ESSAY: The Law vs. Justice - A Troubling Dichotomy
"...Depictions of policemen – and recently, policewomen – as flawed but essentially courageous figures whose blatant disregard of rules should be forgiven because they care too much, fails to address a grim history of due process abuses by burying them beneath the facile premise of action-packed hijinks or zany comedy.”
In text or film, police stories run parallel to a mosaic of much-loved tropes and familiar cinematics: the steely-eyed officer staring down the barrel of a gun as he confronts the perp; the ubiquitous car-chase through a glittering metropolitan mise-en-scéne to the counterpoint of screeching tires and wild jazz; the athletic detective pursuing the antagonist through an urban maze of rooftops and stairwells, guns blazing and adrenaline pumping; the hard-edged police duo pummeling a snitch to a bloody pulp in a trash-strewn alleyway until he confesses to the information they're after. Genres switch from comedy to drama; protagonists evolve from stoic sleuths with a spotless badge and an unswerving mission to wisecracking cynics whose broken moral compass belies a heart of gold. Yet, as key figures in a discursive construction of culture, each character is elevated to near-sacrosanct levels of heroism for one reason: he will unflinchingly use violence to achieve his ends – not because he disregards the law, but because he has taken it upon himself to uphold justice. The dichotomy between the two, while incontestably age-old, is remarkable because the idea that one is an obstacle to achieving the other is a recurrent theme in law enforcement fiction – and because it appears to at once enable and ennoble police violence.
A cursory glance toward contemporary entertainment reveals how saturated it is with alternately gripping or poignant portrayals of the police – be they crime dramas, infotainment or film. Yet, when perusing a majority of these media-created depictions, it is also essential to note the dark skein of violence that runs through the narrative, framed as a necessity to maintain control within a gritty backdrop of urban decay (Deflem, 2010). From television shows like Law & Order, CSI Miami, The Wire and Chicago PD, which feature hard-nosed protagonists roughing up their suspects as par for the course, to critically-acclaimed films such as The French Connection (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), and Die Hard (1988), which showcase the ideal cop as a trigger-happy maverick willing to flout both institutional and legal safeguards to catch their perp, to more recent buddy-cop comedies such as The Heat (2013), where the quirky, would-be feminist twist attempts to call attention away from flagrant police abuses, there is a pervasive message that police brutality and misconduct are the panacea to clean up a city seething with crime.
The execution of this concept is certainly exciting from a storytelling standpoint. After all, there are countless instances where the law is stymied by historical framing, its message and purview a product of its times. Neither ironclad nor teleological, laws evolve according to their own methodology, not in smooth sequences but in messy, haphazard, often incoherent increments that reflect the protean nature of society itself (Hutchinson, 2005). However, the diegesis of law vs. justice becomes fraught with complications when it is used repeatedly to promulgate fictional constructs as truth – to frame violence as the only means to fight fire with fire, with the hero cop acting in the best interests of the underdog, against antagonists who will ultimately and most deservedly be trounced in a simplistic narrative arc of Good versus Evil (Geller, 1997; Jacobson, Picart & Greek, 2017). Unfortunately, what these formulas tend to overlook – either due to disingenuity or pure carelessness – is how they function as propaganda pieces for institutions already entangled in civil rights violations. More to the point, their depictions of policemen – and recently, policewomen – as flawed but essentially courageous figures whose blatant disregard of rules should be forgiven because they care too much, fails to address a grim history of due process abuses by burying them beneath the facile premise of action-packed hijinks or zany comedy.
To be sure, crime dramas have been a popular staple of entertainment for decades. In their work, Media and Crime in the U.S, criminologists Yvonne Jewkes and Travis Linnemann remark that crime films are "arguably the most enduring of all cinematic genres..." and that their attraction is rooted in the fact that they "reassure us that criminal behaviors can be explained and serious offenses can be solved. They offer immutable definitions of 'the crime problem' and guide our emotional responses to it" (2017, p. 173). But beyond the comforts of catharsis and closure, these films provide an intimate view into worlds that exist as ciphers to the general public. Research has repeatedly shown that viewers glean knowledge of law enforcement not from direct interaction with said entities, but from mass media consumption (Surette, 1998; Skogan, 1981; Mawby, 2003). While public opinions of policemen are, on the whole, encouragingly positive (Huang and Vaughn, 1996), it is imperative to ask ourselves whether these opinions are factual or colored by the glamour and gloss of mediated representations. In their work, Media Consumption and Public Attitudes toward Crime and Justice, Kenneth Dowler and Valerie Zawilski note that,
Presentations of police are often over-dramatized and romanticized by fictional television crime dramas while the news media portray the police as heroic, professional crime fighters. In television crime dramas, the majority of crimes are solved and criminal suspects are successfully apprehended. Similarly, news accounts tend to exaggerate the proportion of offenses that result in arrest which projects an image that police are more effective than official statistics demonstrate. The favorable view of policing is partly a consequence of police’s public relations strategy. Reporting of proactive police activity creates an image of the police as effective and efficient investigators of crime (2007, p. 3).
Of course, it would be simplistic to claim that all audiences imbibe and interpret media-constructed images of police in the same fashion. As Yvonne Jewkes remarks in the work Captured by the Media, "people are not blank slates who approach a television programme without any preexisting opinions, prejudices or resources" (2013, p. 145; Kitzinger, 2004). However, it is equally impossible to believe that these sources do not feed social constructions of law and order in its myriad forms. Indeed, the media's portraits of crime and justice are often pivotal in influencing both policy and day-to-day events. A large body of research devoted to the relationship between public attitudes and criminal justice policy has shown that representations of crime news catalyze public pressure toward harsher policing and more punitive sentencing. Additionally, a close appraisal of police-related television shows and films yields disturbing trends. Not only is there an overblown emphasis on offender-based violence, i.e. murder, rape, and robbery, but the offenders themselves are portrayed as cunning to an almost, if not outright, psychopathic degree. They can play the criminal justice system like a fiddle, and can run circles around the average police officer, whose by-the-book approach only leaves him/her mired in red-tape and frustratingly stultified by Internal Affairs. Instead, it is up to a tenacious few, with the guts and grit to transcend these bureaucratic impositions, to dispense justice towards offenders (Barille, 1984; Surette, 1998).
Given that the ontological divide between fiction and fact can often risk becoming disquietingly blurred, the study of sensationalist fiction's influence on criminal justice policy becomes doubly relevant (Potter & Kappeller, 2006). An example can be taken from 24, a hugely-popular Fox Network series that ran from 2001 to 2008. The show followed the exploits of counterterroist Jack Bauer, a resourceful anti-hero willing to resort to everything from mass property destruction to torture in order to save the American public. Bauer's legacy survived well beyond the screen, to the point where he was cited by the late Supreme Court Justice, Anton Scalia, as pertinent to constitutional jurisprudence and the use of torture: "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" The fact that Bauer does not exist is beside the point; rather, it is the durable imprint his heroics left on the minds of the audience. For them, the thrilling, nick-of-time rescues and terrorist intrigues exemplified by 24 were not escapist fantasies, but a dire reflection of the national state of affairs (Lattman, 2006, p. 1).
