Popular Culture and Crime: Portrayal of Hollywood Gangsters and Asian Stereotypes

1. DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY Popular Culture and Crime:Portrayal of Hollywood Gangsters and Asian Stereotypes SOCI8011: Crime and the Media Lecture 10 Dr. L. Cho, PhD E-mail: Lifcho@hku.hk

2. What is Popular Culture • Amusement that occupies a society’s leisure time • Reflects interests, manners and tastes of mainstream society • Fads, fashions in dress and speech, styles of interaction • Culture for mass consumption

3. Created and Maintained through Mass Media • Popular culture and mass media have a symbiotic relationship • Tight collaboration • In movies, TV, radio, fiction, poetry, new media, advertising, comic books

4. Popular Culture as Entertainment • Pleasurable escape • Transport us from everyday situation • See something we otherwise would not see • Experience something we normally would not experience • Not necessarily for knowledge or enlightenment

5. Popular Culture as Voyeurism • Infotainment - news as entertainment • A kind of voyeurism • Voyeurism: Spying on people’s lives in their most intimate situations • For example: “To Catch a Predator”

6. Popular Culture and Crime • Recently been of interest since 1990s • Two main areas of research: • Entertainment – detective novels, movies, video games, • News – popular journalism produced as entertainment • “Info-tainment” (celebrity gossip, lifestyle, human interest, “sex- money-power” trinity) • TV cop shows (“Cops”, “America’s Most Wanted”, “Unsolved Mysteries, “American Detective”, “Top Cops”) • As opposed to serious journalism: research, fact checking, serving the “public interest”

7. Popular “COPS” Shows • Distant rare events • Lives of people caught in extreme circumstances • Bizarre crimes • Spectacular events • Extraordinary events • Interesting and fascinating but seldom realistic or relevant • Often is different from our reality • Works to gain and keep our interest

8. “COPS”: “Bad Boys, Bad Boys, What You Gonna Do When They Come for You…” • US documentary TV series • One of longest running TV programme • Premiered 1989 • Began season 22 in September 2009 • Followed officers in 140 different cities in US, HK, London, Soviet Union • Episodes 22 minutes • Follows police officers during patrols and police activities

9. Study on “Cops” • 42 episodes • Units of analysis: 135 criminal short scene/incident • 3-4 per show Source: Mahoney and Westervelt (1998)

10. Crimes on “Cops” vs Official Crime Stats Uniform Crime Reports (US Dept of Justic 1995)

11. Racial Characteristics • Nonwhites rarely portrayed as criminals in fictional TV shows • In “Cops”, nonwhites are criminal suspects nearly 50% of the time • Not so different from real crime stats • Dominant Portrayal: White cops do battle against non-white criminals

12. Previous Studies and “Cops” Study Previous Studies Cops Study “Cops” presented as “factual” Broadcasted frequently (7 episodes aired weekly in some community) Depicts crime in distant places Show travels around, make it seem like crime could happen anywhere • Non-fictional (news) images have greater impact than fictional ones (TV drama) • More a message/theme is repeated, the more influential it becomes • Closer the crime is to home, more it may generate fear among viewers

13. Findings • “Cops” show violent crime is more common than property crime • Crimes by business and affluent not shown • Battle between white officers and non-white offenders • Ends in arrest 75% of the time • Format sets limitations • Crimes in the streets • NOT crimes in the suites (white collar) • Footages edited together (50-60 hours edited down to 22 minutes) • Facts are selected and shaped to fit TV entertainment

14. Implications • Non-whites heavily portrayed as law breakers • Negative racial stereotypes • Oversimplification and uncritical image of black males as criminals • Greater influence on audience perception and fear • Whites disproportionately shown as victims of serious crime • Making whites more concern about crime as social problem • Not significant factor in producing personal fear of crime • May be significant in shaping general view of crime and increasing social concern over crime as a serious social problem

15. Popular entertainment Allows escapes from reality Popular news Provides filter and snippets of abnormal events of the world Construction of the Unusual

16. Critique of Popular Culture • Entertaining and pleasurable • However, people forget or don’t realize it is an extract of reality • Recast and marketed for mass consumption

17. Popular Culture: a Constructed Image of Reality • A specific, narrow slice of reality is reshaped for mass consumption • Though recognized as unrealistic, continued exposure over long term could influence our view of reality

18. Social Construction of Reality • Direct personal experience – direct world knowledge, powerful influence • Symbolic Reality – acquired socially and collectively. Events you didn’t witness but believe occurred. Facts you didn’t personally connect but believe to be true.

