Critical Theory

My own personal opinion is that prison life, as portrayed in moving image, is both realistic and exaggerated at the same time.
While things such as rape in prison & abuse of the prisoners by those in power may be stereotypically expected, from my research I have gathered that this genuinely happens.

Alcatraz prison, one of the most well-known prisons, has been portrayed many times in films such as Escape from Alcatraz & Murder in the First, which was loosely based on a true story. Alcatraz is portrayed as an extremely high-security prison that nobody had ever escaped from, but the website alcatrazcruises.com states that Alcatraz has been misrepresented - "Alcatraz was a tough prison but it was a fair one; most former convicts will grudgingly admit the island was safer and better run than many other prisons where they spent time." The website also states that "Hollywood produced many movies that over-dramatized Alcatraz, especially in the 1930s & 1940s, often depicting brutal guards and violent episodes that had no basis in reality."

However, the website may be biased towards Alcatraz & wanting to portray it in a positive light as it is a cruise company that goes to the site.

ALCATRAZ CRUISES.COM/WEBSITE/FAQS-ALCATRAZ-HISTORY.ASPX

*How long should this be?

Primary Research; a question I posted on the internet

I posted the question 'What is your opinion of The Shawshank Redemption & or Scum?'
I also asked 'Why/why did you not like the films?' & 'What were the films positives and negatives?' as I wanted more than a one-line answer.
I posted this question in a note on my Facebook profile & tagged as many people as I could that I knew had watched at least one of the films so I could get as big a response as possible. I also tagged all the people I know that study/have studied Media so I could get a more detailed response, for example: "This mise-en-scene in Scum is very important to the story, I feel. There is no musical score at all in the film, unlike nearly every other film I have seen, adding to the dreary, depressing feel of Borstal."

Out of the twenty-three people that replied, only four of them had seen Scum, whereas all of them had seen The Shawshank Redemption. I do not feel it is a coincidence that the film with the Hollywood cast & huge budget has been seen by far more people than the relatively unknown Scum, which was nearly banned.

It was the general consensus that The Shawshank Redemption is an "amazing" film for three reasons:
- the message of hope it conveys
- the strong bond forged between the two main characters; some noted that they liked it more because one of the leads is black, in a film set in the 1954's (perhaps not realising that the character of Red was meant to be a white, Irish man)
- the fact that the principal antagonists of the film are "dealt with accordingly, showing good can overcome evil"

The four people that had seen Scum felt that it had some things in common with The Shawshank Redemption, such as the abuse of the prisoners by the Wardens, and the male rape of those seen as "weak & vulnerable".
However, they also felt there were some clear differences between the two films. One of the people I asked the question to said, "There is no message of hope at all in Scum. The prisoners aren't even rehabiliated, they're just left to do what they want, which is probably why there are so many realistic fight scenes in this film. When I first watched the film a few years ago, I genuinely felt like the rape scene in Scum could have been real. The rape scene in The Shawshank Redemption is fairly realistic I suppose, but the fact that the rape in Scum is witnessed, yet nothing is done about it, shows just how corrupt it must be in a prison environment, and that this sort of behaviour must really go on."

Secondary Research; Institutional Information

Scum was a British film created in 1979 on a budget of only £5000 and was distributed by Blue Underground, a company specialising in releasing authoritative editions of cult/exploitation movies on DVD.
The story was originally made for the BBC's Play for Today strand in 1977 but was not shown at the time, although the BBC version has been broadcast since then. Two years later director Alan Clarke and scriptwriter Roy Minton remade it as a film, which was then shown on Channel 4 in 1983, by which time the borstal system had been abolished. The original BBC production differed slightly from the remade one. Aside from one or two differences in the cast, the main difference was that a homosexual relationship between Carlin and another inmate existed, which was in the BBC version but dropped from the later film. A special DVD re-release of the film was made in 2005 with the BBC original version added onto the disc as a bonus feature. Then unknown actor Ray Winstone was cast in the lead role for "the way he walked."

