and perform “calisthenics,” meaning a series of squats and leans to make contraband objects fall out of orifices. The film’s viewers watch the doctor watching the naked and squatting women, while the viewers are also watching the women; the character of the doctor (shot in this scene with the camera low down and looking up at his groin) enjoys the spectacle that is also there for the benefit of the cinema patrons in the drive-in and grindhouse cinemas. Viewing a sexploitation movie is a prurient experience. In Caged Heat, the perverted male doctor enjoys the sight of the naked women twisting in their poses at the same moment in time as does the audience. In House of Whipcord, the pleasure in the sight of young female nudity belongs to the brutal lesbian wardresses as much as to the audience. House of Whipcord flags its sexploitative intentions through extra-diegetic knowledge that viewers can bring with them when watching. Penny Irving took the lead role of the French model Anne-Marie DeVerney. Irving’s public image in 1974 was based around her status as a “page three girl” in the Sun newspaper and in Mayfair magazine (Ross and Collins 2002, 112). Her modeling career intersects with the film’s production and narrative. Director Pete Walker moved into horror films from soft-core pornography and sex comedies (Chibnall 2001, 157). The “crime” that leads to de Verney’s imprisonment was being photographed topless in public. The double up of an audience watching others view and enjoy female nudity has a further parallel in House of Whipcord. Early in the film, it is shown that de Verney exposed her breasts in public and was photographed in the act. Guests at a trendy function enjoy seeing the photo, even though de Verney is discomforted by the experience of seeing others look at herself. Later in the film, once her humiliating and degrading punishment in the prison is in full swing, de Verney is grimly assured that she will soon be ashamed of her body, one wardress promising to see to that “personally.” The moments connect in a complex interplay of reactions. Early in the film, de Verney was already uncomfortable with the experience of other people seeing her nakedness and herself being aware of them watching her in this sexualized manner. Later, inside the prison, de Verney’s body is displayed when at various times she is forcibly stripped, de-loused or splayed on a whipping post. The audiences seeing inside the fictional prisons and being able to enjoy the soft-core visions of display connect seeing a sexploitative women in prison film with decades and even centuries of the prurient pleasure of seeing

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inside a prison and witnessing nudity, violence and degradation (Brodie 2014, 49). Within the diegesis, the characters played by the women experience their own exploitation, but Goffman uses religiously charged terms such as abasement and profanation; these highlight the fact that the exploitation abuts against the religious.

Redemption and Religion on the Inside As a sexploitation film, Caged Heat feature leaves no opportunity unaddressed to provide indecent spectacles, including scenes of sexual assault and scenes in the prison’s showers. Yet again like Whipcord, the film is written and acted to bring the religious and carceral into collision. Jonathan Demme’s film takes place within the tough and realistic prison environment, where the toughness of the wardens and the environment is signaled by the stark visual design of concrete cells and the raw desert and the harsh ambient music and sound design as cell doors slam and wardresses rattle their truncheons along bars. The prisoners’ forthright sexuality and violent physicality also register powerfully. But it also takes place on another level as several characters, including Warden McQueen and prisoners, experience vivid and sexually charged dreams, and these fantasy sequences featuring weird lights, images and sounds sit alongside the brutal realism of the federal prison. Sex defines both the dream worlds and the reality. The film opens with an inmate dreaming that a man is ravishing her from the other side of the cell bars. Another inmate dreams the prison doctor is sodomizing her with intrusive medical tools. Warden McQueen’s dream is the longest and most vivid. The prelude to McQueen’s odd but satisfying dream is a stage show mounted by some of the inmates. The show begins well with the inmates singing the Christian hymn “When the Saints Go Marching In,” but quickly degenerates to obscene jokes and crude visual humor, such as a broomstick thrust through an inmate’s pants to look like a giant phallus. The visual humor is last straw for McQueen, who leaves the prison auditorium, therefore bringing the show to the end. The strange mixture of the religious (singing a hymn) and the sexualized (the massive phallus) transposes into McQueen’s inner fantasy. In her dream, McQueen is liberated from both her disability that keeps her in a wheelchair and her dowdy primness, instead prancing about a stage dressed vampishly in a leotard and top hat. In the dream, McQueen, now a sexualized entity dressed in revealing clothes and striking provocative poses, is giving a homily to the inmates in which the religious content is juxtaposed with her sexuality. “Don’t you realise that it was sex that put you behind bars in the first place?” she demands of the assembled prisoners in her dream, and attributes their criminality to “stealing to dress better for a man” and “killing to eliminate a sexual rival.” The dream ends with the warden, still in her leotard and top hat, demanding “Let’s have contrition! Let’s have redemption! Repentance!”

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as the prisoners applaud rapturously. After the dream has ended, the dowdy warden recalls a vision that was strange and disturbing, but “oddly gratifying.” The dream visions are extensions of the frank female sexuality in the prison. The inmates shower together, fight while naked and are brutally stripped and searched by the staff. These films are products of 1970s sexploitation; however, they both intersect with the religious and the moral. They bring to the screen particular carceral visions that are part of a longer trajectory of understanding female incarceration. The very fact that they are exploitation movies that objectify women through humiliation and violence overlaps with a longer history of carceral theory that proposed the need for intensive control to combat female depravity, itself worse than male depravity (Moore and Scraton, 550–551). In both films, the authorities in charge of the prisons are in fact doing their earnest best to redeem the women. Warden McQueen’s immediate fictional antecedents include the prison wardens in films such as Caged, characters whose sincere efforts at prison reform and prisoner rehabilitation derived from research into actual state penitentiaries (Bouclin 2009, 27). Warden McQueen’s peculiar sexual fantasy, after all, was a sexualized homily. In the dream, the revivalist-style calls for redemption and repentance are undercut by the vampish dress and poses, but the content if not the delivery matches the stern moralistic warnings McQueen gives the inmates outside of her dreams. House of Whipcord responds to a similar impulse of uniting the ecclesiastical and the carceral. The authorities in charge are unofficial but also religious. The austerity of the cells and the enforced silence make the prison as much a monastic establishment as a carceral one (Stohr et al. 2012, 17). House of Whipcord begins with a title card written in ecclesiastical gothic typeface proclaiming: “This film is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today’s lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment.” Similarly, the name of the film’s antagonist, the puritanical and moralizing Mrs. Wakehurst, can be considered a sly dig at Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, the moral reformer and the secretary of the National Viewers and Listeners Association. Pete Walker’s creative and political context included the return to power of a Conservative government and the emergence of the Christian evangelical organization, the Festival of Light (Chibnall 2001, 163). The historical backdrop to the film comprised two significant changes to incarceration and punishment, especially female punishment. One was the abolition of the death penalty, meaning the gallows seen and used in Whipcord is as unofficial as the rest of the establishment. The other was the demolition of the Victorian buildings at Holloway with the intention to soften the carceral regime and turn the prison into a “secure hospital,” a change drive by welfarism (Moore and Scraton, 552). The 1970s began with a major investigation into another of Britain’s aging Victorian prisons, Pentonville, written by the journalist Tom Clayton. His report criticized both the worn-out Victorian infrastructure and the

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prevailing attitudes governing the prison service. He especially targeted the earlier Mountbatten Committee (1966) and its report “on prison security and increase in the number of prisoners” (1968) for apparent flights of fancy in envisaging an armed attack on prisons by a posse of underworld figures. Mountbatten had made influential recommendations about maximum security wings. By 1970, the Illustrated London News carried a report for a modernized style of incarceration, including reconditioning the cells in old jails to include “modern comfortable furniture” and noting Clayton’s calls for reform (March 28, 1970, 19). The unofficial prison seen operating in House of Whipcord stands apart from the women’s prisons shaped by welfarism and efforts to reform both carceral approaches and the contextual buildings. It instead resembles the “complete and austere institution” discussed by Baltard and theorized by Foucault (Foucault 1977, 235). Wakehurst and her two wardresses exert the “unceasing discipline” of the complete and austere prison. The judge informs de Verney that their prison is “a real prison” and “proper house of correction.” That observation refers not only to the harshness of the penal regime, comprising whippings, cold showers, starvation diets, humiliations and hangings, but also to the way the judge reconfigures de Verney’s “crime.” In an “effete” modern court, de Verney exposing her breasts and getting photographed was a trivial offense against public order and she and the photographer were slapped on the wrist with a £10 fine. In the “real prison,” not only is the penal regime harsh, but the crime leading to the imprisonment is reconfigured as a more serious crime and is cast within strictly religious terms as a sign of de Verney’s decayed moral character. At the end point of de Verney’s imprisonment, the prison also appears “proper” in that it has a fully functioning gallows that the prison staff use to hang de Verney. By 1974, capital punishment was forbidden by statute, following the 1969 Act. In the opinion of the foursome running their private prison, properness extends not only to the severity of punishment and the recognition of the immoral dimension of de Verney’s crime, but also to housing and operating the only functional gallows in England. The account the judge and Mrs. Wakehurst give of their prison permits interpretation as promising the “greatest intensity” that Foucault locates in the complete and austere institution (236). While it is a place of brutal incarceration and execution, the interior spaces of the prison in House of Whipcord at times resemble an especially austere monastery rather than a prison. There are lecterns and Bibles in every cell from which the girls must study and memorize scripture, a large sign in the refectory proclaims “The World for Christ,” and the judge plays a church organ in a gothic hall. When the whips promised by the title appear, a type of sexualized crucifixion takes place when the young woman is spread-eagled before a Bible, stripped and then whipped. This slippage between the carceral and the ecclesiastical has actual parallels in the imprisonment of women. Before its demolition in the 1970s, HMP

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Holloway in north London had looked like something from a fairy tale: an incongruous medieval castle in north London with a great ragstone gate, battlements, sculptured griffins and towers (Johnston 2000, 95). But if the exterior was a castle, the interior was an evocation of another type of medieval structure. Inside, with long arcaded wings, high vaulted ceilings springing from corbels and its impressive chapel, the prison was like a cathedral, but a great cathedral of punishment. It was far from alone in evoking the ecclesiastical in the midst of the carceral. Apart from the large and impressive chapels built within Victorian prison complexes which were obviously sacred in style, the non-ecclesiastical spaces of prisons including the cell blocks resembled medieval Gothic religious sites. On film, the same connotations recur and the set design in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) seems like a “sublime space” and “cathedral-like” (Fiddler 2007, 200; 2011, 83). The ecclesiastical associations were the product of nineteenth-century revivals in medieval architecture. Returning to the Middle Ages in aesthetic, architectural and cultural ways had its detractors, who perceived an association between dark religious spaces and the imprisonment of mind and body. Religious centers such as convents had served as prisons in earlier centuries, and one had been used as a place of mass killing during the French Revolution and to imprison the Marquis de Sade (Schaeffer 2000, 442). The metamorphosis of the sacred to the carceral was also a component of what Katherine Rogers refers to as “English fantasy,” especially thinking of religious establishments such as convents as odious and repressive (Rogers 1985, 297). One such instance is the convent of St. Clare in Matthew Lewis’s 1796 novel The Monk. The convent’s prioress captures and punishes young women she believes to be immoral, including an enforced diet of bread and water. In Discipline and Punish, these associations were elaborated. Referring specifically to the punishment of women through labor, Foucault placed attention on the “regulated rigour of the convent,” as being akin to the women’s workshop at Clairvaux (1977, 243). De Sade was not alone in bringing together the ecclesiastical and erotic. Eighteenth-century philosophes delighted in and transmitted rumors of eroticized convents and flagellating mothers superior. McNamara (1996, 547) notes that convents and their inhabitants became sites of fascination for allegations that young girls were mistreated and the sisters were sadists. In popular culture, the association resonates in works from Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth to the Archbishop episode of the first Black Adder series. The creative trajectory from a Sadean convent to a women’s prison includes the female inmates and also their female jailors. The sadistic mothers superior in eighteenth-century sexual fantasies recur as a twentiethcentury wardress or superintendent. The prisons in both House of Whipcord and Caged Heat house women but are also controlled by women. Fantasies are not merely English. Reference to the Marquis de Sade and his real-life

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imprisonment in a convent also brings to mind his sexualization of the ecclesiastical, a link made in Whipcord by one character who adopts the name Mark E. Desade. Carceral spaces in his works are also conventual. In examining eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romantic visions of prions, Victor Brombert notes that de Sade’s sexual fantasies are located in enclosed spaces such as vaults and oubliettes (Brombert 2015, 4). These move from the carceral to the sacred. In his 1791 novel Justine, part of the action involving the titular character’s degradation takes place in a monastery (Hallam 2014, 10). Importantly, and in keeping with the Sadean approach, the life inside the institution is scrupulously well organized and based on what Hallam refers to as “rigid systems,” as is the case with the libertines in the chateau in 120 Days of Sodom (Hallam 2014, 10). That unity between the sacred and the carceral had already featured in cinema before either Caged Heat or House of Whipcord appeared. Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils took place in a seventeenth-century French convent and among the most controversial and censored scenes were some involving sexually depraved and frenzied nuns raping a figure of a crucified Christ, ripping off a priest’s cassock and masturbating. That film drew on Aldous Huxley’s book about demonic possession, as well as the actual history of scandalous events in Loudun convent and the broader Sadean visions of sexual depravity in a convent. In 1971’s A Clockwork Orange, the Church featured prominently during the prison sequences and during his processing, Alex specifically identifies as “C of E.” As in Anthony Burgess’s source novel, the preaching of the prison chaplain and Bible reading are conspicuous during the sequences when Alex has been tried and imprisoned, but before he begins the experimental Ludovico treatment. Both the novel and the film are laden with religiously charged imagery. The prison’s chaplain warns an unresponsive congregation that “we have undeniable proof, yes, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists,” which he describes in terms reminiscent of a Bosch painting, “a place darker than any prison, hotter than any flame of human fire” and where sinners “scream in endless and unendurable agony. Their skin rotting and peeling, a fireball spinning in their screaming guts.” The Minister of the Interior hails the success of the Ludovico treatment in equally religious terms, telling the chaplain that Alex “will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek. Ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly. Reclamation, joy before the angels of God.” Later in the decade, Scum (1977 and 1979) recreated on screen the borstal regime including the compulsory Church of England chapel service. One of the inmates describes the governor as a “religious nut,” but he is a specifically Anglican religious nut and reacts in horror when an intelligent and freethinking inmate, who uses his knowledge of literature and different faith systems to cause disorders and inconvenience, suggests he may convert to Islam (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2004, 161).

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Underpinning the cinematic representations, the convergence of the sacred with not only the carceral but also the sexual is suggested in the British context by the way not the crime and trial but the final days in the condemned cell of Ruth Ellis filtered through the press into the popular imagination. The points made about Ellis and the emphasis given to particular aspects of her final days provide suggestive parallels to what is seen in House of Whipcord. Ellis, the last woman hanged in England, stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1955 for the shooting murder of her lover. After her arrest, murder trial and conviction, which included a mandatory death sentence, various themes swirled around Ellis as the press reported in detail her life inside the condemned cell at Holloway. Before and during her trial, Ellis’s glamorous life as model, bit part actress and nightclub hostess and her correspondingly stylish appearance with peroxide hair had informed public impressions. Once in the condemned cell, she seemed to metamorphose into “a bird stripped of its fine feathers” and was dressed in “a frock of drab grey” (cited in Seal 2012, 18). Surrounding the now dowdy prisoner were the butch and “hardened” forms of “six dark-uniformed women prison officers.” If Ellis, not seen but described in vividly visual terms, changes from a glamorous killer to a frumpy prisoner, she also underwent further metamorphosis into a religiously penitent figure and news reports highlighted the ecclesiastical consonances surrounding her. Among her visitors at Holloway was the Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank. Newspaper reports detailed a somber religious atmosphere surrounding Ellis in her last days on Earth, including having candles lit as she took communion and hanging a crucifix in her cell (Seal 2012, 18, 19). Ellis died on the gallows at Holloway in July 1955, but her case remained a potent and imaginative source of inspiration in the next decades, especially through being kept in public memory by official and unofficial appeals and by tragedies besetting members of her family, including her mother’s attempted suicide in 1969. Accounts of her last days reported across The Star, the Daily Mirror, the Express, the Women’s Sunday Mirror and other popular mastheads artfully brought together a host of elements from the butch wardresses, the transformation from the stylish to the drab and the introduction of the sacred into the dark inner spaces of the women’s prison.

Conclusion In theory, the person in charge in Whipcord is the judge, but he is old, senile and blind. As events develop, it also becomes clear he is the victim of deception as much as the women who have been lured to the prison. Inmates he believes to have been rehabilitated and released have actually been hanged by Mrs. Wakehurst and the two wardresses. That point of deception sets out the clearest point of distinction between different carceral intentions and between the judge’s unofficial but sincere efforts to redeem the women and Mrs. Wakehurst’s resort to capital punishment after three infractions.

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The deception also means that Mrs. Wakehurst has usurped all judicial and carceral functions, being the jailor, the judge and the executioner and placing the prison under wholly female authority. Superintendent McQueen is the female head of a female staff, a fictional iteration of penal reforms, insisting on the separate housing of men and women and the supervision of female inmates by women warders (Moore and Scraton, 550). These films’ insistence of the female authority sets them apart from a prevailing “misogynistic tenor” (Hutchings 2009, 54) apparent in their contemporaries, including Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange and Frenzy, but does show their intersection with the ecclesiastical fantasies of earlier centuries. The films also reflect but promptly subvert actual penological reforms of the era, which advocated women-only prisons to ensure the inmates could not be abused by men (Bouclin 2009, 28). These films are certainly exploitative but are also far from being coincidental in terms of their parallels to actual questions being asked by the mid1970s about the expectations, intentions and implications of incarceration; these films make comments about the incarceration of women but suggest a longer heritage of the sacred, the ecclesiastical and the sordid. Their female prison authorities preach and exhort and are part of a creative trajectory linking back to revolutionary convents and perverse mothers superior. Their ecclesiastical elements are brought into sharp focus by their emphasis on exploitation, and these films are notable for their combination of different strands of thought and tradition.

References Bouclin, Suzanne. 2009. “Women in Prison Movies as Feminist Jurisprudence.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 21: 19–34. Brodie, A. 2014. “The Georgian Prison: Inquisitive and Investigative Tourism.” Prison Service Journal 216: 44–49. Brombert, Victor H. 2015. The Romantic Prison: The French Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cecil, Dawn K. 2007. “Looking Beyond Caged Heat: Media Images of Women in Prison.” Feminist Criminology 2, no. 4: 304–326. Chibnall, Steve. 2001. “A Heritage of Evil: Pete Walker and the Politics of Gothic Revisionism.” In British Horror Cinema, edited by Steve Chibnall and Julian Petley. London: Taylor & Francis. Ciasullo, Ann. 2008. “Containing ‘Deviant’ Desire: Lesbianism, Heterosexuality, and the Women-in-Prison Narrative.” The Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 2: 195–223. Fiddler, Michael. 2007. “Projecting the Uncanny: The Depiction of the Uncanny in The Shawshank Redemption.” Crime, Media and Culture 3, no. 2: 192–206. Fiddler, Michael. 2011. “A ‘System of Light’ Before Being a Figure of Stone: The Phanstasmagoric Prison.” Crime, Media, Culture 7, no. 1: 83–97. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.

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Fryer, Ian. 2017. The British Horror Film: From the Silent to the Multiplex. Stroud: Fonthill Media. Goffman, Erving. 1968. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Pelican Books. Hallam, Lindsay Anne. 2014. Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure, Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film. Jefferson, MD: McFarland. Hunter, I.Q. 1996. “Deadly Manors: The Country House in British Exploitation Films.” In Locating Identity: Essays on Nation, Community and the Self, edited by Paul Cooke, David Sadler, and Nicholas Zurbrugg, 45–55. Leicester: De Montfort University. Hunter, I.Q. 2007, “A Clockwork Orange, Exploitation and Art Film.” Paper for MeCCSA and AMPE 2007, Coventry University, 11 January 2007. Hunter, I.Q. 2008. “Take an Easy Ride: Sexploitation in the 1970s.” In Seventies British Cinema, edited by Robert Shail, 3–13. London: Bloomsbury. Hutchings, Peter. 2009. “‘I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill’: The ‘Women in Peril’ Thriller in 1970s British Film and Television.” Visual Culture in Britain 10, no. 1: 53–69. Johnston, Norman. 2000. Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture. University of Illinois Press. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. London: Wallflower. Kozma, Alicia. 2012. “Ilsa and Elsa: Nazisploitation, Mainstream Film and Cinematic Transference.” In Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture, edited by Daniel H. Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges, and Kristin T. Vander Lugt, 55–71. London: A&C Black. Mason, Paul. 2006. “Lies, Distortion and What Doesn’t Work: Monitoring Prison Stories in the British Media.” Crime, Media, Culture 2, no. 3: 251–267. McNamara, JoAnn. 1996. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millenia. Harvard University Press. Moore, Linda, and Phil Scraton. 2016. “Doing Gendered Time: The Harms of Women’s Imprisonment.” In Handbook on Prisons, edited by Yvonne Jewkes, Ben Crewe, and Jamie Bennett, 549–567. Abingdon: Routledge. Morey, Anne. 1995. “‘The Judge Called Me an Accessory’.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 23, no. 2: 80–87. Rogers, Katherine. 1985. “Fantasy and Reality in Fictional Convents of the Eighteenth Century.” Comparative Literature Studies 22: 297–316. Ross, Robert, and Phil Collins. 2002. The Carry on Companion. London: Batsford. Schaeffer, Neil. 2000. The Marquis de Sade: A Life. Harvard University Press. Seal, Lizzie. 2012. “Ruth Ellis in the Condemned Cell: Voyeurism and Resistance.” Prison Service Journal 199: 17–20. Stohr, Mary K., Anthony Walsh, and Craig Hemmens. 2012. Corrections: A Text/ Reader. London: Sage. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2004. Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Winchester: Waterside Press.

