America's favorite mutants and terrorism

It might seem a little odd to bring out the X-Men to talk about how terrorism is portrayed in the media, but I think there is an interesting representation that can be analyzed. 

I'm gonna go ahead and bring out the first X-Men film from 2000--yes I know it's not the comics or cartoons, but I'm not geeky enough to have seen any of them or even know what they are called. 

In X-Men, we are introduced to Marie/Rogue (Anna Paquin) who hitches a ride with Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who are both mutants. The president of the U.S. recently had an assassination attempt by another mutant so the risk for being exposed as a mutant is high and there is a ton of political tension over the situation. Rogue and Logan are ambushed by some of Magneto's followers in attempt to kidnap Rogue who would be used as a weapon to turn all the world summit leaders into mutants. Cyclopes and Storm  the two and bring them back to the X-Mansion where Professor X is teaching young mutants to hone and perfect their skills for the benefit of humanity.  The fight is on for the X-Men to stop Magneto from killing Rogue and giving mutants power over humanity. 

So we know that this is a terrorism based plot because is relies heavily on the political implications and power issues of one group of people over another--in this case mutants vs. humanity. While Magneto is putting every effort to having the mutants be accepted into society through an aggressive approach with a superior mindset, Charles Xavier believes there is a way for mutants to live with the humans in peaceful co-existence. We have this interesting dynamic between freedom fighters and terrorists--but it is even crazier because we are talking about a fantastical world meshing with the real world. One thing is clear--the humans believe all mutants are a terrorist threat to their way of life and their countries. 

The film portrays terrorism as act against a group of people in which the counter group of people believe they are being oppressed by. So the Magneto is claiming his act of terrorism only because he believes the humans will not accept mutants into society, which he is partially correct at first. However, with Magneto being on the side of the "bad guys" the audience sees things in the view that Magneto is a terrorist to the humans, and Professor X  on the "good guys" side is fighting against the terrorist--although you have to admit Magneto has some pretty good points he makes if it weren't for the fact that he is trying to kill off humanity. Honestly I wouldn't mind becoming a mutant with the machine he makes.

In class we talked about the coverage of 9/11  and the difference between news media, "Terror TV" and other crime films/shows in how they depict terrorism. I think X-men obviously has a much different effect than all of these just based on its content, but never-the-less, we do get a very clear representation of terrorism.

Sins of a serial killer

By far, one of the most creepy serial killer portrayals I've ever seen is in the movie Se7en. First of all can I just say--what? Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey...all in one movie? Pretty genius if you ask me. 

In the movie Se7en, detectives Somerset (Freeman) and Mills (Pitt) are investigating a murder that they soon realize will become a series of murders following the pattern of the seven deadly sins--gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride, lust and wrath. The John Doe serial killer (who we later find out is Spacey) justifies his murders as a punishment for the world's ignorance against these sins. Somerset tries to understand the mind of the serial killer, but Mills believes there is no way you can understand what a serial killer is thinking or what their motives are. 

This film brings back some of the media representations I talked about with the criminal mind set in Dexter. Although Spacey's character is not biologically influenced in his crime, but is psychologically driven to  make a point and to justify his desire to kill. You could also make the claim to the environmental influence since he is doing it out of disgust for what the world has become.

So we automatically recognize the representation of serial killers as creatures of habit. They have a pattern they follow for each victim. Although it an interesting media generated representation that the murders are made out of one underlying motive. In Dexter the motive is to get all the bad guys off the streets to keep the good people safe while still feeding his dark passenger in morally respectable manner (a bit iffy on the use of moral...). In Se7en the motive is to make a statement and purge the world from the seven deadly sins.

Something our class talked about in the reading from Schmid was the Gothic aspect the media puts on the serial killer character. This is portrayed through Spacey's character in the film quite well. First of all he is physically never present and we only see him as this idea of a person though we have evidence that he is real. This adds to the mystery of the character. Then we get the aspect that he has this morally sound reasoning for his murders which gives him this slight sympathetic element. Finally there is the obvious element that he is killing people in a grotesque manner and it is essentially impossible to stop him. Another point to be me made is that though Somerset is working to further understand the mind of the Spacey's character, he can never truly get a grasp at what Spacey is thinking and what he may do next.

In terms of the celebrity involved with serial killers, we get this glorified novelty in the work of the serial killer by making each of these victims "criminals" in a sense themselves. It puts Spacey's character in the position of the necessary purger of sins to cleanse the world and restore order--which is something all audiences want--so it definitely toys with the viewers position against serial killers and heightened the amount of intrigue in their motivations. There is also this dark sort of poetry to the murders that just adds to this sense of fame and celebrity for the serial killer.