The Shawshank Redemption was an American film released in 1995, based on the book Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, written by world-famous author Stephen King. It was directed by Frank Darabont, now noted for also having written, directed & produced films such as The Green Mile. Unlike Scum, famous actors starred in this film, such as Morgan Freeman. Therefore, budget for this film was $25 million and grossed $28,341,469. The Shawshank Redemption was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film was marketed for being a "feel-good" film with a strong message of hope.

Bad Girls was an award-winning British television drama series that was broadcast on ITV from 1999 to 2006; there were eight series. It was produced by Shed Productions, the company which later produced Footballers' Wives and Waterloo Road. It was set in the fictional women's prison of Larkhall, and featured a mixture of serious and lighthearted storylines focusing on the prisoners and staff - "screws" - of G Wing. HBO is developing an American remake with the same characters and exact same storylines.
The first series explicitly showed the sexual relationship between an inmate and a prison officer, an inmate suffering a miscarriage in her cell and another inmate committing suicide after severe bullying. The other series showed similar hard-hitting storylines.

Prison Break is an American serial drama television series that began in 2005. The series revolves around two brothers: one, Lincoln, has been sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, and the other, Michael,who is a genius, devises an elaborate plan to help him escape from prison, hence the title of the show. The series was originally turned down by Fox in 2003, which was concerned about the long-term possibilities of such a series. Following the popularity of serialized prime time television series Lost and 24, Fox decided to back production in 2004. The first season received generally positive reviews and performed well in the ratings. After it was closed down in 2002, Joliet Prison became the set of Prison Break in 2005, standing in as Fox River State Penitentiary on screen. Scenes set in Lincoln's cell, the infirmary and the prison yard were all shot on location at the prison. Lincoln's cell was the same one in which serial killer John Wayne Gacy was incarcerated, which at least one member of the production crew refused to enter, believing that it was haunted. Prison Break spent $2 million per episode in the state of Illinois, which cost them a total of $24 million in 2005.

What I found useful from the media textbooks

Crime, Justice and the Media

I found the names of many sociologists whose work was relevant to my study, such as Dorfman (2001) who found Crime and war programs have received criticism when perpetrators or enemies are that "76% of the public said they formed their opinions about crime from what they read in the news."

Assessing the Research on Media Violence - exactly what is written in the book

Crime dramas remain enormously popular in movies, television and even computer games. When the good-guy police/detectives use violence against criminals, audiences experience a degree of satisfaction because they feel as though some sort of justice is prevailing.
consistently cast as people of specific social classes, races or nationalities. At times this has been done intentionality, as during World War Two when Japanese and German "enemies" were portrayed with negative stereotypes. In more recent years, reality television shows like Cops frequently feature working-class, African American, or Latino people in footage of "live"
chases or arrests.
Sam Peckinpah directed the hyperviolent The Wild Bunch in 1969. His claim that the incredible blood, gore and death in the film was intended to shock audiences into despair over the "real" human atrocities of Vietnam news footage to which audiences had become desensitized by daily viewing. The idea that violence on screen might move viewers to pacifism has a history that parallels the developmen of photography as a recording medium.

Audience Research; Focus Group

I put together a focus group consisting of ten people, not including myself, of various ages, sexes, social class and ethnicities. One of the people at the focus group was in prison himself for a number of years, therefore he had an idea of what is and is not realistically shown in prison related films or television programs. I collected key scenes from prison related media:
The Shawshank Redemption, Scum, Bad Girls & Porridge.

I chose to do this rather than show the focus group one film/show so that they could compare what I had shown them and could contrast what they had seen in each clip. I asked the focus group to write down anything they found interesting or unusual whilst I also used a dictaphone to record their first reactions to the clips, some of which were quite graphic and they had never seen before. They also voiced their opinions on whether they believed certain films/programs were more accurate than others, even though most of them had not even stepped foot inside a prison. I felt it was important to gather their personal opinions regardless of this fact as they represented the viewing public for my research and I wanted different perspectives, especially as the majority of people will not have any experience of prison life either.

