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.
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