Politicized Prisons

‘Are You Woman Enough to Survive?’: Bitch Planet’s Collaborative Critique of the Neo-Liberal Prison-Industrial Complex Martin Zeller-Jacques

Examinations of the role of the media in shaping cultural understandings of prisons and incarcerated people have tended, for obvious reasons, to focus on the forms of media with the widest reach and the largest potential impact. Film, television and journalism all play substantial parts in shaping the way a culture imagines crime and punishment, especially for those who lack direct experiences with the prison system. If their reach and influence make mainstream media a worthy object of study, it also tends to shape the kinds of stories they are able and willing to tell and leaves gaps in representation that may be addressed by examining the ways other media, and other models of media production. This chapter addresses one of those gaps by examining Image Comics’ 2014 series Bitch Planet (DeConnick 2014–2017). The largest of comic publisher outside of the Marvel or DC, Image specializes in publishing creator-owned books, and currently accounts for just less than 10% of the total market share in comics (Johnston 2019). Because Image comics are creator-owned, they represent a wide array of perspectives and approaches both to comics and to the ideas represented within them and have the potential to showcase perspectives well outside of mainstream discourse. Just as importantly for this case study, they also offer comics creators a degree of latitude to use the space of their comics in original or unusual ways.

M. Zeller-Jacques (*)  Queen Margaret University, Musselburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_44

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Bitch Planet presents a feminist dystopian satire, using the space of a women’s prison as launching pad for a critique of a number of intersecting power structures in our own culture, including mass incarceration, racial inequality, sexism, patriarchy and religious oppression. The substance of Bitch Planet’s satire aims to be radical, but far more radical is the way it uses the structure and form of its comic book text. Through the use of back matter, fan-created paratexts and a curated selection of academic and critical contributions, it turns its comic book pages into an enactment of the intersectional politics espoused in the pages of its story. Bitch Planet reimagines both the space of the prison and the space of the comic book as places with radical potential, capable of disrupting the typical media narratives about prison and incarcerated people and the typical constraints of popular media forms and genres.

A Women-in-Prison Movie on the Page Bitch Planet takes place in a near-future world with many shades of our own. A paternalistic government called The Protectorate rules over what appears to be a united Earth. Gender conformity is strictly enforced by a council of ‘Fathers,’ with women who fail to comply with social norms being transported to an off-world ‘Auxiliary Compliance Outpost’ more commonly known as Bitch Planet. As in the American prison system which is being satirized, these ‘Non-Compliant’ women are predominantly queer and/or people of color. The comic’s story follows several of the prisoners of the ACO as they navigate life in the prison, with occasional flashback issues depicting their lives on the outside. While the early narrative seems to be leading toward showing the women participating in a futuristic blood-sport for the amusement of viewers on Earth, this really only functions as a MacGuffin which provokes a violent uprising within the ACO. The last issue published to date finishes as this rebellion spreads from the ACO through a revolutionary group of female terrorists, styling themselves ‘The Daughters of Eleanor’ in memory of the last female president who ruled before the Protectorate. The terminology of the Protectorate harks back to English Puritanism in the seventeenth century and DeConnick cites the book The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood 1985) and film Robocop (1985) as the most prominent influences on Bitch Planet (Foxe 2016), though the 1970s cycle of women-in-prison movies is an obvious touchstone for the setting, the power dynamics and the origins of some of DeConnick’s characters. Indeed, the clearest way to describe Bitch Planet is as a women-in-prison movie in set in space. Women-in-prison movies have a relatively long and heterogeneous history. Suzanna Walters has called this body of films ‘disunified,’ arguing that they ‘constitute not one unitary genre but rather an odd and eclectic pastiche of many subgenres – from melodrama to teenage trouble to exploitation to protofeminism’ (Walters 2001, 107). Given its complexity, a comprehensive critical summary of the women-in-prison films is beyond the scope of this

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chapter, but a brief discussion of two key cycles, each of which showcases a different set of ideas about women in relation to gender and incarceration, is important in order to establish the territory which Bitch Planet stakes out for its own exploration of women-in-prison. The first major cycle of women-in-prison films, which has antecedents in the 30s but starts in earnest with the critically acclaimed Caged (1950), is aligned with the broader ‘Social Problem’ genre of Classical Hollywood Cinema. These films typically deal with a young woman entering the prison system for the first time, undergoing torments at the hands of long-term inmates, sadistic prison staff, or both, and ultimately either being saved by the auspices of a crusading individual (often a kindly male doctor), or being hardened by the experience and either staying in prison or emerging from it a confirmed criminal. While Neale notes that the Social Problem genre is more of a ‘critical invention’ (2000, 105) than a category used organically by filmmakers or audiences, it is nevertheless distinguished by a narrative structure in which ‘the central dramatic conflict revolves around the interaction of the individual with social institutions’ (Roffman and Purdy 1981, cited in Neale 2000, 105). However, Neale argues that these films often portray a schism between the personal and the social, and ‘tend as a rule to insist that the problems they deal with are not resolved, …. [replacing] the possible resolution of social problems with the actual resolution of personal ones’ (Neale 2000, 108). The women-in-prison films of this early cycle certainly withhold solutions to the social problems they depict, but many also withhold even the kind of personal resolution for their protagonists which Neale notes as common to the broader genre. In part, this is because the social problem they depict is twofold. As Anne Morey argues, in the films of this period ‘prison is presented as an agent to return women to domesticity… [But] The agent typically fails at its task because it brutalizes and masculinizes both female inmates and female staff members’ (Morey 1995, 80). There are, thus, two social problems presented in these films. The women being confined to prison are the result of one of these ‘problems’: A crisis of traditional domestic femininity which was, at the same time, finding positive expression in the early stirrings of the women’s movement. The brutal conditions of the prisons themselves, which render them ineffective at restoring women to their socially valorized domestic roles, are the other. But at their core, these films function as critiques of the efficacy of the systems of incarceration they represent, rather than of the wider social structures which lead women to become incarcerated. This first cycle of the women-in-prison film is reforming, rather than radical, and when it presents the failure of its subjects to re-enter civilian life, that failure is depicted as poignant rather than transgressive. The second key cycle of women-in-prison films reverses this dynamic, often showing women’s criminality as defiant, liberating and anti-authoritarian. However, this cycle is also characterized by a gradual transition from

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the ‘seriousness’ of the social problem film to the sexualization and violence of the exploitation film. This cycle’s most prolific proponent was producer Roger Corman, whose trio of Pam Grier vehicles, The Big Doll House (1971), Women in Cages (1971), and The Big Bird Cage (1972), and later collaboration with Jonathan Demme, Caged Heat (1974), discussed elsewhere in this collection, have come to define exploitation cinema’s depictions of womenin-prison. The women in these films are rarely innocent when they arrive in prison and they fight back against the structures which confine them with the same brutality which is visited upon them. Dawn Cecil sees this strain of media representation of women-in-prison as wholly inaccurate, which is undoubtedly true, and highly damaging for the way that these ‘babes-behind bars films perpetuate highly sexualized images of female prisoners … [and] negate the issues surrounding women in prison’ (2007, 304–306). Yet other scholars see a liberating, proto-feminist discourse at work within these films. As Suzanna Walters writes, ‘Women-in-Prison films – in all their strangeness, their multiple marginality – often present images of women and women’s relationships rarely found in more mainstream genres. Women in this world live together, love together, fight each other, and most centrally, fight back against the largely male systems of brutal domination that keep them all down’ (Walters 2001, 106). This is not to suggest that these films are not exploitative, or filtered through an objectifying gaze which presents violence against women as entertainment, but merely to note that they served, as exploitation cinema often has, to provide a degree of visibility to people otherwise rendered invisible in more mainstream media. Ultimately, however, what politics there is in these films is largely personal rather than systematic. Women fight back against brutal guards and sadistic wardens, and while we might read those as metaphors for authoritarian power more generally, these aspects of the 1970s WIP films are rarely elaborated. Bitch Planet takes most of its beats from this second cycle of exploitation-oriented women-in-prison films, though its most effective narrative coup relies upon the patterns laid down in the earlier social problem cycle. However, while the comic book borrows the iconography, tone and sometimes the story beats of exploitation cinema, it is carefully constructed to turn the politics of exploitation back on the prurient reader, and to fulfill the potential to give voice to those who are usually voiceless which was already present in those exploitation films.

A Non-compliant Approach to the WIP Narrative If the women-in-prison movie, both in its classical and in its exploitation form, tends to address politics at arm’s length, via personal experience, Bitch Planet takes the politics of imprisonment head on, rendering the structural and symbolic violence already present in much of Western culture as direct physical and legal violence. In doing so, it attempts to show the usually

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invisible discursive workings of the carceral society, which, in Foucault’s words, ‘“naturalizes” the legal power to punish, as it “legalizes” the technical power to discipline… effacing what may be violent in one and arbitrary in the other’ (Foucault 1977, 303). Because ‘non-compliance’ with social norms is literally a crime in the world of Bitch Planet, the kinds abuses of power which, in American culture, are often dismissed as the result of the overzealous actions of police officers or the unfortunate excesses of a generally robust justice system, are revealed as direct and intentional mechanisms of disciplinary power. The ‘punishing democracy’ Hartnett sees in contemporary America, where ‘the daily mechanisms of governance, the everyday habits of citizenship, our embodied modes of consumption and sense-making, the very fabric of our national life, have become enmeshed in the technologies and rituals of punishment,’ are rendered literal and direct (Hartnett 2010, 5–6). To date, the comic comprises ten issues by the original creative team as well as an anthology series, entitled Bitch Planet: Triple Feature which showcases short narratives set in or inspired by the world of Bitch Planet and produced by a range of guest writers and artists. The element of collaboration which is at the heart of Triple Feature is visible even from the start of the project, in the form of essays contributed by academics or social campaigners, and social media posts and cosplay photos contributed by fans. This impulse toward collaborative authorship of the world of Bitch Planet is key to understanding the comic’s critical and social project and is inseparable from the story told within the pages of the main title. This chapter will focus on the ten-issue run of the main title of Bitch Planet, though many of the points raised here, and especially the opening up of the comic’s authorship to a range of voices beyond those of the central creative team of DeConnick and De Landro, are equally present in Triple Feature. In the analysis of Bitch Planet which follows, I will argue that the comic undertakes an explicit and broad-based critique of contemporary culture, using the othered space of its science-fictional women’s prison as a spur to satire and to critical reflection. Initially, this critique unfolds in the narrative of the comic itself, as it invokes and then upends or inverts the tropes of the women-in-prison film. The first part of my analysis focuses on two key moments of such inversion, one a piece of misdirection in the narration of the first issue, and the other a visual reimagining of the trope of the usually voyeuristic ‘shower scene’ typically found in these films. Each of these moments draws on the conventions of the genre to set up expectations in the audience and then inverts those expectations, prompting further questions about the audience’s own assumptions and biases. The second part of my analysis focuses on the use of back matter in Bitch Planet. From the beginning of its run, Bitch Planet’s story has been supplemented with critical essays, reader contributions and satirical paratexts which supplement and comment on the ideas present within the story while also opening up the comic’s authorship to other voices and perspectives.

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The Star of Our Show Bitch Planet foregrounds its debt to the exploitation subset of the women-in-prison genre most prominently in the art and slogans which adorn its covers. The tagline ‘Are You Woman Enough to Survive… Bitch Planet,’ rendered in lurid contrasting block lettering reminiscent of publicity for Roger Corman’s WIP movies, challenges the reader from the top of every issue. Sensationalized images of violence and the presentation of some characters in striking, lightly eroticized poses, further suggest the comic’s origins in WIP exploitation. Yet even from its first covers, Bitch Planet self-consciously inverts the typical gaze of such films. Rather than the kind of full-body ‘badgirl’ pose designed to put the female prisoner’s body on show, which typically adorns the posters for Corman’s WIP films, Bitch Planet #1’s cover places a blank white silhouette of a muscular feminine figure at the center of the image. Despite, or perhaps in response to, the chains binding her wrists, she stands with her arms raised and both middle fingers presented. This image simultaneously challenges the viewer and their implication in the typically exploitative gaze of the women-in-prison narrative, and it leaves space for the viewer to read themselves into the blank space of that silhouette. This double-process of inviting the reader to recognize the exploitative tropes of the women-in-prison genre, often by placing them in a voyeuristic position in relation to the characters and situations in the story only to foreground the explicit connections between erotic voyeurism and violence, while also carving out a space for the reader to imagine themselves into the position of the non-compliant women imprisoned on Bitch Planet, is one of the comic’s central visual and narrative strategies. Rebecca Wanzo describes the comic as ‘a series of “gotchas”, taking representations that have been seen as unrespectable or exploitative and flipping the script on what people think they know once they have seen the images’ (Wanzo 2018). This strategy of invoking and then satirizing or reversing exploitation tropes informs many different elements of the text, but is especially elaborate in the moments where Bitch Planet hews closest to its cinematic roots, such as the introduction of Marian Collins, a character who represents the typical heroine of a women-in-prison film, in issue one, and in the two part ‘Obligatory Shower Scene’ (as the comic itself labels the sequence) in issue four. Each of these scenes explicitly invokes a trope of the women-in-prison genre, only to subvert it and turn it back on the audience in the process. Marian Collins arrives at the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost early in issue one, on a transport which also carries the actual central characters of the series. Marian exhibits many of the traits typical of the heroine of a women-in-prison film, particularly one from the earlier, social problem adjacent version of the genre. She is white, appears genuinely appalled and baffled to have ended up in prison, and her adjustment to prison life is positioned at the center of the narrative. Marian is picked out of an early brawl scene by two overseers who often perform a choric function throughout the comic. Their

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running commentary on the actions of both prisoners and guards positions them somewhat outside of the general power structure of the ACO; even though they clearly work for the Protectorate, these men do not see themselves as having agency over the lives of prisoners. Indeed, like most of the prisoners, these men are people of color—the only Protectorate employees we meet who are—and their otherness informs the way they comment on Marian’s naiveté upon finding herself imprisoned. Their exchange about the type of prisoner they mockingly call ‘the innocent’ is emblematic: Guard 1: It’s their own fault they don’t see it coming. Guard 2: Some of them must. Guard 1: They won’t let themselves! Runs counter to everything they believe. Guard 2: As far as she’s concerned, she’s done everything right? Guard 1: Ayep. If anything, you’d think we’d learn to stop being surprised. Guard 2: So which one is it. Guard 1: White girl. Guard 2: Of course.

Here the guards stand in for the perspective of the audience. Knowledgeable of the tropes of the genre in which they, as choric commentators, are only partially confined, they have seen other versions of Marian Collins before, and take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing the script play itself out as she pleads her case before the authorities. The comic depicts Marian’s appeal through a series of panels cutting between her conversation with ‘The Catholic’—a habit-clad hologram straight out of an exploitation movie’s BDSM fetish fantasy—and her husband’s conversation with Solanza, the protectorate bureaucrat in charge of the ACO. The conversation is cut so that Marian’s husband appears to be pleading for her freedom at the same time that she is. They both recount the same story—that Marian’s husband had an affair, and her angry reaction led her to be labeled non-compliant and shipped away to the ACO. Husband: She went crazy! I didn’t feel safe! They said… they said they couldn’t do anything. Solanzo: It was her first infraction? Husband: Yes, so they couldn’t help. Unless… Solanzo: I see where this is going. You paid a… “Fee”? Husband: Everything I had saved. And then I waited. Marian: But I changed! I changed! I took responsibility for my part and I forgave him. Husband: Just like that, it was fixed! And it was like… starting over. We put all the ugliness behind us. Moved on.

To the reader conditioned to the tropes of the women-in-prison film, this story reads like the seed of a narrative in which the loving couple will fight against the unjust system which has wrongfully separated them, and possibly

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triumph. But as per the warning of the Guards, we shouldn’t be surprised by what’s coming. Despite the cuts between panels appearing to align Marian’s plea with her husband’s, we soon learn that they are speaking at cross purposes. When Solanza arranges for Mr. Collins’ wife to be released, it is his new wife, Dawn, who greets him, while Marian remains confined off-world. The previous exchange is cast in a new light as we realize that Mr. Collins’ fee was paid in order to expedite the removal of his first wife to the ACO so that he could freely pursue his new lover. In exchange for a further payment from Mr. Collins, Solanza arranges to have Marian dealt with more permanently, and by the end of the issue she has been murdered by a crooked guard, and the comic’s real hero focus has been revealed not to be Marian at all, but Kamau Kogo a black former athlete who fights in vain to protect her. With this deft narrative coup, Bitch Planet accomplishes several things which are central to its project. First, it justifies the use of the exploitative tropes of the women-in-prison genre. While this genre has often been criticized for its sensationalist portrayal of crime and punishment, the very mundanity of Marian’s ‘crime’—effectively her failure to continue to satisfy her husband sexually, or to go quietly when he tired of her—and the severity of her punishment are anything but sensational. Marian is not a murderer or a prostitute or even a ‘good woman’ who made a mistake, in the classic mold of a WIP heroine. She is just a woman whose marriage has gone down the sad but quite mundane path which many marriages do. That the consequences of this are imprisonment, and ultimately death, drives home the social precariousness faced by women in the world of Bitch Planet. At the same time, the comic’s use of Marian as a red-herring asks us to consider our own implicit biases. Though the comic guided us in doing so, we accepted Marian as our wronged heroine because she looked the part. In removing her from the scene and focusing on Kamau Kogo, the comic signals its intent to rectify the misrepresentations common to the women-in-prison genre, by placing women of color at the center of its depiction of prison life.

The Obligatory Shower Scene Of course, the manner in which these women are represented matters as much to Bitch Planet’s internal critique as the mere fact of their representation. Women of color have often been stigmatized or fetishized in the WIP genre, often in the person of characters played by Pam Grier, whose roles in Roger Corman’s WIP films offer the clearest visual precedent for Kamau Kogo’s character in Bitch Planet. Yet while Kogo owes something to Grier’s athleticism and attitude, Bitch Planet works hard to subvert the fetishistic gaze which Corman so often trained on Greer, and never more clearly than in the ‘Obligatory Shower Scene’ in issue four. While the promise of steamy erotic spectacle is certainly part of the texture of the WIP genre, the shower as a place where vulnerable bodies are

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subjected to potential or actual violence also cuts through many of these films. Bitch Planet balances both of these elements, but refuses to untangle them, making the sexual aspects of the ‘shower scene’ instrumental elements of a violent system of exploitation and of violent acts of revenge. The first part of the scene opens on the holographic prison ‘matron’ addressing her charges as they file into the shower. While many of these women are nude, the shot is presented from a distance and many cover parts of themselves with the same kind of modesty and relative discomfort we would recognize from communal changing areas in public spaces in the outside world. These are not women gamboling in erotic freedom as they sometimes do in 1970s WIP films, nor are they uniformly comfortable in their bodies. The holographic matron’s loop of solemn intonations that ‘Soap and water wash away our yesterdays. Each day we begin anew,’ connect the prisoners’ need to cleanse themselves to their wider noncompliance, and to similar discourses about feminine hygiene and self-care which are often visible in the real world, and which are satirized in the mock-advertisements included in the comic’s back matter. In the context of this scene, Kamau Koga has been summoned to the showers by an anonymous note marked with a drawing of an eye. As she queues to enter the showers, Koga is met by an unfamiliar woman wearing an eye-patch with the ‘non-compliant’ symbol emblazoned upon it. The woman explains that the showers are the only place without cameras or armored guards, and so they become the only place to safely plan rebellious activity. However, Bitch Planet still invokes its exploitation roots in that it also depicts the shower as a space for lesbian encounters between the prisoners. Koga’s contact proceeds to make love to her girlfriend in the shower and invites Koga to join them, explaining that she needs to play along because, even without cameras, they are still being watched. Based purely on a description of what is happening in the narrative, this scene could easily be rendered exploitatively. Two women having sex in earnest and another joining into keep up appearances is very much the stuff of 1970s WIP exploitation cinema. Yet the actual encounter, and the dialogue going on around it, is pushed to the corners and sides of the pages. Meanwhile, the center of each of the three pages on which this scene unfolds is taken up with a succession of wide-angle views of the showers, depicting several women not involved in the tryst. This has the effect of focusing the reader’s gaze in two places: the first place we are likely to focus is on the faces of the key characters, which is all we can see of them given the intruding central panels, as they discuss the prison administrator’s plans; the second place we focus is precise middle of each of these central panels. With each successive central image, the view tightens, as if zooming in with a camera. Gradually, the various women in the shower room are removed from the image entirely and we begin to focus on what at first appears to be a black dot on the wall. On the final page of the sequence, this dot appears in extreme

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close-up and we can see the eye of a guard behind it, staring straight back out at us, as Koga’s informant explains that the price of a place to make love in peace is allowing themselves to be watched by a voyeuristic guard. Just as we saw with the story of Marian Collins in the first issue of Bitch Planet, ‘the obligatory shower scene’ first invokes and then inverts our expectations of an exploitative women-in-prison narrative. We are invited to view three women having sex but our gaze is instead turned back on ourselves— our complicity in their objectification laid bare. This is further reinforced several pages later when Koga returns to the shower alone. The visual emphasis here is more clearly on Koga’s body as she aligns herself directly in front of the peephole we saw earlier, and the comic’s most potentially exploitative moment depicts Koga masturbating in full view of the hole as small panels segment her body into mouth, breasts, crotch in a near-perfect demonstration of the fragmentation performed by the classic Mulveyan male gaze (Mulvey 2001). We then see a close-up of the peephole, where an eye has once again appeared, and Koga smiles and says, ‘Gotcha.’ We, like the guard, have been caught looking. Koga then wrests control of her subjectivity back from this objectifying context as she tears the shower pipes from the wall and uses them to break through and subdue the guard. She even reverses the effects of his voyeurism, blackmailing him into working for her by pointing out that she can incriminate him by describing the distinguishing marks on his genitalia. These two moments only begin to address the range of the satirical critique embedded throughout Bitch Planet’s narrative, but they establish its primary strategies. By using a science fiction setting, it renders literal and precise the same kinds of connections of power and privilege which more subtly structure contemporary carceral society. By presenting us with a wronged, white heroine at first, it makes us complicit in the structural racism at the heart of the criminal justice system. And by invoking the voyeurism and exploitation built into the tropes of the women-in-prison genre and upending it, it activates the liberatory potential inherent of the women’s prison. Yet as we will see, the story is really only a part of each issue of Bitch Planet, and the comic’s unusual use of back matter helps to develop and open out its arguments.

