Shots in the Mirror Crime Films and Society

by Rafter, Nicole

• ISBN13: 9780195175059
• ISBN10: 0195175050
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Originally published in May 2000, Shots in the Mirror analyzes crime filmsin terms of the interplay between movies and American Society. The book hasproven useful to students and scholars of criminal justice, law, and film andmedia studies. A new body of literature has been integrated into this revisedtext, reflecting the rapid expansion of scholarship on law-related films overthe past three years. Keeping pace with the evolution of crime films, thissecond edition responds to recent developments, trends, and shiftingcircumstances in the genre. A new introduction and preface outlines how thisedition differs from and updates its predecessor. The new edition updates thefirst six of the current edition's seven chapters and cuts the final chapter. Itexpands the scope and increases the depth and variety of the previous edition byincluding selected foreign films in addition to the American. It also adds a newchapter on film psychos, a previously unrecognized subcategory of crime films,and a chapter called "Offenses of Daily Life: Recent Films of Moral Ambiguity,"which grows organically out of the first edition's distinction betweentraditional crime films, with their easy solutions to social problems, and thosemore unusual critical films which belong to the bleaker, morally ambiguous,alternative tradition.

Table of Contents

J. Andrew Todd, Jr.: The History of Crime Films

Why They Went Bad: Criminology in Crime Films

Cop Films

Courtroom Films--with Charles Alexander Hahn

Prison and Execution Films

The Heroes of Crime Films

The Future of Crime Films

Appendix: Films Cited with Release Dates

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