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Crimesploitation

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"Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised." Most of us have encountered this warning while watching television at some point. It is typically attached to a brand of ...
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  • 31 May 2022
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"Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised." Most of us have encountered this warning while watching television at some point. It is typically attached to a brand of reality crime TV that Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance call "crimesploitation": spectacles designed to entertain mass audiences by exhibiting "real" criminal behavior and its consequences. This book examines their enduring popularity in American culture. Analyzing the structure and content of several popular crimesploitation shows, including Cops, Dog: The Bounty Hunter, and To Catch a Predator, as well as newer examples like Making a Murderer and Don't F**K with Cats, Kaplan and LaChance highlight the troubling nature of the genre: though it presents itself as ethical and righteous, its entertainment value hinges upon suffering. Viewers can imagine themselves as deviant and ungovernable like the criminals in the show, thereby escaping a law-abiding lifestyle. Alternatively, they can identify with law enforcement officials, exercising violence, control, and "justice" on criminal others. Crimesploitation offers a sobering look at the depictions of criminals, policing, and punishment in modern America.

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Price: $100.00
Pages: 180
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Publication Date: 31 May 2022
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781503613683
Format: Hardcover
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"Insisting that the consumption of other people's pain is a defining feature of the neoliberal carceral state, Crimesploitation will not let us meaninglessly 'escape' into our true crime media streaming and listening. Instead, Kaplan and LaChance move us toward a critical reckoning with the exploitative forms of (un)freedom that media's spectacle of crime and punishment have conjured. A powerful dose of thoughtful accountability, this volume points the way to getting truly 'real' aboutand intervening inthe suffering that a culture of punishment has produced. I cannot wait to cite, teach, and buy copies of this book for friends and family."—Michelle Brown, The University of Tennessee
Paul Kaplan is Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. He is the author of Murder Stories: Ideological Narratives in Capital Punishment (Lexington, 2013). Daniel LaChance is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History at Emory University. He is the author of Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (Chicago, 2016).
1. Humiliation, Inc.: Policing the Criminal on Primetime
2. Watching the Night Creatures: Crimesploitation and Boredom
3. Cuffs of Love: Punishment and Redemption in Crimesploitation
4. Middlebrow Crimesploitation
Epilogue: W(h)ither Crimesploitation?