By making the distinctions, we are better equipped to understand what violent movies say about the nature of crime, law, and criminals; we are also better able to understand them as films.
This is somewhat of the author's intervention, albeit, not a strong one. I think it's great that we can see this from the author's interpretation of the objects, but I wanted more here. What more can we take from this? What can we theorize about the need to constantly see this rhetoric in film?
These legal discourses often revolve around the theme ofintrusion. A psycho penetrates a previously lawful space, creates havoc, and immobilizes the law. Rendered helpless, other characters have no idea how to react. They turn to traditional legal means only to find these ineffective. Gradually they conclude that they must take the law into their own hands
This is an answer to the research question, and it an ideology intervention of sorts.
This chapter pries open the ideological frameworks of violent films to explore what they say about criminal nature. 1 Examining three types of violent cinema-slasher, serial killer, and psycho movies-it tries to see how these differ in their constructions of the arch criminal and to catch them in the act (so to speak) of generating popular beliefs and mythologies about serious crime.
This is the overall thesis of the chapter. I would say it stems from the research question, "how to constructs of killers in violent cinema influence the ideologies and mythologies of serious crime?"
It must also be noted that this transformation took place not only from medicine towards law, as though the pressure of rational knowledge on older prescriptive systems; but that it also operated through a perpetual mechanism of summoning and of interacting between medical or psychological knowledge and the judicial institution
Fascinating...how many media representations or legal cases do we see where a psychological evaluation is needed? What a profound connection - I never thought of it like this.
Legal justice today has at least as much to do with criminals as with crimes.
What a telling statement -- going back to Davis and Spade in the racialization of the prison system, could a truer sentence be?
"Can one condemn to death a person one does not know?"
Again, going back to the "who are you statement" - Foucault surrounds the ideation that so much of how we presume and judge or even create institutions is based around a personal identity.
"Who are you?
This alludes to the research question - reading where Foucalt is going on this speech, I can see the start of this being "who are you."
Recog-nising strangers is here embedded in a discourse of survival: it is a question of how to survive the proximity of strangers who are already figurable, who have already taken shape, in the everyday encounters we have with others.
I think is this quite and essentialist statement - I would question if this is truly all based in survivial? The constructionist in me wants to explore the other side...
How does this recognition take place? How can we tell the difference between strangers and other others?
This is the research question divided into two - I think the crux of what Ahmed is questioning is more "How does recognition take place" or "What is the role of recognition in our shaping of identity?"
In this chapter, I analyse how the discourse of stranger danger produces the stranger as a figure-a shape that appears to have linguistic and bodily integrity-which comes then to embody that which must be expelled from the purified space of the community, the purified life of the good citizen, and the purified body of 'the child'.
I want to say that this approaches a method, but it's super vague. I understand that Ahmed is analyzing the "discourse of stranger danger," but I'm failing to see what discourse is being analyzed. It's this thought that makes me question if this is really the "methods" section.
Love and marriage
This is an interesting point. I wonder how much of this narrative, "appropriate due to marriage" can account for various representations of various media outlets "legitimizing" what would normally be deemed as sexual deviancy.
Table 1.Timeline of events.
I like this highlight of events. Were these extracted from the various forms of media that you collected?
it is vital to pay more attentionto the role of assumptions about sexual harm in ideas about what constitutesnormal, good, consensual sex.
Intervention -- Hasinoff points out the assumptions we create as a society. I think to piggy back off of this thought is that in order to help the assumptions there needs to be more wide spread education as well as representations of what consensual sex can look at. This goes above and beyond even the narratives of online dating (especially internationally) but also what is actually shown in a sex positive light in the media?
explore the limitsof and problems with the construction the online predator as a key site of sexualdanger that is located in a specific embodied identity.
RQ & Arg: I think this is the argument--- I think the author is stating that there are problems with the construction of the online predator as a key site of sexual danger that is located in an embodied identity. It stems from the research question of "What are the implications of how the media constructs the identity of online predators"
use discourse analysis (Rose, 2001) to examinetaken-for-granted assumptions about sexuality and technology in mainstreammedia coverage of this case, including print and television news, three episodesof the US TV talk showDr. Phildedicated to the case, and aSeventeenmagazinearticle.
I agree with Claire on the method here.
According to Peter Biehl, "We tried to explain that sometimes it pays to shut up and listen to what other peoÂple have to say, to ask: 'Why do these terrible things hapÂpen?' instead of simply reacting."