Similarly, Clint Eastwood's wild card, Harry Callahan, immortalized by the 70s cult classic Dirty Harry, is portrayed as a ruthless but ultimately effective cop whose willingness to bend – or break – the rules guarantees fast results. What makes the film particularly noteworthy is its scathing criticism of the perceived hurdles beset upon law enforcement via the enactment of the Miranda warning in 1966, in addition to would-be obstacles such as the Exclusionary Rule. Whether or not the film's legal research is rooted in accuracy is, again, beside the point: its true premise is to question whether a system that gives precedence to the rights of offenders over victims is even worth upholding. In the film's closing scene, Harry, having broken the law by shooting the rampaging sniper, Scorpio, tosses his police badge into the water – an act as politically charged as it is defiant. Through Harry, not only is the upheaval of the period's political climate reflected, but the passions of the viewers enacted (Leitch, 2007). Indeed, the Dirty Harry Syndrome – also known as Noble Cause Corruption – is a term coined by the film, although the phenomenon understandably predates it. Jack R. Greene describes it as when "police are tempted to use illegal means to obtain justice... [even though] police ethicists and lawmakers hold that any gains that might be achieved by illegal means are not worth the miscarriages of justice and negative precedents that might result" (2006, p. 601). However, the film's enduring popularity is testament as much to its directorial finesse as to the resonance of its underlying message: that in order for justice to prevail, pragmatic vigilantism is preferable to the impractical hurdle of upholding civil rights. Like his modern predecessor, Jack Bauer, Harry Callahan's actions serve to anchor him within a timeless cultural bricolage: the everyman's avenger who occupies the liminal space between saint and rebel for his steadfast pursuit of justice.
In his work Encoding & Decoding in the Television Discourse, renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall coined the term 'Circuit of Communication' to argue that, despite the assumption of meaning as a static agent, it is in fact a socially structured process that can either edify or delimit us through its visual language and representation (1973). Indeed, the meaning of any medium can be considered a sociopolitical and cultural discourse with its own style, syntax, structure and vocabulary – all of it pivoting on the audience as both the 'receiver of the message, and the 'source.' With that in mind, police films and dramas do not exist in a vacuum, but are in fact embedded in contingent social realities, many of which serve largely to either reflect or perpetuate specific modes of thought and conduct. One need only trace the complex evolution of law enforcement on-screen to observe how they establish specific notions of law vs. justice, good vs. evil, order vs. disorder, within a specific sociopolitical milieu.
For instance, the earliest film noir classics such as Double Indemnity (1936) were pivotal in bringing to life the postwar disenchantment and murky morality of the era, while touching upon gender politics, social mores, and their shocking subversions. Similarly, the besieged and troubled characters of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) served almost as widgets fulfilling a critique on sexual politics and mass surveillance. The late 1960s relaunch of the genre-defining radio and television series Dragnet (1949-70) was designed to tout the impressive intricacies of LAPD procedurals, in an age characterized by anti-police sentiment and the infamous Watts Riots.
Later, the Nixonian legacy of the War on Drugs, and its subsequent Reaganite expansion, saw the rise of such Cop Booster classics as 48 Hours (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1989). More recent films such as Crash (2005), while attempting to touch thoughtfully upon racial tensions in the melting pot of LA, quickly became entangled in undercurrents of misogynoir and color-blindness by suggesting that the officer who committed digital rape on a black woman was redeemed by later saving her from a car crash, and by asserting superficial equality with the idealistic message that everyone across the racial spectrum has problems, while conveniently denying the reality of systemic racism in a white power structure (Hobson, 2008; Lott, 2006). Even the latest blockbuster, The Heat (2013), which aimed to subvert gender roles in law enforcement, unfortunately tripped over its own message by becoming not a paean to feminism but a stale, formulaic buddy-cop cliché that equated female empowerment with the same reckless disregard and gross misconduct vis-à-vis its male-centric counterparts.
At nearly every point, cop films and dramas appear to be a means to either challenge or embellish institutional authority. Yet no matter their superficial advancements, very few focus on the realities of police-work, such as preventive and proactive strategies, much less on efforts at rapport-building – or lack thereof – within the community they protect. Fewer still address blatant acts of police violence and misconduct not as effective tools, but as risky perpetuations of Hobbesian logic where good must vanquish evil by any means necessary.
However, it is imperative to understand how this rigid binarization circumvents meaningful and nuanced dialogue. By resorting to cursory labels that pit one 'side' against the other – and, indeed, create sides at all – it is dangerously easy to frame entire groups of people, policies, and phenomenon as irrational threats that can only be eradicated by extralegal and increasingly ruthless means (Parenti, 2003). Certainly, recent history has seen the expansion of law enforcement as justification to eradicate a 'newer, deadlier' breed of enemies beyond the scope of conventional legality. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, for instance, former President George W Bush denounced the tragedy as "a new kind of evil" that had to be fought "in the shadows." Constitutional safeguards therefore had to be set aside out of necessity, in order to protect the greater good. The outcome would lead to two wars, increasing governmental opacity, the establishment of the Patriot Act, mass domestic surveillance, and the unspoken sanctioning of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on terror suspects (Graham, 2004; Nakashima, 2007; Purdum, 2001, p. 1).
While national security – internal and external – is certainly of prime importance, it is necessary to understand the risks of being engulfed and acclimatized to an atmosphere of terror, through which the media derive profit, politicians push insidious agendas, and financial systems subjugate and surveil public activities. Furthermore, into this commodification and mass consumption of terror, recent trends towards more egregiously aggressive cop shows, and the expansion of police power they reflect, deserve critical focus. In his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, Radley Balko remarks that, "No one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of politicians and public officials fanning and exploiting public fears by declaring war on abstractions like crime, drug use, and terrorism. The resulting policies have made those war metaphors increasingly real" (2014, p. 42).
To decry the media as the sole instigator of fear-mongering would, of course, be unfair. But nor can it be denied that the media in all its forms plays a pivotal role in reinforcing the black-and-white paradigm of law vs. justice, with the heroes willing to achieve their goals at any cost, be it torture or deception (Rafter, 2006). While such narrative designs can be compellingly escapist and entertaining, they run the risk of becoming so entrenched into the social fabric and psyche as to seem factual. A no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement would seem ideal for convicting the indisputably guilty – but the fact of the matter is that the deliberate disregard of procedural law will only undermine the liberty interests of the innocent. Films and television shows that continue to push this agenda merely misrepresent police misconduct as a legitimate validator of heroism, and therefore of goodness. The protagonist is elevated to near-sacrosanct levels for one reason: he will unflinchingly use violence to achieve his ends – not because he disregards the law, but because he has taken it upon himself to uphold justice. Yet regarding the two as mutually exclusive is not only pandering to teleological delusion, but masking the reality of a deeply flawed justice system by redefining criminality as the darkest shade of evil, and police misconduct as the only means to take it down.
