Week 3
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Introduction

Last week we discussed the moral universes of film and related these to sociological perspectives that focus on the background expectancies of everyday life. But, the majority of films are not sociological in their approach to understanding behavior, and in particular deviant behavior. Instead most films rely on two perspectives; free will or psychological motivation.

In the chapter "Why They Went Bad" Rafter explores the motivation given for criminality in Hollywood films. She lists 3 major perspectives: free will, psychological, and environmental. A fourth, biological rarely appears. Finally, some films offer no explanation at all for evil. We will add to this list with discussions of alcohol and drugs as film behavior motivators.

Biological Explanations

Biological explanations of crime date from the late 19th Century, were very popular with academics in the early 20th Century, then came under attack as racist after Hitler's atrocities in the name of eugenics were uncovered, but have made a come back in the last 20 years with the emergence of sociobiology and the human genome project.

Biological explanations in film rely on the "born bad" metaphor as depicted in movies such as The Bad Seed (1956) (1985). In this film, a 9 year old girl is depicted as a born murderess; displaying a host of other anti-social traits along the way as well. A Lombrosian-type criminologist appears in these films to discuss how some children are born evil.

Of course, biological theory reaches its apex in the werewolf movies. Here, biologically infected killers (lycanthropes) are literally depicted as wolves, given over totally to animalistic violence with no hope of remorse or salvation. The idea that humans can revert to animalistic behavior if infected by animal blood or combined with animal genes has resulted in movies such as The Wasp Woman (1960), The Fly (1958) (1986), and Spider-man (2002), among a host of others. Typically, the biological infection turns the human into a killer; only rarely can he or she control the transformation and use the new "powers" for good as in Spider-man.

Biological damage such as a brain injury appears in films such as The Cell (2000) and Memento (2001). In The Cell, a doctor has developed a new technique for entering the brain of her patients and much wander around inside the damaged psyche of a comatose serial killer to learn where he has left his last victim.

Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) inside the mind of a serial killer

Memento is even more complex, as the victim of a brain injury is left without the ability to form new memories that last longer than 20 minutes. To cope with his fate and solve the murder of his wife, Leonard creates an elaborate system of note taking, including maps, photos, hand written notes, and tattoos to refresh his memory. However, ultimately we discover Leonard is himself a serial killer, consciously using his malady to set up future victims of his rage. Knowing he will forget why he wrote a note about something, later he will use it to propel his actions, thinking they are "right."

Environmental Theories

The idea that offenders are forced into crime by factors in the social environment appears in a number of films. As mentioned previously in the course, films that use environmental explanations tend to depict moral universes in which evil is omnipresent, fate is impossible to escape, and alternative outcomes do not occur. The behavior of actors is determined by accidents of birth and social location.  Rafter cites films such as Badlands (1973), starring Martin Sheen in a veiled retelling of the Charles Starkweather and Caril-Ann Fugate murder spree of 1958. "This frightening rebel twosome inspired a whole series of mainstream and not-so-mainstream movies like the 1974 Badlands of Terrence Malick, Wild At Heart by David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott's 1993 True Romance, Dominic Sena's 1993 Kalifornia, and Oliver Stone's 1994 Natural Born Killers. "

The films of Martin Scorsese seem to fit an environmental explanation as well. These include Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Goodfellas (1990). Living across the street from gangsters is enough to start Henry Hill on a life of crime (and later the Witness Protection Program). Similarly, violence originates in a violent society. Kids exposed to violence in the everyday lives of their families or neighborhoods seemed doomed to repeat it.

The reason Hollywood writers and producers like this model can be explained by its potential as a "salvation device." If human beings are not responsible for their actions, then they should not be looked down upon by society or punished for their behavior. Likewise, film audiences can better identify with characters who have been absolved of moral responsibility.

Twisted Psyches: Abnormal Psychology in Film

Films that explain crime as the result of psychological abnormality are numerous. One of the earliest was the Fritz Lang film M (1931)

Peter Lorre stares at himself in the mirror,
unable to believe what he is. From "M."

In this film, Peter Lorre plays a child murderer, driven to repeat his killings by an inner force he cannot control. The film is extensively discussed by Gunning in The Films of Fritz Lang. (Later critics saw premonitions of Hitler in the film, which was banned in Germany following 1933.) Lorre as the killer Beckert is captured at the end of the film by the criminals of the city rather than the police. At a mock trial they set up, Beckert is confronted with pictures of his victims, and confesses to the killings. The explanation he gives for the killings is psychological; he kills to relieve an otherwise persistent inner torture he experiences. The implication is that Beckert was himself an abused child, who is now psychologically tortured by memories of the event. His only release is to kill; momentarily it stops the images from playing in his head, but they soon return.  He awakens from his abyss of total unconsciousness after the murders, only to find news about the murders everywhere in the city. As he reads about it in the mass media, this seems to start the cycle again. So, in effect, Beckert is seeking his own death but is never able to commit suicide. The implication is that such a monster should be destroyed to save future children from the same fate, but Lang introduces a psychiatric defense just as the mob is about to devour him. Beckert is sick and needs to be taken to a hospital. Beckert is ultimately spared when one of the victim mothers speaks up to say that killing him will not bring the children back.

M is also frequently cited for its focus on urban terror as a fundamental part of the modern human condition. In effect, city dwellers are all suffering psychologically from the way fear spreads in a city. Through both word of mouth and the mass media, reports of each murder are circulated quickly throughout the city. Behavior is changed as a result as one must always be watchful. Its only a step of degree from this kind of terror to the world in which we live post 9/11. As just about anything could become a terrorist target and when they might strike and with what weapons and tactics is unknown, a constant feeling of unease permeates everyday life.