Creepy as it may be, serial killer films such as Se7en are interesting to watch because we, in the American culture, are so fascinated by the novelty of the serial murders and the mental process of a serial killer.

Have a bodyguard at all times, Ladies

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Although the above famous quote that would only sound so scary and intimidating from the great Liam Neeson has nothing to do with women and their representation in crime media, you just have to use it when talking about Taken. 

In the film, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is working on having a better relationship with his daughter after being absent with his former job as a CIA special agent. Against his wishes he lets his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) go with a friend to France on what he later finds out is a U2 European tour. When Kim and Amanda get to Paris they are invited to share a cab, unbeknownst to them, with an attractive young man who is working for an Albanian human sex trafficking group. While in Amanda's cousin's house alone they are taken, but not before Bryan calls Kim to check on her and is able to talk her through what will happen--and of course he makes the above threat. From there Bryan is on a quest to find his daughter and kill the men who took her. 

So this representation is obviously centered around women as victims from sexual crimes. In class we talked a lot about rape myths and how they the media portrays them. Though the concerns brought up in this film are ones to take caution over, they send a very distinct message about sex trafficking and rape. 

First of all, we get this message that if you are a pretty upper class young woman who is travelling in a foreign country you will most likely be targeted for sex trafficking, especially if you are alone or with another young woman similar to your demographics. It also presents young teenage woman as an easy target because they are reckless, horny, and only care about have a good time. 

Though women are the the majority of people who are victims of sex trafficking, statistics show that most of those women are being trafficked in their own countries. Also, according to the Polaris Project there are more US victims of human trafficking circulated within the US than the amount of US victims circulated in foreign countries. So women are actually more subject to human trafficking in the US than they are in foreign countries according to stats. 

Another portrayal in the film is that the trafficking gang makes the women addicted to drugs so that they will have sex with customers to feed their addiction. This representation is accurate in that there has been evidence of this happening around the world. Of course we also get the representation of Kim being sold to an old, fat, rich foreign man as one of many sex slaves. Although this does happen in sex trafficking rings, there is more evidence of this happening to women within their own countries rather than as an American in a foreign land.

So, I think this movie has accurate representations of female victims of sexual crimes in some ways, but their are some exaggerations and misrepresentations in terms of the manner in which the sex trafficking plays out in the film. The message of the film is basically if you are a young, white, middle to upper-class female traveling in a foreign country, chances are you will be take by a sex trafficking ring. 

I remember I was in high school when I first saw this movie, and our substitute teacher decided that instead of following the teachers rubric she would show us this movie because it was an important message that we all needed to know. I can tell you after the movie was over, I didn't want to leave the country at all if my parents weren't with me. So the media representation certainly did what it was intending to do, but the message is a little bit over the top. 

HMFS ~ 21 Jump Street is back in business

If we are going to be talking about the portrayal of drugs and crime in the media, there is no way we can forget about 21 Jump Street. Now, on a normal basis I would have chosen the original, but since I think the most recent Jump Street fits better with a contemporary view on drugs, I'll bring in Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. 

In the film, former high school nerd Schmidt (Hill) and jock Jenko (Tatum) help each  other through training to become cops. After getting into some trouble, the partners are stationed on 21 Jump Street, which is an office of sorts for young cops who can pass off as high school students while solving crime in schools. They are assigned to find the dealer and supplier of a drug HMFS which recently killed a student. Schmidt and Jenko essentially switch their previous high school roles and work on the case while becoming a little too invested in their high school lives. 

After watching the entire first season of The Wire, there are lot of difference that we can compare when it comes to how drugs are portrayed in the media. First of all, in The Wire the dealer and supplier are respected much like Eric Molson is in 21 Jump Street, but there is a level of fear from Barksdale that Eric doesn't have with his friends. There is also different demographics when it comes to the two dealers. Eric is a teenage, upper-class white kid from a suburban area and Barksdale is 20-35 year old, lower-class black man living in urban Baltimore. So we get two very different representations of drug dealers with these two forms of media. Part of that representation, mind you, also comes from the comedic aspect of 21 Jump Street. 

The criminal investigation process is also very different between the two media representations. For one, Schmidt and Jenko go undercover to discover who is dealing and supplying the drugs. Then there is the obvious problem of their unprofessional cop manner, which they support as just going with their undercover persona, but we discover that it is a much more personal investment. There is even a scene when Eric questions the partners' undercover identity, considering that they could be cops, but then he says with the behavior the two "brothers" elicit  there is no possible way they could be cops. In The Wire, the cops work under a professional manner and aren't undercover by any means so the process is much different. 