References
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ESSAY: Globalization - Limits & Liminality as Explored in “Paprika”
Kon’s animated film Paprika, through symbolic and stylized means, serves as a critical frame for the phenomenon of globalization.
X-Posted at Pangaea Journal
Inspired by Yasutaka Tsutsui’s titular novel, Paprika begins much in the same fashion as it ends: in medias res, with a phantasmagorical montage of cultural iconography, quirky characters and surreal scenery interwoven at a frenzied pace, each scene jumping into the next with a fluidity that coalesces time and space itself into a distinctly Einsteinian continuum. Audiences are left dazed, disoriented, yet intrigued: there is no way to know whether the introductory sequence is chronicling a dream, or reality, or a freakish blend of both. This destabilizing visual narrative is fairly typical of Satoshi Kon’s craft, yet what calls for critical focus is the unique symbolism underpinning his work. Beneath its rich and densely-layered imagery, the film tackles a number of pertinent issues: from whether multimedia has warped from a benign platform into the jealous architect of our desires; to the tragic dissolution of individual ideas and complex cultures into a miasma of grotesque transnationalism; to whether the weakening friction-of-distance within a digitized world has brought us closer together, or merely distorted the very axes upon which time-space functions and is perceived. Indeed, at its crux, the film embraces a broad spectrum of issues uniquely linked to globalization, all while invoking relevant aspects of human fallacy and social degradation.
Central to Paprika, from the beginning, is its clear disdain for the linearity and two-dimensionalism of traditional narrative. Instead, like a hallucination, there appear to be no distinguishable boundaries between characters or places, no fixed destinations or rational coordinates. The most vivid example is the introductory sequence, where the eponymous protagonist, Paprika, leaps winsomely out of a man’s dreams and into the physical world: flitting from brightly-lit billboards as static eye-candy to a well-meaning sentry spying through computer screens to a godlike specter freezing busy traffic with a snap of her fingers to an ordinary girl chomping hamburgers at a diner to a stylized decal on a boy’s T-shirt to a motorcyclist careening through late-night streets (0:06:12-0:07:49).
Space and time are rendered meaningless – or, rather, are reshaped into something entirely novel and surreal. As Paprika navigates through a complex and dynamic mediascape, she effectively embodies the spilling-over of the virtual into the physical world – and, more significantly, of both the subtle and blatant permeation of media-based globalization in every step of our lives. Indeed, with its alternately fascinating and disturbing chaos of imagery, the very premise of Paprika blurs the boundaries between the inner and outer-worlds, conveying through both symbolic and subtextual allusions the phenomenon of globalization run riot – a dreamscape that unfolds with the benign promise of forging new connections, only to seep past the barriers of reality and engulf and reshape the world to the imperatives of dystopian homogeneity at best, and the subjugation and disintegration of individual autonomy at worst.
It can be argued, of course, that it is hypocritical for animation – in many ways the nexus of metamedia in its most intrinsically illusory form – to lambaste globalization. The media pivots on globalization in all its multifaceted vagaries, and vice versa. Renowned social theorist Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase ‘the global village’ in his groundbreaking work The Medium is the Message, was one of the first to point out that the form of a medium implants itself inextricably into whatever message it conveys in a synergistic relationship: “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered (26).” That the media and the phenomenon of globalization go hand-in-hand, shaping and influencing one another, therefore goes without saying. However, what the imagery of Paprika draws attention to is how the multiplicity of media leads to unpredictable consequences and vicissitudes – which are not always quantifiable or even tangible. Much in the same way technology and global interconnectivity have narrowed – at times even erased – the demarcations of time and space, so too have they led to paradigm shifts of what it means to belong to a static, physical place as a cultural and individual identifier.
Globalization is often defined as fundamentally kaleidoscopic, with a dizzying mobility of ideological, economic, physical and cultural interchanges across a rhizomatous network – but one that is increasingly powered by its own unstable energies and its own besieged and untidy logic. Of particular interest is the ‘disembodied’ component of globalization, where the flow of information and capital is increasingly encoded and abstract, and thus increasingly more likely to permeate local spaces that may not always be open to such profound transformation, imposition and redefinition. In their work, The Quantum Society, Zohar and Marshall liken the chaotic, fractal nature of the modern world to quantum reality, stating that it
…has the potential to be both particle-like and wave-like. Particles are individuals, located and measurable in space and time. Waves are ‘nonlocal,’ they are spread out across all of space and time, and their instantaneous effects are everywhere. Waves extend themselves in every direction at once, they overlap and combine with other waves to form new realities, new emergent wholes (326).
Unarguably, the focal point in Paprika is globalization as a catalyst of “new realities.” But while these can be captivating and edifying, allowing us to create or explore new identities, or to grow more closely tethered together, they can also represent the sinister infiltration of exploitative elements within our most intimate lives. This is made chillingly evident through the plot of the film, which centers on the theft of the DC Mini – a futuristic device that allows two people to share the same dream. While intended as a tool to help treat patients’ latent neuroses and deep-seated pathologies, the film makes clear that, if misused, this prototype can not only allow an intruder to access and influence another’s dreams, but can unleash the collective dream-world into the sphere of reality itself. The DC Mini, on its own, would function as a tepid metaphor for the symbiotic dance between globalization and technology. But following its theft, the resultant chaos it invokes sets the riveting, psychedelic stage upon which the inner-world of dreams erupts out into mundane reality, a fantastical convergence that not only threatens the safety of the entire city, but also denies each citizen their own private realm of dreams, within which they have the freedom to nurture a true inner-self. As Dr. Chiba – the no-nonsense alter-ego of our dreamscape superheroine Paprika – remarks: the victims of the abused DC Mini have become mere “empty shells, invaded by collective dreams… Every dream [the stolen DC Mini] came into contact with was eaten up into one huge delusion.” The scene is made particularly memorable by its vivid visual symbolism: two droplets of rainwater on a car window merging into one, highlighting the irresistible flow between not only dreams and reality, but the liminality of globalization as a fluid force that cannot be bound by temporal or spatial delineations (0:52:12-0:52:37).