In order to reassure ourselves that we are doing something to counter this threat a giant surveillance system has been allowed to emerge, without questioning its implications on privacy or civil liberties. M also showed this outcome, as the city mobilized a surveillance system to try to stop the killer.

Whether the type of psychological torment experienced by and inflicted on others by personalities such as Beckert's could have been ended by his own death is a theme that appears in the recent film The Others (2001).

Is the mother protecting her children or torturing them? Scene from The Others.

Nicole Kidman plays the mother of two small children living alone in a large mansion on the island of Jersey. She protects the children from all outside influences, including making sure their photo sensitive skin never is exposed to sunlight. Gradually both the children and the mother come to recognize that she has murdered the children and they are now ghosts living in the mansion, being invaded by the living. Only by facing what she has done and reconciling with the children is any hope of spiritual peace possible.

The deviant woman as one with a wounded psyche is a oft-repeated theme. While most male criminals do what they do as a result of greed or male competition, the female criminal as sick is accepted as normal. This should not be surprising as studies of the mental health field through the 1970s have found that therapists traditionally associated male personality traits with healthy human traits while normal female personality traits were thought to lend themselves to abnormality.

Rational Choice Explanations

Modern criminology originated with a rational explanation of human behavior (actually a variation on the sin model) based upon the works of Beccaria and Bentham, rejected that explanation for much more deterministic biological, psychological, and sociological explanations, but returned to rational choice thinking following the 1970s. On the other hand the American legal system, which has the task of proving guilt or innocence, and then doling out appropriate punishment, has always remained rooted in the free will camp. Only the insanity plea and the idea that prison can somehow provide treatment for offenders exist as exceptions to the predominant belief system.

Likewise a large number of movies do not explain motivation for deviant behavior in response to biological, psychological, or environmental factors, but in the choices made everyday by human beings to participate or not participate in crime. One could make a strong argument for the movies as the arena in which humans face the temptations of the Seven Deadly Sins (which according to Pope Gregory are greed, sloth, anger, lust, gluttony, pride, and jealousy) on a daily basis and either succumb to their temptations or remain morally steadfast. For example, boredom (sloth) can be seen in characters who "slum" with con artists (House of Games (1987)) or mobsters (The Cure for Boredom (2000)).

In traditional films characters who give in to "the dark side" must either be redeemed or punished/destroyed. In alternative tradition films everyone sins, so evil is pervasive. Righteousness and salvation are impossible.

In film noirs from  Double Indemnity (1944) to The Last Seduction (1994) we see strong woman who are just as greedy and unscrupulous as any man. As men are depicted as readily eager to give in to lust, femme fatales can control and manipulate the opposite sex with ease. Maxfield's essay on Double Indemnity is unique in that he reinterprets the film not as a femme fatale movie, but as an anti-homosexual one. The Fred McMurray character (Walter Neff) hopes to show his colleague, played by Edward G. Robinson, that he will not by "caught" by him. 

Drugs and Alcohol in the Movies: From Reefer Madness to Clean and Sober

Hollywood film has been inconsistent in its treatment of drugs and alcohol as causes of human behavior. Since alcohol has enjoyed much wider societal acceptance (even during Prohibition) than other substances (opiates, marijuana and other hallucinogens, etc.), we would expect the former topic to be treated with ambivalence. Drugs, on the other hand, were viewed as anathema until the 1960s, when a new generation of teen-oriented films like Easy Rider came along. We will then compare Hollywood drug and alcohol accounts to the frenzied way illegal drugs have been discussed within the news media.

Norman Denzin recently published a book covering the history of alcoholism in American movies entitled: Hollywood Shot by Shot. Unfortunately, there is no comparable source on Hollywood's treatment of drugs. Denzin stresses the importance of reviewing film "texts" as a way to understand changing American conceptions of social problems such as alcoholism or drug abuse. For those without direct personal experience with alcoholics or drug users (there are some) films may be one of the few sources of information they have, resulting in stereotyped perceptions. For the over 12 million alcoholics, over 1 million AA members, 30 million adult children of alcoholics, and over 4 million alcoholic families, these films may serve a different purpose. They may help them construct an understanding of their own drinking problems and those of their friends and relatives. Denzin talked to many recovering alcoholics to get their analyses of Hollywood problem drinking films. Obviously if their own experiences and the cinematic ones are not congruent, such individuals may find the films not helpful at best and, at worst, intellectually dishonest. Of course, Hollywood films always run the risk of "glamorizing" any topic they take on. This is almost inevitable given contemporary cinematographic techniques such as color filming, close-ups, make-up, editing, and wide screen viewing. Also, we already know the actors in these films, who often became "stars" because of their good looks and natural charisma. While playing a hopelessly alcoholic lawyer in The Verdict I believed from the beginning that Paul Newman would win his case. After all, that drunk was Paul Newman!!

Denzin's main argument concerning alcohol is that Hollywood has always presented us with a bifurcated vision of the topic. On the one hand, drinking has been presented as a normal part of what ordinary and sophisticated people do when they engage in sociable behavior. But, for every sober, normal, social drinker, Hollywood has shown us a deviant drinker. These stereotypes have included sad or laughable "lushes" (e.g. Arthur), the slightly "giddy, tipsy" imbiber (typically women), or the out-and-out drunk. The problem drinker's decline is charted, shot by shot, until he or she dies, gets sober, or is laughed off the screen. The alcohol film has fit quite nicely into a number of Hollywood genres: melodramatic tragedy, melodrama with a happy ending, the western, the woman's film, and comedy.