Bitch Planet as Intersectional Community-Building While the satire at the heart of Bitch Planet is potent and astringent, it does not provide systemic answers alongside its systemic critique. Indeed, Kelly Sue DeConnick frequently returns to the absence of answers in the letters which end each single issue of the comic, most notably at the start and finish of the second arc of the main narrative (Issues number 6 and 10). This arc of the story was written during the heart of the 2016 US presidential election, with the final issue being published shortly after Donald Trump’s election. And while DeConnick’s final letter on the arc again claims to have no answers

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for her readers, I would argue that the structure of Bitch Planet itself, as it is transformed over the course of the five issues of this second arc, constitutes her answer. Throughout these five issues, Bitch Planet gradually changes shape from a satirical comic book with a feminist sensibility to a kind of latter-day feminist zine which uses the comic book at its start to prompt discussion, creativity and the sharing of feminist praxis. Like many feminist zines, Bitch Planet, to paraphrase Adela Licona, ‘performs the difference it is trying to make’ (Licona 2005, 109). The collaborative, curatorial instinct to foreground the voices of many different women, to practice intersectional feminism in the authorship and creation of the comic, is evident from the start of Bitch Planet’s run. However, it becomes especially marked from issue 6 onwards and is most obviously present in the ever-expanding back matter of the individual issues. From issue one, these include letters from DeConnick and critical essays from prominent feminists in academia, journalism or social justice, as well as fan letters, twitter-interactions and other forms of fan celebration, and satirical advertisements or images inspired by the world of Bitch Planet. The final four issues of the comic’s run each contain fourteen pages of back matter, comprising more than third of each comic’s total length. Regular features include pieces on the critical vocabulary of feminism, interviews with feminist creatives in other fields, crafting projects and recommendations for wider reading. They also give space to an ever-expanding array of letters from readers, often accompanied with images of readers displaying personalized non-compliant (NC) tattoos inspired by the comics. This back matter displays two key aspects of the way Bitch Planet enacts a form of intersectional feminism which answers (or, perhaps, prescribes an answer for) its critique of patriarchal culture, mass incarceration and the dehumanization of othered subjects within both. The first aspect is its curation of a variety of voices, decentering the (necessarily limited) authorial perspective of DeConnick herself by supplementing it with many other voices. The second, which works in parallel with the first, is a shift from the inclusion of back matter pages which directly satirize the ads found in real comics or women’s magazines of an earlier era, to pages which take on the appearance of in-world texts which have been vandalized or transformed through bricolage, the DeCerteauian tactics (1984) common to zine production. (See Knobel and Lankshear 2001 for a discussion of DeCerteau in relation to Zines.) Through the inclusion of a range of voices from critics, scholars, creatives and fans, Bitch Planet curates a community of feminist practice. These contributions rarely speak directly to one another; of the essays, only Danielle Henderson’s contribution to the first issue of Bitch Planet really directly addresses the events of the comic itself. Later essays tend to operate as mediations on or interventions around the ideas invoked by the comic. Occasionally, the layout of these contributions is constructed to invite the

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reader to make connections, as in issue 7, when Angelica Bastion’s essay on the problematic trope of the ‘Strong Black Female’ who endures oppression and hardship without complaint is juxtaposed with panels from within the comic depicting Kamau Kogo and Penny Rolle clasping hands and mourning the death of their friend Meiko. On other occasions, the essays draw attention to real-world social issues, making implicit connections to the story. For instance, Mikki Kendall’s essay at the end of issue four focuses on the different reactions of police to disciplinary infractions of black and white students in American schools, highlighting the ways in which the prison-to-school pipeline criminalizes black youth. It reminds us that while the satire of Bitch Planet may seem far-fetched, we should not find it hard to imagine a world where women are incarcerated for being too loud or disobedient when we already live in a world where precisely this can and does happen to young African-Americans. In most instances, however, the connections between different elements of the back matter, or the back matter and the comic itself, are not so direct. This is largely because the inclusion of all of these elements stems from reluctance on the part of the author to do all of the speaking or organizing of ideas. In her letters, DeConnick repeatedly emphasizes her choice to bring other voices into the back matter of Bitch Planet, and sometimes into the writing process. In a particularly self-conscious moment in issue eight, in which the comic introduces the prisoners of section one, a ward reserved for trans women who have been imprisoned for the crime of ‘Gender Deceit,’ DeConnick’s letter explains that an array of trans consultants has helped her and De Landro to address the subjectivity of trans people effectively. DeConnick acknowledges the ways in which her own understanding of trans representation was deepened by these exchanges and credits the character of Rose as having explicitly emerged from this consultation process. If the process of ‘doing intersectionality’ (Lépinard 2014) is, as Choo and Ferree put it, about ‘the importance of including the perspectives of multiply-marginalized people, especially women of color… and a focus on seeing multiple institutions as overlapping in their co-determination of inequalities’ (Choo and Ferree 2010, 131), Bitch Planet enacts this perspective first through its narrative, and then through the intersectional community of scholars and fans it develops within its back matter. If Kelly Sue DeConnick doesn’t provide answers to her own provocations, she does encourage other women to lend their voices to the attempt to find a solution.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning The last issue published (to date) of Bitch Planet came out more than two years before this chapter was written. The story focused on the discovery that Eleanor Doane, the last female president of Earth, had been imprisoned aboard the ACO, and prisoners, led by Kamau Kogo and aided by the father

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of their murdered friend Meiko, broke into the control room of Bitch Planet, bringing Eleanor with them. The last issue of Bitch Planet promised that a strong, responsible woman was going to arrive to sort things out. It went to press shortly after Donald Trump defeated Hilary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. In her final letter to the readers of Bitch Planet, Kelly Sue DeConnick describes staying up late to watch the election with her daughter. She describes the way she and her husband explained the election to their children, and the way she, while speaking with a friend who was a first-generation African immigrant, had to readjust her perceptions about just how unsurprising this colossal moral failing on the part of America was to someone with a different set of life experiences. The letter is elegiac and sad, and like Bitch Planet, it offers no answers. But as you read on, Sarah Joffe’s essay on emotional labor offers necessary practical advice for how to navigate the world. Jamelle Bouie lists the contact details of organizations which will need money or help to combat Trump’s agenda. Readers share their advice and experiences and Kelly Sue responds fulsomely with practical ideas for the next steps to take. And the last few pages are given over to images of women carrying home-made ‘non-compliant’ signs and displaying tattoos inspired by the comic as they attend the various women’s marches held in response to Trump’s election. When we think about how the media represents incarceration, we often think of the sensationalized stories it tells, the assumptions it makes and the injustices it perpetuates. But the media is not a monolith, and in delving into its smaller corners, such as creator-owned comics like Bitch Planet, we can see the other things it does: the anger it can harness, the forgotten people whose stories it can tell, and the communities it can help to build.

References Atwood, Margaret. 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Cecil, Dawn K. 2007. “Looking Beyond Caged Heat: Media Images of Women in Prison.” Feminist Criminology 2, no. 4: 304–326. Choo, Hae Yeon, and Myra Max Ferree. 2010. “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities.” Sociological Theory 28, no. 2: 129–149. DeCerteau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DeConnick, Kelly Sue. 2014–2017. Bitch Planet. Portland: Image Comics. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin. Foxe, Steve. 2016. “Margaret Atwood & Kelly Sue DeConnick in Glorious Discussion.” Paste. Online: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/09/ margaret-atwood-kelly-sue-deconnick-talk-angel-cat.html. Accessed April 11, 2019.

730  M. ZELLER-JACQUES Hartnett, Stephen John. 2010. Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Johnston, Rich. 2019. “2018 Direct Market Comics Sales Up on 2017—By Over Half of One Percent.” Bleeding Cool. Online: https://www.bleedingcool. com/2019/01/16/2018-direct-market-comics-sales-2017/. Accessed April 11, 2019. Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. 2001. “Cut, Paste, Publish: The Production and Consumption of Zines.” Paper prepared for the State of the Art Conference. Athens, Georgia. Online: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Michele_Knobel/publication/313516983_Cut_paste_and_publish_The_production_and_consumption_of_zines/links/58a34c9eaca272d3a4960388/Cutpaste-and-publish-The-production-and-consumption-of-zines. Accessed April 11, 2019. Lépinard, Éléonore. 2014. “Doing Intersectionality: Repertoires of Feminist Practices in France and Canada.” Gender & Society 28, no. 6: 877–903. Licona, Adela. 2005. “(B)orderlands Rhetorics and Representations: The Transformative Potential of Feminist Third-Space Scholarship and Zines.” NWSA Journal 17, no. 2: 104–129. Morey, Anne. 1995. “The Judge Called Me an Accessory: Women’s Prison Films, 1950–1962.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 23, no. 2: 80–87. Mulvey, Laura. 2001. “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema.” In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent Leitch, 2181–2192. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Neale, Steve. 2000. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge. Walters, Suzanna. 2001. “Caged Heat: The (R)evolution of Women-in-Prison Films.” In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in Film, edited by Martha McCaughey and Neil King. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wanzo, Rebecca. 2018. “What Is the Liberatory Potential of Bitch Planet’s Exploitation Aesthetic?” In “Hard Women, Hard Time: Bitch Planet Comic Studies Round Table (Part Three).” The Middle Spaces. Online: https://themiddlespaces.com/2018/03/13/bitch-planet-3/. Accessed April 11, 2019.

Filmography The Big Bird Cage (Dir. Jack Hill, 1972). The Big Doll House (Dir. Jack Hill, 1971). Caged (Dir. John Cromwell, 1950). Caged Heat (Dir. Jonathan Demme, 1974). Robocop (Dir. Verhoeven, 1985). Women in Cages (Dir. Gerry de Leon, 1971).

Prison on Screen in Italy: From “Shame Therapy” Propaganda to Citizenship Programmes Nicoletta Policek

The link between cinema and prison is considered in this chapter through praxis which mirrors societal changes when it comes to define the meanings and purposes of incarceration (Melossi 2000; Cheliotis 2010). The particular focus is on Italian cinema with all its nuances: from short movies and documentaries produced by Istituto Luce, during the period 1928–1932, when the Fascist regime’s narratives dominated the Italian cinema screens and prison was depicted as a fundamental tool of propaganda (Zamponi-Falasca 1997), through the post-World War II Neorealism, characterised by stories set amongst the poor and the working class (Dalle Vacche 2014), until the much more contemporary “usage” of prison movies (Jewkes 2013). Here, viewers witness a further dichotomy and have the possibility of looking at the prison both from outside (Kehrwald 2017), with a voyeuristic and at time pornographic view of life in prison, and from inside out, where art therapy is the chance for inmates to validate themselves as human beings longing to acquire citizenship status again (Tester 2001; Surette 2014). Constructing a genealogy of prison-set motion pictures is much more than simply providing an overview of the representations and usages of the prison space (Carrabine 2012). By exploring prison’s place in society, the focus is on complex issues relating to citizenship and belonging: those in prison are never considered by society as citizens as they are still seen, politically and N. Policek (*)  Associate Professor in Policing & Criminology, University of Cumbria, Institute of Business, Industry & Leadership, Carlisle, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_45

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institutionally, as people who have for the most part forfeited their rights as citizens. In this sense, prisons are seen as institutions which are set apart from ordinary society (Wacquant 2001, 2009). The discussion that follows pieces together the essence of the possible latent functions of mass-mediated images of crime, criminals and penal institutions.

Italian Cinema: A Genealogy of Prison-Set Motion Pictures A national cinema is not a set of motion pictures that help to differentiate a nation from other nations; rather, it is the sequence of relations and exchanges which enlarge in connection with films, in the arena defined by its economic and juridical policy (Golding and Murdock 2000). From an historical and chronological viewpoint, it is possible to claim that a nation is a geographic entity where individuals are assimilated by institutions, traditions and a language which, concurrently, replicates and shapes the national character (Bondanella 2001). Language plays a critical and vital part in conveying the sense of a movie, but it is not characteristic of its nationality. With reference to Anglophone cinema, for example, it is obvious that it is not such cinema that is defined by its Englishness, English being a language spoken in many countries around the world. Thus, viewers can understand the same dialogue without sharing the same ways of thinking or the same sense of what is precious. It is different from Italian, which is scarcely spoken outside Italy and the sense of Italianess which transpares from any cinematic endeavour in Italy. This is the uncomplicated starting point when suggesting a geneology of Italian cinema. Perhaps more importantly, Italian cinema facilitates the disclosure of previously unnoticed aspects of social life (Forgacs and Gundle 2007). Although not a peculiarity of Italian cinema, such transformation, possibly more important than the first, and unique to the political and social Italian landscape, is the diffusion of new, often imposed, models of social life. This is not a reference to cinematic realism, but, rather, the point here is on symbols (Mason 2003). Two tangled threads, intertwined with the development of penological discourses on prison and punishment (Melossi 2000), are discernible: the use of propaganda, specifically Fascist propaganda (Pinkus 1995), and the acknowledgement of the existence of the working class, as the most victimised in penal policies and praxis (Valier 2000). The threads identified mask the invisible rather than the visible order of violence in prison, on the basis of disciplinary rather than prohibiting powers. Efforts to conceptualise violence in prison all stand before the challenge raised by the historical development outlined by Foucault (1975) who draws attention to the invisibility of state-governed violence. Other aspects of Italian cinematic culture are relevant to encapsulate this contribution which is supported by the narratives assembled through the structuring principle of auteurism, conceiving of directors as social actors. In

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particular, 232 prison movies set in Italy have been examined, covering a time span from 1923, with Mario Volpi’s Il Grido dell’Aquila (the Eagle’s scream), a celebration of Italian Fascism to Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), a 2012 drama film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani set in Rebibbia Prison, following inmates in their rehearsals ahead of a prison performance of “Julius Caesar”. Selection for inclusion in the sample has been guided by the following main criteria such as the films had to include a depiction of prison as part of the plot narrative. In addition, only Italian-language films released in Italy were considered for inclusion in the study. Keyword searches were conducted using the Power Search feature on the IMDb, an online movie reference website. Several keywords and keyword pairings were included in the search process including crime, criminals, prison, prison guard and justice. Once this list of films was compiled, a theoretical sampling approach was used to identify and select relevant films appropriate for this project. What follows is an overview of the key themes identified.

Prison Movies and Fascist Propaganda: The Istituto Luce The cultural genealogy of Fascist propaganda in Italy embeds cinematic descriptions of the prison as the locus where the tension between the organisation and the construction of the myth of nationalism comes to life (Antolisei 1933). Those who are in prison are those who have taken grievances against the State either as petty criminals, disobeying to the State’s rules and regulations, or as political activists, openly vocal against the Fascist party with its imperialist approach and its goals of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. Through documentaries and short movies promoted and financially sponsored by the Fascist regime, the visibility of the punishment afforded to such “bad citizens” helps to support and reinforce the radical authoritarian nationalism that lays at the core of the Fascist administration. By 1924, with the creation of Istituto Luce—with Luce being the acronym for L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa, i.e. The Educational Film Union—the screening of documentaries and short movies celebrating Fascism has indeed been made mandatory by law (D’Autilia 2005; Ellena 2008). Censorship during Fascism is heavily used to avoid unwanted material to be screened (Policek 2019). The oceanic crowd gatherings (Cerchio 1940), with their very crafted choreographies, the celebrations of nationalism and the rituals to promote the supremacy of Italian Fascism, the displaying of healthy and physically strong, male and female, bodies, are all parts of the great Fascist atlas (Luzzatto 2001) which depicts individuals in prison as unworthy citizens (Modona Neppi 2007). The task of Istituto Luce becomes then not only to reproduce, but to actively produce the fascistisation of the Italian society (Ellena 2008) whose cinematic gaze embeds the new vertical social order which virtually excludes individuals in prison but instead proudly showcases prison buildings.

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Encapsulated in the diversity and apparent incoherency of its state-sponsored architectural commissions, there appears a picture of a regime whose political ideology is plural from its inception (Laura 2000). Buildings, and prison buildings are not exception, are the main focus of short movies and documentaries which held a dual emphasis on the idealised past of Roman imperial heritage, while also emphasising the allegedly modern and progressive nature of Fascism (Ricci 2008). It is the aesthetic diversity of state-sponsored architecture that Istituto Luce comes to embody, echoing the dual vision of Fascist ideology floating between the glories of the past and a vision for the future (Venturini 2015). Images of prison buildings thus become a silent reminder of the institutional view that finds diversion from conformity a real and eloquent threat to the processes of homogeneousness of the nascent mass culture that Fascism wishes to impose. In other words, prison buildings are the result of the menace to the rigidly hierarchised social order, and at the same time, they are also a subtle prompt of what the Fascist regime requires, that is loyalty and obedience. The anonymity of images, prisons are glanced at, and the cinematic eye never lingers too long on them, corresponds to the Fascist informative style that reinforces the monolithic nature of the message: prisons are there to support the need for consensus of a regime which promotes incarceration and often the death penalty for political dissidents. Prisons are visible in short documentaries and newsreels because they can please that same regime that in the 1930s has introduced a new penal code (Ferri 1921; Grispigni 1942). Approved in 1930, the penal code, known as Codice Rocco, is to be followed in 1931 by the new Regulation for Institutes of Prevention and Punishment, as per Royal Decree n. 787, 18 June 1931, only to be modified shortly after (Grandi 1941). However, law 9 May 1932, n. 527 which is composed of only five articles concerning the regulation of work inside prisons, the restructuring of prison buildings, prison accounting and institutions for the assistance of individuals who are in prison, does not include a specific financing programme for the prison building industry. Therefore, with lack of funding allocated to prisons, penal institutions start experiencing a gradual decay of the architectural model which only few years earlier constituted the pride of the Fascist regime. Prisons therefore cannot be seen anymore, in any cinematic effort which supports the Fascist propaganda. As the construction of less impressive prison buildings takes place, often in conjunction with the restoration of old buildings, prisons disappear from the big screen, only to be substituted by the verbal threat of the existence of the prison. Talks about the prison start to populate short movies and documentaries whose main topic is the Italian experience at war (Luzzatto 2001; Mariani 2018). Although individuals in prison are invisible from the screen, visibility is now accorded to those who work in prison. In 1937, a new legislation regulates the work of custody agents (Royal Decree 30 December 1937, n. 2584) which, although

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modified and adapted in the following years, remains in force until 1990 (Ricci 2008). Such regulation assigns to custody agents the task of ensuring order and discipline, in the dual sense of vigilance and vigilantism, in penal establishments, allowing them to participate symbolically in the punitive war waged by the Fascist state against those who are defined as criminals. As well as telling law-abiding citizens how to think and feel, prison-set movies from now on dictate the way in which citizens should conduct themselves. Individuals in prison, for their part, are described as degenerate beasts beyond redemption or as undeserving citizens. Those who work in prison, on the other hand, appear in movies as generally prone to good-hearted decisions that prioritise public security, thus reinforcing public perceptions of the overall need of the prison institution and of the essentialness of its further growth and harshening on two grounds: to mould good Fascist citizens and to act as deterrent against the rise of political uprising. Panopticism, the situation where the few see the many, owes its existence and ascendancy to its very mirror image that is synopticism, an equally malleable situation where the many see and contemplate the few (Mathiesen 1997). Through the new penal code, the Fascist state is represented as an organism, at one time, economic and social, political and juridical, ethical and religious, whose right to punish is the right of preservation and defence of the state. The overt eclecticism of the functions of the sentence is reflected in the establishment of strict rules which regiment prison life condensed in prison work, civil education (i.e. re-education of the good Fascist citizen) and religious practices. The prison rules for propaganda purposes and the fascistisation of prisoners are documented with particular evidence in short documentaries endorsed by the Ministry of Justice through the Istituto Luce. The conditions of prison life are visually represented in descriptions of individuals in prison—minors and adults, men and women—shaved to zero, dressed in uniform and depersonalisation jackets, attending lessons on Fascist culture, at Mass, or in the course of clumsy gymnastic or paramilitary exercises (Fassone 1981). With the new penal code, three fundamental hinges of prison life, work, civil education and religious practices, become mandatory, in the sense that any other activity is not only prohibited but subject to disciplinary sanctions. The strict separation between the prison world and the outside world and the constant isolation of individuals who are in prison, only identified with a matriculation number (instead of their surname), are epitomised within a legal framework which divides prison buildings into three distinct groups: preventive custody prisons, prisons for the execution of ordinary sentences and prisons for the execution of special (that is political) sentences. Fascist propaganda proved more interested in portraying political prisons. Anyone considered dangerous to public safety could be removed from their usual residence and sent forcibly to remote areas of central-southern Italy. From 1926 to 1943, political prisoners are about 10 thousand; those considered

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most dangerous are sent mainly to the confinement colonies of the islands of Lampedusa, Favignana, Ustica, Lipari, Ponza, Tremiti and Ventotene (Fassone 1981). Together with the remoteness of the said locations, Istituto Luce offers now the opportunity to gaze at the life of political prisoners through an array of short documentaries illustrating the duality of the punishment—reward system. For example, the following were forbidden and punished: collective complaints, disrespectful behaviour, the use of blasphemous words, games, possession of playing cards, songs, resting in the camp bed during the day when not justified by illness, refusal to attend church services, possession of a needle, a pencil stump, reading or possession of books or periodicals with political content or with images of nudes or half-naked women (Fortuna 2004).