It is precisely this unpredictable fluidity that runs rampant across real-life Tokyo in the film, wreaking havoc in its wake. Of particular interest is the gorgeous riot of imagery employed to represent the collective ‘delusion:’ the recurring motif of a parade, in all its clamorous splendor, that unfurls through the city streets, infusing spectators with its own peculiar brand of madness. For its eye-popping and mind-bending details alone, the sequence warrants close examination. But accompanying the visual feast is the nightmarish gamut of cultural, technological, social and historical commentary embedded within its imagery. To the cheerful proclamations of, “It’s showtime!” a procession of Japanese salarymen leap with suicidal serenity off of rooftops; below, the bodies of drunkenly-staggering bar-hoppers morph into unbalanced musical instruments, while families frolicking through the parade transform into rotund golden Maneki-neko to disturbing chants of, “The dreams will grow and grow! Let’s grow the tree that blooms money!” Here, in a scathing political lampoon, politicians wrestle one another in their eagerness to climb to the top of a parade-float; there, a row of schoolgirls in sailor uniforms, with cellphones for heads, lift their skirts for the eager gazes of equally cellphone-headed males.
Satoshi Kon does not bother with coy subtext; he announces the mind-degenerating effects of globalization on both dramatic and symbolic planes: a parade that swells into disorder and eventual destruction, headed by a clutter of sentient refrigerators, televisions, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, deck tapes and automobiles. Traditional Japanese kitsch competes with lurid Americana; cultural symbols like Godzilla and the Statue of Liberty waltz alongside such religious icons as the Virgin Mary, Vishnu and the Buddha, while disembodied torii arches and airplanes soar overhead to the discordant serenade of money toads and durama dolls. The effect is at once hypnotic and horrific; the vortex of collective dreams lures in countless spellbound bystanders, transforming them into just another mindless facet of the parade, from a robot to a toy to a centerpiece on a parade-palanquin. Witnessing the furor, one character dazedly asks, “Am I still dreaming?” and is informed, “Yes. The whole world is” (1:11:09-1:12:42)
In her book, Girlhood and the Plastic Image, Heather Warren-Crow remarks that Paprika “…proffers a visual theory of media convergence as not only an issue of technology, but also one of globalization… [Its] vision of media convergence is one in which boundaries between cultures, technologies, commodities and people are horrifyingly permeable… While our supergirl is eventually able to stop the parade… these multiple transgressions cause mass confusion, madness, injury and death (83).” If this seems a dark denouncement of globalization, one cannot deny that it is in many respects fitting. With the vanishing delineations between nations, cultures, ideas and people arises the phenomenon of “cultural odorlessness,” or mukokuseki. The term was first applied to rapid social transformations in Koichi Iwabuchi’s book Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, although the phenomena can just as readily be applied to postmodernity in all its miscellaneous facets (28). While globalization has engendered new intimacies and easier connections (on the surface), this overwhelming grid of interconnected information has simultaneously become a web trapping human beings inside it. Individuality – on a national, local, or personal scale – has been pushed aside in favor of a real and virtual superhighway powered by pitiless self-commodification and voracious consumership, within which the cultivation of a true self no longer holds meaning. One particular scene in the film captures this with wistful succinctness. As a weary Dr. Chiba gazes out of the window of her office, her livelier alter-ego Paprika (real or imagined) appears superimposed before her reflection. “You look tired,” Paprika says, “Want me to look in on your dreams?” to which Chiba replies, “I haven’t been seeing any of my own lately.” Against Paprika’s winsome overtones, her own demeanor strikes a chord that is dismal in its flatness. Although Chiba’s profession is to dive through the colorful welter of others’ dreams, it is her grasp of her own self that proves the ultimate fatality in this venture (0:24:10-0:24:23).
Indeed, it has often been argued that as both the physical and disembodied aspects of globalization grow increasingly more pervasive, so too do diverse organs of surveillance – from institutionalized dogmas meant to restrict personal development by branding it as outdated or subversive, to internal and external disciplinary structures meant to monitor and subjugate a person’s ‘inner-self:’ the very stuff of his or her dreams. Such themes, while hardly novel, are nonetheless relevant, tethered as they are to such iconic works as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, both of which – through literal and metaphorical means – examine societies wherein people are subject to relentless government scrutiny, mind-policing and the absolute denial and denigration of privacy. Foucault’s work, in particular, is useful for deconstructing social mechanisms. Utilizing a genealogical historical lens, Foucault traces the slow and oppressive transformation – as opposed to ‘evolution’, a phrase often touted by proponents of liberal reform – of the Western penal system. His main focus is to illustrate how, despite our self-congratulatory complacence at moving away from the barbaric model of medieval punishment, in favor of gentler and more civilized modes of discipline, we have in fact simply transferred the imperatives of controlling human beings – be they deviants or conformists – from their bodies to their souls. As Foucault states, “Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights,” thus intimating that the organs of institutional control have not grown less harsh or restrictive, but simply less overt (11).
Certainly, by relying on a framework of internal rather than external constraints, it has become possible to erode the very modicum of individuality, reducing human beings to what Foucault describes as “docile” bodies complicit in their own exploitation. Foucault lays the blame for this phenomenon on a capitalist system whose economic and political trajectory has led society to a place of commodification and classification (“governmentality”), where the complexities of dynamic individuals are pared down into reductionist categories of ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable.’ According to Foucault, surveillance and regimentation as a means of producing compliant individuals is the crux of modern economies, to the point where society has transformed into an industrial panopticon – a nightmarish perversion of Jeremy Bentham’s original ideal. As such, whether individuals live as offenders within a prison, or as free citizens, is irrelevant. The scant difference in both their constraints is measured by mere degrees (102-128).
In Paprika, these issues are not explicitly announced, but are instead woven through the story’s fabric in an alternately lulling and disquieting fashion. Noteworthy scenes – such as where Paprika, a captive chimera with butterfly-wings, is pinned to a table while a man literally peels away her skin to paw rapaciously at the prone body of Dr. Chiba, nestled pupae-like within, to the moment where Detective Toshimi Konakawa, harried by recurring nightmares, bittersweetly comes to terms with boyhood dreams he had suppressed in order to survive by the dictum of a cold and prescriptive adult world – are all reminders that it is our inviolate inner-space that makes us uniquely human. To allow it to be invaded, subjugated and erased is to reduce ourselves to passive automatons, our every desire governed, our every choice predetermined. In Paprika, this knowledge blossoms only when each character delves deep into themselves, to find at their core the dream-child that remains untouched by reality’s smothering hold, and to discover within that dream-child both untapped softness and strength. “She’s become true to herself, hasn’t she?” Paprika playfully remarks of the somber Dr. Chiba, when the latter finally comes to terms with her repressed affection for the bumbling genius Tokita (1:15:42).
