Week Five blog

In this weeks reading, viewing and lecture we looked into how cops are portrayed in the media.

The first reading by Renee Goldsmith Kasinsky, Patrolling the Facts: Media, Cops, and Crime, discusses the difference between the type of work cops do in the real world, and how cop and detective work is protrayed by the media. More often than not, there is a disparity between the two. In the real world, cops have a lot of paperwork and sit at a desk for most of the time. In television and movies, we don't see this type of work being portrayed. Usually we see cops out in the field arresting criminals who are running from the law. Cops are portrayed as crime fighters, that have a lot of power and authority to take matters into their hands and uphold the law. Kasinsky also talks about the Rodney King beating and how cops were portrayed as the major perpetrators of the violence. This is an interesting case, because usually the cops want to be portrayed in a certain way, even if its not really that way. However, the media actually portrayed to the public that cops are not perfect, and police brutality is an issue that needs to be looked into. I thought it was interesting how the cops always want to be on the good side of journalists, newspapers, and television, and how they have a power to manipulate the media in order to portray a certain image to the public.

In the Rafter reading for this week, she talks about Cop and detective films and how they are portrayed in this way. Cops can be portrayed in different lights through films, but usually the image that they are portrayed is in a positive light. They are seen as holding a certain power to fight crime, and sometimes take matters into their own hands (as we see in Dirty Harry) in order to keep law and order. Since the Dirty Harry movies came out, We see a lot of characters that stem from these same tropes. There are a lot of  vigilante type cop films in which the cop has to go his own way, rebel against the bureaucratic system in order to fight crime. Cops are portrayed as smart and knowledgeable, physically fit, masculine. tough, showing little emotion. This notion of the ideal cop in cop and detective films is not exactly a realistic portrayal of cops in society. Cop and detective work is dramatized and exaggerated through films.

After watching Dirty Harry we talked about the portrayal of the cop and detective role. In this film, Dirty Harry is the vigilante type cop, and takes matters into his own hand when it comes to upholding the law in San Francisco, California. He is anti-bureaucratic and sees the system as inept, corrupt, and unable to actually get any crime-fighting accomplished. Harry makes crime fighting look effortless and easy when he happens to stumble upon a bank robbery. He simply fires one shot per criminal and the job is taken care of. We all know this is not an accurate depiction of police work and crime fighting in the real world. This ties right into our discussions and readings of how cop work is portrayed in the media. Cops want to be portrayed as living an exciting life of crime fighting on the streets, even if its not realistic. These images reinforce our beliefs about cops and the type of work they do.

On CNN. com I found an article about a California cop who is pleading not guilty for being charged with beating a mentally ill homeless man to death. The police officer apparently attacked the man after an altercation on the street. The order goes on to discuss other instances of police brutality in the Los Angelas area. The district attorney said the cops behavior was unacceptable and not protecting or serving the public. The cop could now be sentenced to 15 years in jail. I thought it was somewhat ironic how the cop is portrayed here. Cops are supposed to be good right? Or at lease we think. The person that is supposed to protect and serve is now the one put on try for committing a criminal act of murder. I think it is important for the media to not be one sided and just show the heroic stories of police work but also show how cops are human too and make mistakes, just like us, or just like criminals. 

CNN story link

Here is the link for the story i found on CNN this week that i mentioned in my week four blog post
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/20/justice/georgia-davis-execution/index.html?hpt=ju_c1

Week Four Blog

In this weeks lectures and readings, we discussed the idea of the predator criminal icon in the media, as well as criminology theories of why criminals go bad in the first place.

In Ray Surette's article, the whole notion of the predator icon in America was discussed in depth. In our class discussion we also talked about how the media portrays criminals in a menacing light and that there are evil criminals out there preying on innocent victims. This image of the predator that is depicted in media narratives (including TV, News, and Movies) is not representative of the actual types of crime that occur in the real world. The amount of predatory crime that occurs is actually very rare. However, because the media has portrayed the criminal landscape in this way, Americans feel like they should fear for their lives on a daily basis. Most people do not feel safe walking around a big city at night. Granted, innocent people do fall victim to violent crimes, but very rarely does it make up the total percentage of criminal activity. In the article it was also discussed how the criminal justice system and the media blames the criminal for their wrong-doings and puts the responsibility on them to fix their own problems. We live in a very individualistic society where people think that you have complete control over your actions, and anything that you do is solely your own fault. However, this completely disregards the whole host of other factors that come into play when assessing the criminality of an individual. Policies and program reform are also some factors that might contribute to the criminal behavior in some people.