Neorealism in Prison: The “Imprisoned” Working Class The post-war period of the late 1940s until the early 1960s, years marked by the apex of Italy’s economic miracle (Forgacs and Gundle 2007), is characterised by a political, social and economic reorganisation reflected also in different penal policies aligned to the reconfiguration of economic and political relations of post-monarchical and post-Fascist Italy, one consequence of which is the increasing polarisation of rich and poor (Policek et al. 2016). With the enactment of the Italian Constitution in 1948, the rehabilitative aspect of sentencing becomes a full constitutional principle. This is, however, a synthesis and, at the same time, the start of a wide debate about the function of sentencing which the cinematic gaze of the time is willing to take on, by showcasing now the prison as the locus of punishment for the already suffering poor in society. The Italian economic miracle has exacerbated the labelling of some communities and identifiable groups of people as “no hopers”, “underclass”, “dangerous” and/or “criminal” individuals, feeding back into the very problems of marginalisation and unemployment which often lie at the heart of criminality. That is, the structural transformations in the Italian political economy are refracted socially in ways that reinforce negative images of, and the repressive law enforcement practices directed at, the most vulnerable sections of the community. Such processes serve to entrench further the unemployability, alienation and social outsider status of members of such disfranchised communities characterised by permanent structural unemployment and underemployment. In principle, the structure and organisation of prison in post-war Italy were geared towards re-socialisation, that is the prison environment must be organised in accordance with the social need of the re-education of the offender (Ravagnani et al. 2018). In other words, this is the cultural and theoretical context that gives birth to Article 27 of the Italian Constitution which provides in the last two paragraphs, on the one hand, a ban on the

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death penalty (paragraph 4) as well as inhuman punishment (paragraph 3), but also that punishment “must aim at the rehabilitation of the convicted person”. The reality is that prisons in post-war Italy are inhabited by heavily stigmatised as “crime prone” individuals, who are the most structurally vulnerable, the most dispossessed, the poorest and the most deprived people in society, all funnelled into prison in an attempt to rebuild the country into socially heterogeneous neighbourhoods where law-abiding citizens in full employment can contribute to the tangible forthcoming economic Italian success. Within this background, the cinematic genre which has become most emblematic of post-war Italian national cinema, both internally and externally, is Neorealism. Although a considerable amount of critical analysis exists (Sorlin 2006) which engraves the innovativeness of Neorealist films to their newness in cinematic style and narrative form, leaving Neorealism still predominately encased within a formal or aesthetic analytical shell, the identification of Neorealism as a decisive counter to the cinema under Fascism is too simplistic in its reduction to a reactionary movement. Italian Neorealist cinema is important because of its attempts to look at the prison as an opportunity to tell the story of the most oppressed in society. The most acute unifying factor in prison-set Neorealist films is the attempt to challenge the “hybridization of culture”: this includes the tendency both to represent less affluent social classes across diverse regions (specifically a novel emphasis on the working class and the South) and to illuminate the exchange of traditional social roles brought on by the war. More than technique or narrative, Neorealist films, via their dramatisation of endemic and problematic cultural, regional and class differences between North and South, city and country, present a powerful populist counterargument to the coercive and homogenising vision of nationalism under Fascism (Venturini 2015). Criminals are not those who took grievances against the state, but those who inhabit the prison because they cannot be part of the state. They are not simply marginal to the labour market, they are literally excluded from it—by virtue of family history, structural restrictions on education and job choices, geographical location, racial and ethnic segregation, and so on. In addition to absolute unemployment, marginality in post-war Italy is also constituted through permanent part-time work, through seasonal or irregular employment combined with unemployment, through minimum or sub-standard conditions at, near or even below the poverty line, through short-term contract employment and through the privatisation of services, prison included (Policek et al. 2016). This comprises a condition of existence for a substantial proportion of working-class Italian adults and for young people too. The class situation of individuals in prison is ultimately defined by the contours of unemployment and the general status of wage labour in the economy (Melossi 2000). Through the injection of local and regional social realities into cinema especially when tacking unemployment and criminality,

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Neorealism exposes the fallacies of Italian unity while simultaneously offering a radically new concept of nationalism based on class consciousness, cultural heterogeneity and regional complementation in a post-war environment characterised by the widespread reconstruction of the nation’s politics, economy and culture. Thus, Neorealism, in a very Gramscian sense, serves as representative of a “molecular transformation” of the existing Italian state, standing in contrast to Fascism’s intended project of the wholesale creation of a new form of the nation. Incorporated in such a reading is a necessity to position the divergent political paths that inform the contrasting strategies of constructing nationalism based on either force or consent. Prison-set movies therefore are largely the result of the combination of multiple characteristics of Italian society, including the lack of a national-popular literature, low literacy rates (especially in the South), low nation-scale-oriented periodical subscription and readership, the absence of television, high levels of film production, importation and cinema attendance and high rates of theatre-screen creation, particularly in the South as per Catholic Church sponsorship. Together, these attributes bespeak of the necessity to use film in general and prison-set film in particular, in an inquiry cantered on the contextualisation and nature of representations vital to this specific period of Italian history (Sorlin 2006). The presentation of poverty and unemployment that characterised the Italian post-war environment also functions as a great social equaliser in its suggestion that all citizens, regardless of class, region, and urban and rural location, are confronted by the same struggle to survive. Rather than language or a shared relationship to history, the primary basis of Italian unity is transferred to the collective task of rebuilding both the physical and social landscapes following the war. The cinematic gaze at the prison is therefore a reminder of the endemic nature of poverty and destitution at the same time, breaking down social and regional stratifications and fostering drastically new concepts of national unity that allow for the retention of cultural heterogeneity. Interestingly, the cinematic view of the prison, through the uncompromisingly realistic presentation of the common experiences of post-war poverty, unemployment and fractured families that Italian Neorealist cinema offers, omits the experience of women as offenders, only to pay attention to women in prison as objects that excite viewers leading to the reinforcement of the variegated neo-liberal ideologies all supporting the spectacle of imprisonment (Policek, this volume). While embedded in a specific period of post-war Italian history, the cinematic techniques ascribed to Neorealism continue to be utilised for their contestatory modes of presentation. In the realm of representation, realism has become a salient mechanism for sociocultural interrogation. This is where the legacy of Neorealism shines brightest, specifically with reference to representations of “social truths” on screen.

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A Contemporary “Usage” of Prison-Set Movies The prison system only comes back to the attention of Parliament in 1960 with a bill presented by the then Minister of Justice, stressing the relevance of the individualisation of re-educational treatment based on observations of the prisoner’s personality. Although never enacted and abandoned in 1963 at the closing of the legislature, the contents of the bill are very interesting, because they planned new elements—educators and social service centres—as well as the introduction of probation (Ravagnani et al. 2018). Indeed, the purpose and the rationale for punishment have transformed and improved significantly since then, shifting from a retributive and deterrent perspective to a re-educational model (embedded in the principle of resocialisation or rehabilitation) (Ravagnani et al. 2018). Prison-set movies mirror the new direction of penal policies and practices in the country (Melossi 2000). Viewers witness a dichotomy in the usage of prison-set movies and have the possibility of looking at the prison both from outside, with a voyeuristic and at time pornographic view of life in prison, and from inside out, where art therapy is the chance for inmates to validate themselves as human beings longing to acquire citizenship status again. It all starts with a movie of rare beauty, the 1959 Renato Castellani’s Nella città l’inferno (In the city, hell) one of the few instances in which female detention is represented in Italian cinema, interpreted by the talented Anna Magnani and Giulietta Masina. Another milestone in Italian prison cinematic history is afforded by Cittadino in attesa di giudizio (Citizen awaiting trial) directed in 1971 by Nanni Loy, starring Alberto Sordi. To follow there are the most popular Mery Forever (directed by Marco Risi in 1989) and Vallanzasca (directed by the actor turned director Michele Placido in 2010). Both were positively received by both cinema critics and the general public. Here again, the theme of “social truths” already emphasised by Neorealism emerges in the background of a political penal landscape which is characterised by prisoners’ rights violations which have drawn the attention of in turn Amnesty International, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights (Labita vs Italy, App. No. 26772/95, 6 April 2000). At the same time, prison-set movies acquire a different and much more powerful presence, when artistic endeavours are “managed” by individuals in prisons (Tzanelli et al. 2005). The first of the most recent, beautiful example of the power of art, which becomes a very strong motivating and identifying element for people who are in prison, is represented by a theatrical workshop held at the prison of Rebibbia, in Rome, where a select group of individuals responsible for very serious crimes, stage Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. Directed in 2010 by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Cesare deve morire (Caesar must die) becomes the threshold in measuring the impact and relevance of contemporary “usage” of prison-set movies in Italy. To follow there are shot movies portraying another reality not represented by Italian cinema that of juvenile prison.

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Particularly noteworthy, is the recent documentary by Claudio Casazza, Another Me, which has already received several awards. In this valuable work, the director manages to deal with the thorny and complex issue of sexual crimes, portraying the reality of a particular psycho-educational treatment lasting a year and carried out precisely with a select group of prisoners responsible for these kinds of crimes (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2005). In the last two decades, Italy has witnessed an exponential increase in the therapeutic use of cinema as art therapy for the benefit of individuals incarcerated and as a means of denouncing violations of prisoners’ rights. For instance, in many penal institutions, the screening of films, dealing with issues relevant to those who are in prison, has both a cathartic and educational purpose. In the small reality of the Penal Colony of Isili in the island of Sardinia, for example, cinema is utilised as a means of therapeutic setting (Ravagnani et al. 2018). In the penal institution of Dozza, in Bologna, individuals in prison have organised a Festival about movies which deals with the prison, with a clear purpose to facilitate the engagement of the general public and with the clear aim to bring the prison outside its walls (Ravagnani et al. 2018). The benefits of cinematic art therapy are numerous: through the usage of cinema, it is possible to sublimate aggression and violence amongst individuals in prison. Cinema promotes non-verbal communication (Wilson and O’Sullivan 2005), even while the individual in prison does not want to talk about feelings and ideas which might leave him or her vulnerable and permits the person in prison to express their feelings in a manner acceptable to both the prison and outside culture. Non-verbal communication is also important when addressing issues pertaining to a low educational level, illiteracy and other obstacles to verbal communication and cognitive development (Chouliaraki 2010) and foreign nationals who are in prison so that language is not a barrier. Most importantly, when individuals in prison are involved in movie production, they are able to re-establish an identity above that of the person who is in prison and learn skills which are transferable upon release (Bennett 2008).

Conclusion The imagery of punishment allows audiences to project unconsciously the guilt and insecurities of everyday life onto weak minorities of strangers, that is individuals in prison. The inherent artificiality of media exposure to prison helps neutralise the incipient sense of personal danger, without preventing evocation of it as real and grave (Carrabine 2012). This is because viewers are afforded the dual experience of suffering as if they were present to the horrifying instance and detachment by virtue of their real absence from the scene itself. But insofar as condemnations and punishments do not follow logically from crime and deviance, they do not intrinsically embody aspirations for a crime-free society and perfectly orderly prisons. To put the point differently,

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the unconscious functions of punishment may only be served so long as there is a continuous supply of suitable enemies, being those who take grievances against the Fascist state in the 1930s Italy, or those who are by default criminals because they are unemployed in post-war Italy or those who are the foreigners in contemporary Italy (Melossi 2000), thereby justifying the drift towards ideological repression (Wacquant 2009). These subjects of representation are all, albeit in differing ways, related to concepts of belonging, identity, inclusion/exclusion and citizenship. And precisely for this reason, future research endeavours on the link between cinema and prison should focus on how cinema can assist the interests of the powerful by operating, not as a tool of propaganda, but as a tool of democracy so that citizens’ rights are respected and protected from violations.

References Antolisei, Francesco. 1933. “Pene e misure di sicurezza.” In Rivista Italiana di Diritto e Procedura Penale, 129–149. Tipografia Operaia. Bennett, Jamie. 2008. “Reel Life After Prison: Repression and Reform in Films About Release from Prison.” Probation Journal 55, no. 4: 353–368. Bondanella, Peter E. 2001. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Carrabine, Eamonn. 2012. “Telling Prison Stories: The Spectacle of Punishment and the Criminological Imagination.” In The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment, edited by L. K. Cheliotis, 47–72. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cerchio, Fernando. 1940. Servizio di guerra, in «Cinema», 10 luglio 1941. 21 Nota di servizio del 9 marzo 1940 cit. in Schwarz, “Fotografia del Duce possibilmente con l’elmetto”. Cheliotis, Leonidas K. 2010. “The Sociospatial Mechanics of Domination: Transcending the ‘Exclusion/Inclusion’ Dualism.” Law and Critique 21, no. 2: 131–145. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2010. “Acting on Vulnerable Others: Ethical Agency in Media Discourse.” In Roots, Rites and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good, edited by L. K. Cheliotis, 108–124. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dalle Vacche, Angela. 2014. The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema. Vol. 179. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. D’Autilia, Gabriele. 2005. Il fascismo senza passione. L’Istituto Luce. in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia, a c. di Giovanni De Luna et al., vol. 1, t. I, Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945). Torino: Einaudi. Ellena, Liliana. 2008. Rifare gli italiani. Spazi, appartenenze e identità nello sguardo del Luce, in L’Italia del Novecento. La fotografia e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini, De Luna, G., D’Autilia, G., & Criscenti, L. (2005). 1.cit., pp. 203–277. Fassone, Elvio. 1981. La pena detentiva in Italia dall’800 alla riforma penitenziaria, Bologna 1980, in partic. pp. 53–67. «La questione criminale», 1, nr. monografico: Il codice Rocco cinquant’anni dopo. Ferri, Enrico. 1921. Relazione al progetto preliminare del codice penale, «La scuola positiva», pp. 1–130. Milano: Francesco Vallardi.

742  N. POLICEK Forgacs, David, and Stephen Gundle. 2007. Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Fortuna, Francesco Saverio. 2004. Il carcere duro: negazione dell’ideologia penitenziaria, «Rassegna penitenziaria e criminologica», I, pp. 63–67. Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Golding, Peter, and Graham Murdock. 2000. “Culture, Communications and Political Economy.” In Mass Media and Society. Rev. 3rd ed., edited by J. Curran and M. Gurevitch, 70–92. London: Arnold. Grandi, Dino. 1941. Bonifica umana: decennale delle leggi penali e della riforma penitenziaria. 2voll. Roma: Ministero di grazia e giustizia. Grispigni, Filippo. 1942. La funzione della pena nel pensiero di Benito Mussolini, «Rivista penale» , pp. 651 e segg. Unione Tipografica. Jewkes, Yvonne. 2013. “Creating a Stir? Prisons, Popular Media and the Power to Reform.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 137–153. Cullompton: Willan. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. New York: Columbia University Press. Laura, Ernesto G. 2000. Le stagioni dell’aquila: storia dell’Istituto Luce. Vol. 34, 11–35. Roma: Ente dello spettacolo. Luzzatto, Sergio. 2001. L’immagine del duce. Mussolini nelle fotografie dell’Istituto Luce, Roma: Editori Riuniti, e Id., “Niente tubi di stufa sulla testa”. L’autoritratto del fascismo, in L’Italia del Novecento, a c. di De Luna et al. cit., pp. 117–201. Mariani, Andrea. 2018. “The Cineguf Years: Amateur Cinema and the Shaping of a Film Avant-Garde in Fascist Italy (1934–1943).” Film History 30, no. 1: 30–57. Mason, Paul. 2003. “The Screen Machine: Cinematic Representations of Prison.” In Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice, edited by Paul Mason, 278–297. Cullompton: Willan. Mathiesen, Thomas. 1997. “The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’ Revisited.” Theoretical Criminology 1, no. 2: 215–234. Melossi, Dario. 2000. “Changing Representations of the Criminal.” British Journal of Criminology 40, no. 2: 296–320. Modona Neppi, Guido. 2007. Diritto e giustizia penale nel periodo fascista, in Penale giustizia potere. Ricerche, storiografie. Per ricordare Mario Sbriccoli, a cura di L. Lacchè, C. Latini, P. Marchetti, M. Meccarelli, Macerata, pp. 341–378. Pinkus, Karen. 1995. Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising Under Fascism. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press. Policek, Nicoletta. 2019. “Censorship.” In The Sage International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society, edited by D. Merskin. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Policek, Nicoletta, Luisa Ravagnani, and Romano Carlo Alberto. 2016. Paradigmi di ingiustizia e privatizzazione della pena in Italia [Paradigms of Injustice and the Privatizing of Punishment in Italy], Rassegna Italiana di Criminologia, no. 1: 59–69. Ravagnani, Luisa, Alessandro Zaniboni, and Nicoletta Policek. 2018. “Breach Processes in the Context of Alternative Measures in Italy.” In The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, edited by M. Boone and N. Maguire, 198–210. London: Routledge.

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Ricci, Steven. 2008. Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922–1943. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rocco, Alfredo. 1930. Relazione a S. M. il Re del Ministro Guardasigilli (Rocco) presentata nell’udienza del 19 ottobre-VIII per l’approvazione del testo definitivo del codice penale, in Codice penale e codice di procedura penale (R. D. 19 ottobre 1930-VIII) preceduti dalle rispettive Relazioni ministeriali, Torino, pp. 3–137. Rocco, Alfredo. 1931. Relazione a S. M. il Re del Ministro Guardasigilli (Rocco) per l’applicazione del testo definitivo del regolamento per gli istituti di prevenzione e di pena, «Rivista di diritto penitenziario», 3, pp. 581–705. Sorlin, Pierre. 2006. Italian National Cinema. New York: Routledge. Surette, Ray. 2014. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. Toronto: Nelson Education. Tester, Keith. 2001. Compassion, Morality and the Media. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Tzanelli, Rodanthi, Majid Yar, and Martin O’Brien. 2005. “‘Con Me If You Can’ Exploring Crime in the American Cinematic Imagination.” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 1: 97–117. Valier, Claire. 2000. “Looking Daggers: A Psychoanalytic Reading of the Scene of Punishment.” Punishment & Society 2, no. 4: 379–394. Venturini, Alfonso. 2015. La politica cinematografica del regime fascista. Rome: Carocci editore. Wacquant, Loic. 2001. Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh. Punishment & Society 3, no. 1: 95–134. Wacquant, Loic. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The New Government of Social Insecurity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Wilson, David, and Sean O’Sullivan. 2005. Re-theorizing the Penal Reform Functions of the Prison Film: Revelation, Humanization, Empathy and Benchmarking. Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 4: 471–491. Zamponi-Falasca, Simonetta. 1997. Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. Vol. 28. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ulucanlar from Prison to Museum: Contestation on Memory and the Future in Turkey Mine Gencel Bek

Introduction Ulucanlar prison, where many political prisoners were imprisoned, tortured and even executed during different eras of Turkish history, has been the subject of many memoirs, poems, popular songs, and films. Its rebirth as a museum, in 2011, has also been critically analyzed by social scientists. After tracing the official narrative of the museum, this chapter analyzes how the visitors of the museum, some of whom had been imprisoned there in the past, read and signify the museum. Visitors’ notes, participant observation in the museum, individual face-to-face interviews, focus group interviews, and the news on the museum provide main sources of this analysis.

Museums as Memory Sites and Transformation Studies on memory museums have an interdisciplinary character traversing museum studies, architecture, media, and cultural studies. The increase in the interest in the issues of emotion, trauma, mourning, confession, reconciliation, forgiveness, and therapy as well as the increase in both the number of such museums and the demands to memorialize and remember in different forms, have contributed to the increase in the studies on memory (Worcman

M. Gencel Bek (*)  University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_46

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and Garde-Hansen 2016, 27). Memory museums have changed with time. The early memory museums as memory sites were about presenting and facing the past while newer versions aim at providing a dialogic space for different citizens and encouraging participation. When authoritarian and oppressive regimes change, and laws become more democratic, human mentality does not automatically change with them. Questioning, active participation, negotiation, and feelings are important in transformation, and this process can be helped with an innovative and interdisciplinary perspective. Elazar Balkan (2016) notes the importance of historical dialogue as a process rather than an outcome and suggests that we need a new methodology to develop a new bridge between the two different spheres of academy and advocacy. Bix Gabriel (2012), by relying on the experience of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (which has 260 participants from 47 countries), argues that memory sites are not only about the past but are also places for citizens to discuss and even act on current issues. Similarly, David Dean (2013) argues that museums can contribute to conflict resolution and social justice by providing active visitorship, engagement, learning, interaction, and discussion. Recent studies about human rights have placed stress on the importance of museums (Giesbrecht and Curle 2015). During the last two decades, human rights museums have opened in different parts of the world supporting a human rights culture and exposing violations (Busby 2015, 1). The focus on the term “museum for human rights” instead of human rights museum is in parallel with the changing understanding of memory sites. While the older museums aim to document and show the violation of rights, the new generation of museums, such as CHRM, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, support human rights and victims (Failler and Simpson 2015). According to Carter (2015), this is the common aspect of both human rights and memory museums, going beyond representation or commemoration to develop ways for visitor citizens to act concretely. It does not guarantee every museum visitor being transformed into a human rights advocate; but as Rasmussen (2002) suggests, visitors can articulate the museum experience in different ways, develop different positions, or continue with the same position after the interaction with the museum. What matters is to create a chance for dialogue and encounter. Digital media and technology are now being used to increase these chances. Leon Tan (2012) argues that, in museums of the networked-age, physical objects are largely replaced by digital collections (visual, audio, or information pieces in different forms). In some, more conventional media and technologies continue to exist alongside the digital (Keightley and Schlesinger 2014). After summarizing the developments in the participatory museum, we should consider the need for research to become more participatory as well. This means not only going beyond reading the museum as a text and including the visitors’ dimensions but even designing the research in a participatory way that contributes to the struggles on human rights and memory.