Now talking about the moral panic around drugs portrayed in the media, we don't get this use sense of moral panic do to the comedic nature of the show. Obviously Ice Cube is pretty adamant about Schmidt and Jenko finding the supplier to stop the spread of the drug. There doesn't seem to me much concern by about the spread of the drug ruining the lives of high school students. However Ice Cube does make a funny statement about how since it was an upper-middle class white kid who died from the drug, now the case was important enough to look into. But even from the students at the school, there isn't this hype or panic surrounding the spread of drugs through the school. Also the representation of moral panic usually is stemmed from the overdone media coverage and we have none of that represented in the film. It also down plays the potential panic since it is a comedy.

Unlike how other drug centered TV shows and films represent drug crime, 21 Jump Street handles the issue in  a completely different manner with the comedic element. Rather than having drug problems revolve around poor, heavily black populated urban areas being distributed among adults, the films provides an upper-middle class, high school setting with mostly white teenagers running a drug ring. However, I think it is important to point out the potential message this movie is trying to make about our perception on drug crimes and its representation in the media. That maybe by going against our societal expectations and stereotypes in the film it is making a point about the representations we get in shows such as The Wire. Something to think about.

A Different Light: Interpreting school shootings in a fictional media representation

When it comes to dealing with school shootings, it is a sensitive and tragic subject to portray through the media. However, the media goes through a lot of work in making a spectacle out of school shootings in examining the purpose and history behind the shooter(s) motives. 

There is not a lot, in terms of entertainment media, of examples that portray school shootings other than infotainment documentaries studying and analyzing the motives of shooters. However there is one New York Times Bestselling author who portrays an emotional fictional story centered around a school shooting and a trial that follows.

In Nineteen Minutes Jodi Picoult tells a story about a teenage high school boy named Peter who was bullied  and finally snaps after his former best friend Josie leaves him out of peer pressure to join the popular group of kids in school and now instigates much of the bullying toward Peter. Peter decides the best way to deal with the situation is to bring a firearm to school and Josie witnesses the horrific events that follow. Josie's mother, Alex, takes on trial of Peter's case in court as the judge though her daughter is a key witness for the prosecution. 

This story takes on an interesting issue surrounding school shootings where the reader is able to have an exclusive look inside the trial of the shooter and the bullying that caused Peter to react the way he did. We get an interesting insight not looking at the effects of bullying but rather the issue of peer pressure and becoming someone you are not in order to please others. 

I think though the story still tries to explain the purpose and motives around the shooting there is several extra elements that people wouldn't typically expect from media coverage of school shootings--fiction or not. For example, we get the insight of a judge ruling on the trial of the shooter as well as a mother whose daughter witnessed the event and had a hand in instigating the event. Aside from that, we also get a compelling look into the parents of the shooter trying to figure out what they could have done differently or signs they may have seen toward this effect happening. The emotional involvement that Picoult portrays through these two parents is just impeccably written and has you feeling such strange emotions that are seemingly foreign to the general reader. 

As in many of Picoult's books, the emotion that is transcribed into this heart-wrenching story containing such a difficult issue has readers actually sympathizing with the shooter at times, which is such a different and confusing message to portray. The media usually tries to get the public to focus on a certain focal point to understand the shooter(s) motive such as troubled home life, mental illness, school troubles--Picoult focuses on the effects of peer pressure in high school.

Picoult said she did intensive research on the Columbine shooting but she wanted less about the information behind the shooters and more about those who were impacted by the effect directly. She ended up getting a first hand account from a survivor of the Ricori shootings in MN. From the account of a young man whose friend had died in the shooting, Picoult felt a great connection as a parent and wanted to portray that through her story. 

I think the most interesting narrative in this story is the one between Alex and Josie and their strained mother/daughter relationship. It explores an interesting dynamic of Alex making a choice to fix the relationship with her daughter or judging fairly without being effected about the choices her daughter made. 

All in all, this is a fantastic story that plays with your emotions through such a trying ordeal and the sensitive subject of a school shooting and there is an interesting angle that Picoult takes on compared to that of media in general. 

An Epic Escape for Justice

There is no way we can talk about prison films without me ranting about one of my favorite movies of all time- The Shawshank Redemption. I mean, just the name of the film is awesome let alone the fantastic plot line, intriguing characters and amazing actors.

The Shawshank Redemption is a story that follows the prison sentence of Andy Dufrense, who was charged for the murder of his wife and her lover, though he was actually innocent. While in Shawshank, Andy becomes friends with Red, the prison con man "who knows how to get things." Andy is able to work his way up in the prison by using his banking/accounting skills to help out the prison guards and even the warden with their finances and taxes. 

This movie contains all of the typical stock characters of a prison film: the corrupt warden (Norton), the innocent heroic protagonist (Andy), the comrade (Red), the group of friends (Haywood, Brooks, etc.), the evil guard (Hadley), and the bad guy crew (The Sisters). 