19. Social Construction of Reality • Experienced reality and symbolic reality mixed together • Constructed reality perceived as real world • Reality is subjective, differs from person to person • People with similar backgrounds often see the world similarly due to sharing same symbolic reality and experienced reality

20. Media is Main Distributor of Knowledge • Media information not blindly accepted • Part of social construction of reality competition

21. Social Construction of Reality Competition • Competition involves claims and claimsmakers (promoters, activists, professional experts, spokespersons) • Claims: descriptions or explanations regarding the extent and nature of a phenomenon • Competition to have their particular construction of reality accepted

22. Claimsmakers Shape of View of the Problem • Statements and claims are promoted as facts about the world • Claimsmakers not just draw attention to particular social condition • They shape our sense of what the problem is

23. Competing Constructions of Crime and Justice “Frames” Frames Policy Swift and increase severity of punishment “get tough!” Address “root cause” create jobs, reduce poverty Recreate traditional communities • Faulty Criminal Justice: Lack of “law and order” • Blocked Opportunities (economics): inequality, unemployment, poverty, lack of education • Social breakdown: family community breakdown Source: Surette 2007

24. Media as the Playing Field • Each construction demands different policy course • Winning dominant construction directs public policy • Claimsmakers compete for media attention • Media tends to favor the dramatic, those sponsored by powerful groups, established cultural themes • Media as claims filter • Difficult for those outside popular cultural mainstream to access media

25. Three Dominant Social Construction of Reality Engines • Info engine #1: Personal experience and significant others • Info engine #2: Popular culture: distributed through mass media, including popular news and entertainment • Info engine #3: Other social institutions. A symbiotic relationship with media – rely on each other for info and to make their info credible and heard

26. Myth Creation of Gangsters • What role does popular culture/entertainment industry/Hollywood play? • Myths associated with particular types of criminals like the gangster?

27. Classic Criminal Types in Hollywood Film: Gangster • Viewers often end up siding with them • Hoping they will not get caught • Yet we know they will mostly likely pay for their sins at the end • Why is this?

28. Classic Criminal Types in Hollywood Film: Gangster • Where does the gangster image come from? • Why are we attracted and repulsed by the gangster image? • Why do film stereotypes persist even when they are debunked?

29. History of Hollywood Gangster Films • Dark side of American Dream • Illegal quest for wealth, fame, happiness • Prohibition (1920-1933) – the banning of Alcohol • Great Depression (1929 – 1945) • Crime and bootlegging out of poverty

30. History of Hollywood Gangster Films • Film audiences have an ongoing fascination with evil • Simultaneously repellant and irresistibly attractive • Gangsters became romantic heroes in popular imagination

31. Backstage Behaviour (Surette 1998) • Most crimes are secretive, private, hidden • More serious the crime, more backstage, more novel the portrayal • New places, activities, perspectives • Glimpse of rare and bizarre acts • Coupled with discussions of justice, morality, society • Provides escapism and expose – rich sources for entertainment media

32. Media’s Construction of Reality • Things few of us experience directly • Being arrested, going to jail, being a criminal defendant, sentenced to prison • Media images plays important role • Mass media provide the majority of information public receivesabout crime (Graber)

33. Media Construction of Reality Media is not value neutral Media rooted in ideological beliefs Media also must be understood in its social, political and organizational context Film Industry: entertainment and making a profit

34. Gangsters in American Mythology: • From rural bandits to urban gangsters • Process of myth construction and acceptance • Process of stereotyping

35. The “Other” • Depicted as ethnic in order that the audience will want to despise • Jet Li in Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon

36. Ethnicity and Gangster • Black mafia (Black Caesar 1973) black urban youth in gangs (Boyz N the Hood 1991) • Cuban and South American Mobster (Scarface 1983) • Jewish gangster (Once Upon a Time in America 1984)(Lansky 1999) • Italian organized crime (Goodfellas 1990)(Donnie Brasco 1997) • Chinese mafia (Year of the Dragon 1985)(Shanghai Triad 1995) • Little Odessa (1994) Ukrainian enclave in Brooklyn NY, ethnicity and problem of adjusting to life in American covered • Russian and Eastern Europeans the new mafia of choice

37. Asian Stereotypes in American Film History • Early films: majority cast in small, non-speaking roles as servants, laundry man, shopkeeper • Movies centered on Asian person were played by Caucasians • The practice of making white actors look Asian was called “yellowface.” Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/43815/asian_stereotypes_in_film_history_pg2.html?cat=40

38. Stereotypes of Asians Asian Female Asian Males “Charlie Chan” (nerdy, unattractive, emasculate, mysterious man, possessing awesome powers of deduction. At the same time, deferential to white, non-threatening, Asian domestic servants were commonly called Charlie- as in “Good boy, Charlie”) Yellow Peril (menacing, predatory, lusting after white women >>> kungfu kicking, ruthless type) • Dragon Lady (Dominatrix, conniving, tricky) • Lotus Blossom/China Girl (Exotic, submissive, meek and ready to serve a man’s every need)

39. In Sum • Films present a world of crime and justice not found in reality • Fragmented images provides distorted reflection of crime and crime control • Over emphasize individualism and personal justice as appropriate solution to crime • Rehabilitation and social reform are belittled (Surette 1998)

40. In Sum • Stereotyping of Asians in Hollywood films crowds out competing constructions that may more accurate portray Asians