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.