The person that had been in prison, Adam, said he knew people that had been physically & sexually assaulted by the Wardens, although he was not one of them. As I asked him questions, comparing & contrasting each of the programs/films he said, "there's a constant power struggle inside, and you have to come out on top or you're not gonna make it. The Shawshank Redemption's a nice film, but I wouldn't say it's realistic, but only because of the ending. It's nice to think that some people in prison can have so much hope, because when I was in, I didn't. One of my cellmates committed suicide the first week he was here, and I can't say I don't blame him. Porridge isn't supposed to be realistic I suppose because it's a comedy, but the cells looked realistic enough of the times, and the fact there's one stern warden & one 'soft' warden is true to the prison I was in myself. Bad Girls is a mix of the two, quite realistic I expect of women's prisons with a bit of comedy thrown in, although I think alot of it must have been exaggerated for dramatic effect, to make it more controversial."

One of the girls in my target audience said this about Bad Girls,"It shocked me so much when it came out that I promised myself I'd never commit a crime. The miscarriages in prison, the sexual and physical abuse, the suicide, all of that affected me quite a bit when I was younger. I honestly thought this happened day-in day-out in jail, and alot of it probably does, but I wonder now whether Adam hasn't got a valid point. Prison life may well be exaggerated in films & television shows to appeal to a wider audience, to shock them. Maybe even to shock them away from committing crimes?"

I asked her whether she had ever been inside a prison or seen a real prison cell and she said, "No, I've never seen the inside of a prison but in all the media I've seen of prison cells, they look really depressing and so small that I'd feel suffocated being there. There's no privacy." Everyone in the group agreed with this last remark, myself included.

I asked the group whether they felt that violence between inmates happened as much as it does in Scum, and one of them pointed out that many real-life criminals have been killed in prison by other inmates, such as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The focus group were all over 18 as nearly all prison related moving image shows brutal, shocking scenes and they are usually rated 18. Through researching I have found that men generally watch prison related moving image more than women. I asked the females in the group why they would not watch films such as Scum on a regular basis and one of them said that she is too "squeamish and emotional" to watch "scenes of rape and such realistic abuse all the time."

In Bad Girls, some women who were heterosexual before they went into prison form lesbian relationships whilst inside prison. Nearly all of the women in the focus group said they could understand why this happened, but only one of the men said this. One of the women who said she could relate to the relationships said, "If you're in prison for a long time, you'd miss intimacy and probably be sexually frustrated, so I can totally see why women would turn to other women in prison. However, I doubt this would happen nearly as much in an all-male environment. I forgot about this point actually until you brought it up; it's not one of the typical prisom 'stereotypes' that come to mind when I think of being in a prison."

Secondary Research; Film Reviews

Scum: these reviews are from Amazon.com

Overall, Scum is not an easy watch. Its hard to emphasize with characters who want to beat each other up with pipes, encourage racial violence and commit rape unpunished. But for the message it carries and its sheer, unpolished presentation of what are basically true events, its a must see.

BRILLIANT FILM. This is Ray Winstone at his best. The West Ham boy is the Cockney Al Pacino. The fight scene where he 'does' child abusing paedophile Richard Grimson, traitor Paul Wellings and `Grass` Al "Walter Mitty" Parlour is the highlight of this classis prison drama. This is without doubt one of the best British movies ever made and up there alongside The Long Good Friday, Lock Stock and Get Carter.