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The existing studies on Ulucanlar prison museum mostly rely on the critical readings of researchers (e.g., Çaylı 2011; Herzog 2013; Kelekçi and Akbaş 2015). This study shares the critical position of the previous studies but also includes the signification process of the museum’s visitors as well as being inspired by the participatory action research. Studies on museums as sites of memory and remembering in Turkey have increased in recent years. Most of them focus on the sites that are not yet museums and analyze the past events and political discussions in parallel with the demands of transforming sites of massacre into museums. For example, Eray Çaylı (2014) considers the demands for the Madımak hotel, where the Sivas massacre took place in 1993, resulting in 39 deaths, to be transformed into a museum. Several human rights organizations and networks are also attempting to get Diyarbakır prison,1 the site of severe human rights violations, made a site of memory and conscience. However, let us leave aside the establishment of new ones, as even the limited number of the current sites of conscience have been attacked in the era of the increasingly authoritarian regime of the AKP. Among these attacks, police destroyed the monument commemorating the Roboski massacre in Diyarbakır.2 The 10th October monument, commemorating the massacre of 100 peace demonstrators by an ISIS suicide bomber, has been attacked several times.3 So too has a human rights monument in Ankara where the protesters, dismissed from their job by decree, gathered to demand back their jobs, were surrounded by steel barriers after the two leading protestors, Nuriye Gülmen (an academic) and Semih Özakça (a teacher) (both had protested their dismissal from their job with emergency decree by hunger strike) were imprisoned.4 The statue in Kızıltepe to the memory of 12-year-old Uğur Kaymaz, killed by the police in 2004, was destroyed in June 2017.5

Ulucanlar Museum in the Official Narrative Ulucanlar, founded in 1925, was the first prison of the Republic of Turkey and was the site of the execution of 18 prisoners over 81 years. In 2000, 32 people were killed and dozens injured in the “Return to Life” operation, carried out by the state in 20 prisons where prisoners on hunger strike protested against the isolated and controlled spaces of new F-type prisons. Later, in November 2016, the ECHR ruled that such operations violated the prisoners’ rights.6 Ulucanlar, one of the prisons where these operations were carried out, closed in 2006. After 3 years, Altındağ Municipality designated the prison as a museum, which opened in June 2011. According to Ankara Chamber of Architects President Tezcan Karakuş Candan, the Chamber of Architects, which had been included in the process at the beginning of the restoration, was later removed from the process and its members were excluded from the opening (5 August 2016, interview with Ankara Chamber of Architects President Tezcan Karakuş Candan). The impression I received

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during the interview and from working in the Library of the Chamber of Architects was that the work they did during the period they were involved was in line with the understanding of the current-generation museum, summarized at the beginning of the article. For example, it was stated that the aim of the contest called Urban Dreams, through which the Ankara Chamber of Architects approached nearly 600 students, was not so much a competition but a way to create public opinion about participation in and the subject of the museum. A memory book was created, and the works from the competition were exhibited at a festival. Even though it was better than becoming a shoe shop (an option mentioned in the process), some felt the current, restored version lost its spirit, as was expressed in criticism found in the visitors’ notebook and among focus group participants in this research. Other institutions shared and voiced this criticism, for example, the Association of Revolutionary 78s,7 an initiative to struggle and document against the injustices of the state, paramilitary and the military coup of 12 September 1980, argued that the prisoners’ spirit had been destroyed along with the history and traces of the inmates by the restoration works carried out by the Altındağ Municipality in Ulucanlar.8 Some participants in the study agreed. The museum administration, however, argued during the interview that the restoration had not changed the place much and at the same time emphasized the “touristic” character of the museum, mentioning even specifically the award from TripAdvisor communicated in the media. The official narrative of the museum can be also traced through the news published on the Web site9 of Altındağ Municipality, which currently owns and manages the museum. The results of the content analysis of the news of Ulucanlar Prison museum on the Web site of Altındağ Municipality during the period of 2007–2016 reveal that the Web site contained mostly news (203 news items) of official-historical anniversary events of “national” and “religious” value. Thus, Ulucanlar is subsumed by the narrative of official history, with the rituals and practices of Sunni-Islam and events that reinforce the nation-state myth (e.g., remembering the poet and national-anthem writer Mehmet Akif Ersoy, and the anniversary of August 30th Victory Festival). Special days such as Mothers’ Day and Teachers’ Day are intertwined with these nationalist and religious frameworks that link motherhood and martyrdom with the AKP. The main actors in the news are the mayor and AKP politicians. The second news frame was the touristification and commercialization of the museum (144 items). The memories here become souvenirs. The motto “Revolutionaries are immortal” is listed in the guestbook but the immortal becomes a “souvenir” for sale in the museum shop. In the third frame, Ulucanlar has become Altındağ Municipality’s venue for welcoming official delegates (111 items). It has now become like Hamamönü (which is a renovated and gentrified region of an old neighborhood in Ankara) transformed into a welcoming place for the visitors of the Altındağ Municipality.

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The topic least communicated is about the museum as a place of memory, where human rights were violated. There is a form of commemoration (just 5 items) where mostly right-wing prisoners are remembered.

Objections to the Official Narrative? Remembering and Identification in Visitors’ Notes Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2005), by relying on the earlier literature on history and memory states that history is also a matter of establishing identity. Our relationship with the past is not limited to factual knowledge or intellectual understanding; it is also a matter of thinking and empathizing. The museums, like historical heritage sites, historical novels, and films, empathize with the arts; they recreate dreams of past emotions and experiences; the grief-stricken grieve, and victory is celebrated. By establishing our own identity, we define our world. With our knowledge of the past, our feelings are intertwined with our identity, sometimes in a fraught relationship (2005, 22–23). The visitor notebooks in Ulucanlar Prison are important in terms of both showing these emotions and established identities and being attempts to disrupt the above-mentioned official narrative in a limited space. The first volume of the notebooks on the museum, opened 13 days after the opening date of the museum on 16 June 2011, was analyzed during the month of June 2016. With the inspiration of the participatory action research technique, the coding sheet was shared with the library staff using the coding guidelines. The dominant rhetoric in the museum notebooks relied on the greetings conveyed to the revolutionary leaders, remembrance messages, the remembrance of resumption and hope, and remaining cultural traces. The executed leftist student leader Deniz Gezmiş was the most quoted person and received 49 comments. It is possible to list slogans written under the following suggested headings: Remembering and Immortalizing; Opposed-Opponents; SupportedImagined; and Resistance and Hope: Remembering and Immortalizing:We will not forget you We do not forget comrades, we will not forget Revolutionary Martyrs are Immortal They Live In Our Heart, Not Dead. Opposed-Opponents:Damn American Imperialist Collaborators. Damn Imperialism, Damn Fascism Damn Fascist Order Supported-Imagined:Live Communism Live Marxist Leninist Ideology Salvation of the people of Turkey Revolutionary Struggle for Life, Damn Fascism This Revolutionary Fire will not be Extinguished

750  M. GENCEL BEK One Way Revolution. Revolution and Socialism. Workers and Peasants. Resistance and Hope:We Will Take The Sun Close to the sun We will get the sun. It will be morning in our country even though death does not leave us. We Will Continue Walking Your Way We will win There are days to see. Living is Resistance

In the analysis of visitor comments, likes and criticisms were examined in two categories: of prison museums, in general, and of prison itself. There were very few people who liked prison, though one person wanted the death penalty to come back, and another wrote “They should have thought when they committed crime.” The majority were critical of the prison (108 comments). These included criticism from the left wing of politics, which is also evident in the slogans, as well as defending the freedom of thought and liberalism against the death penalty, and religious references (“God do not lead any people here,” “God save them”). The criticism of the museum focuses on the fact that the original condition has been distorted (36 comments) by the restoration work (21 comments). There were also those who complained that entrance was not free (7 comments), that the structure was “making money from bitter history” (6 comments). The majority said that the museum should continue to exist in spite of all criticism. The function of the museum was expressed as remembrance, shedding light, enlightening future generations, and confrontation (126 comments). There were some who brought their children “not to interfere political events and actions” and “to teach them a lesson” here (12 comments). There was also one that said that “the left has suffered, and the right has suffered and it is a shame for all.” These issues were discussed in a more critical perspective in our focus group interviews below. There were significant differences in terms of language and discourse between how men and women wrote in the museum notebook. Unlike the men, women expressed their feelings rather than avoiding them. It could be about political prisoners executed in prison, or about other prisoners they knew personally. For example, one woman wrote in the notebook a letter to her father who had been in prison in the past and had died.

Claiming Memory Against Official Narrative The focus group interviews on 25 June 2016 lasted two and half hours with 21 participants and a museum coordinator and resulted in 70 pages of transcript. Ten of the participants were women, and the range of age and

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occupation was quite broad. Before the interviews, the researcher made efforts to increase the diversity of participants deliberately and made public announcements by using different channels. Yet the participants were not so different from each other in terms of political tendencies; they were mostly from a leftist, socialist, or social democrat background. The majority of participants mentioned that they avoided visiting the museum on their own (only 3 visited alone) because of the emotional stress caused by being there. Five participants (3 of them had been in Ulucanlar) had experienced imprisonment at different periods of their life. Three participants had had friends or relatives in the prison. One participant’s mother, father, uncle, and friends were imprisoned in Ulucanlar. Six people visited the museum more than once. (This situation or practice of visiting the museum more than once also was expressed in the visitor’s notebook.) FK and KHO are 2 participants quoted here in greater length: FK was in different prisons for political reasons from 1981 to 1996 (twice in Ulucanlar, in 1986 and 1994). KHO was in Ulucanlar prison in 1991.

Deleting Memory and Sorrows Through Touristification? I announced the main meeting hall of the museum as the interview venue. This is called the VIP hall. Since there are other meeting halls, I tried to welcome each participant at the gate rather than specifically mentioning the name VIP. This sensitivity was appropriate as can be seen through the interviews: FK: Now we are sitting in VIP, are we not? This is VIP, is it not? MGB (me): Yes we are. This is why I could not announce the name clearly as VIP. FK: In fact we are NIP (Not important people). How did it happen? We do not know… MGB: Yes we are sitting in VIP as NIP.

What is at stake here, as can be seen in the words of museum managers and the news which has been analyzed, the Ulucanlar prison museum is being made increasingly touristic and becoming a site of prestige for Altındağ Local Council. These words of a participant whose many relatives and friends were imprisoned are in parallel with my feelings after seeing the writings: Now this is my first time since it became a museum… When entering the museum, there is a notice that says that tourism is at its heart, I am so demoralized by that. (HB)

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This touristic dimension, which was expressed by the museum coordinator in individual interviews, was repeated in the focus group interview and received a negative reaction from the other participants: We are the 9th in Turkey in terms of visitor numbers. (ZK)

Touristification and commercialization were addressed together as issues; such things as charging money at the entrance, the existence of commercial cafes, a shop selling the memories of revolutionary leaders, and renting the spaces were specifically referred to (Fig. 1). We should also note the mentality to change the women’s ward to the restaurant now. (FK)

For me, also, using of a space for exhibition which was previously a women’s ward is trying to express their idea of womanhood: producing and exhibiting traditional style knitting; sewing handmade artisan crafts for homes and the bridal dowry; bride costumes; and so forth (Figs. 2 and 3). Some participants also think that the museum is organized with a masculine mentality that excludes women. There is a total absence of any information on the woman MP Leyla Zana, who was imprisoned here. Other absences in the museum space and its Web site are those of the Kurds and of children. The children’s prison riot against their treatment is

Fig. 1  Museum shop

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Fig. 2  A general view of women’s exhibitions in the previous women’s ward

Fig. 3  Bed room embroidery and hand-craft in women’s exhibitions in the previous women’s ward

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under-represented, although in the audio guide that visitors can rent there is a brief reference to the film Duvar (Yılmaz Güney, 1983) which is about the riot. Traces of child prisoners are, however, absent from the museum. As Kavanagh (1996) mentions, museums are spaces in which history is both remembered and forgotten. A perceived loss of authenticity after the restoration of the prison museum was the predominant theme during the interview with the Ankara Chamber of Architects. The new form seemed “too nice,” “like a holiday village.” What happened was “alienation,” destroying the memory. The problem with destroying memories is that it erases of the sufferings of the past. You really were feeling what had been experienced here when you visited the earlier version before being turned into the museum. But when you walk around here now, there’s no trace of sorrows which were experienced here. (HK) I wish the earlier version would be protected. They destroy our memories and memories. (NE) When I first visited the museum, I felt this: It was too nice. I mean, it is something like that makes people want to sleep… So beautiful… like a holiday village. But those who know this place are very aware that this was not like this. I observed this: We are alienated from the place we live or to the geography more generally. Since we are alienated, that space is no longer for us to produce memories and information. We cannot create anything from this. I saw that this is what was done in this museum. This place has a political identity. This museum cannot produce information or memory. That bothered me. This is not specifically new in Turkey. It’s not related to the museum. The burning of Ankara after the dispatch of the Armenians, the entire Armenian neighborhood … It is the logic of destroying the same memory. The destruction of Kurdistan, after sending people by tanks … All these things destroy the memory. I’m here because I feel uncomfortable. What can we do? … (Yİ)

Hiding and Distorting Resistance and Struggle The museum has some displays where the human rights violations and torture applied to prisoners in the cells were reconstructed in tableaux using wax figures and recorded voices: “Don’t do it. Don’t hit me.” For me, as a visitor, it created a sense of the state as powerful while the prisoners seemed weak and oppressed and unable to resist, despite the stories of the heroism of the leftist political prisoners. Balkanay (2017, 171) argues that, through these talks and voice effects, the “passive” visitor is called on to adopt the role of the guardian or the prison manager. Our interviewees who had been prisoners also challenged this representation of the past and talked about the times when the political prisoners were active: They built a garden, planted trees, vegetables and fruit, wrote poems, slogans, and drew pictures on the walls, created a library, cooked their own food, and created a sports hall and a workshop for music, art, and chess.

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And here none of these are mentioned. Not seeing those unbelievably destroys the social solidarity of the period. Now you enter. Here are crying prisoners as if it was their fate; they have surrendered. These are the views… [in fact] prisons were the places where political prisoners were recreating themselves. I could experience and see that in my own life. It was the period of my life when I read the most books and had the most political discussions. (KHO)

This process ended (as been explained above) with the transformation of the prisons into F-type prisons. The state’s so-called Return to Life operations, according to the interviewee, finished this process: I think it was like the process of destroying all the examples of solidarity that started in 85 and prevailed up to 90. (TMA)

During my visits to the museum, I objectively observed a distorted extract of the news about Ulucanlar prison resistance being exhibited. Even the editor10 himself had admitted that the information at the news headlined “5 min Before” was not accurate, and that the photograph taken belongs to another time. The news, which says that “[t]he revolutionaries took sticks, and banners in their hands, and captured the prison,” seeks to build the “legitimacy” through which the government seeks to justify the “reorganization” of the prisons. Hürriyet newspaper itself admitted that the newspaper was misinformed by the police. This information had already been communicated to the museum administration before the focus group work, and it was also asked about in the focus group interviews with the museum authorities. MGB: I already informed the museum about that, … did you stop that news from being exhibited in the museum? Museum administrator: Your note was taken to be evaluated … We learned from you that it was wrong. As an alternative to removing this news item completely, some participants said that a reprint could be added to the news and that the mistake could be shown. Later, when I went again, I saw the same news still hanging on the wall. Thus, the explanation from the museum management (“evaluation”) was a simple “public relations” strategy that was defiant or, probably, hierarchically communicated to the superiors but not considered appropriate; they did not share it. There is a critique in the literature that reveals that the media is increasingly fictional and that elites represent and control history, and furthermore that history is largely ignored by the news (Edy 1999). Zelizer (2008) argues that, unlike memory research that focuses on “there and then,” journalism focuses on “here and now.” In Turkey, the situation is even more complex since even mainstream journalism has been largely abolished, basic professional principles are not followed, and journalism is used by political power

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for manipulation (Gencel Bek 2019). Already-existing memory associations are trying to fill the past and present void through their own platforms. For example, the Justice, Truth, and Memory Center11 continues to engage in advocacy work to include and document human rights violations, including forced disappearances, while pursuing legal studies for this purpose. There are also other smaller memory initiatives as well as human rights associations and alternative media initiatives.

Reconciliation with the Past? Lesson of What? One of the most discussed issues in the focus group was whether Ulucanlar prison should be a museum, and with what purpose? Even though the great majority of interviewees agreed that it should be a museum, mainly as a lesson, others differed about what was understood by “lesson.” According to some visitors’ notes and during the talks with visitors and the officers working in the museum, the lesson to learn is to “look at how left and right conflict brought the country to such a terrible situation.” What was absent in their accounts was the dimension which is valid for all human rights museums: the state using violence and torture on citizens, various human right violations, and even violating their right to live by executing them. The whole narrative of the museum, locating the photographs and small biographies of prisoners, from both left and right, side by side, also contains the invisibility of the state as the main actor (Fig. 4). Does locating the poems of communist Nazım Hikmet and the right-wing Necip Fazıl serve this narrative, I asked participants. The participants reacted to this as well as the official narrative of “left and right together suffered” in a similar way to that expressed by the museum coordinator. OÖ: I think putting Necip Fazıl and Nazım Hikmet side by side, saying leftist youth as well as rightist youth were tortured, putting their belongings side by side in the museum…. these are not simple things but strategic actions. MGB: And that disturbs you…? OÖ: Definitely… Why was there a military coup? Some excited leftist and rightist youth were shooting each other (in the official discourse) yeah? The state tells it like this. Media represent it like this. FK: The military coup stands on this idea. NE: Yes… FK: But this is not true… OÖ: No. FK: I agree with you completely. MGB: Do all of you agree?

All agreed. Some participants were ambivalent about the prison being transformed into a museum. “What is this for?”, they asked. Those who did not have any

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Fig. 4  Museum exterior

experience of imprisonment argued that the same things are happening here so there is no point, while those who had experience of imprisonment talked of not wanting anything to remind them of their prison days: ZY: Why do we want to make our sorrows concrete and turn to places for sightseeing? I could not find an answer to that… We cannot delete the sad memories but we do not want them either. Since it affects us very badly, we do not want to see. SK: They could make a park here instead…. There are too many bad memories here… MGB: Would you rather see a park here than a museum? SK: Of course… MGB: What for? For forgetting? SK: There are museums of many things but there cannot be museum of prison.. MGB: Is that so? FK: Let them build a park somewhere else… The majority of the focus group participants felt Ulucanlar should remain as a museum, even though it seems distorted rather than authentic.

758  M. GENCEL BEK Instead of being a shopping mall or something at least people can say there was a prison here once where people lost their lives and were executed in hanging tables. At least future generations will know this. Even preserving it in this form is of course a great thing. (NE)

Nevertheless, not only the reconstruction of the museum, but ongoing human rights violations are hindering the museum from achieving a real function: Now around here, as my friend told now, people were hung up. In 96, people were killed here by planks, iron bars and weapons. About ten people, ten prisoners were killed in the Ulucanlar Prison. The prisoners were claimed to be rebels! In four walls. You have the gas. You have everything. You can do what you want without killing them and so on. We can say that the processes today are actually much larger than the operation that was made in prison in Cizre, Nusaybin. In order for us to see a function in terms of social memory, we also need something: a democratic atmosphere, peace. It is very difficult for museums to function as a real museum without this. (FK)

As some participants state, the injustices and human rights violations against civilians are still current, and there is no major challenge arising from the large sections of the society against that. The curatorial practices are suggestive of not openly dealing with and questioning the past. The museum reduces the spatial and temporal extensiveness of the memory with the claim that “this (what ‘this’ is already a contested issue in official and counter-official memory) happened here and it is over”: The state has a logic like that: “These and that happened in Turkey in the past. But look these are not experienced anymore.” This kind of image is transmitted to our brains. People were hung in here. They are not anymore. People were killed in prisons, but the prisons are like roses now. Torture was being experienced while there is no torture today. The state is trying to show its innocence. The same things are happening now too. (Yİ)

The critical remarks also focused on the ownership of the museum, run by the municipality, which is not autonomous but connected to central government, rather than a human rights advocate civic initiative: …Two years ago, I brought my aunt from outside Ankara to here for the first time. Especially, she wanted to see it and her statement after the visit was exactly like this: “They tortured and now are they saying, “See how beautifully we tortured them?” These words made me think a lot. The reason and the source for these sufferings being experienced are the state, and the state or its local municipalities continue their control here. This should be a situation which needs to be discussed. (OÖ)

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It is a problem to be given to state control like my friend said. Granting municipal supervision is a problem. There can be independent institutions, NGOs… I do not know. there are academicians who work on this issue can create a board and supervise the things of this museum. It is necessary to struggle for this… So maybe it will get to the real function then. (FK)

Conclusion This study revealed how visitors to Ulucanlar prison museum (some of whom had experienced imprisonment there or in other prisons) read the museum in a critical way and built a counter-memory, after tracing the officially constructed memory narrative. The results of the research have also been sent to the museum coordinators in the hope that it could lead to changes. However, the current curatorial principles at the museum are informed by broader official politics and policies. Therefore, a broader transformation by the state is needed to deal with the whole mentality and actions, to call to account the officers who enabled or committed crimes against prisoners by torture, imprisonment or execution, and to start a reconciliation process. So far this has not happened. Still, since we believe that the struggles of the museum to represent the past can also contribute to broader struggle, various specific recommendations regarding the museum have been developed. First, the museum should be under the management of a civic initiative that supports human rights. Ulucanlar museum with its shops, garden, and cafe should be transformed into a living human rights museum where interactive and participatory activities and trainings are aimed at the education of all on human rights, particularly the children and youth, rather than just being the place where Altındağ’s Mayor welcomes official high-ranking guests. Manipulated information and hate speech should be removed or at least exhibited along with critical remarks. The museum’s “invisibles,” those who are not remembered but forgotten, children, Kurds, and women, should be present with their own narratives. The everyday life of the prison’s past can be re-lived, using the opportunities of new technology. What the prisoners had written on the walls disappeared when they were restored and painted but these could be replaced digitally by their photographs, which are still available at the Ankara Chamber of Architects. Literature on memory and human rights suggests how the museum should not only limit itself to exhibiting the violations but should also advocate human rights. Currently, Ulucanlar prison museum is not able to fulfill the first limited mission. Instead, it still exists to disseminate and reinforce the dominant discourse and idealize the power of the state rather than portraying the violation of human rights. This is done not only through the objects exhibited but also through the activities organized by the municipalities, and presented on their web page. The struggle over the past also means the struggle for the future. It is hoped that this piece could contribute to these struggles.