The division of alcohol users also served another purpose: in a Durkheimian sense the discussion of deviant drinking helped to define the normal drinker's normality. Americans want to drink but do not want alcoholics in their midst. One can claim to be a "normal drinker" if he or she does not do the things deviant drinkers do: e.g., pass out, act abusively, let it affect their work or family, etc. The alcoholic in film was frequently depicted as a "diseased," sick, often insane, violent person who violated the normal standards of everyday life. As social problems films, many included messages about how recovery from alcoholism was possible. Cures included: the love of a good man or woman, will power, A.A., or a spiritual experience. Almost all of these films are anti-alcoholism, with Barfly being an exception; alcoholism was just a background condition of the characters' lives. Leaving Las Vegas (1995) won critical acclaim for its depiction of a man determined to drink himself to death, rather than fight his alcoholism.

The messages regarding alcohol and alcoholism one receives from films have changed over time. Movies produced during the early silent era (through 1920) tended to favor temperance. During the Prohibition era Hollywood films shifted their point of view and became much more pro-alcohol. However, the film community was restricted by the Hays Code which stated that: "The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot, or for the purpose of characterization, will not be shown." Alcohol use was liberally depicted in films of the era anyway, although rarely do we actually see alcohol touching the lips of on-screen personages. Prior to 1945, when excessive drunkenness was depicted, there was no presentation of the disease concept and the word alcoholism was never used. In the period between 1945-1962, through the growing influence of A.A. (founded in 1935) and the National Council on Problems of Alcoholism (1937), alcoholism was first presented as a disease and A.A. became a treatment option. The Lost Weekend  (1945) with Ray Milland first used the term alcoholic. Between 1960 and 1980, social problems films decreased in popularity, but TV movies of the week took their place and thrived on themes like teenage alcoholism, family violence linked to alcoholism, and drug addiction. Meanwhile the Hollywood film between 1966 and 1976 took a more positive attitude toward alcohol. Films like M*A*S*H* showed that excessive alcohol use was nonproblematic. However, in 1976 the modern cycle of alcoholism movies began with the remake of A Star Is Born, featuring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson . Now, films which portray alcoholism as a clear-cut family disease, which can also include drug abuse are not uncommon. When the alcoholic is a man, which is typically the case, there is almost always a good woman who stands by him through it all, and if he sobers up, she is partially responsible. These films hint that the reason she is so patient may be that she is "diseased" herself, a latent co-dependent.

When the alcoholic is a woman, she is usually doubly cursed, because of her failure to be concerned about her principal duty to family. When a Man Loves a Woman cast Meg Ryan in such a role. In addition the linking of femininity and pathology, so long a staple of the Hollywood movie, was applied to female problem drinkers. In addition, female alcoholics act out sexually more frequently than male problem drinkers do.

A film dealing with the transgenerational aspects of addiction is Aberdeen (2000). The father played by Stellan Skarsgård is a lifelong alcoholic, who struggles to stay sober while he and his cocaine-using daughter (Lena Headey) attempt to travel to pay a visit to their dying wife/mother (Charlotte Rampling). The history of the family unit is one of utter dysfunctionality.

Drug Films

A historical model for drug films similar to Denzin's for alcohol can probably be developed for movies from the 1930s to the present. In the silent era, Chinese were stereotyped as opium users, such as in D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossums. Early talking films like the 1930s Reefer Madness and Cocaine Fiends  reflected the antidrug position of Harry Anslinger and the federal government. However, the misinformation about the effects of marijuana and cocaine depicted in these films served to undermine the antidrug messages blatantly embedded in the films. In the 1960s, these early antidrug films suddenly became popular again, particularly among the knowledgeable youth drug culture who now considered them campy. Frank Sinatra's 1955 The Man with the Golden Arm  offered a more realistic portrait of a struggling musician/card shark strung out on heroine in an age in which such drug use was considered anathema. In the 1970s, drug films like Easy Rider expressed the growing acceptance of drug use. However, even in that film the drug using/selling heroes are killed. Today's films document the seriousness of drug addiction and its impact on society. A new generation of black filmmakers has documented the impact of drugs on poor black communities and showed both the enticements of selling drugs and the violence that now accompanies drug dealing in our inner cities (e.g. Boyz n the 'Hood, Menace to Society, New Jack City, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood).

Two of the more realistic portrayals of long-term drug abuse appear in Drugstore Cowboy 1989 and Trainspotting (1996). The first follows the lives of a group of young adults who raid hospital pharmacies to get access to high quality drugs. In Trainspotting "a group of disaffected Scottish youths turn to heroin to escape the banalities of modern-day existence. Then, they begin to suffer the consequences and discover that there are no easy solutions to the inherent loneliness and pain of life." The bleakness of life in Scotland is compared to the excitement of London.

Because we have as a society been less ambivalent about drug abuse than alcohol consumption, it is difficult to find an on-screen equivalent in drug films for the comic drunk. Cheech and Chong (their films were made principally for hip drug-aware audiences ) and Sean Penn's pizza-ordering Spiccoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High count as examples. Jimmy Stewart's Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey (1950) and Dudley Moore's Arthur in the films with the same name (1981, 1988) are prime examples of how everyone loves to laugh at a drunk. Such films perpetuate the idea that alcohol can produce positive effects and lubricate social communication. However, characters in such films have an aggressive edge to them which only seems to be expressed while drinking. Arthur is rebelling against his upper-class family and background. While drunk he is free to undermine the pretentiousness of the upper class lifestyle. The critiques contained within Harvey  question whose definition of social reality is valid. Encapsulated in this film about giant white rabbits, and those who see them and those who don't, is a critique of modern psychiatry and its diagnoses of alcoholism, insanity, and sanity. The persons who act crazy and violent in this film are not the patients diagnosed as mentally ill but the psychiatrists.

