Screening the Police

Film and Law Enforcement in the United States
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-757772-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 680 g

American police departments have presided over the business of motion pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made, promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police explores the history of film's entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium.

For the New Jersey State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means of making the agency world-famous as early as 1896. Beat cops became movie stars. Police chiefs made their own documentaries. And from Maine to California, state and local law enforcement agencies regularly fingerprinted filmgoers for decades, amassing enormous records as they infiltrated theatres both big and small.

As author Noah Tsika demonstrates, understanding the scope of police power in the United States requires attention to an aspect of film history that has long been ignored. Screening the Police reveals the extent to which American cinema has overlapped with the politics and practices of law enforcement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tsika, Noah

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtssoziologie, Rechtspsychologie, Rechtslinguistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: "The Glorification of Policemen"

- Chapter 1: Cinema's Municipalities: Industrial Expansion and the Locations of Policing

- Chapter 2: Cinematic Badges: Conventions, Complications, and "Films for Cops"

- Chapter 3: Veto Power: Film Censorship as Discretionary Policing

- Chapter 4: Ballistics, Bertillonage, and Ballyhoo: Selling the Science of Crime Detection

- Chapter 5: Filmgoers' Fingerprints: Supporting Carceral Expansion Through "Lobby Gags"

- Chapter 6: From Kiddie Cops to the Coal Police: Private Proxies and the Production of Criminological Common Sense

- Chapter 7: Coda: 2020 Vision

Über Autor(innen)

Noah Tsika is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, City University of New York He is a contributing editor of Africa is a Country and the author of several books.