760  M. GENCEL BEK Acknowledgement   No financial support was received for this study. I would like to thank the participants who contributed to the study with interviews (whose names were kept anonymous for safety reasons), my student Sezer Ahmet Kina who worked in transcribing the focus group meetings and Sencer Bek and Esin Aygün who provided organizational support on the day of the interview. Many students and friends of mine were imprisoned from the time I decided to research on this topic to the writing. Just because I signed a peace petition, I had to defend myself too, like hundreds of colleagues called Academics for Peace. When I set out to start a new life in another country after being dismissed through a decree and just before my passport was canceled, I packed the notes and readings of this research into the suitcase as well. These do not only explain why the writing of this took long and how difficult it was to complete it but also show that it necessitates massive struggle and paying a huge price to protect rights and freedoms against increasing levels and changing forms of state violence in Turkey in recent years. Moreover, grievous things were experienced and are still going on. I dedicate this article to my uncle Cengiz Arıcı, who had to spend part of his youth in Ulucanlar prison after the 12 September coup d’etat and haven’t been able to go to the museum yet, and all political prisoners who are held captive.

Notes





1. Mustafa Sütlaş, “Beş Nolu Cezaevi ‘Hafıza Mekanı’ Olarak Kalmalı.” Biamag, 29 September 2012, http://bianet.org/biamag/kultur/141130-5no-lu-cezaevi-hafiza-mekani-olarak-kalmali. 2. “Diyarbakır’daki Roboski Anıtı Yıkıldı, İsimler Parçalandı.” Evrensel, 8 Ocak 2017. https://www.evrensel.net/haber/303148/diyarbakirdaki-roboski-anitiyikildi-isimler-parcalandi. 3. “10 Ekim Anıtına Çirkin Saldırı.” Evrensel, 26 Mart 2017. https://www.evrensel.net/haber/313622/10-ekim-anitina-cirkin-saldiri. 4. “İnsan Hakları Anıtına Abluka.” Birgün, 22 Mayıs 2017. http://www.birgun. net/haber-detay/insan-haklari-aniti-na-abluka-160753.html. 5. “Uğur Kaymaz Heykeli Kimi Neden Rahatsız Etti?” BİA, 12 Haziran 2017. https://bianet.org/bianet/siyaset/187349-ugur-kaymaz-heykeli-kimineden-rahatsiz-etti. 6.  http://www.tihv.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Ra_2004_Turkiye_ Insan_Haklari_Raporu.pdf. 7. Karacan (2016, 103–104) analyzes the museum they created, 12 September Shame Museum in comparison with the Ulucanlar Museum. Differently from Ulucanlar Museum, Revolutionary 78s focuses on the crimes and injustices of the junta with the discourses of victimization. Secondly, the museum does not limit only with the prison of Ulucanlar but remember all spaces of injustices. 8. bkz, http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/diger/209104/_Yasayan_tarih_ katledildi_.html. 9.  https://www.altindag.bel.tr/#!haberler. 10.  h ttp://www.hurriyet.com.tr/er tugr ul-ozkok-bu-ayip-mutlaka-silinmeli-39105941. There were other distorted news being exhibited such as “all prisons are occupied by militants,” aiming to legitimize the “operation” made by the state. There were news including hate speech such as the news with the headlines “revolutionary women are used for workers,” “socialist traitors.” 11.  http://hakikatadalethafiza.org/.

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References Balkan, E. 2016. “Historical Dialogue: Beyond Transitional Justice and Conflict Resolution.” RNHDP Summer School Presentation. İstanbul. Balkanay, E. 2017. “Kolektif Belleğin Yeniden İnşası: Ulucanlar Cezaevi Müzesi’nde Özne-Mekan İlişkisi.” In Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş. Toplumsal Bellek, Mekan ve Kimlik Üzerine Araştırmalar, edited by Tahire Erman and Serpil Özaloğlu, 163– 172. İstanbul: Koç Üniversitesi. Busby, K. 2015. “The Idea of Human Rights Museum: Introduction.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, 1–26. Winnipeg: UMP Press. Carter, J. 2015. “The Museology of Human Rights.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, 208–226. Winnipeg: UMP Press. Çaylı, E. 2011. “Architecture, Politics and Memory Work: Fieldnotes from the Ulucanlar Prison Museum.” In Museum of Ideas: Commitment and Conflict, edited by Eray Çaylı, 368–397. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc. Çaylı, E. 2014. “Architectural Memorialization at Turkey’s Witness Sites: The Case of the Madimak Hotel.” In Contemporary Turkey at a Glance: Interdisciplinary Perspectives at a Local and Translocal Dynamics, edited by K. Kamp, 13–24. Berlin: Springer. Dean, D. 2013. “Museum as Sites for Historical Understanding, Peace, and Social Justice: Views from Canada: Peace and Conflict.” Journal of Peace Psychology 19, no. 4: 325–337. Edy, J. A. 1999. “Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory.” Journal of Communication 4, no. 2, 71–85. Failler, A., and R. I. Simpson. 2015. “Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, 165–179. Winnipeg: UMP Press. Gabriel, B. 2012. “Sites of Conscience: Past to Present, Memory and Action.” In Museums of Ideas: Commitment and Conflict: A Collection of Essays, edited by Eray Çaylı, 14–31. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc. Gencel Bek, M. 2019. “Collective Myths and Decivilizing Politics in Turkey.” In Collective Myths and Decivilizing Politics. Volume 5 of “The World Language of Key Visuals,” edited by Stefan Kramer and Peter Ludes, 142–157. Computer Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, Münster: Lit. Giesbrecht, J., and C. Curle. 2015. “From Imagination to Inauguration.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, 322–332. Winnipeg: UMP Press. Herzog, M. 2013. “Contested Histories and Their Musealisation at Ulucanlar Prison Museum.” Heritage Turkey 3: 37–38. Karacan, E. 2016. Remembering the 1980 Turkish Military Coup d’Etat. Memory, Violence and Trauma. Wiesbaden: Springer. Kavanagh, G. 1996. Making Histories in Museums. London: Leicester University Press. Keightley, E., and P. Schlesinger. 2014 “Digital Media-Social Memory: Remembering in Digitally Networked Times.” Media, Culture and Society 36, no. 6: 745–747. Kelekçi, Ö., and M. Akbaş. 2015. “Cezaevinden Müzeye: Geçmişi Karanlıkta Bırakmak.” In Türkiye’nin İnsan Hakları Gündemi Konferansı III. 2014–2015. Ankara. Unpublished Conference Presentation. Morris-Suzuki, T. 2005. The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History. London and New York: Verso.

762  M. GENCEL BEK Rasmussen, S. 2002. “The Uses of Memory.” Culture & Psychology 8, no. 1: 113–129. Tan, L. 2012. “Museums and Cultural Memory in an Age of Networks.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 4: 383–399. Worcman, K., and J. Garde-Hansen. 2016. “Social Memory Technology.” In Theory, Practice, Action. Routledge: New York and London. Zelizer, B. 2008. “Why Memory’s Work on Journalism Does Not Reflect Journalism’s Work on Memory.” Memory Studies 1, no. 1: 79–87.

In the Name of the Father: (Re)Framing the Guildford Four Fran Pheasant-Kelly

Introduction Jim Sheridan’s film In the Name of the Father (1993) is a drama based on the wrongful conviction of four individuals—known as “the Guildford Four”— for the 1974 Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings in London. The attacks reflected an intensification of the republican bombing campaign on mainland Britain during the 1970s as a result of the “Troubles” and were carried out by active service units of both the Provisional IRA and Official Republican Army operating in England (Miller 1990, 308). The conflict in Northern Ireland had long-standing origins but escalated in 1969 when the British government deployed troops in Northern Ireland and ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The four individuals accused of the pub bombings were Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Carole Richardson and Paul Hill. In addition to representing the case of the Guildford Four, the film addresses the unsound conviction of the Maguire family (relatives of Gerry Conlon) who came to be known as the Maguire Seven. These included Gerry Conlon’s father, Guiseppe Conlon. Sheridan drew on Gerry Conlon’s autobiographical account of events, Proved Innocent, which was published in 1990 shortly after the Court of Appeal overturned the Guildford Four bombing convictions and prior to the publication of the Final Report of the Inquiry into the Convictions Arising from Bomb Attacks in Guildford and Woolwich (May 1994).

F. Pheasant-Kelly (*)  University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_47

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The film therefore appeared amid a volatile political climate and before publication of Peter May’s final report. It received critical acclaim, garnering seven Academy Award nominations, and was commercially successful, achieving worldwide box office of $65.8 million against a budget of £13 million.1 While it was a box office phenomenon in Ireland and fared reasonably in the USA, it was less well received at the time of its release in Britain where it was criticized for several inaccuracies and omissions. These criticisms rested, among other issues, with the film’s foregrounding of the father–son relationship as it unfolded during their time in prison together (Conlon’s autobiography reports that while he and his father were on occasion in the same prison, they did not share a cell). As Ruth Barton notes, The hostility with which the film was greeted by some quarters within the UK and others in the US needs to be read against certain positions the film was taking. In particular, its suggestion that the British State was capable of engaging in actions that were as reprehensible as those generally associated with paramilitary activity – physical torture, mental abuse and the taking of innocent lives – locates the film within a very small niche of critics of an institution that has, during the course of the Troubles, successfully deflected attention from its less salubrious policies. (2002, 74–75)

Regardless of these contemporaneous disparagements, the production is important because it highlighted certain systematic faults in institutional regimes that, in this case, centered on police failings and deliberate tampering of evidence. One might argue that the emotiveness and empathy engendered via the father–son interaction, together with certain aspects of the film’s aesthetic approach, furthered the narrative’s cause, that is, to amplify the sense of injustice. Certainly, as Barton further suggests “the film’s appeal can be partially attributed to its adherence to mainstream filmmaking practices and its recourse [….] to a high emotional register” (2002, 74). Retrospectively, it is possible to position the film in a continuum of productions that allude to real-world institutional incompetence and, given the fact that many other miscarriages of justice surfaced thereafter, the poetic license of the film is arguably less significant than its attention to the flaws of institutional systems. Indeed, looking back, numerous examples of ineptitude, corruption, discrimination and malpractice subsequently emerged in the judicial and policing system. This is readily illustrated, for example, by the 2017 outcome of the Hillsborough inquest, which found that the 96 people who died in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster were unlawfully killed, with criminal proceedings still ongoing at the time of writing this chapter. At the same time, analogous controversies have emerged across many other institutions, both in the UK and beyond, ranging from the BBC and the Catholic Church through to the National Health Service. Revelations concerning such incidents effectively bracket an era of change, not only in terms of the judicial system, but also across other major organizations, and constitute a revised “structure of

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feeling”, as described by cultural studies scholar, Raymond Williams (2011). Emergent since the 1970s, but gathering momentum in later decades, such changes arguably reflect an “opening up” of society in all its visual, socio-cultural and political configurations. Accordingly, this chapter examines In the Name of the Father in light of the facts that became known about the falsification of evidence and led to the wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four. Specifically, it reframes the film in the broader zeitgeist of institutional failures and miscarriages of justice that emerged from the 1970s onwards. Drawing on Conlon’s (1994) autobiography and critical reviews, as well as archival evidence from the trial, the chapter considers how Sheridan’s film, despite its inaccuracies and omissions, is ostensibly an important document that pinpoints one incident in an extensive spectrum of institutional flaws.

The Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven The drama is based on the wrongful conviction of the Guildford Four, their conviction now considered as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British political history. The Four were accused of carrying out bombings of pubs at Guildford on October 5, 1974, and Woolwich on November 7, 1974, that killed seven people in total in a series of attacks later found to have been perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) (May 1994, 15). Those arrested included Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson, who were eventually convicted and given life sentences. They subsequently spent fifteen years in prison for crimes that were unproven and depended on coerced confessions. Despite later admissions to the bombings by convicted IRA terrorists, Martin O’Connell and Brendan Dowd (Conlon 1994, 165), the Guildford Four’s first appeal in 1977 was rejected (May 1994, 173). However, subsequent evidence uncovered by their solicitor, Gareth Peirce, led to the case reopening in 1987 and the Court of Appeal quashing their convictions in October 1989 (May 1994, 2). In the Final Report of the Inquiry into the Convictions Arising from Bomb Attacks in Guildford and Woolwich, Peter May states that the “Avon and Somerset [Constabulary], in the course of examining original documents on behalf of the Crown for the purposes of the hearing, made certain discoveries which cast serious doubt on the reliability of some of the evidence given by police officers at the original trial” (1994, 4). In the conclusion to the prologue to his autobiographical account Gerry Conlon recounts how, when released from prison, he approached the awaiting television crews and told them “I’ve spent fifteen years in prison for something I haven’t done, for something I knew nothing about. I watched my father die in prison for something he didn’t do. He’s innocent, the Maguires are innocent, the Birmingham Six are innocent. Let’s hope they’re next” (1994, 4). Conlon’s words proved prophetic as the overturning of

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the case against the Four triggered a re-examination of the conviction of the Maguire Seven. As is depicted in the film, the courts sentenced the Maguire family in 1976 for handling explosives, because some of them appeared to test positive for nitroglycerine (Poyser et al. 2018, 25). All of them served their entire sentences before the convictions were overturned based on the unreliability of forensic tests (Poyser et al. 2018, 26). Similar discrediting of forensic evidence, together with sworn statements by a former constable that the men had been beaten while in custody, contributed to the quashing of convictions for the Birmingham Six, allegedly responsible for twenty-one deaths in two Birmingham pubs in 1974. Like the Guildford Four, substantial public support along with several televised documentaries also had an impact. These examples, however, represent a fraction of those later found to be unsound, with numerous cases subsequently overturned. As Poyser et al. note “These miscarriages provided the hard evidence to demonstrate that the appellate system was not working in the way that many thought it should and helped to underpin calls for urgent change” (2018, 26).

Raymond Williams and “Structure of Feeling” The corruption and unsound practices reported in these convictions, along with the disbandment of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad who were involved in the convictions of the Birmingham Six, were not limited to the policing system. The film’s portrayal of the inadequacies of judicial and policing processes is symbolic of other equally disturbing revelations occurring since the 1970s. These include: controversies in the British/US medical landscape (see Pheasant-Kelly 2016) which featured a patriarchal system that embraced a “club culture” (Dixon-Woods et al. 2011) and gender disparity in terms of both pay and employment figures (McManus and Sproston 2006); the prominence of iatrogenic disease, for example, Hepatitis C and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease from contaminated blood and growth hormone products; an emerging failure of medicine to combat infectious pathogens, notably HIV/AIDS; and numerous medical outrages such as the body parts scandal at Alder Hey Hospital in 1999, when body organs were harvested for research, partly for financial gain, whereby children’s organs were sold for profit. In addition, Susan Squier reports that “an ‘archive’ of human and fetal organs had been discovered at the Alder Hey Hospital, including a heart collection containing more than two thousand hearts; a fetal collection containing around 1500 foetuses, and an additional collection that by December 1999 had accumulated more than 445 partial or full fetal remains” (2004, 175). Overall, the cumulative effect of institutional inadequacy has led to a change in the tide of public opinion, not only toward medicine, various police services and the judicial system but also in recent times toward other entrenched institutions and associated cover-ups. Organizations currently undergoing transformation and heightened accountability range from the

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Catholic Church and banking systems to the BBC for reasons akin to those affecting the National Health Service and the medical profession in general, namely institutionalized discrimination, unethical practices and criminal negligence. In the Name of the Father thus resonates with broader issues that are discernible in a range of films and genres. Indeed, the film is central to an argument for a revised structure of feeling articulated broadly across visual culture. In many cases, the resultant drive toward transparency is reflected in an unfolding “bodily turn” in film, television and popular culture, that is, a preoccupation with the damaged, transgressed, concealed and interior body. Other times, it is evident in critiques of specific institutions. In certain post1970s films, the problematic nature of institutions is addressed via abject imagery that is directly connected to institutional corruption. Alien (Scott, 1979) and its sequels are useful examples given their inclination toward interiority and abjection and simultaneously, allusions to, and criticism of institutions, including a prison in Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992). This correlation between visual culture and the contemporaneous zeitgeist is rooted in what Raymond Williams describes as society’s “felt sense of the quality of life at a particular place and time” (2011, 68). Expressly, the materialization of body imagery and institutional questioning parallels a change from a repressive, patriarchal society to one that is generally more liberated, transparent and equitable. In itself, and partly because of the nature of a docudrama, In the Name of the Father does not directly mirror the tropes of abjection that commonly signal such a structure of feeling. Rather the film is a cornerstone of this socio-cultural and political phenomenon and directly represents organizational malpractice and corruption. Its poetic license is therefore irrelevant to the overwhelming fact that it tells a truth about the failure of the British legal system and the unjust imprisonments that followed unsafe convictions. As noted, this “structure of feeling” is not restricted to either the judicial system or the medical profession but is a mood or way of thinking discernible retrospectively across the entire socio-cultural and political spectrum at any given moment. Ian Buchanan (2010) highlights both the retrospective and indeterminate aspects of the concept, explaining that the term refers to the different ways of thinking vying to emerge at any one time in history. It appears in the gap between the official discourse of policy and regulations, the popular response to official discourse and its appropriation in literary and other cultural texts. Williams uses the term feeling rather than thought to signal that what is at stake may not yet be articulated in a fully worked-out form, but has rather to be inferred by reading between the lines. If the term is vague it is because it is used to name something that can really only be regarded as a trajectory. (Buchanan 2010, 455)

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This trajectory, as Williams states, extends from “a particular work, through its particular form, to its recognition as a general form, and then the relation of this general form to a period” (2011, 9). Looking back at In the Name of the Father, it is therefore now possible to locate it within a continuum of failing and incompetent institutions and the consequent drive toward transparency.

In the Name of the Father The film has been the subject of both critical acclaim and controversy, with reviews either praising Sheridan’s vision, or criticizing the film’s ­omissions and deviations from truth. David Pallister notes to omissions: “the Birmingham case [the Birmingham Six], the most celebrated of the miscarriage of justice cases which led to the [1974] Prevention of Terrorism Act – allowing the Guildford Four to be held for seven days’ interrogation – is nowhere mentioned. And never once in Conlon’s 15 years inside was an impression given that police fabrication of evidence was an on-going practice” (1994). Janet Maslin, on the other hand, describes it as a “scathingly brilliant film” (1993) and Daniel Day Lewis’s portrayal of Gerry Conlon as a “dazzling performance” (1993). She also notes that the film “is faithful to the larger facts while taking minor liberties with the Conlons’ case, most notably confining both Gerry and Guiseppe in the same prison cell. This shift provides an extraordinary opportunity for the film to explore the complexities of love between father and son” (1993). In a similar vein, Desson Howe describes the film as being “as good a compromise of fact and fiction as you could hope for” (1994). Howe summarizes the main fictions as including “the cell-sharing between father and son. [Sheridan] also condenses two real-life trials (of the Guildford Four and […] the Maguire Seven) into one and boils down two IRA bombing culprits into a slick, fictional composite” (1994). Pete Postlethwaite’s performance as the father in particular attracts critical acclaim (Mars-Jones 1994). Academic scholarship on the film likewise centers on its characterization and performance with suggestions that the focus on the Oedipal relationship between Gerry and his father renders the investigation plot secondary (McLoone 2000, 71) and the “dependence upon the conventions of family melodrama led to a much greater emphasis upon interpersonal relations than political conflict” (Hill 2006, 195). Alternatively, there is commentary on the representation of Gareth Peirce (Emma Thompson) in relation to her role as a solicitor (Blum 1996, 1065), the authenticity of the film in terms of its adaptation (Allison 2013, 43), and the use of coercive interrogation techniques as they relate to a post-9/11 milieu whereby the film’s “treatment […] of state brutality resonate[s] in the contemporary geopolitical climate” (Nunes 2009, 917).