The alcoholic/drug abuser as salvageable antihero has been a frequent Hollywood motif. Typically, these films present the moral career of the film's protagonist as a three phase process: seduction, fall from grace, and redemption. Entry into the recovery phase occurs only after the hero experiences a "vital sense of recognition" and dramatically reverses their life course. The parallels to the A.A. theory of decline and recovery are not coincidental, although early Hollywood versions of the drunk as hero did not contain the disease metaphor. Another variation on the antihero theme is the frequently made link between alcohol/drugs and creativity. A number of films dealt with writers, actors, singers who succumbed to alcohol and/or drugs once caught up in the Hollywood star-maker machinery. A Star Is Born has been remade three times. Examples include the John Belushi bio Wired and the Sid Vicious bio Sid and Nancy (1986) starring Gary Oldman. For these artist/drug abusers there was no redemption. The moral lessons were obvious. Recovery films include Horton Foote's Tender Mercies and Clean and Sober. In the former Robert Duval plays a broken down country singer, saved by an understanding woman. In the latter, Michael Keaton must become a true convert to the A.A. philosophy in order to gain redemption. In 28 Days, Sandra Bullock attempts to survive her court-ordered treatment.

Drugs and Society

One of the recurring topics within films is drugs. From the point of view of the media, there often appears to be no bigger problem in our society.

Why does coverage of drugs dwarf media discussion of other major social problems such as poverty, racism, sexism, or the declining quality of our educational system? Why are drug pushers perceived as such a menace to our society, even more destructive than property criminals such as car thieves and burglars, air and water polluters that might kill many, or savings and loan swindlers who stole billions?

Jock Young, a British criminologist, has written on these issues in several books and essays. Young thinks it is quite strange that there is a reverse relationship between the number of deaths that mood-altering substances cause and their coverage by the media. Tobacco is the most dangerous drug currently in use in our society, followed by alcohol, then various illegal drugs. When C. Everett Koop was Surgeon General of the U.S. he declared nicotine to be as addicting as opiates or cocaine, yet it will in all likelihood always be legal.

Why is the drug taker such an easy target for media manipulation? Young argued that illicit drug takers were such good media fodder because they represent the deviant par excellance. The drug culture allegedly disdains work and revels in hedonism, has no sexual morals (i.e. The link between AIDS, intravenous drug use, and illicit sex has been a major media story for years), and allows drug consumers to escape reality for a fantasy world on their own.

Our culture as a whole is not anti-drug, only drugs taken for hedonistic purposes alone. Legal drugs taken to "stimulate work" or to "relax" are acceptable. Coffee and tea serve the former purpose while alcohol and cigarettes perform the latter. A form of deviance with legal drugs occurs if drug takers start to use the substances at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Those who drink alcohol at work while on the job or stay up all night drinking coffee are suspect. Illegal substances have never been socially recognized as work or relaxation drugs, leaving the only purpose for their use a hedonistic one. The moral indignation over illegal drugs may result from the belief that such drug users are refusing to practice deferred gratification, one of the bedrock virtues of our economic system. At the same time, stories based on such individuals and their activities are titillating to the public. They fall under Jack Katz's paradigm as those who are testing the limits (of hedonism), and we can wishfully fantasize we too were so brazen. But, ultimately the story must turn and the drug taker's world collapses around him. Conventional morality is thus reaffirmed. Deferred gratification is the better way.

Even though the use of drugs is quite pleasurable for some, the media driven accounts attempt to deny or ignore this fact. This is done in several ways: blaming drug taking on psychopathology [the product of personality disorders]; and documenting that drug deviance is ultimately not pleasurable, unhealthy, and deadly. As illicit sex can lead to venereal disease or AIDS, excessive drug use may destroy your body or necessitate a turn to crime. These outcomes are pictured as inevitable. Given knowledge of these facts only truly sick individuals would choose to become seriously involved with drugs. While those "addicted" to drugs may need treatment, all addicts freely chose to experiment with drugs in the first place despite the warnings, and therefore, may deserve punishment. At the least they must be removed from society, temporarily, to protect others from their "bad habits."

No such mercy should be accorded drug dealers, for they prey on the weak. They must be stopped at all costs and punished. Campaigns to catch drug dealers have been an ongoing phenomenon for more than 20 years. In the 1980s, American prison and jail populations skyrocketed, due in no small measure to increased concerns about drugs. From the mid-1980s, the new drug menace was a cheap form of crystalline cocaine called "crack."
 

Criminality on Primetime Crime Dramas of the 1970s

TV crime dramas through the 1970s were quite different from Hollywood films. Until the emergence of reality-based crime shows,  such as Hill Street Blues, LA Law, or NYPD Blue, the businessman was typically depicted as the heavy. Steven Bochco, producer of all these programs, created the shift.