In Chapter two of Rafters book there were different theories discussed that try to explain criminal behavior and how people become criminals. The notion of the "born bad" criminal was brought out in our class discussion, but many criminologists today do not rely solely on this theory, because there can be a whole host of other factors that come into play when investigating the source of ones criminal behavior. In some ways, this theory has been trumped because we don't have any conclusive evidence for people who are simply born bad because of their unfortunate genetic inheritance. Environmental theories are more widely accepted as valid and useful in explaining crime, because it makes more sense. Your family life growing up, the people you are around, the Socio-economic status you are born into, are all determinants of your likelihood to live a life of crime, or to be a law-abiding citizen. Peer groups also have a huge influence on criminal activity in youth. Rational choice explanations were also discussed in the chapter as well as in our class discussion. There are many people who choose a life of crime, because they do not have as many opportunities and see crime as the rational choice. The benefits of committing the crime outweigh the costs of committing the crime. There were also psychological theories of crime that were discussed. There are criminals in the media that are depicted as psychotic for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they become that way after going through hard experiences, or they might have a chemical imbalance in their brain that makes them more prone to commit crime.

After watching Menace II Society, I couldn't help but think of Cane and how unfortunate it was for him to grow up in that kind of environment. It seemed like he could have been a decent person, if he had been given more opportunity, or was able to get out of the bad environment he was in. He knew what was right in most situations, but instead, he went along with his buddies and engaged in criminal activity because he saw it as the only option. He also made some rational choices. When he decided to steal the rims off of someone else's car instead of paying for them, he saw that as the best option because he didn't have that much money. Clearly he was thinking things through. In the case of his friend O-dog, he seemed like the type of criminal that was a thrill seeker, and didn't think about the consequences of his action. He chose a life of crime not just because of the environment, and the opportunity he had to commit crime, but it seemed like he enjoyed committing crime more than cane. This movie goes right along with the theories of crime we discussed in the Rafter reading and how the environment and the rational choices they made in the movie let to a life of crime.

I was browsing the CNN news channel and stumbled upon an article about a death-row inmate in Georgia who is sentenced to lethal injection after being convicted from murder of a police officer 22 years ago. There are supporters all over the world that believe he was wrongly convicted and he has his last chance to defend himself in an appeal this Monday. The police officers mother who was shot believes he should be executed, and wont have closure unless he is executed. However the death-row inmates family and many supporters believe he is innocent. This article made me think of the idea of the predator criminals in the media and how the criminal justice system deals with these criminals. Clearly, the mother of the deceased cop thinks that he is the one who shot her son. She thinks he is a predator and should be executed in order for her to have closure, but did he really commit the crime? The media would like to portray him as a violent killer, but there are many people that believe he was wrongly convicted. If he is innocent, this just goes to show that there are not as many violent predators in the world than the media would like us to believe.

Week Three Blog

In rafters introduction to "Crime Films and Society", she discusses how crime is presented in traditional crime films, and the pleasure that we get from watching crime films for entertainment purposes. She talks about the "happy hypocrisy" and how we pride ourselves in the ability to figure out these crime stories and root for the criminal, but also for the law which brings them to justice. It is suggested that there is a lot of underlying messages and meanings about our culture in critical crime films, and our perceptions of crime and criminal justice are continually being shaped by movies; more so than we think. When sit down and watch a crime film, we are not just simply watching it, but actively engaging in the story, and are in one way or another affected by it; whether we are consciously aware of it or not. We constantly adapt, mold, and change our beliefs of crime in society when we watch crime movies. Because most of us don't experience crime in our everyday lives, we have the chance to escape into an imaginative world of what crime and the criminal justice system might be like, even though its not completely accurate, we identify with the images and ideas that are portrayed through  crime films.

The process of how Criminal activity becomes a news story was discussed in Chermaks article "Crime in the News Media." I thought it was interesting how stories are chosen to be presented in the News media based on the severity and intensity of the crime. It seems like the stories that grab our attention the most in the news, are those that have the most shock value. Ironically however, this can give a skewed perception of crime to the everyday lay person in our society because most of the crimes committed in this country are not that intense. While watching the news or reading the paper people might get the impression that we live in a cruel world and that we are not safe and bad things happen to good people. Granted, there are innocent people victimized, but for the most part the majority of crimes are on the misdemeanor level.

After having viewed the dateline episode in class, i thought about infotainment in our country and how much of what we watch and hear about crime, depends on how it is portrayed. On the show dateline, they pick stories that will grab your attention and keep you engaged in the show until you find out what happens in the end. Most of the stories they choose have the same basic prompt where an innocent, vulnerable, good person falls victim to an evil, cruel perpetrator. As i said earlier, this again shows how news media doesn't give an exactly accurate representation of the type and frequency of crimes committed. In order to keep people watching, they need interesting, rare, heinous crime stories to keep people entertained. These stories that are shown as infotainment in our country feed into society's ideas about what type of crime is committed, on what scale, and how much crime is left solved or unsolved.