For Paprika, it is evident that social or technological transformations cannot be powered by the erosion of individual dreams. To do so is to condemn the world to an eldritch darkness sustained only by greed. The film’s penultimate scene, where the egomaniacal chairman – the true thief of the DC Mini – looms as a monstrous giant over the despoiled city, proclaiming, “I am perfect! I can control dreams and even death!” could almost serve as the critical foreshadowing of globalization taken to its bleakest conclusion: the desecration of nature and humanity alike by a self-serving force that, in its thirst for absolute control, will cancel out the very diversity of dreams that once made globalization possible. It is only when Paprika – fusing with Dr. Chiba and Tokita – reemerges in the form of a baby to battle the chairman, is equilibrium restored. “Light and dark. Reality and dreams. Life and death. Man and woman. Then you add the missing spice [Paprika],” she recites, as if listing ingredients to a recipe (1:19:50-1:20:32). Yet, in keeping with theme of liminality and indeterminacy, the key to vanquishing the chairman is not in these binary oppositions, but in their capacity to combine together and shape the world into more than one thing at once. As Paprika swallows the chairman whole, reversing the shadowy post-apocalyptic city to its original state, battle-scarred but still intact, the audience is reminded of fluidity of the quantum world. Life and death, dreams and reality, destruction and rebirth, all coalesce within an ever-transforming continuum.
So too, as the film’s open-ended yet distinctly uplifting ending makes clear, is the process of globalization inherently free-flowing and malleable in its interaction with its environment. Rather than focusing on the split between globalization as a force of cultural erasure versus a celebration of differences, the film highlights the alternately delicate or brutal negotiations between the two: a friction that is necessary to keep the phenomenon in flux. Zygmunt Bauman’s book and selfsame concept of Liquid Modernity proves especially useful here, in that in order to comprehend the mutable nature of the modern world, it is necessary to look beyond traditional models and regimented perceptions. As he makes clear:
Ours is … an individualized, privatized version of modernity, with the burden of pattern-weaving and the responsibility for failure falling primarily on the individual’s shoulders… The patterns of dependency and interaction … are now malleable… but like all fluids they do not keep their shape for long. Shaping them is easier than keeping them in shape. Solids are cast once and for all. Keeping fluids in shape requires a lot of attention, constant vigilance and perpetual effort – and even then the success of the effort is anything but a foregone conclusion (8).
Of course, the exchange of images and ideas across a would-be deterritorialized realm does not mean that the myriad components within must lose their separate identities. Rather, those identities become more essential than ever, bringing with them their own consequences and questions – all of which must be understood through the dynamic lens of globalization, until we come to understand not only the frailties of the social order, but how they can improved, in order to make connections both genuine and mutually-beneficial for a polyphonic future. The answers lie not within the inherently-shifting structure of globalization, but rather in its creative use. In the film’s final segment, where Detective Toshimi Konakawa purchases tickets to the movie, Dreaming Kids, after decades of stultifying self-repression, speaks of the capacity of globalized multitudes to enthuse as well as to ensnare the individual’s dreams. Globalization does not exist in a vacuum; even as it threatens to engulf nations, localities and persons into a bilious swamp of depersonalized shells, so too can it be transformed by the nature of the worlds it encounters. The change is double-edged and double-sided; the effect is a living, breathing bricolage that grows and alters as we do – and how we do.
That said, it is evident that Satoshi Kon’s message is not one of a facile globalized utopia. Rather, it is about the dangers of losing ourselves within such a seductive phenomenon, whose effects can too easily be maneuvered toward mass surveillance and subjugation. For Paprika, the cross-flow of cultures, ideas, commodities and people is illustrated as an unceasing process, but one that we ourselves are responsible for shaping. If done right, there is the tantalizing promise of a happier, freer life, within which globalization may enhance rather than exploit our dreams. But if done wrong, Kon’s narrative is bleakly apocalyptic – a world fallen victim to a hostile and all-pervasive force that gnaws away its very humanity. While the film’s content-driven, as opposed to structural, formula can be mystifying and overly-abstract at times, there is no denying its visual ingenuity: a multimedia extravaganza that beautifully translates the welter of dreams into reality. With its alternately fascinating and disturbing chaos of imagery, Paprika blurs the boundaries between the inner and outer-worlds, conveying through symbolic and subtextual allusions the phenomenon of globalization run riot – a dreamscape that yields both brighter possibilities and special connections if we do not allow it to diminish us, yet also a sinister agency of mass domination and dystopian homogeneity if we fail to put it in its proper place.
Cases have been recorded of inmates' grievances rejected by the prison administration for writing in the wrong color of ink, for scribbling on the back of the form, or for missing the narrow window of filing deadlines. Many argue that prisoners flung into this Kafkaesque labyrinth of mechanisms will find their cases—no matter how meritorious—consigned to oblivion.
To describe the legal system of the United States as beleaguered is an understatement. Confronted with bulging carceral populations, soaring costs, and an influx of litigation, our courts have, time and time again, fought to keep from buckling under the strain of their caseloads—often at the cost of yielding where they should uphold their commitment to the rule of law. Within the workings of this overwhelmed system, the appellate courts play the vital role of a filtering apparatus. In 1995, approximately fifteen percent of the civil suits received by federal courts were filed by prisoners. Of these suits, ninety-seven percent were dismissed, with only thirteen percent granted declarative or injunctive relief (Schlanger 2). This astonishingly low success rate reflected the presumption—whether canard or fact—that a majority of prisoner litigation was frivolous, and unworthy of courts' attention. Indeed, by the 1990s, the volume of inmate claims had reached such heights that Congress was compelled to address the crisis. In 1995, in a hearing before the Senate for the Department of Commerce, Justice, and State, it was reported:
The number of lawsuits filed by inmates has grown astronomically – From 6,600 in 1975 to more than 39,000 in 1994. These suits can involve such grievances as insufficient storage locker space, a defective haircut by a prison barber, the failure of prison officials to invite a prisoner to a pizza party for a departing prison employee, and yes, being served chunky peanut butter instead of the creamy variety (U.S. Senate. Dept. of Commerce, Justice and State 1995).
To combat the pandemic, Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (hereafter referred to in this paper as the PLRA) in 1996. Intended as a mechanism to close the floodgates of litigation, the PLRA's provisions seek to restrict meritless inmate suits so that higher-quality cases may be allowed review on the court docket. One provision states that no inmate shall bring forward a suit under federal law, until all available "administrative remedies" are exhausted. Additionally, under a second provision, the PLRA imposes a negative penalty—a "strike"—wherein a court may dismiss a prisoner's lawsuit on the basis that it is frivolous, malicious or has failed to state its claim (Boston & Manville 564-550).
At the time of its passage, the PLRA garnered widespread bipartisan support as it was intended to ameliorate the judicial process. To be sure, following its enactment, the volume of prisoner litigation significantly dropped. Barely within four years of its passage, the total number of prisoner lawsuits in federal courts declined by 40%. More significantly, the PLRA's broad provisions were lauded for ferreting out "junk litigation" and subsequently reducing the burdensome judicial workload. However, these same features sparked fierce backlash. Many believed that, far from streamlining inmate claims, the PLRA introduced a thicket of administrative barriers intended to discourage inmates from airing serious abuses (Ostrom et al.1536).