When Ben Stein looked at prime time crime in his 1979 analysis The View from Hollywood Boulevard, he found it in no way mirrored reality. He found that the typical "street crime" on prime time TV involved a well-to-do white person (often a businessman) murdering another well-to-do white person. If one thinks of the programs of that era; e.g. Columbo, Dallas, Dynasty, Heart to Heart, Starsky and Hutch, Quincy, etc. one could only conclude that violent crimes are committed every day by the wealthy and the powerful. (For more, watch tape 290 in the conference room collection Hollywood's Favorite Heavy: Businessmen on Primetime TV). In comparison, in reality both perpetrators and victims of street crime are usually poor, and frequently from minority groups. Reality-based TV dramas put an end to this era. 

Criminologists have developed a number of theories over the last 100 years to explain criminal behavior. We may actually have developed too many good explanations of why people commit crime, but few that explain why criminals whose behavior is largely determined by forces outside their control sometimes desist. Biological and genetic explanations see criminals as mutants victimized by faulty heredity. Psychological models explain that criminals are sick or suffering from early childhood or familial traumas. Social environmental theories see criminals trapped in poverty or participating in an underclass subculture that fosters and celebrates criminal activity. Finally, conflict explanations see criminals are poor persons fighting back against an established societal elite that keeps them down.

In comparison, prime time crime dramas prior to the "reality era" drew upon few of these explanations. By locating crime in the upper class, a number of criminological explanations for crime were rarely employed. Prime time crimes were almost always premeditated, with careful planning taking place weeks or even months prior to the event. There were no sudden impulses of rage or anger that motivated prime time criminals. The motivation was simply greed. If the white perpetrator was not well-to do (e.g., a white punk) they are most frequently presented as mentally ill. An overbearing mother or a traumatic childhood was often introduced to explain criminal motivation. For example, the premiere episode of Unsub, a drama created to simulate the work of the FBI's forensic unit, featured a white serial killer who killed to erase the pain of an overly demanding mother. She had forced him to watch her take baths.

Maybe TV crime shows represented a version of classical criminology? To a significant extent Americans, including our criminal justice system, do not take positivistic criminological explanations seriously. Instead most accept a classical free will model of criminal motivation. Criminals have a choice in whether or not to commit crimes. Criminals must get something out of it, certain advantages (e.g., money, property, the pleasure of dominating and inflicting pain on others), or they won't commit crimes. If punishments are swift, certain, and severe enough, a reasoning criminal would desist. Such a model goes back to Beccaria and Bentham, and is based upon the utilitarian pleasure-pain principle and the assumption of rationality. Criminals will continue in their ways as long as the advantages outweigh the potential disadvantages. Prime time's fascination with greed as the motivation for middle-class white criminals is in fundamental agreement with the classical model. Only when TV offered us up mentally ill criminals, did it differ with the beliefs of the American majority.

If Hollywood portrayals are dominated by the classical model, Ben Stein still wondered why prime time crime consisted almost exclusively of white upper-class violence. After watching thousands of hours of TV crime shows, he reported never to have seen a major crime committed by a poor, teenage, black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican youth, even though in reality they account for a high percentage of violent crime. The question he asked was, why? To get an answer Stein interviewed the persons most directly responsible for the images portrayed on prime time shows, TV writers and producers. The answers that he received astounded him.

He found that the overwhelming majority of TV writers had rejected the classical free will explanation of crime. They believed that the blame for violent street crime rested not in the criminals themselves, but on some larger social failure. Our society had failed to adequately integrate a significant portion of its population or to offer a real opportunity to succeed. (Maybe they had read Robert Merton's anomie essay.) In the eyes of TV writers, the inequity of the situation in which the poor are forced to live was cited as more detrimental than neighborhood crime. The former simply produced the latter. Their explanations for street crime included the following: 

• the poor lack the opportunity to fully participate in desirable lifestyles 

• their frustration from not getting the good things of life leads some to seek their goals through crime

• the real cause of crime is the gap between the American dream and American reality; crime begins with unemployment (a man without a job is an angry man)

• the white power elite is not about to give up any of their wealth or power

Only a minority of TV writers blamed street criminals themselves for their criminality.

Far more serious than street-level crime to TV writers were white-collar crime, organized crime, and political corruption. The Hollywood TV producer sees crime as being rooted in the upper class or upper middle class. The elites which control society are responsible for the production of crime. Although a 15-year-old minority group member may actually wield the gun, it is the well-off suburbanite who stops him from going to medical school and instead to become a vicious killer.

Stein also noted that these ideas, while told to him, were not directly communicated on prime-time crime dramas. Writers and producers, who almost universally treated their TV audiences with disrespect, believed such an argument was too complex for TV drama. So, producers developed a shortcut for the message. The suburbanite as street criminal is a metaphor; since he is ultimately to blame anyway for our society's crime problems, Hollywood places the gun directly in his hand. The poor, minority groups, and youths are thus relieved of any responsibility for their actions. In fact, they are never shown as criminal at all.

Another explanation considered by Stein but ultimately rejected for the paucity of minority criminals on TV until the mid-1908s was interest group pressure. Minority group organizations lobby against negative portrayals of their members in TV and movies. If a number of black criminals showed up on prime time, the NAACP would protest. Stein was told this by studio heads, who claimed they feared minority protests. However, Stein points out that minorities actually had nothing to protest about because they were not being portrayed negatively on prime time TV anyway.

