Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:48 am
Time: 12:48 am
Results for popular culture
6 results foundAuthor: Lam, Anita Yuen-Fai Title: Making Crime TV: Producing Fictional Representations of Crime for Canadian Television Summary: Criminologists and sociolegal scholars have become increasingly interested in studying media representations of crime in popular culture. They have studied representations using content analyses, often examining their “accuracy” against academic research. Alternatively, these scholars have also studied media effects. In contrast to these studies, I focus on the television production process of making entertaining, dramatic representations of crime. In doing so, I empirically address the following research question: how do TV writers know about crime, and how do they transform that knowledge into fictional representations? I answer this question using a triangulation of methods to gather data – specifically, ethnography, archival research, and interviews with writers and producers – and through the juxtaposition of several case studies. My case studies include the following Canadian crime television programs: 1) the police drama The Bridge, 2) an original Canadian drama about insurance fraud, Cra$h and Burn, and 3) crime docudramas, such as F2: Forensic Factor and Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science. Taking cues from Bruno Latour‟s actor-network theory, I focus on the site-specific, concrete, dynamic processes through which each television production makes fiction. I conceive of the writers‟ room as a laboratory that creates representations through collaborative action and trial and error. This research demonstrates that, during the production process, representations of crime are unstable, constantly in flux as various creative and legal entities compel their revision. Legal entities, such as Errors and Omissions insurance and broadcasters‟ Standards and Practices, regulate the content and form of representations of crime prior to their airing. My findings also reveal the contingency of (commercial) success, the heterogeneity of people who make up television production staff, and the piecemeal state of knowledge that circulates between producers, network executives and writers. Details: Toronto: Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies University of Toronto, 2011. 273p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed May 4, 2013 at: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/32075/1/Lam_Anita_YF_201111_PhD_thesis.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Canada URL: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/32075/1/Lam_Anita_YF_201111_PhD_thesis.pdf Shelf Number: 128654 Keywords: Crime in Mass MediaMass Media and CrimeMedia (Canada)Popular CultureTelevision |
Author: Papadopoulos, Alexandros Title: A Violent Archaeology of Dreams: The Aesthetics of Crime in Austerity Britain, c.1944-1951 Summary: In the immediate post-Second World War period, London's criminal cultures generated popular understandings of fantasy and cinematic escapism as a modern mode of life, a pleasure-seeking activity and a form of rationality. These narratives centred on increasingly visible but enigmatic genres of urban transgression: notably the phenomenon of spivery. Mixing petty crime, gambling and the black market with proletarian dandyism, urban waywardness and celebrity posturing, the cultural iconography of spivery was also associated with the deviant lifestyles of confidence tricksters, army deserters, good-time girls and mass murderers. Drawing on cinema, popular literature, courtroom drama, autobiography and psychiatry, this thesis explores how debates about the escapist mentalities of the spiv shaped the public discussions of crime as a socio-aesthetic practice. The central aim is to explore the cultural and symbolic associations between street-wise forms of deviant illusion and the cinematic representation of fantasising criminals in 1940s London. The thesis reveals how contemporary historical actors and cultural institutions understood the imagination as a popular and contested form of knowledge about the self, social change and erotic life. The method interweaves intertextual analysis of a key cinematic subgenre of crime, 'spiv films', with a historical focus on two 'true crime' stories: the cleft chin murder (1944) and the serial killings carried out by John George Haigh (1944-45). Utilising the criminals' self-confessions, trial transcripts, autobiography and popular journalism, these cases studies show how spivery was rooted in the experience and representation of everyday metropolitan life. The interdisciplinary examination of cinematic text and historical evidence emphasises how Hollywood aesthetics and indigenous national culture co-determined the public construction of 1940s crime as an embodiment of the contradictions of post-war British modernity. Details: Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, 2011. 286p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed May 18, 2015 at: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:125325&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:125325&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF Shelf Number: 135702 Keywords: CinemaMedia and CrimePopular CultureTrue Crime |