Prior to 1996, the standard for grievance processes was set by the Justice Department, and was intended predominantly for federal prisons. The PLRA has cast this aside; as of today, there are no regulations outlined for prison grievance procedure. Critics are also concerned with the capricious nature of the regulations themselves. Cases have been recorded of inmates' grievances rejected by the prison administration for writing in the wrong color of ink, for scribbling on the back of the form, or for missing the narrow window of filing deadlines (Hearing on H.R. 4109, Prison Abuse Remedies Act of 2007). Many argue that prisoners flung into this Kafkaesque labyrinth of mechanisms will find their cases—no matter how meritorious—consigned to oblivion.
Over two decades have passed since the passage of the PLRA. However, it continues to stir contentious debate—among scholars, politicians and inmates alike. As recently as August 21, 2018, a nationwide prison strike was launched, in an attempt to expose the worrisome underbelly of prison administrations. The strike was spearheaded by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a prisoner-led trade group. Intended to unionize incarcerated persons, the IWOC values emancipation, equal rights and community safety. With their championing, the prison strike attracted significant media attention, as well as garnering widespread inmate solidarity. Similar strikes were reported to have spanned across prisons in California, Delaware, Washington, Texas, Indiana, Nevada, New York, and even Nova Scotia, Canada. Prisoners outlined ten demands, including improved prison conditions, more funding for the implementation of rehabilitative programming, an end to life without parole sentences, and, most pertinent to the scope of this paper, the rescission of the PLRA so that inmates would be allowed "a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights" (“Prisoners Demand Reforms, Better Conditions...”) Given the hermetic nature of carceral systems in the US, grievance procedures prove invaluable in maintaining fairness within the hierarchical placement. The IWOC therefore argue that the PLRA's provisions seriously impede prisoners from securing a humane redress for their issues (Lopez 1).
Conversely, proponents of the PLRA argue that, whatever its perceived shortcomings, the Act demonstrates success in eliminating procedurally weak cases from the court docket. What's more, they call attention to the fundamentally litigious nature of inmates in general—as well as the fact that not all their complaints, however valid, merit the attention of the courts. The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), for instance, argues that PLRA is a safety valve that restores balance to the nature of prisoner litigation. Founded in 1907, the NAAG's mission is to foster state, federal and local engagement on legal issues. Their core values are dedication, integrity, collaboration, cooperation and inclusiveness. Since the PLRA's passage, they have steadily defended it as sensible mechanism to deter inmate-based judicial abuses. Indeed, in 2005, the NAAAG estimated that inmate civil rights litigation cost taxpayers over $81 million—and that most of the costs were incurred by insubstantial lawsuits (Newman 525-27; Shay & Johanna 300).
Whatever its empirical benefits or its administrative shortcomings, the fact remains that the PLRA is extremely complex in both its interpretation and application. For its supporters, it is a valuable tool for judicial sifting, staving off a deluge of baseless inmate suits. For its critics, it is a coercive instrument of civil rights abuses, enabling the authoritarianism of prison regimes. For the sake of brevity, not all the provisions of the PLRA will be examined in this paper. Relevant to our interests are section 42 U.S.C. § 1997e (a) of the Act, which details its administrative exhaustion requirement, and 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), which deals with its "Three-strike" provision in appeals courts (Hobart 982-994). The Constitutional legitimacy, doctrinal coherence and administrative merits of these two sections have received extensive academic debate. However, rooted in each argument are the core values of justice and equality—as well as whether the Act delivers them, or renders them cruelly illusory. Prisoners constitute an invisible—and highly vulnerable—population bloc. Denied the bargaining power available to other segments of society, it therefore becomes critical to examine the PLRA from a lens of efficacy versus equilibrium.
Accordingly, it requires us to ask: Should the "Exhaustion" and "Three-strike" provisions of the PLRA be repealed? The aim of this paper is to answer this question through a careful examination of the PLRA's history, current legislative contentions and proposed remedies, parties to the controversy, and the arguments presented for and against the PLRA's two most tendentious provisions. This paper will seek to understand the core values of each side, the moral reasoning behind, and consequences of, their particular standpoint, before concluding with a potential solution for the matter at hand.
History
Prior to the 1960s, federal courts adopted a "hands-off" approach vis-à-vis prisons. Treated as regimes unto themselves, prison and jail inmates were deemed second-class citizens at best, non-entities at worst. Accordingly, their grievances were given little standing in the courts. Ruffin v. Commonwealth (1871) best exemplifies the federal bench's attitude toward prisoners. Referring to prisoners as "slaves of the State," the Supreme Court denounced their legal identities with the statement, "The bill of rights is a declaration of general principles to govern a society of freemen, and not of convicted felons" (Dubber 123; Wright 18). Accordingly, prison conditions and resultant complaints were left for individual correctional administrations to handle as they saw fit. While cases such as Ex Parte Hull (1941) and Coffin v. Reichard (1944) augured footings for inmate claims in courts, the corrections system remained, on the whole, a "shadow world" beyond judicial oversight (Schmalleger and Atkin-Plunk 102; O‘Lone v. Estate of Shabazz 354-55).
To be fair, this hands-off doctrine was based less on malicious indifference than on the fact that correctional institutions were freed from judicial interference under the separation of powers rationale. However, the opacity also lent itself to coercive penal policy, unchecked administrative abuses, and squalid living conditions within prisons (Blackburn et al. 246-249). By the 1960s, concomitant with the Civil Rights Movement, prisoners began agitating for improvements to their station. Backed by lawyers and civil liberties organizations, they sought to challenge what they deemed to be legal barriers to fairness and equality in courts, meaningful avenues of redress, and procedural and substantive rights. The following two decades would see the Supreme Court consistently vindicate prisoners' Constitutional rights (Hawkins and Alpert 11). Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, it was declared: "Every person who, under color of any statute... subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress" (Capistrano 1).
Landmark rulings such as Monroe v. Pape (1961) and Cooper v Pate (1964) heralded the era of due process rulings for state and federal prisoners (Muraskin 150). In defiance of a longstanding tradition of judicial detachment, courts assured petitioners easier legal access, religious freedom, medical treatment and protections from racial discrimination, going so far as to state "There is no iron curtain drawn between the Constitution and the prisoners of this country" (Waltman 74). This would mark the beginning of the "Open Door Policy" that characterized judicial attitudes towards prisoners, culminating in a 1970 speech by Chief Justice Warren Burger before the National Association of Attorneys General, which called for the implementation of prison grievance procedures (Coyle 52). Manifesting in the shape of 'administrative remedies', these were intended to combat the issue of besieged courts, without curbing inmates' access to them in the event of civil rights abuses. However, these rudimentary grievance mechanisms would prove inadequate. By the 1980s, Congress enacted the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) as a sweeping overhaul of prison conditions. Particularly noteworthy was CRIPA's ability to award attorneys the power to remedy lawsuits related to "egregious or flagrant conditions" in prisons (Holt 15). At the same time, CRIPA also required prisoners to exhaust administrative alternatives before accessing federal courts. This was intended as a careful counterweight to the surge of inmate litigation that would inevitably reach the courts themselves (Edelman 233-245).