Empirical Comparison

While Stein's account is largely journalistic, Rhonda Estep and Patrick McDonald did an empirical study of how primetime crime evolved on TV from 1976 to 1983. They make three major points, all of which differ from reality: 1) there is an overemphasis on violent crime and an under representation of property crime 2) there has been an overrepresentation of white, middle-aged, middle-class whites in both suspect and victim roles 3) crime on TV is almost always unsuccessful and the criminals are always apprehended by the police. Some of their findings appear below.

a.) On 1981 TV shows, 26% of all crimes depicted are murders, 19% are robberies, 11% are assaults. Compare that to current UCR figures. Aggravated assaults accounted for 60 percent and robberies comprised 33 percent of all violent crimes reported to law enforcement in 1994. The rate of 716 violent crimes for every 100,000 inhabitants is rather small in comparison to a 1994 property crime rate was 4,658 offenses per 100,000 population. Larceny-theft comprised 65 percent of property crimes reported,

b.) For murders the suspect is most likely to be a white, middle class, middle aged male. Official police records reveal that the typical suspect arrested for murder to be a young, lower class male, and about equally as likely to be black as white. Thus, the only characteristic on which TV depiction is accurate is gender. In 1976, 100% of the TV murderers were white compared to UCR data for that same year which showed the actual racial breakdown at 46% white and 45% black. In 1981, 79% of the TV murderers were white, 3% were black, and 17% other. On TV the average age of killers was 42 with only 6% under age 25; according to UCR the average age was 20-24 with 44% under 25. Average age gradually went down on TV dramas, but remained 10 years too old. On TV, middle class murderers predominated, while UCR indicates lower class.

c.) Murder victims are also wrongly stereotyped as to sex, race, age, and social class. In 1976 70% of TV's murder victims were male and 30% female; UCR found 76% male versus 24% female. While the 1976 comparison was similar, by 1981 TV had changed dramatically. 65% of all murder victims were female and 35% male. Was there a backlash against the feminist movement? In 1976, murder victims on TV were 84% white and only 2% Black; UCR reported 51% white and 47% Black stats. By 1981, TV had changed somewhat; 71% of murder victims were white with 18% black . The average age of murder victims was higher on TV than in reality. In 1976, the TV average age was 37, with 36% under 30. UCR reported an average age of 20-29, with 45% under 30. On TV the typical murder victim is middle class; according to UCR they are lower class.

d.) Robbery suspects and victims show similar discrepancies when TV and real life criminals are compared. Only the sex of suspects is presented accurately. In 1976, TV robbery suspects were 92% white and averaged 40 years old, compared to UCR's 32% white and average age of 15-19. The typical motive for robbery on TV is greed, not need. In the TV profile of crime victims the most glaring errors occur in race (TV 90% white, UCR 24% white), and age (TV around 40, UCR 12-15).

e.) Probably the biggest fallacy communicated by TV crime dramas is that "crime never pays." Most suspects on TV are either captured or killed. With respect to murder suspects such depictions are fairly accurate. Around 90% of TV murder suspects are caught, UCR arrests average in the mid 70's (72%-79%). However, on TV most robbery suspects are caught (near 90%). The FBI reports police departments as clearing by arrest only about 25% of all robberies. Law enforcement agencies nationwide recorded a 21-percent Crime Index clearance rate in 1994. The clearance rate for violent crimes was 45 percent; and for property crimes, 18 percent. Among the Crime Index offenses, the clearance rate was highest for murder, at 64 percent, and lowest for burglary, at 13 percent. TV gives the false impression that the police can solve most crimes, which they can not.

What are we to make of these differences? Hollywood writers would defend their craft by stating they are telling stories for entertainment purposes, not trying to recreate a statistically accurate reproduction of the Uniform Crime Reports. However, not surprisingly, when asked by Ben Stein where they got their ideas for story lines many writers responded from the newspaper or TV news. So, it appears that the relationship between Hollywood and the news media may be reciprocal. What people make of media accounts, and whether they recognize the inaccuracies in media coverage which focuses on violence, street crime, and the unusual is another question; one we will return to later.

The Coming of Reality TV

What I am referring to as reality TV has two components: (1) reality-based crime dramas and (2) TV crime documentaries (reality programs). Both have become staples of network and cable TV station offerings since the mid-1980s. 

1. Reality-based crime dramas began with Hill Street Blues, and continue today in programs like Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and 100 Centre Street. These shows feature plots ripped from newspaper headlines, camera angles purposefully used to look more amateurish, and ongoing character development made to simulate careers within criminal justice.

TV movies of the week often fit this pattern as well. One satellite channel, the True Stories channel, recycles these movies endlessly.

(2). Reality programs on television are defined as nonfictional programming in which the portrayal is presumed to present current or historical events or circumstances. The production presents itself as being a realistic account.

Included are news and public affairs programming, interview and talk shows, entertainment news-and-review programs, documentaries, and other programs presenting themselves as recreations of "real-world" events, such as those depicting scenes of police or emergency workers, or humorous events or circumstances. Programs may be either actual or recreated depictions of events or circumstances, but in the case of the latter, the context must make it clear that efforts have been made to recapture a past event as it happened. Although not coded for this project, instructional programs featuring live actors and quiz and game shows are also considered reality programs.

The two continue to become less distinct as Hollywood TV producers copy many of the documentary video/film styles and reality shows are edited to appear more movie-like. Hybrids like America's Most Wanted feature both documentary-style re-enactments spliced with real photos and surveillance camera footage. Confused viewers have frequently spotted the actors playing the criminals and turned them in to the FBI.

In the reality TV era, minorities are depicted as criminals during primetime much more frequently than in the past. If producers fed viewers a steady diet of white-only criminals, they would be charged with being unrealistic, the most serious charge that could be leveled at them. Activist groups have challenged what they see as stereotyping.

Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile delinquency has, like drugs, been a major concern within our society and one frequently discussed by the media. However, discussion of this issue is complicated by a factor not present with drugs. In reality, the media has no stake in whether drugs are illegal or legal. They make no money directly from drugs. But, the media does sell its products to adolescents, and can not risk offending this audience of consumers. Teens purchase movie tickets, CDs, video games and computer game software, and watch TV. Nevertheless, Hollywood has long focused on the issue of juvenile delinquency. But, what has its attitude toward wayward teens been?

The JD Films

One thing that appears to be a constant in the history of Hollywood's depictions of delinquency is the distinction between "good kids" and "bad kids." We discover that most juvenile delinquency films make this distinction. Good teenagers may do some pretty awful things, but they are pictured as basically decent kids whose primary problem is that they are "misunderstood." Their parents often are to blame because they don't make the effort to understand their own children. When good kids are bad their rebellion is often expressed against the restraints that adult society places upon them or against adult hypocrisy. The good (bad) boy is often redeemed by the good teenage girl who marries him; reestablishing the boy's ties to adult society. Sometimes an understanding adult saves the good kid (e.g., a Spencer Tracy character as in Boy's Town, or a Glen Ford saving Sidney Poitier in Blackboard Jungle ).

Real "bad" kids engage in violence and create havoc because of their total lack of conscience. He or she is unsalvable and will either be killed, sent off to reform school, or sent into exile from the peer group (e.g., The Bad Seed, Sean Penn's Bad Boys, etc).

These themes can be traced back to films of the 1930s. James Cagney in Public Enemy (1931) starts out as a good kid, but goes bad. His environment is, however, largely to blame, Cagney grows up in the slums of Chicago and in 1909 starts his delinquent career by delivering beer for a local tavern. As a teenager he graduates from petty thievery to grand theft and then emerges into full-fledged gangsterism during the prohibition era. Cagney is required to meet a gruesome end, but his vitality and personality make him a sympathetic character with the audience (a good bad guy). This appealed to Depression audiences who were themselves struggling to make ends meet in a system that seemed to have betrayed them. The public's enthusiastic respond to this gangster film frightened many moralists who believed it glorified delinquency and criminality. These films were often preceded by disclaimers; discussing the severity of the crime problem and disavowing any glorification of the criminal.

Good kids dominate drug films like Reefer Madness. Its teens are wide-eyed innocents seduced and manipulated by adult drug pushers. Under the drug's influence they shamefully give up their virginity and degrade themselves. One girl reflecting on her immoral behavior finds it best to commit suicide.

The Dead End Kids were good kids whose delinquency was always attributable to others. In Crime School (1938) two of the Dead End Kids are sent to reform school, but the staff and guards turn out to be the true criminals. Beating the juveniles was not an unusual practice. Humphrey Bogart came to their rescue as the new idealistic director of corrections who argued that brutal discipline only led to hardened juveniles and ultimately adult criminals.

Of course, this division of potential delinquents into good and bad kids created by Hollywood screenwriters appears simplistic. However, we discover that in the real world the American juvenile court system made similar distinctions. Robert Emerson in his classic text, Judging Delinquents discussed how the court traditionally sought to separate good kids from bad. But, how was this to be done? The goal was to identify kids who were "trouble." The court was not looking for one-time offenders, but children who had the potential for committing serious future delinquent acts. But, how could one predict an individual's future? Judges developed a rather complex mechanism for making such predictions. While the offense committed theoretically not was to be considered in judging the delinquent, in reality the more serious offenses were considered predictive of future criminality. In addition, court officials probed the youth's school records and family environment. Those with low grades, records of truancy or school misbehavior were more likely to be "trouble" than those with good school records. Similarly, those form broken homes or abusive families were deemed potentially more dangerous than those form solid middle-class homes. Lawyers assigned to defend youths tended to concentrate their energies on "good" kids while almost abandoning "bad" kids to the system. The court was relatively easy on youths deemed "non-trouble," giving them an adjustment or probation. On the other hand, problem delinquents are sentenced to reform schools or correctional facilities. Until the 1970s, juvenile courts routinely separated youths into two large categories just as the juvenile delinquent film does.
 

The three major juvenile delinquent films of the 1950s continued to present us with good and bad kids. They were The Wild One with Marlon Brando, Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, and Blackboard Jungle with Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow. However, 50s teenagers lived in a world fundamentally different from any of their predecessors. The development of the bomb meant their lives could end at any time, and gave an additional aura of desperation to their lives. They had to live life to the fullest now because there were no guarantees of tomorrow. They adopted a new dress, fast cars, and rock and roll music. During the 1950s, teenager subculture became largely undecipherable to adults.

Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954) seemed indifferent if not downright contemptuous of contemporary middle-class society. When asked what he was rebelling against his response was "What Have You Got?"

Brando and his motorcycle gang invaded a small town made up of utterly bland middle Americans. However, throughout the film Brando drifted back and forth between acceptance and rejection of society's values. We are not sure until the final frames whether he was a good or bad kid. Brando was gradually drawn back into conventional society by a good girl, Cathy, who represented everything Brando claimed to be rejecting. He despised her at first, but was attracted to her nevertheless. Cathy was ambivalent about Brando as well. He represented freedom from her repressed lifestyle, an "ideal" stranger to whisk her away from her boring existence. Brando initially refused to be molded into her dream male. Brando saved Cathy from being raped by his own gang. However, the townspeople trapped Brando. He accidently killed an old man with his motorcycle when hit over the head by an angered resident. Brando was charged with murder and would have been convicted, but Cathy saved him by convincing an eyewitness to come forward and tell the truth. The gang was told to leave town and never return. Brando returned sometime later to see Cathy. Rather than a storybook romantic ending they realized they will never fulfill each other's dreams. Brando rides out of town for the last time. He represents the stoic male who continues to reject hearth and home, like Bogart's Rick in Casablanca.

