Consuming Confinement: Real Prisons on Screen, 1970 – Present

Harrington, Catherine Emily

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-0qa4-y867

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Consuming Confinement: Real Prisons on Screen, 1970 – Present

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This dissertation is a contribution to the depth and breadth of prison media history. I position prison media of the 1970s as key antecedents to the prison reality television of the 2000s and today. The purpose of this arrangement is to bring attention to an era of prison media that has been neglected in prison film histories and to highlight some commonalities between the 1970s and the mid 2000s +, as periods of potential carceral change, where incarceration is a topic of public discourse and critique. The first half of the dissertation is focused on media of the 1970s and adds to prison media scholarship in a number of ways. I argue that the success of Scared Straight! (1978) was made possible in part through the negotiation of racial tensions and its justification as a public service amid the televisual wasteland of the time. Having established the production of prison media for the public as a negotiation between prison administrators and media makers, I turn to a heretofore unexamined arena of prison media in chapter 2, instructional film, specifically The Correctional Officer film series. I argue that films aimed at instructing corrections officers are an important, untapped archive for unpacking how a ‘professional’ corrections officer should act and conceive of the work of corrections. I also established corrections officers as an important audience. The second half of the dissertation focuses on media produced after 2000, beginning with MSNBC’s Lockup in chapter 3. I describe some of the ways that corrections has had a hand in particular Lockup productions and in doing so, argue for the importance of directing attention at the process of production as well as the depiction of corrections in prison reality television. I consider Lockup as a participant and product of neoliberal paternalism. I also offer narrative analyses of Lockup that are not directly related to mass incarceration, connecting the consumption of prison reality to anxieties around surveillance. Finally, chapter four steps ‘outside the gates’ to consider Love After Lockup and I argue that Love After Lockup makes visible the reach of the carceral system while simultaneously questioning the rationality of caring for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. This project considers prison media history an important area of scholarly interest, one that requires more investigation if we are to understand the roots of mass incarceration. I draw attention to the restrictions and means by which prison media are produced and to corrections as distinct from prison administrations, as a party with its own interests and power. I have pointed to instructional films and reality television as archives that demand additional attention and I conclude this dissertation with the suggestion that the question of care, rather than knowledge or ‘realness,’ is one to be grappled with if we are to move further along the path to conceptualizing a future where confinement is not the answer for a multitude of social ills.

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