Author: Richardson, Chris Title: Communicating Crimes: Covering Gangs in Contemporary Canadian Journalism Summary: In this integrated-article dissertation, I examine representations of gangs in Canadian journalism, focusing primarily on contemporary newspaper reporting. While the term - gang - often refers to violent groups of young urban males, it can also signify outlaw bikers, organized crime, terrorist cells, non-criminal social groups, and a wide array of other collectives. I build on Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework to probe this ambiguity, seeking to provide context and critical assessments that will improve crime reporting and its reception. In the course of my work, I examine how popular films like West Side Story inform journalists' descriptions of gangs. Though reporters have been covering suburban gangs for decades, they continue to place gangs in the inner city, which fits better with imagery from the Manhattan musical. Meanwhile, politicians and political commentators frequently exploit the ambiguity of gangs, applying its rhetoric to opponents and evoking criminal connotations in mediated debates. Based on these findings, I argue that Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence envelopes contemporary Canadian newspapers and I suggest that journalists must incorporate alternative images and discourses to challenge these problematic communication practices. Consequently, my last chapter explores art projects in Regent Park and Clichy-sous-Bois, where I find techniques that challenge the dominant tropes of gangs within the news media and provoke more nuanced conversations about such groups. I conclude by outlining the implications of my research for journalists, gang scholars, and concerned citizens. Details: London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 2012. 314p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed September 2, 2015 at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1793&context=etd Year: 2012 Country: Canada URL: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1793&context=etd Shelf Number: 136648 Keywords: GangsJournalistsMedia NewspapersPopular CultureYouth Gangs |
Author: Navarro, Jose Alfredo Title: Machos y Malinchistas: Chicano/Latino Gang Narratives, Masculinity, & Affect Summary: Machos y Malinchistas interrogates how Chicano nationalist cultural productions, after the Chicano movement (1960-2010), have posited a monolithic Chicano/Latino identity primarily based on a racist, heteropatriarchal nation-state model for nationalism that results in the formation of a "transcendental revolutionary Chicano [male] subject" (Fregoso). Furthermore, although this project examines how these literary, cinematic, and musical representations of Chicano/Latino men in late 20th century are strategically deployed by the mainstream media and also by Chicanos/Latinos to simultaneously reproduce and resist imperialist, racist, and heteropatriarchal logics of domination. It also highlights the process through which dominant cultural ideologies force Chicanas/os and Latinas/os to imagine themselves through the prism of a white racist, heteropatriarchal nation-state - one that ultimately regulates Chicano/Latino identity and sexuality. Such nationalist narratives, I argue, not only effect a symbolic erasure of Chicana and Latina women - especially with regard to representations of these women in the novels and films I analyze - but also fiercely regulate male Chicano/Latino sexuality. Therefore, many of these literary and cultural representations of Chicanas/os and Latinas/os- especially in gang narratives, and particularly with respect to representations of so-called "figures of resistance" like El Pachuco and El Cholo-reveal the effects of Spanish and U.S. colonial residues on the Chicano/Latino community while they underscore the history of racism and sexism in the U.S. In this respect, my preliminary conclusion is that the representations of Chicano/Latino men and their masculinities/sexualities in literature, film and music in the U.S. has largely been what I call a masking - or brown-facing - of the legacies of Spanish and U.S. imperialisms, heteropatriarchy, and racism in the country. Nevertheless, I maintain that such performances still form particularly cogent responses to state oppression and the underlying logics of domination. Furthermore, I argue that these literary, cinematic, and musical products create opportunities to disrupt these imperial logics. Finally, in my consideration of the ways that gender and sexuality mediate Chicano nationalist discourses, especially as these discourses relate to Chicano/Latino masculinity represented by Chicano/Latino gangs, I begin to rearticulate Chicano/a Latino/a identity as a part of a larger anti-racist, egalitarian, and anti-imperialist political identity that functions to "liberate (Chicano/a and other minority) constituencies from the subordinating forces of the state" (Rodriguez 2009). Consequently, Machos y Malinchistas utilizes the fields of American Studies, Postcolonial, and Cultural Studies-specifically, Chicana/o Cultural Studies-, literary criticism, and other subaltern historiographies as key frameworks for understanding Chicana/o Latina/o nationalist cultural productions. My project draws upon recent Chicana/o Latina/o scholarship like Richard