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.
Ian Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719088865
- eISBN:
- 9781781706909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088865.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The late nineteenth century was marked by profound concern about national physical well-being. Despite initial post-Famine optimism in the 1850s about the prospects of national dietary reconstruction ...
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The late nineteenth century was marked by profound concern about national physical well-being. Despite initial post-Famine optimism in the 1850s about the prospects of national dietary reconstruction and agricultural prosperity, pessimism about the Irish condition quickly re-emerged. To introduce this theme, this chapter focuses on mid-century feeding in institutions and maintains that critics of institutional dietary policies invoked this seemingly internal institutional matter as a concern with national implications. Following the Famine, physicians paid closer attention to the issues of nutritional quality and deficiency and established firm links between an insufficient diet and permanent physical and mental weakening. Institutions provided opportunities for physicians and medical witnesses to witness, monitor and better understand the negative physical and mental effects of poor nutrition. Their well-publicised observations drew public attention to the idea that a nutritionally inadequate diet encouraged the onset of bodily conditions such as scrofula (or tuberculosis of the neck) and ophthalmia (or conjunctivitis). This chapter explores these themes by analysing dietary arrangements in mid-century prisons, workhouses, reformatories and industrial schools.Less
The late nineteenth century was marked by profound concern about national physical well-being. Despite initial post-Famine optimism in the 1850s about the prospects of national dietary reconstruction and agricultural prosperity, pessimism about the Irish condition quickly re-emerged. To introduce this theme, this chapter focuses on mid-century feeding in institutions and maintains that critics of institutional dietary policies invoked this seemingly internal institutional matter as a concern with national implications. Following the Famine, physicians paid closer attention to the issues of nutritional quality and deficiency and established firm links between an insufficient diet and permanent physical and mental weakening. Institutions provided opportunities for physicians and medical witnesses to witness, monitor and better understand the negative physical and mental effects of poor nutrition. Their well-publicised observations drew public attention to the idea that a nutritionally inadequate diet encouraged the onset of bodily conditions such as scrofula (or tuberculosis of the neck) and ophthalmia (or conjunctivitis). This chapter explores these themes by analysing dietary arrangements in mid-century prisons, workhouses, reformatories and industrial schools.
Monika Fludernik
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198840909
- eISBN:
- 9780191879906
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198840909.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy focuses on a historical survey of our imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors that occur in great numbers in ...
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Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy focuses on a historical survey of our imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors that occur in great numbers in texts about imprisonment from Antiquity to the present but are also used to describe many non-penal situations as confining or restrictive. These imaginings are argued to coalesce into a ‘carceral imaginary’ that determines the way we think about prisons, just as social debates about punishment and criminals feed into the way our carceral imaginary develops over time. The book juxtaposes literary and non-literary contexts and contrasts fictional and non-fictional representations of (im)prison(ment) and discussions about the prison as institution and experiential reality. It comments on present-day trends of punitivity and foregrounds the ethical dimensions of penal punishment. The main argument of the book concerns the continuity of carceral metaphors through the centuries despite historical developments that included major shifts in policy (like the invention of the penitentiary). The study looks at selected carceral metaphors, often from two complementary perspectives, such as the home as prison or the prison as home (Chapter 4) or the factory as prison and the prison as factory (Chapter 7). Within chapters, case studies of particularly relevant genres and texts employing these metaphors are presented, often from a historical perspective in which their development through several periods is analysed. The book examines not only English-language prose fiction but also poetry and drama from the Middle Ages to postcolonial, particularly African, literature.Less
Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy focuses on a historical survey of our imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors that occur in great numbers in texts about imprisonment from Antiquity to the present but are also used to describe many non-penal situations as confining or restrictive. These imaginings are argued to coalesce into a ‘carceral imaginary’ that determines the way we think about prisons, just as social debates about punishment and criminals feed into the way our carceral imaginary develops over time. The book juxtaposes literary and non-literary contexts and contrasts fictional and non-fictional representations of (im)prison(ment) and discussions about the prison as institution and experiential reality. It comments on present-day trends of punitivity and foregrounds the ethical dimensions of penal punishment. The main argument of the book concerns the continuity of carceral metaphors through the centuries despite historical developments that included major shifts in policy (like the invention of the penitentiary). The study looks at selected carceral metaphors, often from two complementary perspectives, such as the home as prison or the prison as home (Chapter 4) or the factory as prison and the prison as factory (Chapter 7). Within chapters, case studies of particularly relevant genres and texts employing these metaphors are presented, often from a historical perspective in which their development through several periods is analysed. The book examines not only English-language prose fiction but also poetry and drama from the Middle Ages to postcolonial, particularly African, literature.