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To date, however, the film has not been located in the broader context of institutional controversy. This chapter therefore uniquely proposes the film as a cornerstone in a revised “structure of feeling” that pervaded all forms of organizational enterprise from the 1970s onwards and led to a discernible parallel trend across popular culture, film, television, art and literature. It textually analyzes the film in respect of this structure of feeling, with a focus on the sympathy provoked by Sheridan’s approach toward the victims of the British judicial system and their on-screen portrayal. Expressly, it considers the omissions and modifications as well as the way that emotion is heightened via narrative details, visual style and sound effects, and reframes the production within the current socio-cultural and political climate of transparency that began to emerge in the latter decades of the twentieth century. The emotive nature of the film is quickly established when it opens with a series of exterior images entailing medium shots and close-ups of young couples laughing as they enter the “Horse and Groom”, the location of the first Guildford pub bombing in 1974. Almost immediately, an explosion occurs, with an exterior shot now revealing debris flying out toward the camera, and the explosion repeated multiple times from several perspectives. The overall effect of this “impact aesthetic” (King 2000, 95) is to provoke shock and immerse the spectator in the events. Thereafter follows a medium shot of Gareth Peirce (Emma Thompson), soon shown to be Gerry Conlon’s (Daniel Day Lewis) solicitor, sitting in her car as she inserts a cassette tape into the car’s tape deck. The playing of the tape-recording of Conlon’s account of events is then projected in voiceover and traces their arrests, which are mediated in flashback. The use of voiceover encourages spectator identification with Conlon, an approach that Sheridan maintains throughout the film, and which generally follows Gerry Conlon’s autobiographical account (1994). The film then cuts to Belfast, where Gerry Conlon’s family live and where, framed in a succession of long, medium and close-up shots, he is visible on a rooftop, stealing lead. Armored vehicles and armed British security forces soon spot him and misinterpret a piece of lead piping that he is stealing as a rifle. The Army therefore erroneously mistake him as a sniper and move in quickly, and, in one of a series of scenes where they appear as if over-reacting, fire shots at him. In a similar vein, they then mobilize tanks and riot squads against the locals—mostly women and children—who quickly congregate and cause deliberate disruption by banging dustbin lids on walls and cobblestones to alert their neighbors and trigger general confusion. The cinematography conveys the chaos, which includes a combination of rapid editing, extreme camera angles, and fast and sometimes blurred panning shots that track Conlon as he flees, as well as by a concatenation of sound effects including gunfire, clattering bin lids, and shouting and cheering. Extra-diegetic music adds to the pulsating and dramatic scenes of conflict. Such misperception of, and inappropriate reaction to Gerry’s actions frames the later more significant

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events whereby Conlon and his three friends, Carole Richardson, Paddy Armstrong and Paul Hill are falsely accused of the bombings. Although Gerry is presented as a petty thief and is abusive toward his father, Guiseppe Conlon (played by Pete Postlethwaite), causing a strained relationship at the outset of the film, his conscience and sense of morality are frequently signaled. For instance, early on at the docks when his father sends him to London to get away from the influences of and threats imposed by the IRA, their conversation is stilted and awkward. But as Gerry departs, we hear him say, in voiceover, that “I ran up the gangplank to get away from him, but then felt bad”. In fact, the spectator receives reminders that Gerry is essentially morally good despite his wrongdoings. Several further examples occur, first when Gerry meets up with Paul Hill and they move into a squat in London. Having had a disagreement with one of their fellow squatters (who blames Conlon and Hill for the spate of bombings at that time), they spend the night in a local park. Here, while sitting on a park bench in the dark, a homeless man claims that the bench is where he always sleeps. The man, Charlie Burke, is significant to the narrative as he is a witness who can provide the two with an alibi, which is one of the pieces of evidence withheld during the trial. This reflects the real situation when police did not follow up Gerry’s alibi (Conlon 1994, 214; May 1994, 288) although while Burke is a tramp in the film, in real-life he was someone Conlon met in a hostel (Barton 2002, 89). Charlie carves his initials into the back of the park bench, which again becomes narratively important in that it enables Gareth Peirce to trace him and to confirm that Conlon and Hill did have an alibi. Burke asks Conlon for some money, and, although having scarcely any himself, he gives him some (Gerry’s voiceover discloses that “we had no money in our pockets – we hadn’t the bus-fare to Guildford even if we knew where it was”). It is at this time that the first Guildford bomb detonates, returning the spectator to the film’s opening scene of young couples approaching and entering the pub, followed again by the blast. Shortly thereafter, Conlon and Hill wander through the streets and come across some house keys dropped by a prostitute. In a further indication of a moral side to his personality, Gerry whistles at the prostitute and points to the keys on the ground, but she ignores him while her client merely rebukes him. Conlon therefore breaks into the apartment that the prostitute has just left and steals £700—again his voiceover reveals that “I did feel a little bit guilty about that”. He returns to Belfast, and dressed in newly purchased two-tone brogues, a fur-trimmed Afghan coat and sunglasses, lavishes money on his family. But during the night, the British Army (having been prompted by Gerry’s former fellow squatter) force their way in, arrest him and take him back to London. During interrogation, muffled echoes, extreme close-ups of his face and the faces of the officers present a threatening sequence as both Conlon and Hill are subjected to torture and coercive interrogation. In the real case, as Abraham Miller notes, Paul Hill’s confessions (he was the first to

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be arrested) were inconsistent and the police had no evidence that any of the Four were involved in IRA activity (1990, 308–309). In fact, Gerry Conlon “had refused to acknowledge the Provisional IRA’s control of the Catholic area of Belfast and in turn had been severely beaten by them” (Miller 1990, 309). This is reflected during the opening sequence of the film when Guiseppe Conlon stops the IRA from “kneecapping” Gerry. Even so, Nicole Ives-Allison suggests that such contraction of Conlon’s relationship with the local Provisional IRA as detailed in the early passages of his autobiography are detrimental to the film’s project in that they would have revealed the “true preposterousness of the idea that he would be accepted as Volunteer at any level” (2013, 53). Throughout the interrogation depicted in the film, a group of police officers are framed from a low angle perspective while Conlon is generally viewed from a high angle, indicating their physical domination over him. Charlotte Nunes also notes the chromic aspects of the scene, suggesting that “Gerry’s garish red-orange shirt reflects the blaze of his emotions […]. By contrast, the chill, uninterrupted grey of the interrogators’ suits emphasizes their iron resolve to implicate Gerry” (2009, 922). The layering of muffled voices and distorted sounds enhances a sense of Gerry’s disorientation, arising from his seven days detention, seemingly without sleep, under the newly passed Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974). According to Miller, who interviewed Gerry, “Conlon says that he was beaten, stood naked in an unheated cell and deprived of food for six days” (1990, 309). In the film, he is finally coerced into signing a confession when one of the officers, Detective Pavis, whispers in his ear “I’m going to shoot Guiseppe”, thereby adding to the emotive tenor of the situation (according to Conlon’s autobiography, the police threatened to kill his mother and sister [1990: 80]). The film focuses on the interrogation and torture of Hill and Conlon but omits a detail concerning a police surgeon who allegedly administered pethidine to Carole Richardson before her confession (Miller 1990, 310). This was an important factor in causing Richardson’s disorientation but did not become known until 1987 and was therefore a key point in the Four’s second appeal. Likewise, Grant McKee and Ros Franey report that Paddy Armstrong was on amphetamines and had not slept for two nights when he signed his confession (1988, 432). While the film intermittently cuts back to Gareth Peirce as she continues to listen to the tape, it moves on to Gerry’s imprisonment prior to the trial. Here, the emotional register of the film again ratchets up in a sequence that begins with an overhead shot of Gerry lying on his bed, having just been taken into custody. Upon hearing a commotion, Conlon peers through a letterbox shaped viewing portal to see his father, naked and covered in white de-lousing powder. An extreme close-up of Gerry’s eyes cuts to one of Guiseppe’s eyes, Gerry banging his hands on the door in desperation. A rapidly edited montage of close-ups and extreme close-ups of the officers’

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grinning faces and the distraught eyes of Gerry and his father follows, and is overlaid with voices that overlap and echo, their shouting adding to the sense of anguish and fear. The scene is fictionalized but does draw on their emotional encounter described thus in Conlon’s autobiography when his sick father was first detained: “I don’t know why, I looked up towards the hospital block. Standing there in one of the windows was my father […] My heart stopped. For a moment I could not comprehend it […] What had my father to do with this? What’s he doing behind bars?” (1994: 111). Conlon learns from his father that the Maguire family have all been detained for “bomb-making offences”. The preposterousness of this is highlighted when, during the subsequent trial, the Prosecution Counsel holds up a transparent bag containing a pair of rubber washing-up gloves, belonging to Annie Maguire (Britta Smith) (Conlon’s aunt, whom he had visited on his earlier arrival in London), and allegedly contaminated with nitroglycerine. Just prior to the court case, the spectator is alerted to the gloves as questionable evidence when one officer comments “The results may not be good enough for the court” to which another replies “your word will be good enough for the court” indicating inherent corruption of the system and the seeming futility of providing authentic evidence. Following the real-life exoneration of the Maguire Seven in 1991, Barton notes that “whilst the scientific procedure employed to make this case was widely discredited long before their release, the failure of the May report to endorse these findings did little to re-establish confidence in the British justice system” (2002, 69). During the trial, the credibility of the British judicial system is further strained in that the Guildford Four are described as “combat veterans, the elite of the IRA” just as close-ups frame their bored and disinterested faces. Carole Richardson rests her head on her hands and the Four look ordinary looking and far removed from the description provided. Likewise, the Maguire family appear innocent, especially the youngest, aged fourteen years, blond-haired Patrick Maguire. As their sentences are passed, with convictions ranging from thirty-year minimum sentences, the family members cry out in disbelief. The trial judge states (as in the real situation [Miller 1990, 310]) that he wished that Conlon had been charged with treason so that could have imposed the death penalty. This is an important inclusion in sustaining the emotional impact of the film. At the same time, the camera cuts to an extreme close-up of Inspector Dixon’s (one of the officers who had earlier interrogated Conlon) mouth as he smirks, and then cuts to a medium shot of his wife blowing him a kiss, as if the conviction is a joyous personal triumph, divorced from the gravity of its implications. This extreme close-up of the mouth technique occurs several times through the film and implies that his (and that of others) testimony and the spoken word are fallible—indeed, speaking, language and words are highlighted on several occasions. For example, when Gerry first meets Gareth Peirce, he mocks her use of language, saying “you’re very good at the English aren’t you. You see, I don’t understand your language; justice,

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mercy, clemency, I literally don’t understand what those words mean”. Later, following his father’s death, he pulls out the tape from a cassette and winds it around his face, babbling wildly. As indicated in Conlon’s autobiography, Gerry is contrastingly silent in disbelief when the verdict is passed. A static extended shot frames him behind bars, his hands covering his mouth in shock and unable to utter a sound. Once incarcerated and although initially reviled as one of the perpetrators of the Guildford bombing, Gerry soon makes friends with other prisoners and a sense of solidarity is established. This is amplified when in 1977 a new inmate, Joe McAndrew (the aforementioned fictionalized IRA member), a convicted IRA terrorist, confesses to Inspector Dixon that he was responsible for the Guildford murders and tells both Dixon and Pavis that “you’ve innocent people in jail for that”. The confession is significant in that, although abbreviated from the real scenario (in which an IRA group on trial for the Balcombe siege (and subsequently known as the Balcombe Street gang) claimed responsibility for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings and provided clear and sustained evidence of this [Miller 1990: 312]), it fails to secure the release of the four, who remain in prison. McAndrew and Gerry Conlon become friendly and McAndrew supports the growing campaign to release the Guildford Four through peaceful protests. To this end, all of the inmates join the cause and suspend banners from their windows, the images making their way to television news broadcasts. To some degree, therefore, because of McAndrew’s support for their campaign, we are encouraged to identify with the IRA—which is one of the sources of contention in critical responses to the film. However, any empathy is soon dissipated when McAndrew sets fire to one of the prison officers. It is at this point that Gerry again demonstrates his moral integrity as he extinguishes the flames engulfing the severely burned officer and openly criticizes McAndrew. Concurrently, he becomes more compassionate toward his increasingly ill father and shot-reverse-shots disclose them not only becoming closer, but also Gerry assuming a parental role in his concern for Guiseppe. While the two did not share a cell in real-life, there are elements of this concern described in Conlon’s autobiography that are explicitly referenced in the film. For example, Conlon describes his father “who I would see most weeks at the court struggling to breathe, going slowly up and down the stairs. He seemed so frail that it seemed unbelievable that he was being put through this” (1994, 115). Guiseppe too adopts some of Gerry’s traits—for instance, it is at this point that we hear him swear for the first time. In other words, they become more equal and accepting of each other, with Gerry gradually taking over the role of the father figure, thereby providing the Oedipal scenario that is the subject of some academic analysis. Sheridan’s focus on their relationship intensifies as Gerry takes an interest in the campaign to overturn their convictions, with their efforts intercut with footage of campaigners, displayed on television screens. Indeed, the media

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played a significant role in sustaining the momentum of the real-world scenario. As Miller reports, Jonathan Dimbleby produced a three part series in March 1984 for Yorkshire television, David Frost interviewed Annie Maguire on breakfast TV, and ITV featured the case in 1987, leading to the then UK Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, announcing a reinvestigation of the case (1990, 314). Alastair Loan, who was Conlon’s solicitor prior to Gareth Peirce, had been working with Grant McKee and Ros Franey on a documentary titled The Guildford Time Bomb, which was broadcast in 1986 and published as a book in 1988. This is despite difficulties in discussing political issues in the media that related to the Troubles, particularly in Northern Ireland. In this respect, Barton notes Section 31 of the Irish Broadcasting Act of 1960 was updated in 1976 to prevent the appearance of interviews or reports of interviews with spokespersons from the spectrum of paramilitary groups and their political representatives […] In the UK, although the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) did deter many journalists from interviewing suspected terrorists, censorship was less a matter of legislation than tacit consent between various government bodies and the media. (2002, 65)

When Guiseppe is eventually taken ill and Conlon pleads to go to the hospital with him, the officers refuse. Gerry again sits in cells staring ahead when a priest walks in and informs him that his father has died. “Thank you very much” responds Gerry coldly, without looking at the priest, his lack of visible anguish magnified in subsequent shots that frame him centrally in medium close-up as he gazes blankly at the camera. Here, his reaction mirrors the real one described in Conlon’s account (1994, 194). The static camerawork is intercut with flashbacks of his father indicating his suppressed grief. At this point, a scene that shows inmate solidarity is noteworthy. One of the prisoners, a Rastafarian named Benbay (Paterson Joseph), who befriended Gerry early in his sentence, ignites a screwed-up sheet of newspaper and throws it from his cell window. The spectator views him first from inside the cell, and subsequently, the burning paper from outside in a series of low angle shots. “Guiseppe is dead” shouts Benbay as long shots now fully frame the external prison walls with the flaming fragments floating and spiraling downwards. Subsequently, more and more pieces of burning paper drift downwards from the prison windows, overall creating a potent sense of inmate solidarity, but also engendering spectator involvement in Conlon’s bereavement (since only the spectator beholds this spectacle). Like the letterbox sequence, the scene is both aesthetically and emotionally charged, the burning fragments set against the darkness of the night. The scene is fictionalized but draws indirectly on aspects of solidarity described in Conlon’s account whereby the prisoners would tie together strips of bed linen and hang them outside their windows:

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a prisoner named Jiffy […] would throw his line with a hook on the end and eventually catch the line put out by the remands […] and whatever it was would be slid down from remand to us, and then slung along the block from cell to cell: food, orange juice, porno magazines, snout. What we were doing with those lines out of the window was ridiculous. (1994, 217)

Guiseppe’s death thereafter seems to strengthen Gerry’s resolve and he works tirelessly with Gareth Peirce on their campaign despite further attempts by Dixon to thwart their efforts (he moves Gerry to a prison in Scotland). Undeterred, Gareth searches through the trial records and statements and finds evidence of Charlie Burke’s alibi in Gerry’s file with a note pinned to the front stating “Not to be shown to the defence”. According to Terry George (1994), the screenwriter, this was not fictionalized for the film and again furthers spectator engagement in that the spectator has earlier witnessed the alibi. The film moves to the resulting re-trial when Dixon again takes the stand, the camera framing his mouth once more in extreme close-up as he utters the oath. Concurrently, canted angles frame Dixon as Peirce reveals the previously concealed alibi. Another extreme close-up now centers first on Dixon’s eyes and then his mouth as Peirce questions him about the hidden evidence. The trial depicted in the film focuses on the alibi which also forms a significant section of May’s (1994) report although the report (not published until after the film’s release) refers to a number of other discrepancies and reasons for appeal. These included, as in Conlon’s account (1994, 128), that the handwritten notes associated with the confessions could not have been taken place contemporaneously as the respective interviews progressed (May 1994, 4); their confessions were made under duress; Carole Richardson’s alibi remained convincing; The Balcombe Street gang had confessed to the Guildford and Woolwich bombings; and the Four had been denied their proper rights (May 1994, 263). May also adds three further arguments, namely: that Carole Richardson would not have had time to get from Guildford to a concert where she had alibi evidence (1994, 110); there were similarities between the Guildford and Woolwich bombings and other later bombings that the Four could not have carried out; and that Richardson had a suggestible personality (May 1994, 263). In addition, there was no mention of the administration of pethidine to Richardson at the time of making her original confession. May states that the police surgeon volunteered this information in 1987 but subsequently withdrew the admission (1994, 282). While not all of these details (such as the disclosure of the pethidine) are highlighted in the film, Sheridan does focus on many of the crucial issues, and indeed, reference is made to the film several times by the report which contests the fact that a note stating “Not to be shown to the defence” was attached to Burke’s statement. The report however does state that “these statements were never expressly drawn to the attention of Conlon’s lawyers” (1994, 288).

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The film culminates with the triumphant release of the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven, with Gerry addressing the cheering crowds, although his words deviate slightly from the prologue to his autobiography. He begins with similar words, namely “I’m an innocent man. I’ve spent fifteen years in prison for something I didn’t do. I watched my father die in a British prison for something he didn’t do” but then condemns the British Government. In an emotional proclamation, he shouts “until my father is proved innocent, until all the people involved in this case are proved innocent, until the guilty ones are brought to justice, I will fight on, in the name of the Father and of the truth!” The trial of the three former Surrey police officers involved in the convictions took place in April and May 1993 when “a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice ended with their acquittals” (May 1994, 3).

Conclusion In summary, the film is relayed via Conlon’s perspective and we are given insights into the way that the suspects were tortured, often signaled by acute camera angles, short average shot length, and rapid editing. Because of the way that the film encourages the spectator to sympathize with Gerry Conlon, especially through the death of his father and in the complexities of their relationship as it develops in the sharing of their prison cell, it might be accused of inviting a biased perception. Despite significant omissions from the film that would further afford spectator insight into the fallibility of the British judicial system during the 1970s (such as the fact that Carole Richardson’s mental state may have been compromised by the combination of drugs administered prior to signing her confession), its emotional register is vital to the film’s impact. Consequently, the film stands as an important testament to the revised structure of feeling that has emerged since the 1970s, especially in relation to patriarchal structures of power that have since begun to be dismantled, including those surrounding the courts and prison systems. While the drive toward transparency is paralleled by a focus on corporeality across many aspects of visual culture, In the Name of the Father does not follow this trend. This is partly because it is based on fact and does not lend itself to abject imagery in the same way as other genres such as horror and science fiction might. Rather, it is a significant cornerstone of this revised structure of feeling. Miller, at the time of the case, suggested that “[t]he Guildford experience needs to be viewed in this larger context: not as an indictment of British justice but as a symptom of the stress violence places on the institutions of a democratic society trying to respond to the attacks on its very existence while balancing its commitments to the cherished rule of law” (1990, 316). A retrospective analysis suggests otherwise. If we consider the film and its relationship to documented fact and within a continuum of cultural representations that articulate institutional flaws, either through a specific visual vocabulary, or, as is the case here, directly in the form of a docudrama, we can

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see that the actions of the British judicial system operating in the case of the Guildford Four are symptomatic of more widespread institutional failings that have since been revealed.

Note 1.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107207/.

References Allison, Nicole-Ives. 2013. “Irish Accents, Foreign Voices: Mediated Agency and Authenticity in In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking.” Journal of Terrorism Research 4, no. 10: 43–63. Barton, Ruth. 2002. Jim Sheridan: Framing the Nation. Dublin: The Liffey Press. Blum, Carolyn. 1996. “Images of Lawyering and Political Activism in In the Name of the Father.” University of San Francisco Law Review 30, no. 4: 1065–1076. Buchanan, Ian. 2010. A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conlon, Gerry. 1994. Proved Innocent: The Story of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four. London: Penguin. Dixon-Woods, Mary, Karen Yeung, and Charles Bosk. 2011. “Why Is UK Medicine No Longer a Self-Regulating Profession? The Role of Scandals Involving ‘Bad Apple’ Doctors.” Social Science & Medicine 73, no. 10: 1452–1459. George, Terry. 1994. “Letter to the Editor: Sins of the Guildford Four Prosecution.” New York Times, March 12. Available at https://www.nytimes. com/1994/03/12/opinion/l-sins-of-the-guildford-Four-prosecution-447099. html. Accessed August 23, 2019. Hill, John. 2006. Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics. London: BFI. Howe, Desson. 1994. “In the Name of the Father.” Washington Post, January 14. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/ videos/inthenameofthefatherrhowe_a09e26.htm??noredirect=on. Accessed August 21, 2019. King, Geoff. 2000. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: IB Tauris. Mars-Jones, Adam. 1994. “Seeking the Self Inside: Not Guilty.” Independent, February 11. Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ the-big-picture-seeking-the-self-inside-not-guilty-adam-mars-jones-reviews-in-thename-of-the-father-1393380.html. August 21, 2019. Maslin, Janet. 1993. “Film Review: In the Name of the Father; The Sins of a Son Are Revisited on His Father.” New York Times, December 29. Available at https:// www.nytimes.com/1993/12/29/movies/review-film-name-father-sins-son-arevisited-his-father.html. Accessed August 21, 2019. May, John. 1994. Final Report of the Inquiry into the Convictions Arising from Bomb Attacks in Guildford and Woolwich. London: HMSO. Available at https://www. gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-of-the-inquiry-into-the-convictions-arising-from-bomb-attacks-in-guildford-and-woolwich. Accessed August 21, 2019.

778  F. PHEASANT-KELLY McKee, Grant, and Ros Franey. 1988. Time Bomb: Irish Bombers, English Justice and the Guildford Four. London: Bloomsbury. McLoone, Martin. 2000. Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema. London: BFI. McManus, Ian, and K. Sproston. 2006. “Women in Hospital Medicine in the United Kingdom: Glass Ceiling, Preference, Prejudice or Cohort Effect?” Journal of Epidemiological Community Health 54, no. 1: 10–16. Miller, Abraham. 1990. “Preserving Liberty in a Society Under Siege: The Media and the ‘Guildford Four’.” Terrorism and Political Violence 2, no. 3: 305–323. Nunes, Charlotte. 2009. “In the Name of National Security: Torture and Imperialist Ideology in Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father and Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto.” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 4: 916–933. Pallister, David. 1994. “In the Name of the Father.” Vertigo 1, no. 3. Available at https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-1-issue-3spring-1994/in-the-name-of-the-father/. Accessed August 21, 2019. Pheasant-Kelly, Frances. 2016. “Towards a Structure of Feeling: Abjection and Allegories of Disease in Science Fiction ‘Mutation’ Films’.” BMJ Medical Humanities 42, no. 4: 238–245. Poyser, Sam, Angus Nurse, and Rebecca Milne. 2018. Miscarriages of Justice: Causes, Consequences and Remedies. Bristol: Policy Press. Squier, Susan. 2004. Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Williams, Raymond. 2011 [1961]. The Long Revolution. Cardigan: Parthian Press.

