Shots in the Mirror Crime Films and Society

by Rafter, Nicole

• ISBN13: 9780195175066
• ISBN10: 0195175069
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Movies play a central role in shaping our understanding of crime and the world generally, helping us define what is good and bad, desirable and unworthy, lawful and illicit, strong and weak. Crime films raise controversial issues about the distribution of social power and the meanings ofdeviance, and they provide a safe space for fantasies of rebellion, punishment, and the restoration of order. In the first comprehensive study of its kind, well-known criminologist Nicole Rafter examines the relationship between society and crime films from the perspectives of criminal justice, film history and technique, and sociology. Shots in the Mirror begins with an overview of the history of crimefilms and the emergence of various genres, surveying important films from the silent era, the early gangster films of the '30s, classic film noir, the work of Hitchcock, and recent innovations by Scorsese, Tarrentino, and the Coen brothers. Keeping pace with the evolution of crime films, Shots in the Mirror has been updated to respond to recent developments, trends, and shifting circumstances in the genre. This new edition expands the scope and increases the depth and variety of the previous edition by including foreign films inaddition to American movies. Rafter also integrates an entirely new body of literature into the study, reflecting the rapid expansion of scholarship on law-related films over the past three years. She has added a chapter on psycho movies, a previously unrecognized subcategory of crime films. Anothernew chapter, "The Alternative Tradition and Films of Moral Ambiguity," focuses on recent sex crime films. This new final chapter grows organically out of the first edition's distinction between traditional crime films, with their easy solutions to social problems, and those more unusual criticalfilms which belong to the bleaker, morally ambiguous, alternative tradition. Rafter examines more than three hundred films in this study, considering what they have to say, socially and ideologically, about the causes of crime, and adding valuable contributions to the on-going debate on whether media representations of violence cause crime. Shots in the Mirror is both amarvelous history of crime films and a trenchant analysis of their complex relationship to larger society.

Author Biography

Nicole Rafter teaches at Northeastern University in the College of Criminal Justice, and is a professor in the Law, Policy, and Society Program.

Table of Contents

Note on Use of Dates	xvii
Introduction: Crime Films and Society	3	(18)
The History of Crime Films---by Drew Todd	21	(40)
Why They Went Bad: Criminology in Crime Films	61	(26)
Slasher, Serial Killer, and Psycho Movies	87	(22)
Cop and Detective Films	109	(26)
Criminal Law Films	135	(28)
Prison and Execution Films	163	(26)
The Heroes of Crime Films	189	(24)
The Alternative Tradition and Films of Moral Ambiguity	213	(22)
Appendix Crime Films Cited with Release Dates	235	(6)
References	241	(10)
Index	251