I liked this quote - I think it is such a good example of how most of us really do just need to shut up and listen, and it's astounding how change will happen.
hese alternatives are attempting to reverse the impact of the prison industrial complex on our world.
Another good example of Davis alluding to her argument. By re-visiting how the alternatives fit into her arguement of the various relationships that encompass the prison industrial complex and how it impacts our current society, we can see how her "methods" of showing the history and outlining many of the ideologies come together with her interventions.
The decriminalization of alcohol use serves as a historical example. In both these cases, decrimiÂnalization would advance the abolitionist strategy of decarceration-that is, the consistent reduction in the numÂbers of people who are sent to prison-with the ultimate aim of dismantling the prison system as the dominant mode of punishment. A further challenge for abolitionists is to idenÂtify other behaviors that might be appropriately decriminalÂized as preliminary steps toward abolition.
An example of Davis offering decriminalization as an intervention.
chools can therefore be seen as the most powerful alternative to jails and prisons. Unless the current structures of violence are eliminated from schools in impoverished comrmmities of color-including the presence of armed security guards and police-and unless schools become places that encourage the joy of learning, these schools will remain the major conduits to prisons. The alternative would be to transform schools into vehicles for decarceration. Within the health care sysÂtem, it is important to emphasize the current scarcity of institutions available to poor people who suffer severe menÂtal and emotional illnesses.
Over the next few interventions Davis highlights you see two main themes: the first highlighted in this annotation is surrounding the notion of redefining institutions so that prison truly becomes obsolete. the second which I will highlight in a coming page is surrounds the decriminalization of crimes that are out of necessity or illness such as sex work or drug use.
Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternaÂtives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalÂization of education at all levels, a health system that proÂvides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice sysÂtem based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retriÂbution and vengeanc
Intervention - again addressing ideology.
If, however, we shift our attention from the prison, perÂceived as an isolated institution, to the set of relationships that comprise the prison industrial complex, it may be easiÂer to think about alternatives. In other words, a more comÂplicated framework may yield more options than if we simÂply attempt to discover a single substitute for the prison sysÂtem. The first step, then, would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system.
This is an intervention, as well as also defining her argument further about the set of relationships that comprise the prison industrial complex. I think this first intervention is to get the reader to shift their own notions of "punishment" and "prisons" and begin thinking outside of one institution and one way to solve for "crime".
There are a number of reasons why we tend to balk at the idea that it may be possible to eventually create an entirely different-and perhaps more egalitarian-system of justice.
Davis opens with her ideas for the types of interventions.
The term "prison industrial complex" was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailÂing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new strucÂtures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit.
This is where we see Davis' argument start to form (all of chapter 5). Much of her previous "methods" begin tieing into this concept of the prison industrial complex. A complex serious of relationships that are tied not only with systems such as the military industrial complex (seen as a symbiotic relationship), but that with economic systems, legislative, and overall ideologies. It is this complex that Davis starts to unravel and pull in the deep racism and sexism that has been exploited in prisons with many elements in our institutions and views. I believe her argument to be out of this from her research question is that, "the prison systems that we have built have been ineffective and problematic based upon the prison industrial complex. It is with this notion that prisons are in fact obsolete."
3 Imprisonment and Reform
Chapter 3 we see more of Davis' "method" by using further historical examples. These, however, are more in line with the ideologies surrounding what it means to be incarcerated and how that has been translated up to today.
this may lead us to take seriously the prospect of declaring prisons obsolete.
I think this is an insinuation of the argument - however I do not thing the argument is explicitly stated.
Introduction-Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?
Research Question I think it is at first glance if "Prison's are obsolete" as the title suggests. I think it's misleading in a way. I think really what Davis is asking as her research question, is "How have prisons impacted or society and do they work?"
The murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012
Comment: Overall I see that the author was trying to link the experiences of all of the vulnerable and marginalized by referring to racism, however I think Spade's argument could have been more effective if it was narrowed onto the experiences of trans and queer. While pieces of it were, I think in the beginning I was having trouble keeping tabs if this was about all of the marginalized population or just a focused group within.
The third kind of work is building alternatives.
This is an intervention, however it is not as strongly stated as the other two - initially it seems as it is, however, I think this intervention could have been stronger if there was a stronger answer to "alternative to what"
Identifying what pathways and apparatuses funnel our people into danger and fighting against these systems that are devouring us is vital work.
Intervention: the overall idea is to identify the ways and systems that "funnel" the vulnerable into danger.
Directly helping each other during our moments of crisis is essential-especially when we do it in ways that are politically engaged, that build shared analysis of the systems that produce these dang
Intervention: How the first strategy intervenes for the problem facing the vulnerable.