Conclusion Marcus Harmes, Barbara Harmes and Meredith Harmes

Incarceration in this collection extended in type and meaning from lawful imprisonment to unjust incarcerations that have been found to be unsafe, to the incarceration of the insane, and the holding of political prisoners in gulags and prison camps. The prisons and prisoners that have been encountered are both actual and fictional, from Her Majesty’s Prisons in the United Kingdom to the federal penitentiaries of the United States, prisoner camps, and lunatic asylums. The prisons and prisoners surveyed in the collection include those on the small screen and in cinema, fictional prisoners from Tony Soprano to the Count of Monte Cristo to analogues of people actually incarcerated such as the Guildford Four. Other views of prison came from podcasting and reality television. Incarcerated people are mostly nameless and faceless; some however sit heavily in popular consciousness. So too do some prisons, from Sing Sing and Riker Island to Guantanamo Bay, as do the darkly sinister associations that form around carceral artifacts notably “Old Sparky” the electric chair. Sentencing prominent people to prison is not new. Others, such as Myra Hindley, Fred and Rosemary West, or Josef Fritzl become famous only because of arrest and imprisonment. Alternatively, there are those who are famous before imprisonment and whose incarceration becomes one M. Harmes (*) · B. Harmes · M. Harmes  Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] B. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] M. Harmes e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_48

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more event in a colorful life, or else the destructive final act that overturns a lifetime’s reputation. Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment in 1895, and his contribution to jail literature with “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” published anon­ ymously by “C33,” after the cell block, landing and cell where he was held, is one instance of the imprisonment of those with a public profile who can write articulately about being in prison. At the time of writing however, the rate of the famous disappearing into prison has accelerated. Bill Cosby’s imprisonment has followed after #MeToo. Other prison sentences such as Rolf Harris’s are not directly aligned with the #MeToo movement but do emerge from an associated process of historic offenses emerging into the present. The same cultural forces lie behind the imprisonment of the Anglican bishop Peter Ball, now a disgraced child molester but once a friend of royalty, and Cardinal George Pell in Australia. Beyond these however extend a longer parade of the famous who have spent some time in prisons. Some have served tiny sentences, such as Paris Hilton’s three days for refusing to register for drug rehab, to the longer terms such as Martha Stewart’s five months for fraud, Robert Downey Jnr’s year for drug-related offenses and the sentences given to the dual national businessman Lord Conrad Black and the writer Lord Jeffrey Archer. These prisoners are of course scarcely representative of prison populations, being mostly white, prosperous, and of high status. Some become articulate about the prison experience during and after sentencing, and their celebrity can bring the discussion of imprisonment and prison conditions into public discourse. On one level is Paris Hilton’s appearance on Larry King Live reading her prison journal or having both it and her intelligence roundly mocked and parodied in the Sunday Times (“Wow! This is sooo awesome. Here I am in Los Angeles prison and, like, everybody’s being real nice”). On another is Conrad Black using his fame and his journalism training to highlight the mistreatment of prisoners in US jails. While this Handbook united incarceration and the media, it is not only the famous who are the subject of study. Criminal justice and incarceration attract the sensationalism and distortion inherent to populism, so it has been both timely and important to investigate how incarceration sits in popular consciousness. However, also in the real world, surveys show widespread ignorance in the general population about the scale of prison populations, or the sort of people sent to prison, except through the iterations of prison life presented in popular media. The chapters revolved around the central issue of what different media, ranging from film and television to comics, music, and podcasting, say about incarceration. They focus on stories where both prisons and prisoners can have celebrity status and where many depictions of prison are often at a sensationalist distance from actuality. In the fictions and semi-fictions of tabloid news, documentaries, and reality TV explored in this volume, these anxieties about law and order, civil rights, justice, and rehabilitation are prompting creative and speculative imagining about the past,

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present, and future of prisons, prisoners, and authority. The decommissioned prisons that are now reborn as popular tourist attractions can sensationalize crime but can also tell important stories about human rights. Equally, the chapters asked what are the creative potentials of incarceration? What imaginative but alarming future visions suggest themselves from looking at these organs of the state? How seriously do people treat prisoners creating reflexive artworks? Central to the chapters in this collection has been the engagement of different populations with life and activity inside prisons. This volume tackled many different representations of incarceration, described by Alana Barton and Alyson Brown as “hegemonic state-defined narratives of imprisonment,” prone to simplification. Creative visions are also complex ones; some chapters in this collection emphasized exploitation and misrepresentation, and the perpetuation of stereotypes. Others revealed how these representations might subvert or complicate common negative depictions of incarceration. As such, the Handbook has been more than a study of “prisons in popular culture,” although “popular” is an important aspect. In media from film to the tabloids, prisons are visible and even marketable. The chapters addressed questions related to the connection or more likely the disconnection between prisons as they really are and how they are presented in popular media; they pursued the implications of prisons being fascinating institutions that are prominent in popular culture but to which few people have access and which fewer still will ever genuinely understand. This Handbook goes some way toward broadening the understanding.

Index

0-9 1990, 166, 168, 171, 172, 175 20000 Years in Sing Sing, 630, 631, 633 6x9: a virtual experience of solitary confinement, 267, 268, 274, 276, 277, 281 A A Clockwork Orange, 8, 18, 166–172, 506, 700, 710, 712 Alien 3, 530, 531, 767 American incarceration, 11, 62, 68, 69, 72, 83, 101, 117, 118, 120, 135, 142, 180, 305–307, 312, 313, 316, 442, 456, 465, 495, 687 Ararat Lunatic Asylum, 13, 575–579, 583 Argentina, 319, 323, 324, 328, 547 Assaults on prisoners, 6, 127, 293, 334, 351, 352, 411, 420, 702, 706 Asylum in popular culture, 575, 577, 582 Auburn State Penitentiary, 109 Audience ethnography, 35 Autobiography of Malcolm X, 119 Autocastration, 332, 340, 343, 344 The Avengers, 501, 504–507

B Bad Girls (1999–2006), 142, 147, 148, 155–160, 614, 615, 642, 658, 664, 673, 700 Bentham, Jeremy, 4, 6, 109, 193, 204, 292, 489–491, 515, 535 Beresford, Bruce, 208–211, 216 Beyond Scared Straight, 151, 411, 444, 445 Birdman of Alcatraz, 253, 254, 386, 633 Bitch Planet, 14, 717–722, 724–729 Black Box, 403 Black Mirror, 9, 12, 455, 456, 468, 473, 474, 476–478, 483, 487, 489, 490, 492–494, 496, 497, 500 Blaxploitation films, 102, 108, 110, 114, 131 Boesky, Ivan, 308 Borstals, 165, 167, 459, 700, 710 Breaker Morant, 10, 208–215, 218 Bronson, 9, 33, 36, 39, 41, 45, 550 Brooker, Charlie, 456, 464, 473, 474, 476, 479–482 C Caged Heat, 615, 621, 699, 700, 702, 704–706, 709, 710, 720 Camp 14: Total Control Zone, 90–93, 95, 96, 98

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Harmes et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7

783

784  Index Capital punishment, 3, 12, 126, 127, 177–182, 185–187, 207, 219, 391, 480, 707, 708, 711 Carceral gaze, 549 Carceral landscape, 9, 25, 346 Carceral punishments, 533, 542, 549, 550, 661 Central visual concept, 224, 722 Chateau d’If, 189, 191, 199, 201 Civil death, 21, 501, 527, 528, 530, 533 Clandestine tours, 545 Club Fed (1989), 306–313, 315–317 “Club Fed” image, 310, 311, 313, 314 Colditz, 141 Concentration camps, 25, 397, 546 Confessional forum, 425, 433, 434 Confinement, 18–27, 54, 197, 199, 203, 224, 225, 229, 232, 233, 274, 276, 278, 279, 353, 354, 390, 456, 458, 482, 501, 508, 514, 517, 542, 549, 577, 579, 635, 685, 690, 736 Conlon, Gerry, 763, 765, 768–776 Conviction, 377, 379, 385, 390 Convicts, 141, 193, 209, 388, 415, 417, 419, 531, 555–565, 567–571 Cool Hand Luke, 95, 225, 254, 386, 389, 398, 542, 629, 632, 635, 636, 641 The Count of Monte Cristo, 9, 10, 140, 189, 204, 779 Crime and justice, 52, 139, 150, 160, 281, 305, 388 Cruel and Unusual, 331–334, 337–339, 341, 342, 344–350, 352, 353 D Dangerous Women, 145, 147 Dark tourist sites, 13, 556–558, 560, 561, 563, 565–571, 583 Dead Boss, 151, 152, 614–616, 618–620, 623, 624 Death penalty, 25, 123, 177–183, 391, 501, 508, 457, 461, 627, 707, 734, 737, 750, 772 Decommissioned prisons, 542, 545, 547, 556, 590, 781 Dekker, Thomas, 2 Deleuze, Gilles, 513, 514, 525 Dickens, Charles, 3, 4, 71, 140, 377, 544

Digital technologies, 456, 488 ‘Disciplinary’ tools, 489, 490 Doctor Who, 165–168, 170–173, 175 Documentaries, 5, 8, 11, 53, 54, 61, 67, 90, 99, 150, 168, 257, 270, 291, 309, 405, 446, 641, 646, 679, 731, 733–736, 766, 780 Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, 6 Dystopian futures, 473, 489, 527 Dystopian penalty, 456, 468, 474, 527 Dystopias, 12, 166, 168, 171, 172, 468, 474, 491, 527, 531, 533, 534, 536, 718 Dystopian societies, 496, 531 E Each Dawn I Die, 377, 385, 390 Ear Hustle, 51–63 Eglin Federal Prison Camp, 307–309 Electric chair, 177, 178, 181, 184, 185, 423, 495, 779 Ellis, Ruth, 248, 711 Enemy Combatant, 69–73 Escape from Alcatraz, 225, 380, 628, 641 Ethical taboos, 584, 677 Ethnographic prerogative, 118 The Experiment, 400, 403–405 F Fænglset, 595 Fanaka, Jamaa, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110–114 Federal penitentiaries, 21, 244, 257, 779 Female-centred series, 673 Feminism, 13, 613, 614, 616–624, 671, 727 Feminist utopia, 613, 621, 623 Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, 73 Foucault, Michel, 4, 18, 39, 77, 102, 118, 191–195, 204, 225, 240, 414, 432, 468, 474, 489–491, 493–496, 512, 514–517, 521–525, 533–536, 542, 549, 685, 690, 694, 701, 703, 708, 709, 721, 732

Index

G Gandhi, Mahatma, 42, 120 Gangster, 121, 148, 361–371, 390, 634 Gender and race, 133, 657 The General, 69, 76–79 Genre expectations, 427, 575, 632, 657, 721 Get Hard (2015), 294, 306, 311, 383 Ghost tours, 559, 575, 577, 578, 580, 581, 583, 584 Girls Incarcerated, 12, 150, 425, 426, 430, 431, 434, 435, 467, 641 Godfather Trilogy, 362 Goodfellas (1990 film), 362, 363, 366, 370 The Governor, 147, 160 Grahame, Kenneth, 3, 4 The Green Mile, 95, 225, 542, 635, 641 Guantanamo Bay, 24, 779 Guantánamo Diary, 68, 69, 79–82 The Guildford Four, 763, 765, 766, 768, 772, 773, 776, 777, 779 H Hard and soft power, 39, 45, 46 Heteronormativity, 13, 628, 634, 635 Hillsborough inquest, 764 Hogan’s Heroes, 141 Holloway Prison, 700 Horror and gothic genres, 575 Horsens Straffeanstalt, 13 The House of Whipcord, 699–705, 707–711 Human rights, 14, 67, 68, 72, 80, 82, 90, 93, 98, 125, 179, 180, 266, 320, 333–336, 338, 351, 407, 593, 746, 747, 749, 756, 758, 759, 781 Human rights organizations, 89, 96, 747 The Hurricane, 377–379, 385, 389 Hyde Park Barracks, Australia, 546, 556, 558–560, 565, 570 I I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 8, 94, 377, 380, 383, 385, 388, 389, 391, 631 Immersive journalism, 267, 268, 270, 271, 273, 274, 277, 280–282 Incarcerated, 154, 430

  785

Indeterminacy, 45, 194, 689 Inmate experiences, 155, 297 In the Name of the Father, 377, 379, 385, 389, 763, 765, 767, 768, 776 Iriarte, Nathalie, 320, 321, 324–328, 330 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 166, 174, 379, 385, 763, 765, 768, 770–773 The Istituto Luce, 731, 733–736 Italian cinema, 731, 732, 739 J Journalism, 123, 268, 270–276, 280, 282, 322, 414, 438, 439, 717, 727, 755, 780 “Just deserts” punishment, 457 K Kaechon internment camp, 10, 89, 92 Kelly, Ned, 208, 209, 213–215, 219, 466, 530, 568, 571 Kristeva, Julia, 513, 515–517, 522–525 L The Last Man Hanged, 208, 215, 218, 219 Lesbian and heterosexual imaginary, 13, 686 The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convicts, 101, 105, 107, 109, 114 Lock Up, 12, 178, 180, 181, 183–186, 250, 446, 630 Lompoc Federal Prison Camp in California, 308 M Madman’s Hill, 575, 576 Mafia, 298, 362–365, 367–370, 651 Malcolm X, 104, 105, 119–121, 134 Mandela, Nelson, 42, 269, 353 Man in a Suitcase, 501, 504–506 Maraz, Reina, 319, 322, 324–326 Marquis de Sade, 701, 709 Masculinities, 55, 104, 112, 225, 228, 229, 248, 312, 346, 362–365, 371, 628, 636, 637, 663, 664

786  Index Massumi, Brian, 425, 429, 430, 432 Media and technology, 489, 746 Mental illness, 130, 345, 517, 575, 577, 578, 582, 585 Men’s and women’s bodies, 635, 688 Minority Report, 464, 511, 512, 514– 517, 519, 520, 522, 524, 525 Miscarriages of justice, 2, 11, 14, 380, 515, 764, 765 Morant, Harry, 209–213 Motherhood in imprisonment, 656 N Neoconservatism, 456, 458, 459 Neoliberalism, 136, 458, 462, 595, 614 Neorealism, 731, 736–739 Newgate Prison, 2, 3, 191 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 120, 685, 690 North Korea, 10, 89–91, 95, 96, 98, 99 O Office Space, 311 The Old Melbourne Gaol, 208, 209, 213, 215, 556, 558–561, 563, 565, 566, 568, 570, 571 Omertà, 361 Operational prisons, 422, 499, 542–545, 549 Orange Is the New Black (OITNB), 2, 13, 62, 142, 151, 152, 155–159, 270, 305, 441, 447, 542, 613–616, 618, 620–624, 636, 641, 642, 645, 646, 649, 666, 673, 675, 677, 678, 680, 681, 686, 700 ‘Outlaw’ connotation, 531, 535 Oz, 5, 147–149, 155–160, 305, 542, 623, 636, 655, 659, 661, 673, 680 P Paddington 2, 11, 223, 225, 226, 228, 230, 236, 239, 240 Palimpsestic penality, 474, 477, 483 Panopticon, 4, 6, 94, 193–196, 198, 201, 432, 433, 489–492, 494, 512, 519–521, 535, 536, 548 Paternalistic discourse of power, 329

Patriot Act, 511, 513 Penal colonies, 2, 18, 530, 547, 627, 634, 656, 740 Penal discipline, 414, 708, 735 Penitentiaries, 18, 19, 177, 257, 269, 313, 614, 707 Penitentiary (1979 film), 102, 104, 108–110, 112, 114, 631 Penological terms, 500 Penological theories, 169 Perro Crónico, 320 Plantations, 2, 18, 113, 117, 129, 224, 415, 577 Podcasting, 8, 52, 53, 281, 779, 780 Poems From Guantánamo, 68 Police lockups, 22 Popular culture narratives, 139, 154, 158, 159, 376 Popular imaginary, 51, 103, 474, 689, 711 Pornography, 6, 446, 460, 634, 685, 690, 691, 705 “Pornoscript” structures, 14, 686, 691, 692 Porridge, 2, 8, 142–145, 151, 152, 155, 159, 160, 165–168, 225, 592, 593, 673, 678 Port Arthur, 13, 546, 555, 556, 558– 564, 568, 570, 584 Prison, 17–21, 25, 26, 35, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183–186, 543, 699 Prison Break, 149, 150, 155, 156, 542, 636, 673 The Prisoner, 2, 9, 12, 141, 142, 145–147, 500–509, 542, 616, 642, 656–658, 661, 664, 671–674, 676, 678, 679 Prisoner audience, 35, 46, 47 Prisoner: Cell Block H, 13, 142, 148, 152, 153, 156, 614, 642, 671, 686, 699, 700 Prison management, 44, 243, 258 Prison memoirs, 67, 69, 71–74, 82, 105, 118, 120, 123, 125, 127, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136 “Prison movies” genre, 628, 636 Prison museums, 14, 466–468, 542, 546–549, 570, 590, 592, 593, 595, 600, 602, 747, 748, 750, 751, 754, 759

Index

Prison paradigm, 1, 83, 104, 108, 110, 159, 179, 181, 183, 184, 252, 256, 321, 514, 644, 767 Prison riots, 160, 266, 312, 390, 434, 752 Prison-set motion pictures, 731, 732 Prison-themed television programs, 139, 147 Prometheus, 513 Psychic spaces, 513, 516 Q Qualitative coding, 478 The Queen of Los Hornos, 319, 321–323, 328 Quiet Rage, 11, 404 R Real and imagined prison, 23, 157, 175, 223, 225, 399, 489, 495, 505, 598, 708 Reality television, 2, 5, 12, 150, 151, 425–431, 439, 446, 447, 459, 463, 467, 779 Reed, Austin, 101, 102, 105–111, 113, 114 ‘R’ (film), 591, 593, 597, 599–603 Rehabilitation, 6, 26, 45, 109, 112, 118, 132, 134, 148, 151, 158–160, 166–169, 173, 174, 177, 180, 181, 184, 240, 241, 266, 278, 279, 376, 413, 415, 457, 458, 462, 465, 482, 534, 542, 544, 545, 577, 595, 633, 679, 701, 704, 707, 737, 739, 780 Richmond Gaol, Australia, 558, 559 Rideau, Wilbert, 122–125, 129 Rikers Island, 114, 123, 133 Ryan, Ronald, 175, 207, 209, 213–219 S San Quentin prison, 294, 406 Santiago Baca, Jimmy, 121 Scared Straight!, 12, 151, 411, 412, 415–423, 446, 545 Scared Straight! 10 Years Later, 411 Scared Straight! 20 Years Later, 411, 417 Scum, 165–168, 531, 710

  787

Senghor, Shaka, 120, 121 Servitude, 117, 118, 489 Sesame Street, 7, 442, 443, 448 Sexploitation, 688, 699–702, 705–707 Sexual Abuse in Detention Elimination Act (2005), 335, 351 Sexual identity, 642, 646, 657 Sexuality in prison movies, 628, 635, 636 Sexual pleasure, 14, 686, 689 Sexual punishment theory, 332, 350 Shame Therapy, 731 The Shawshank Redemption, 18, 97, 225, 305, 377, 381, 384, 385, 387, 516, 542, 546, 629, 630, 636, 641, 660, 702, 709 Shin Dong-hyuk, 89, 91, 93, 95, 98 The Simpsons, 2, 5 Single-sex spaces, 614 Sing Sing Prison, 171, 423 Slavery, 103, 104, 110, 114, 117, 129, 132, 135, 419, 648 Social and mental control, 456 Social networking responses, 278, 280 Socioeconomic status, 290, 292, 296 Solidarity-building, 78, 113, 398, 515, 542, 601, 673, 755, 773, 774 The Sopranos, 11, 361–366, 371, 680 South Park, 5 Spanish television, 642–644, 646–649 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), 11, 21, 23, 397, 398, 400, 401, 403, 405–407 State penal systems, 13, 338 Statsfængslet Østjylland, 590 Stereotypes, 5, 59, 61, 94, 103–105, 110, 113, 139, 150, 154–156, 159, 227–229, 255, 280, 308, 329, 412, 417–419, 545, 593, 628, 629, 632, 643, 644, 648, 650, 651, 687, 781 Stigmatisation, 293, 656, 657, 662 Stir Crazy, 146, 377, 381, 383, 386, 389, 630 Supermax, 166, 175, 268 Surreal prisons, 500 T Telefantasy, 166, 502–506 Television ‘hub’ or ‘precinct’, 672 Tenko, 141

788  Index Thomas, Piri, 122, 158 Traditional and new media, 437 Transgender women, 331–347, 349–353 Transitional space, 63 Trauma, 69, 93, 96, 118, 213, 274, 333, 334, 337, 338, 341, 343, 345, 347–353, 463, 514, 575, 578, 582–584, 745 True stories, 37, 153, 378, 379, 389, 390, 437, 598, 637 Turkey, 9, 75, 548, 747, 752, 755, 758 Tyburn, 3, 4, 23 U Ulucanlar prison, 745, 747–749, 751, 755, 756, 758, 759 US solitary confinement, 3, 5, 24, 38, 52, 54, 60, 62, 68, 106, 113, 114, 118, 120, 128–130, 140, 143, 175, 179, 180, 186, 217, 266–270, 274–281, 311, 332, 334–337, 344, 345, 350, 351, 353, 354, 385, 389, 390, 398, 430, 435, 515, 564, 615, 623 US television, 617, 643, 646, 680 V Viewer’s gaze, 348 Vigilante justice, 8, 174, 463, 478, 480–482 Violation of human rights, 92, 333, 342, 350, 352, 353, 746, 747, 754, 756, 758, 759 Virtual reality (VR), 267, 268, 270–278, 280–283, 479

Vis a vis, 642–650 Visual arts, 560 Visual concept methodology, 223–227, 236, 239, 241 W Walker, Pete, 217, 700–702, 705, 707 Watchdog role, 437 Wentworth, 2, 13, 142, 145, 151–153, 155–160, 614–616, 618, 620, 622–624, 636, 642, 645, 656–659, 661–666, 671–681, 700 White-collar offenders, 289–299, 306, 307, 310–312, 316, 317 Willow B: Women in Prison, 145, 146 Within These Walls, 142, 143, 145, 148, 160, 642, 699 Wolf of Wall Street (2013), 306, 310, 311 Women in Prison, 146, 147, 614, 641, 678 Women in Prison (WIP) genre, 615, 628, 657, 664, 666, 724 Women in prison films, 13, 150, 614, 632, 636, 657, 686–688, 699–701, 705, 720, 722, 724, 725, 738 Woodward, Edward, 211 Written Inside, 53 Wrongful incarcerated, 189, 390 Wyoming State Penitentiary, 182, 183 Z Zeitgeist, 178, 525, 765, 767 Zimbardo, Philip, 11, 21, 23, 397–407