Julilly Kohler-Hausmann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691174525
- eISBN:
- 9781400885183
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691174525.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In 1970s America, politicians began “getting tough” on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's ...
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In 1970s America, politicians began “getting tough” on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. This book sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. The book shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period. When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. This book rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the “underclass” could be managed only through coercion and force. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, the book offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.Less
In 1970s America, politicians began “getting tough” on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. This book sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. The book shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period. When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. This book rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the “underclass” could be managed only through coercion and force. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, the book offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.
Neil Mitchell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906733728
- eISBN:
- 9781800342118
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906733728.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the surrounding forces, both individual and collective, which led to the writing and subsequent filming of Carrie (1976), giving a clear picture of its place within the popular ...
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This chapter discusses the surrounding forces, both individual and collective, which led to the writing and subsequent filming of Carrie (1976), giving a clear picture of its place within the popular culture of the era and offering an insight as to how Brian De Palma and his cast and crew capitalised on numerous factors to bring Carrie to the big screen. As with all movies that attain a lasting resonance and/or reverential status, there is no single defining attribute that led to Carrie's standing as a classic, but rather a convergence of diverse determining factors. Talent, happenstance, timing, and prevailing social, cultural, and political climates and mores are all equally influential elements that affect a movie's reception. In Carrie's case, these factors gestated in the fledgling career of horror novelist Stephen King, De Palma's ambitions (commercial and artistic), the climate of unrest in America in the early 1970s, and the wave of homegrown nihilistic horror movies that both commented on and reflected the country's troubled psyche at the time. Along with the ‘paranoid conspiracy’ thrillers and pointedly political movies of the time, the horror movies released in America in the 1970s were at the forefront of cinematic responses to a sustained period of cultural upheaval, social turbulence, and political disenchantment.Less
This chapter discusses the surrounding forces, both individual and collective, which led to the writing and subsequent filming of Carrie (1976), giving a clear picture of its place within the popular culture of the era and offering an insight as to how Brian De Palma and his cast and crew capitalised on numerous factors to bring Carrie to the big screen. As with all movies that attain a lasting resonance and/or reverential status, there is no single defining attribute that led to Carrie's standing as a classic, but rather a convergence of diverse determining factors. Talent, happenstance, timing, and prevailing social, cultural, and political climates and mores are all equally influential elements that affect a movie's reception. In Carrie's case, these factors gestated in the fledgling career of horror novelist Stephen King, De Palma's ambitions (commercial and artistic), the climate of unrest in America in the early 1970s, and the wave of homegrown nihilistic horror movies that both commented on and reflected the country's troubled psyche at the time. Along with the ‘paranoid conspiracy’ thrillers and pointedly political movies of the time, the horror movies released in America in the 1970s were at the forefront of cinematic responses to a sustained period of cultural upheaval, social turbulence, and political disenchantment.
