Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 4: “’The Great Unseen Audience’: Sing Sing Prison and Motion Pictures” considers the unique conditions of possibility for showing film in Sing Sing Prison. Issues addressed include how film ...
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Chapter 4: “’The Great Unseen Audience’: Sing Sing Prison and Motion Pictures” considers the unique conditions of possibility for showing film in Sing Sing Prison. Issues addressed include how film obtained a foothold and related to the rhythms of carceral life at Sing Sing as well as carving out new routines for incarcerated men; why Hollywood executives curried favor with Sing Sing’s Warden Lewis E. Lawes; and cinema’s role in inculcating ideas of modern citizenry (a clarion call in the US penological discourse). The chapter also considers the role played by early radio broadcasting in the prison, since radio headsets installed in Sing Sing’s cells in the late 1920s also brought in the outside world and served as a strategic tool for Warden Lawes, whose fireside chat radio programs were piped directly into the cells on Sunday evenings.Less
Chapter 4: “’The Great Unseen Audience’: Sing Sing Prison and Motion Pictures” considers the unique conditions of possibility for showing film in Sing Sing Prison. Issues addressed include how film obtained a foothold and related to the rhythms of carceral life at Sing Sing as well as carving out new routines for incarcerated men; why Hollywood executives curried favor with Sing Sing’s Warden Lewis E. Lawes; and cinema’s role in inculcating ideas of modern citizenry (a clarion call in the US penological discourse). The chapter also considers the role played by early radio broadcasting in the prison, since radio headsets installed in Sing Sing’s cells in the late 1920s also brought in the outside world and served as a strategic tool for Warden Lawes, whose fireside chat radio programs were piped directly into the cells on Sunday evenings.
Jennifer Graber
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834572
- eISBN:
- 9781469603339
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807877838_graber.8
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter describes how Sing Sing Prison's agent assaulted the resident chaplain and threw him out of the prison. The institution had no minister until a year later when a new head administrator ...
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This chapter describes how Sing Sing Prison's agent assaulted the resident chaplain and threw him out of the prison. The institution had no minister until a year later when a new head administrator took over. The new agent, Robert Wiltse, was also dubious about prison chaplains. In a report presented to the state legislature in 1834, Wiltse questioned the claims of inmate reformation boasted by prison ministers. “How much risk do they run of being deceived by hypocritical protestations?” he asked. Wiltse assured the legislature that “the hope once entertained of producing a general and radical reformation of offenders through a penitentiary system, is abandoned by the most intelligent philanthropists, who now think its chief benefit is the prevention of crime.” In order to suppress lawbreaking, Wiltse argued, “criminals must be made to submit through corporal punishment.”Less
This chapter describes how Sing Sing Prison's agent assaulted the resident chaplain and threw him out of the prison. The institution had no minister until a year later when a new head administrator took over. The new agent, Robert Wiltse, was also dubious about prison chaplains. In a report presented to the state legislature in 1834, Wiltse questioned the claims of inmate reformation boasted by prison ministers. “How much risk do they run of being deceived by hypocritical protestations?” he asked. Wiltse assured the legislature that “the hope once entertained of producing a general and radical reformation of offenders through a penitentiary system, is abandoned by the most intelligent philanthropists, who now think its chief benefit is the prevention of crime.” In order to suppress lawbreaking, Wiltse argued, “criminals must be made to submit through corporal punishment.”
Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the ...
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A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the prison emerged as a setting and narrative trope in modern cinema. Focusing on films shown in prisons before 1935, Alison Griffiths explores the unique experience of viewing cinema while incarcerated and the complex cultural roots of cinematic renderings of prison life. Griffiths considers a diverse mix of cinematic genres, from early actualities and reenactments of notorious executions to reformist exposés of the 1920s. She connects an early fascination with cinematic images of punishment and execution, especially electrocutions, to the attractions of the nineteenth-century carnival electrical wonder show and Phantasmagoria (a ghost show using magic lantern projections and special effects). Griffiths draws upon convict writing, prison annual reports, and the popular press obsession with prison-house cinema to document the integration of film into existing reformist and educational activities and film’s psychic extension of flights of fancy undertaken by inmates in their cells. Combining penal history with visual and film studies and theories surrounding media’s sensual effects, Carceral Fantasies illuminates how filmic representations of the penal system enacted ideas about modernity, gender, the body, and the public, shaping both the social experience of cinema and the public’s understanding of the modern prison.Less
A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the prison emerged as a setting and narrative trope in modern cinema. Focusing on films shown in prisons before 1935, Alison Griffiths explores the unique experience of viewing cinema while incarcerated and the complex cultural roots of cinematic renderings of prison life. Griffiths considers a diverse mix of cinematic genres, from early actualities and reenactments of notorious executions to reformist exposés of the 1920s. She connects an early fascination with cinematic images of punishment and execution, especially electrocutions, to the attractions of the nineteenth-century carnival electrical wonder show and Phantasmagoria (a ghost show using magic lantern projections and special effects). Griffiths draws upon convict writing, prison annual reports, and the popular press obsession with prison-house cinema to document the integration of film into existing reformist and educational activities and film’s psychic extension of flights of fancy undertaken by inmates in their cells. Combining penal history with visual and film studies and theories surrounding media’s sensual effects, Carceral Fantasies illuminates how filmic representations of the penal system enacted ideas about modernity, gender, the body, and the public, shaping both the social experience of cinema and the public’s understanding of the modern prison.