While CRIPA was well-intended, and served as a predecessive blueprint for prisoner litigation, the social narrative surrounding prisoner's rights was shifting. By the mid-1990s, the amount of filings in federal district courts had risen from 42,000 to 68,000, leading the New York Times to remark: "After three decades of startling growth, civil rights lawsuits brought by inmates protesting prison conditions in New York and elsewhere across the nation have become one of the largest categories of all Federal civil filings" (Dunn 1). This was not lauded as a sign of progress, but an impediment to proper judicial functioning. The nature of inmate claims was deemed irrelevant or merely petty: dealing with melted ice cream, lack of shampoo, and an inmate's right to put on a bra (Hudson 22). The NAAG compiled "Top Ten Inmate Lawsuits" lists, which included the now-notorious case of the inmate suing over chunky peanut butter (Wright and Pens 58). Media campaigns decrying the inanity of these suits soon cultivated a public contempt for prisoner-litigants as a whole. As the tough-on-crime weltanschauung sweeping Capitol Hill reached its zenith, many began questioning the effectiveness of CRIPA's grievance model, which did not seem to address the Constitutional violations in prisons so much as clog the court systems with unnecessary chaff (Reams and Manz 58-82).
In response, Congress drafted the PLRA, aiming to remedy the disorder in the federal courts. Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Bob Dole, key sponsors of the bill, justified its proposal by citing the low success rate of prisoner suits, arguing that only an infinitesimal amount carried enough merit to be heard in court. Senator Dole, quoting Chief Justice Rehnquist's complaint that prisoners "litigate at the drop of a hat," went on to state, "The bottom line is that prisons should be prisons, not law firms" (U.S. Senate 1995). The NAAG praised this legislation as deliverance from a crippling workload; their Inmate Litigation Task Force wrote to Senater Dole, expressing a "strong support" for the PLRA as the solution to a burgeoning crisis (Sullivan 422). Conversely, prisoner advocates criticized the touting of absurd inmate claims as political subterfuge. Judge Newman of the Second Circuit, for instance, argued that the "poster child" cases mentioned by the PLRA's proponents were anomalies, and that prisoner's suits dealt with subject matter far graver in nature than critics suggested ("Free the Courts From Frivolous Prisoner Suits" 1). Similarly, Jon O. Newman, a federal appeals judge, stated that the anecdotes of frivolous litigation were either taken out of context, or "at best highly misleading and, sometimes, simply false" (521).
Current Policies
Whatever the case, the PLRA was passed in 1996, packaged as a rider to the appropriations bill—the Omnibus Consolidated Rescission and Appropriations Act of 1996. Designed to limit non-meritorious lawsuits by imposing a structural seal, the PLRA instituted multi-pronged requirements before inmate claims reached federal court. For one, it limited judicial intervention into carceral management, previously promulgated by consent decrees (court-ordered reforms imposed via settlements) unless the least "intrusive" means were implemented to correct the issue. Other provisions included the preclusion of inmates suing for mental or emotional suffering as opposed to physical injury; and the elimination of the traditional waiver of the filing fee (then $150) for indigent petitioners. In addition, the PLRA enabled courts to dismiss suits for frivolity/maliciousness/failure to state a claim, and expected them to have exhausted all administrative remedies before pursuing legal redress in court (Sercye 475-477).
The latter two provisions are most significant for our purposes. The first, Section 42 U.S.C. § 1997e (a), modeled itself on the armature laid out by CRIPA. Similar to its antecedent's exhaustion mandate, the PLRA does not allow prisoners to bypass administrative remedies before bringing lawsuits to federal court. However, whereas CRIPA allowed courts to decree the exhaustion of administrative mechanisms at their discretion—i.e. where they deemed it "appropriate and in the interests of justice" (Weiss 3)—the PLRA's exhaustion requirement is compulsory. The strict adherence to this provision was underscored in Booth v Churner (2001), where the petitioner argued against the exhaustion requirement when administrative remedies could not suffice for the nature of relief sought. However, in a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court stated that regardless of the nature of the administrative remedies, the prisoner is required to go through the procedure of exhausting them. Justice Souter wrote for the Court, "we think that Congress has mandated exhaustion clearly enough, regardless of the relief offered through administrative procedures" (Booth v. Churner 1; Palmer 84)
A second vital component of the PLRA, Section 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), is meant to impose consequences of prisoners who consistently bring frivolous lawsuits to court—the "frequent filers", so to speak (Peck). Firstly, it requires judges to dismiss an inmate petition sua sponte—"of one's own will," referring to a judge's order made without request by the parties in the case—if it is deemed to be "frivolous, malicious, fail[ing] to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, or seek[ing] monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief." Dismissal for one of these four reasons will incur a "strike." A prisoner with three strikes becomes ineligible from claiming filing status in forma pauperis (IFP). This status was created by Congress to allow indigent citizens—prisoners included—to forgo the payment for filing fees on a temporary basis. A prisoner who has thrice had their claims dismissed on the basis of malice, frivolity, failure to state a claim, or monetary relief sought from those immune to the action, therefore risks losing access to the courts (Cordisco 2)
Since its passage, the PLRA has garnered both praise and contention alike, with circuit courts split concerning its financial utility and its doctrinal coherence. For its proponents, the PLRA's successes are both symbolic and substantive. Not only has Congress remedied the excess litigation swamping federal courts, but it has transformed the proverbial "deluge" into a dribble—dropping over 41,000 lawsuits to about 24,400, despite a concurrent 23% swelling of the prison population (Doran 1040-1041). For its critics, however, the PLRA has further exacerbated the "outsider" status of prisoners, overcomplicating grievance processes through what amounts to little better than "a sophisticated social control mechanism serving only bureaucratic interests" (Bordt and Musheno 7). What's more, they argue that prisoner litigants, already contending with barriers in the form of undersourced counsel and blockages to generic court access, must now navigate through an additional maze of rules.
Whatever its merits and demerits, the PLRA remains a monolithic statute, untouched by trends in judicial policymaking. Indeed, it can be argued that as the United States increasingly adopts the Foucauldian hallmarks of a carceral society, the PLRA proves instrumental in shaping the Constitutional rights of prisoners, as well as their demarcations and applications. On the flipside, in amassing the largest correctional system in the world, the PLRA proves pivotal in sieving out unnecessary caseloads, and in alleviating the expenses for federal courts. As such, it is essential to more closely examine the Act from the eyes of both its beneficiaries and its naysayers, in order to assess its consequences on current and future inmate litigation.