Three kinds of strategies are being taken up by queer and trans activists
Method: sharing three strategies being used.
people are jUstifiably scared of violence and that £ · . , ear is cultivated· by a constant feed of television shows portraymg horrifying violence and brave police and prosecutors . who put serial rapists and murderers in pnson.
Intervention: "so what" "who cares" - this is an effective way of showing that many of us have been shown this justice system myth by way of the media.
Most violence does not happen on the street between strangers, like on TV, hut between people who know each other, in our homes, schools, and familiar spaces.
Comment: this is a really important point, however, I'm a bit frustrated with the lack of supporting evidence. I think some form of data - a quote by another scholar - something - would have helped this. I think this is a crucial piece especially since Spade used media of perpetuating a myth earlier in the paper as an intervention.
More than 60% of people in U.S. prisons are people of color
Method: using statistics - effective, however, more effective if there are citations associated with it.
Many people working to dismantle racism identify the criminal punishment system as one of the primary apparatuses of racist violence and probably the most significant threat to black people in the U.S.
Intervention: this somewhat answers the "who cares" - Spade is definitely speaking to those who wish to "dismantle racism"
Five realities about violence and criminal punishment are helpful for analyzing the limitations of hate crime leg1slat1on
Method: Spade uses 5 areas to highlight his argument and dive into the research question.
I think this is an effective way to articulate the argument, however, depending on the sources within each of the "five realities" would deem this appropriate or not for answering the research question.
what does it mean to call on that system for justice and accountability?
Research question: overall Spade is questioning the justice system in its accountability for the marginalized populations.
The idea that we are in danger rings true, and the message that law enforcement will deliver safety is appealing 1n the face of fear. The problem is that these prorruses are fa~se, and are grounded in some key myths and lies about Violence and criminal punishment.
This is the author's argument: Spade is saying that marginalized populations are in danger and that placing hope/trust into the current legal system is not going to be effective.
lthough it's true that you can't keep answer-ing them forever and at a certain poim must say enough IS enough. Although a determined skeptic can infinitely ask why something rnatters-"Why should 1 care about earning a salary? And why should 1 care about supporting a family?"-you have to stop answering at some point in your text.
Comment: I like that Graff addresses this because I think some could take it too far and "go down the rabbit hole" and over explain - but again with her templates and exercises I think that is also helpful.
Exercises
Method: showing the reader how to do this in their own writing - very effective.
Regardless of how interesting a roptc may be to you as a writer, readers always need to know what is at stake in a text and why rhey should care. All roo often, however, these ques-tions arc left unanswcrcd-nu11nly because writers and speak-ers assume that audiences wtll know the answers already or wtll fiuure them our on their own.
Intervention: Graff is writing for academic writers - I think these couple of sentences are her "so what" "who cares"
What Grady impl1cidy says here is "Look, dear reader, you may think char these que5tions about the nature of fat cells I've been pursuing have licdc ro do wnh everyday life. In fact, however, these questions arc extremely importam-particularly in our 'incre<lSingly obese world' in which we need co pn:vem obesity from destroying our health."
Comment: I like here how she casually analyzes the text, and shows the sort of "internal monologue" of an author describing their "so what"
Whereas the "who cares?" question asks you to identify an interested person or group, the "so what?" question asks you to link your argument to some larger matter that readers already deem important.
Method: comparing/contrasting the "so what" with "who cares" is an effective way to answer the RQ and help Graff's argument. It shows that both are necessary.
To address "who cares?" questions m your own writing, we sug, gesc using templates
Method: The author gives explicit, templated suggestions as to how to write for "who cares" in order to make her argument seem more concrete.
Notice how Grady's wnring reflects che cenual advice we give in this book
Method: Analyzing the "case study" - I think this appropriate and effective for the reader. If Graff had only shown the passage and moved on, I think that would have not been helpful, but breaking down the passage helps clarify the argument made.
con-skier rhe following passage from rhe sc1cncc writer Dcntse Gr<tdy.
Method: Graff uses a case study to show the reader an instance of "who cares"
A II writing is conversational. So what? Who c"res? Why Joes any of rhts marter? How rnany times have you had reason to ask these quel>-tions?
Research Question: Graff essentially opens with her research question.
Rather than assume that audiences will know why their cl<1ims mattl!r, all writers net!d w answer the "so what?'' and "who cares?" questions up from.
Thesis: Graff is clearly stating that writers need to address the question of "so what" and "who cares" up front to help their audiences.