T. Rodriguez's Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (2009) and Ellie Hernandez's Postnationalism in Chicana/o Literature and Culture (2009) and puts key elements of these respective texts into conversation with my analysis of Chicano/Latino nationalist texts-specifically, with regard to the way Chicano/Latino gang figures have been utilized as a conduit of Chicano nationalist resistance. More importantly, like Monica Brown's Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizens in Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Chicana Narratives (2002), my project levels a critique of Chicano nationalism through the prisms of gender and sexuality in gang narratives. However, unlike Brown's critique, which relies heavily on notions of citizenship that support a nation-state framework for constructions of the Chicana/o Latina/o identity, my critique offers a transnational and localized reimagining of the Chicana/o Latina/o "nation" that facilitates a disruption of nationalist positions and perspectives. My analysis, therefore, stages a transnational, stratified and feminist critique of Chicano/Latino masculinity and sexuality that is mediated through Chicano nationalism in these literary and cultural texts. Details: Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2012. 176p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation, 2012: Accessed February 2, 2016 at: http://cdm15799.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll3/id/105072 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://cdm15799.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll3/id/105072 Shelf Number: 137733 Keywords: FilmsGangsLatinosLiteratureMasculinityMedia RepresentationsPopular Culture |
Author: Omoni, Femi Title: The Reframing of Black America: The Portrayal of African Americans in American Television Crime Dramas Summary: Crime dramas are one of the most popular genres in film and television history. For over 100 years, American audiences have watched depictions of the conflicts that occur between cops and bad guys, and sometimes between cops and cops, or bad guys and bad guys. In the early days of film, the most common role of police officers was that of the bumbling fool who was there to serve as a laughingstock for the audience, and to serve as both a set-up and a punchline for the protagonist. But what happened when people were asked to take onscreen police officers more seriously? And what happens when lines between worlds fictionalized and real begin to blur? This research explores the evolution of the police drama from the series that invented the genre in the 1950s to the one that deconstructed and revolutionized it in the 21st century, and it particularly looks at the roles that race and racism played in the changing nature of this genre. It examines how African Americans are represented in crime dramas and looks at the way that these television shows replicate or challenge stereotypes that suffuse American media and popular culture. Sometimes the shows acted as a mirror to reflect the broad national view. At others, they were intended to serve as a gadfly to instigate change. Details: Durham, NC: Duke University, 2017. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed march 27, 2018 at: https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/14072 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/14072 Shelf Number: 149590 Keywords: African Americas Media Popular CultureTelevision |
Author: Workman, Simon Title: "A Criminal Strain Ran In His Blood": Biomedical Science, Criminology, and Empire in the Sherlock Holmes Canon Summary: Nearly a century and a half after their initial publication, it is clear that Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and novels continue to be a cultural phenomenon throughout the world. However, less clear are the ways in which those works emerged in response to-and as an example of-cultural anxieties surrounding advancements in science, particularly in the fields of biology and medicine. Advances such as Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection not only called into question basic long-standing assumptions about man's relationship to the universe; they also promised to improve the investigation of crime, as well as potentially justify certain imperialist beliefs about racial difference-beliefs that themselves influenced the development of criminal investigation. This project demonstrates how the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories both respond to and participate in the ideological nexus of biomedical science, criminology, and British imperialism by examining the ways in which certain key texts in the Holmes canon deploy medical discourse, criminological theory, and imperialist assumptions in the creation of a rational and "scientific" worldview through the characters of Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Details: Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 2017. 183p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 3, 2018 at; https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1505126689988603&disposition=inline Year: 2017 Country: International URL: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1505126689988603&disposition=inline Shelf Number: 149659 Keywords: Crime in LiteratureCrime NovelsLiteraturePopular Culture |