Film, Crime, and State Legitimacy: Political Education or Mis-Education?

Abstract

Film and related media are an important source of visually centered narratives in many contemporary cultures. This essay focuses on recent crime stories (particularly in the United States) conveyed through these media. In what follows, the emphasis is on film, but the issues could often be adapted to apply to other media that use moving images. The paper examines the relations between such crime stories and complex emotional attitudes about crime and the perceived legitimacy of the democratic state as a social agency that distributes the moral attention of the public about the criminal justice system, including law enforcement activities and legal punishment. Philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty have written interestingly about narratives and moral emotions, but not much about moving pictures.1 This essay takes film narrative about crime seriously as a symptom of, or factor in, public sentiments about crime. It does not, however, attempt to frame and test causal hypotheses, but is rather an exercise in cultural interpretation. I argue that one revealing and influential public source for criticism, justification, and modification of emotions about crime is film (and similar moving picture) narrative. More important, I use various examples to show that film narrative about crime is capable of seeking to persuade the audience