This week while browsing the news on the internet i stumbled upon a story at CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/28/kentucky.arizona.sexual.assault/index.html?iref=obinsite about a man who had kidnapped, sexually assaulted and impregnated a younger relative more than 20 years ago, and is finally being taken away into federal custody. The girl waited several years to come forward to the authorities about the crime until she had fled from the man. She said that she didn't tell anyone about the crime until several decades later because she feared for her life and her child's life. This story made me think of all the crime that goes unnoticed, unsolved, or unreported in our country. Sometimes, crime never gets solved, and sometimes it takes years to bring people to justice and lock the perpetrator away. Most of the crime stories that appear in headlines are the ones that are the most violent and shocking. As i mentioned earlier, these are the kind of crimes that are going to make the news and that people will want to read about because of the entertainment value in them, even though they are very rare.

Week Two Blog

Hayward's article called 'opening the lens' posed that while we may not experience criminal activity in our everyday life, we are bombarded with images of crime through different media outlets (Television, Movies, radio, internet, newsprint, etc). The notion of the 'image' and 'visual' being interchangeable as well as different to the viewer 'seeing' or taking in that image of crime has an impact on how our society perceives crime and criminal justice in our world. Our views in turn shape the image that we see and it becomes a cyclical process between the impact of the image on the viewer and the impact of the viewer on the image. I agree with Hayward's ideas and methodological approach to studying cultural criminology in the media and the idea that " the (visual) media has changed from simply conveying information or telling entertaining stories about crime, to actually shaping and producing its reality." I think that crime-related media might be more influential on our culture and society than we perceive in our everyday experiences.

There were different methodological approaches discussed for studying crime in Yar's article. The Content Analysis approach looks at the frequency of a particular image, word, or phrases within a medium across different media. This is a very objective approach to studying crime trends in the media which could produce some interesting results but doesn't quite give us the whole picture. I think this approach to studying crime is a surefire way to come up with some good numbers or facts, but doesn't look deep enough into the 'why' aspect of happenings in crime-related media. the Marxists approach to studying crime looks at how crime-related media is presented to society in such a way that reinforces the views of the most powerful people in society. Marxist ideology poses that the consumers views of this crime related media are being influenced by the dominant class interests and the views that they hold. This is a somewhat negative view on crime-related media and i don't completely agree with the notion that all crime-related media is a reflection of the dominant class in our society. The postmodern pluralism approach suggests that there can be multiple meanings derived from any single crime-related medium. i agree with this approach because every individual in society has their own subjective experience and i think you can have a host of different meanings from any TV show, movie, etc.

In Alison Young's article she suggests that when we are the consumers of crime related media, we are not simply just watching the Movie or TV show, but we are an active partaker in what is happening in the crime-related event. We are affected by what is happening in the scene and our perspective of crime can be shifted, shaped, and molded by the media. This suggests that the media has a certain power over how we think about crime and its relation to us and the society we live in. I agree with Young's methodological approach in studying crime in the media because it goes beyond simply just viewing crime, but she suggests that we are an active participant in it. We feel what the people feel, and relate to the images and stories portrayed on a human level. This suggests that criminal images and stories in the media can evoke a strong response in us.

The Law and Order viewing from last week is related to this weeks readings on many different levels. In some ways the different characters in the show are reinforcing the ideas of the societal view on crime and how things occur in the real world. The portrayals in a lot of these episodes are exaggerated or not completely accurate. We all know that how crime is presented in a Law and Order episode is not a completely accurate depiction of crime in the real world, but we still identify with the depictions represented of the police, law enforcement, victim, suspects, and the perpetrators. the script is somewhat predictable the more you watch the episodes. I also notice that these episodes evoke an emotional response in us, just like Alison Young discussed in her article about Movies emotional affect on us. I also think that postmodern pluralism can be applied to Law and Order episodes because not everyone will be affected in the same exact way. and you can get multiple meanings from these heinous crimes depicted in the episodes.

For my outside viewing this week, i decided to watch a crime-related movie called The Italian Job. I found this movie to be related to the post-modern pluralism ideology and Alison Youngs ideas about being an active viewer in the media and the affect it has on our emotions and perspectives. In the movie, there is a group of professional thieves who go on a trip to Italy to steel a bunch of gold. It turns out that after they got away with the gold, one of the men in their group has a hidden agenda and decides to steal all the gold for himself and shoot the group leader. His daughter finds out about loosing her father and wants retribution. One man in the group who was like an apprentice to the father decides to get everybody back together and steal the gold that was once theirs. They find the man who betrayed them in LA and come up with a plan to regain their prized gold. While i was watching this movie, I couldn't help but sympathize for the daughter who lost her father and was angry at the man who killed him and stole all the gold that should have been theirs. While watching this movie, you sympathize with the people getting the gold back, but after i watched it i realized that even the "good guys" were committing a crime too, but it was portrayed in a heroic manner. This shows how multiple meanings can be derived from this film, what we perceive as being right and wrong, event though the crime is wrong, it can be justified in some cases such as in this movie. I think that this shows the power of crime in the movies and how our views can be subtly changed in certain criminal situations and what is right and wrong. The lines can become blurred in this situation.