The film also follows the stock plot of prison films. The story involves Dufrense's 20 years spent in Shawshank to lead up to the climax of his epic escape through a tunnel he has dug from him cell out to the sewer pipes. It's not good prison movie unless someone breaks out or a riot erupts. But this movie takes it to the next level in which Dufrense conceals his escape attempts for 19 years without ever getting caught, and at the same time he is able to work his way up in the ranks of the prison system. 

The stock theme of the film follows the rebellion against injustice as Dufrense escapes from the prison as a free man with money he took from the corrupt warden and therefore serving justice to those who persecuted him in his innocence. 

You gotta love Red--the guy who knows how to get things--because as an audience we like to see someone who can challenge authority, so when there there someone in the prison system who can break a few rules and get away with it we tend to cheer for them. I think the way they set up his character in the film was drawn out the best and utilized to bring home the theme of injustice and the ability to turn your life around (from a murderer to a respectable man).

I think in terms of how prison films are typically set up, this film does a spot on job of following the stock elements. The fantastic acting and the intriguing story line only add to that irresistible exclusive look into prison life, though it is in a historic sense and perhaps not quite in tuned with the complete reality of what happen(ed/s) in prisons. 

The Weather today consists of Courts and Lawyers

When talking about criminal law films and the way court systems are portrayed in the media, I always tend to dose off and think "ugh, court systems, yada, yada, yada lets get this over with." However, the dynamic of how court systems are portrayed in contemporary films is not so much centered on the trials themselves anymore, but they focus largely on the actions of the lawyers outside of the court. 

In The Rainmaker, Matt Damon's character, Rudy Baylor, just graduated from law school and takes his bar exam  while working at small firm that isn't doing so hot. He takes on a case of a couple whose insurance company is denying requests that will help pay for their son's operation which will save his life. Rudy learns of the schemes run by corporate insurance agencies to rip people out of their money, and he fights to take them down and serve justice to the couple whose son (spoiler alert) had died because he was denied the operation. 

Now, I may be a little biased because any movie or show Matt Damon is in I automatically think it is amazing, but this criminal law film based off the book of John Grisham does a good job of making the court system complex and passionate. Obviously the lawyers get away with somethings that they would not be able to get away with in the real world (like when they stage the contact of a jury member in order to play the defense attorney against himself by removing a member who could potentially go against the prosecuting case). 

In class we talked about the three modes of media trials: abuse of power, cases illustrating the sinfully rich, and cases involving a kind of evil stranger. The Rainmaker falls into the categories of abuse of power and illustrating the sinfully rich. The insurance company holds the power with ability to deny customers what they need, but they are also making tons of money off of people who are less fortunate. Insurance companies are a different kind of authority figure abusing trial than we would usually assume, but they are known form abusing the power they have from instances in the past.

This is the case in which Rudy works towards providing justice to this couple who loses their son because of the insurance company's schemes and cheating people of their money. He works to expose the insurance company of fraud and essentially allowing the couple's son to die. 

The biggest aspect of this movie is the battle between the young, inexperienced lawyer and the experience lawyer who has a reputation for winning many, if not all, of his cases. 

Leo Drummond, the defense attorney for the insurance company, is a lying scheming lawyer who goes through any means to make sure his client wins the case, whereas Rudy is concerned mostly with being honest and forthright in his cases. This launches the central conflict of ethical issues within the practice of law and the in the court systems in general. I feel like this type of representation does not reflect on the nature of the court systems and lawyers today, but the devious evil defense lawyer is a popular character type in these criminal law films. Never-the-less, there is an interesting conflict that is presented with the ethical issues that arise in the criminal justice system.

Another interesting aspect of the show is that an almost equally corrupt judge as Drummond is a lawyer who wants to call the trial off because he doesn't think Rudy can make a could case, gets replaced with a more sympathetic judge who is willing to let the trial commence. This example of corrupt judges botching the trial before it even commences is another one of the ethical problems that are being displayed in the court systems. 

In the end, Rudy wins the case, but the insurance company declared themselves bankrupt so they can't pay the fifty million dollars of punitive damages. This is still a great success for Rudy, but he decides rather than continuing in his career as a lawyer, we would teach law to students and focus on the ethical behavior of lawyers instead. 

So in the end the central conflict is the ethical principles of the court systems and how this is portrayed in the media. With the abundances of criminal law films and shows that portray these unethical court scenarios, one can conclude that people have a lack of trust in the court systems and the criminal justice system as a whole because lawyers and judges can behave unethically. However, I don't think this correlates with the way the court system actually works in our society- it is just how the media chooses to portray it because of the few large cases where the people felt there was injustice (perhaps the OJ Simpson case as an example). 

In any case, it is important to examine the ethics of the criminal justice system and the people who work within it.