The Shawshank Redemption: by Rober Ebert, world-famous film critic. 23/9/94

“The Shawshank Redemption” is a movie about time, patience and loyalty -- not sexy qualities, perhaps, but they grow on you during the subterranean progress of this story, which is about how two men serving life sentences in prison become friends and find a way to fight off despair.The story is narrated by “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) who has been inside the walls of Shawshank Prison for a very long time and is its leading entrepreneur. He can get you whatever you need: cigarettes, candy, even a little rock pick like an amateur geologist might use. One day he and his fellow inmates watch the latest busload of prisoners unload, and they make bets on who will cry during their first night in prison, and who will not. Red bets on a tall, lanky guy named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who looks like a babe in the woods.But Andy does not cry, and Red loses the cigarettes he wagered. Andy turns out to be a surprise to everyone in Shawshank, because within him is such a powerful reservoir of determination and strength that nothing seems to break him.

Andy was a banker on the outside, and he's in for murder. He's apparently innocent, and there are all sorts of details involving his case, but after a while they take on a kind of unreality; all that counts inside prison is its own society -- who is strong, who is not -- and the measured passage of time.Red is also a lifer. From time to time, measuring the decades, he goes up in front of the parole board, and they measure the length of his term (20 years, 30 years) and ask him if he thinks he has been rehabilitated. Oh, most surely, yes, he replies; but the fire goes out of his assurances as the years march past, and there is the sense that he has been institutionalized -- that, like another old lifer who kills himself after being paroled, he can no longer really envision life on the outside.Red's narration of the story allows him to speak for all of the prisoners, who sense a fortitude and integrity in Andy that survives the years. Andy will not kiss butt. He will not back down. But he is not violent, just formidably sure of himself. For the warden (Bob Gunton), he is both a challenge and a resource; Andy knows all about bookkeeping and tax preparation, and before long he's been moved out of his prison job in the library and assigned to the warden's office, where he sits behind an adding machine and keeps tabs on the warden's ill-gotten gains. His fame spreads, and eventually he's doing the taxes and pension plans for most of the officials of the local prison system.

There are key moments in the film, as when Andy uses his clout to get some cold beers for his friends who are working on a roofing job. Or when he befriends the old prison librarian (James Whitmore). Or when he oversteps his boundaries and is thrown into solitary confinement. What quietly amazes everyone in the prison -- and us, too -- is the way he accepts the good and the bad as all part of some larger pattern than only he can fully see.The partnership between the characters played by Robbins and Freeman is crucial to the way the story unfolds.

This is not a "prison drama" in any conventional sense of the word. It is not about violence, riots or melodrama. The word "redemption" is in the title for a reason. The movie is based on a story, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King, which is quite unlike most of King's work. The horror here is not of the supernatural kind, but of the sort that flows from the realization than 10, 20, 30 years of a man's life have unreeled in the same unchanging daily prison routine.The director, Frank Darabont, paints the prison in drab grays and shadows, so that when key events do occur, they seem to have a life of their own.Andy, as played by Robbins, keeps his thoughts to himself.

Red, as Freeman plays him, is therefore a crucial element in the story: His close observation of this man, down through the years, provides the way we monitor changes and track the measure of his influence on those around him. And all the time there is something else happening, hidden and secret, which is revealed only at the end.

“The Shawshank Redemption” is not a depressing story, although I may have made it sound that way.

There is a lot of life and humor in it, and warmth in the friendship that builds up between Andy and Red. There is even excitement and suspense, although not when we expect it. But mostly the film is an allegory about holding onto a sense of personal worth, despite everything. If the film is perhaps a little slow in its middle passages, maybe that is part of the idea, too, to give us a sense of the leaden passage of time, before the glory of the final redemption.

Primary Research; Questionnaire

Age:
Gender:
Class:
Ethnicity:
Lifestyle choices (if you go to the gym, eat healthily etc):


1) Do you ever watch prison related films or television shows, such as Prison Break or The Shawshank Redemption? Please name those you watch. Did you watch Bad Girls when it was aired?

2) Do you think prison is depicted realistically in films/television shows? Why do you think this?

3) Do you feel there are any prison stereotypes, due to what you've seen on television/in film? (i.e. prison rape). If so please name some of the stereotypes

4) WHAT OTHER QUESTIONS CAN I ASK