Abstract
This chapter commences with analysis of the gothic nature of criminology as a discipline. Gothic generates a sense of the sublime by exciting ideas of danger, terror, pain and horror. It is concerned with subjection and victimization and has the ability to inspire fear through the use of sublime effects in architecture and the manipulation of the psychological (Groom 2012). Johnson (2012: 168) argues that ‘prisons explicitly deal in fear’ and highlights the irony of prison security—given that ‘no one feels secure in prison’. Such concerns, as well as spectralization, repression, the uncanny, misunderstandings, possession, excess, monstrousness and hybridity, lend a certain gothic logic to its use in criminological studies. Having explored elements of the gothic, this chapter goes on to consider comics. According to Giddens (2012: 85), comics exist at the borders, they are between the ‘textual and the visual, and between the rational and the aesthetic’, they have an essential ‘in-betweenness’. Two particular aspects of comics are considered. Firstly, the impact of the Comics Code in constructing understandings of crime, justice and punishment; and secondly, the representation of black characters in comics. These connections are then fed back through the work of people like MF Doom and Rammellzee, which returns us to hip-hop, masks, fantasy and performance, cyborgs and hybrids. We are deep in the realms of viscous culture. Analysis of the thick and sticky connections between comics and gothic tradition operates as a viscous network through which an array of criminological concepts is explored, and as we shall see, a space where monstrous transformations occur.
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Notes
- 1.
Although none of the men I interviewed said prison was easy, some prisoners and ex-prisoners contribute to the idea that prison is. A number of students discussed how friends who had been to prison described it in this way. Jimmy Boyle (1977) offers an interesting, performative take on this. Describing how on release from prison he started to give a completely fictitious account of the experience, becoming boastful, even though he had found it terrifying.
- 2.
Initially, many of the men only briefly touched on their time in prison, skirting over this period of their lives to some extent—a time best forgotten. Charlie, however, continues to explore the impact of incarceration and has created a one-man play using puppets, masks, physical theatre and dance to shine a light on his experience of prison. As part of his documentary, Stories of Healing, he also shared some of the abuse he experienced during his prison experience.
- 3.
For an example of this in popular culture see French TV series The Returned.
- 4.
Watchmen was listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 best novels published in the English language since 1923.
- 5.
Shapeshifting is considered in more detail in Part 4, which draws on the shapeshifting of werewolves and tricksters and ideas around metamorphosis to analyse life after release from prison.
- 6.
There are numerous excellent texts that explore class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and the criminal justice system. See for example, Rusche and Kirchheimer (1969) Punishment and Social Structure for historical analysis on economic relations or Reiman and Leighton (2012) The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison; Messerschmidt (1993) Masculinities and Crime; Bowling and Phillips (2002) Racism, Crime and Justice; Smart (1999) Law, Crime and Sexuality.
- 7.
A point pedantically made by Alan Partridge in I’m Alan Partridge episode four.
- 8.
This relates to the idea that fictional TV programmes such as CSI influence public perception.
- 9.
I would like to thank Thom Giddens for this insight.
- 10.
The Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) scheme was introduced in 1995 with the expectation that prisoners would earn additional privileges—enhanced status—through demonstrating responsible behaviour and participation in work or other constructive activity.
- 11.
Under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 you can be held and treated without your consent.
- 12.
The connection between emotion and the gothic is semantically interesting given the links between Goth and Emo youth subcultures.
- 13.
- 14.
Although, as Varnum and Gibbons (2001) note, this is geographically determined. In Japan, parts of Europe and Canada comics have been treated as serious cultural products.
- 15.
Possibly telling us something about how power seeks to limit and control imaginative space.
- 16.
The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Dark Knight Rises and Iron Man 3 grossed over a billion dollars each and are in the top 20 highest grossing films ever.
- 17.
People in England and Wales are more likely to be sent to prison and for longer periods of time than in the past. Since 1993 the number of people serving life or indeterminate sentences has virtually doubled (Ministry of Justice 2013).
- 18.
This is not only the case in relation to ethnicity, as female characters in comics are frequently stereotyped and sexualized.
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Farrant, F. (2016). Comics and the Gothic. In: Crime, Prisons and Viscous Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49010-0_6
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