Blackboard Jungle (1955) was about the problems faced by a new teacher at a big city vocational high school. The kids in this film were early on compared to animals. However, we discover that perhaps they are savable if only the teachers can break up the alliance of delinquents and get one of them, preferably a leader, to side with the educational establishment. Ford chooses a kid who appears to be more sensitive than the rest, played by Sidney Poitier, as his potential convert.

In the final showdown Ford and Poitier are able to win all the kids back except one, Vic Morrow. He can't be reassimilated and must be branded a criminal and destroyed. Morrow pulls a knife on Ford in the classroom and the students rally around the teacher; Morrow is disarmed and expelled from the classroom forever. The teacher has succeeded where the criminal justice system fails.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Without a doubt the best remembered and most influential juvenile delinquent film of the 50s and perhaps of all time. It starred James Dean who had died in a car crash prior to the film's release. Rebel was also one of the most psychoanalytic delinquency films ever made. Inadequate parents produced troubled children. There was not one good parent in the film.

However, there was a positive image of a cop in this film. Edward Platt played an officer assigned to the juvenile squad, who seemed to understand what these kids were going through and sympathized with them, ultimately hoping to straighten them out as well. However, he was not really a cop, but a social worker. Negative stereotypes appear when any other police officers appeared in Rebel. They were ineffective, brutish, and never showed up until things had gone too far.

The movie opened with Jim and his family having moved once again to a new town to help their son avoid scrapes with the law. What's wrong with Jim and his fellow juvenile delinquents? Nothing at all. While they're rebellious, all they really wanted was to be loved. The family unit was at fault. In Jim's family his dominant mother ruled over his wimpy father, leaving him without a male role model. Jim begged his father to become more assertive and discipline Jim's behavior. Plato has no family at all. In Judy's family, father dominated mom. Three sick families appear in Rebel. Parents were criticized for being too strong and too weak, for both being absent when their children needed them and smothering their children with affection when they didn't need it. Parents can't do anything right.

If parents can't be trusted to raise children, who can? The film supported the idea that experts (social workers, teachers, psychiatrists) must be entrusted with the welfare of children. Inadequate and underprepared mothers and fathers must be willing to hand their children over to state approved experts. The juvenile court system was based on the same premise. It was set up as a surrogate parent system with the judge as an omnipotent parent figure ruling in the child's best interests.

Jim himself came to recognize what was wrong with his generation and went about trying to save the kids, both from their parents and themselves. His first goal was to get troubled Judy and Plato to come along with him. Ultimately they formed a surrogate family to replace the faulty families they had grown up in. He saved Judy by getting her to fall in love with him and thus drop both her Oedipal interest in her father and her ties to the gang. Plato was more difficult to bring into the fold because he was more rebellious and obviously more neurotic. He had killed puppies for no reason. However, at the old mansion Plato became the child in Jim and Judy's fantasy marriage, and hopes emerged for a utopian ending. However, such was not to be the case for Plato. He was captured by the gang.

The film's ending demonstrated the decade's belief about how to salvage wayward children. Plato had to die because he was an extremist and unsalvable. He is out of control, alienated, and ultimately unreachable by adult authority. However, Plato was also representative of Jim's rebellious half. They were in effect the same person, only now divided into two. Jim acquiesced to larger societal demands and would go on to become a solid citizen, perhaps even a therapeutic expert himself. Meanwhile his rebellious nature (his worse half) represented by Plato has been expunged. Jim puts his red jacket (his mantle of rebellion) on Plato just before he is killed. Jim's asocial side has thus be exorcised. If Jim is too be granted entry he must give up all of his extremist tendencies. The film separated the unsalvable from the potentially regenerate.

In a film from 30 years later, Bad Boys with Sean Penn we see many of the same issues being played out. Growing up in an urban ghetto, raised by inadequate parents, it is no surprise that Sean turns to crime. It is inevitable he will end up in reform school. At the school, Penn uses his smarts, strength, and charisma to rise to a position of dominance in the school's unofficial social structure. When faced with the life or death struggle of taking on his sworn nemesis, the only question is whether he is a true killer and already beyond hope of restoration.

In the 1990s the most popular juvenile delinquency films have featured black and Hispanic teenage gangs, depicted as violently attempting to survive in America's large urban centers. The level of violence in these movies is extreme compare to earlier era JD films. Boys in the Hood was the first. Blame is not placed on parents, or neighborhood, or the kids themselves, but upon the larger "establishment." Laurence Fishburne as" Furious Styles" delivers the criminological message, a variant of critical theory. White youth gangs are conspicuously absent in the 1990s. In the 1980s, S. E. Hinton's novels of poor white kids in Tulsa, Oklahoma (The Outsiders, Tex, Rumble Fish) were popular. Reactionary white youth are depicted as neo-Nazis committing hate crimes in American History X. 
 

Week 3 Class Participation Assignment

Pick a recent crime film you have seen and discuss the explanation for criminal behavior that appears in the movie. Use the concepts that appear in this lecture. Is the film more psychological or sociological in its analysis?

Your answer is worth up to 4 points and is due by the start of class on Monday.

Copyright Monday, April 10, 2006 Cecil Greek