Stakeholders: The Proponents
To be sure, while the proponents and opponents of the PLRA appear to sit on diametrically opposite sides of the argument, their goals intersect in one critical sphere: introducing structural efficacy in prisoners' access to the civil justice system. Where they differ is in their characterization of the content that the prisoners bring to the courts: problematic frivolity on one side, deprivations of constitutional rights on the other. In understanding the values that each stakeholder adheres to, their stance becomes easier to comprehend, with their approach to the PLRA extending beyond self-interest to the particular belief systems that permeate the very policies they espouse. This proves critical when deconstructing the "Administrative Exhaustion" and "Three-strike" provisions of the Act, as it highlights attitudes not only toward carceral populations, but to the institutions that house them.
Proponents of the PLRA range from prison officials to judges to attorneys. For example, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) continue to be energetic supporters of the PLRA. Founded in 1907, the Association serves as a conduit between attorneys general, enhancing their job performance and efficacy. It also functions as a liaison to the federal government in areas such as criminal law, appellate advocacy and consumer protection. As mentioned earlier, their core values include dedication, integrity, collaboration, cooperation and inclusiveness (“National Association of Attorneys General.") Having championed the PLRA from its embryonic stages to its maturation, they laud it as a success for its capacity to distinguish between wasteful inmate claims versus legitimate human rights violations. Indeed, they stress that the aim of the PLRA is not to impede inmate filings, but to curtail the ballooning—and often-absurd—nature of prison litigation trends (Royal v. Kautzky 1). In establishing the "Three-strike" and "Administrative Exhaustion" dyad, they argue that the Act's purview is to maintain procedural efficiency, economization, and above all, judicial detachment (Hudson 22-29).
As stated previously, the 1960s and 70s were a pivotal era for state prisoners, with the Supreme Court recognizing their right to bring in claims under Section 1983. This led to a wave of inmate-filed federal suits highlighting issues with confinement, many of which were successfully remedied. In the wake of meaningful court access, greater protections and wide berth for procedural due process, the "hands-off" approach previously favored by courts fell to the wayside; under the aforementioned "Open Door Policy" (Coyle 52), the number of state prisoner civil rights lawsuits increased by 227%, shooting up from 12,397 in 1980 to 40,569 in 1995 (Branham 541). However, in conjunction with the swelling litigation arose complaints that prisoners were filing claims that lacked substance, that were based on malicious agendas, and that were detracting the attention of federal judges away from worthier litigants. In Scher v. Purkett (1991), a District Judge noted in the memorandum that the courts were becoming "vexed... with malcontent inmates who fill their idle time, and the Court's precious time, by filing § 1983 complaints about the petty deprivations inherent in prison life" (1). Similarly, the Indiana Law Review, in an article assessing the burdens of the federal docket, noted that "Many prisoners are interested in using the courts to achieve ends other than the adjudication of meritorious claims. Prisoners use the judicial system to harass prison and judicial officials by pursuing cases to the full limits of the law" (445).
Prior to the PLRA's passage, courts utilized a wide range of discretionary methods to handle the workload generated by such inmate suits. However, there was no overarching consensus that produced a workable solution to the issue. This was further exacerbated by the fact that inmates, with an inchoate understanding of legal procedures, were sometimes unsure of whether to label a specific issue as a Constitutional violation or simply an administrative grievance. To be sure, prison can be a restrictive and unsavory environment. However, a restrictive and unsavory environment is, in itself, not grounds for launching a dispute. Cases such as Estelle v Gamble (1976) and Brown v. Plata (2011) sought to illustrate (in an arguably contradictory fashion) what constituted cause for state action duties versus what did not (Simon 276-280). However, these rulings were not enough to establish a uniform threshold. Furthermore, the broad—and some have argued, porous—provisions of CRIPA could not filter out the meaningful inmate claims from the greater bulk of insubstantial ones. Subsequently, certain inmates with legitimate civil rights grievances would find their claims superseded by their vindictive counterparts, who filed merely for "entertainment value" (Greifinger 38-39; Hanson and Daley 3).
To that end, proponents of the PLRA argue that its "Administrative Exhaustion" stipulation proves invaluable. It allows for a standard framework to guide the otherwise convoluted mechanisms employed by courts to weed out meritless claims. In an interview, Leonard Peck, a former attorney for the TDCJ, notes that the exhaustion procedure is in place for inmates to "pin themselves down to an issue, and evaluate what its facts are." Given that a majority of inmate grievances are service-based requests, the Act allows prison administrators and inmates to be in accord about the problem, and decide whether or not it warrants action from the courts. Sarah Hart further argues that this mechanism alerts corrections managers to "problems that need to be addressed and allow[s]them to resolve disputes before they turn into Federal lawsuits" ("Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland..." 5). This encourages both efficacy and cost-effectiveness; inmate grievances can be promptly addressed without consuming time and money on the court docket.
In a similar vein, the PLRA's "Three-strike" standard is argued to be a safeguard against unnecessary financial expenditure. Given that meritless lawsuits impair the courts' ability to address more valid claims (prisoner-based and otherwise), the provision sets a standard intended to discourage frequent-filer inmates from wasting the courts' time. The second half of the "Three-strike" diptych is its in forma pauperis provision. This limits indigent filing after a prisoner’s claims have been dismissed three times, in which event the prisoner must pay over one hundred dollars when they re-file their claim to the courts. Proponents of the PLRA argue that there is no case-law guaranteeing prisoners the Constitutional right to be excused from payment of filing fees. More to the point, they claim that the provision is not a draconian countermeasure intended to curtail inmate rights. If anything, it offers great leeway in the choices offered to inmates, as it i) does not outright bar lawsuits, ii) does not apply to state actions, and iii) does not apply to exigent circumstances where the prisoner is in imminent danger of bodily harm. Viewed this way, the PLRA seeks to keep administrative powers with the prisons themselves, as opposed to outside parties. The benefits to this approach are twofold. Firstly, it allows prisons to understand the issues unique to their particular institutions, and to tailor penal policies accordingly. Secondly, it augurs a return to the 'hands-off' doctrine, allowing prisons to maintain their own security and order without judicial micromanagement (Hudson 22-30; "Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland..." 14-16).
The latter proves especially significant in examining the proponents' stance, since judicial oversight in prisons has long been considered anathema. Before the PLRA, cases such as Harris v. Fleming (1988) saw federal courts increasingly assuming the role not of impartial arbiters but of "busybodies" concerned with the day-to-day functioning of correctional institutions (Robertson 187-188). The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals went so far as to state that, "Judges are not wardens, but we must act as wardens to the limited extent that unconstitutional prison conditions force us to intervene..." (Johnson 53). This observation made clear a troubling philosophy of judicial overreach. It called into question the role of the federal judiciary, which was accused of succumbing to "Lochnerization"—i.e. invalidating democratically enacted laws in the name of due process (Lochner v. New York n.p.). While disguised as an ennobling motive, it did not sit well with the majoritarian paradigm which cleaves law from policy. As far back as the 1930s, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter had made clear that "courts are not representative bodies. They are not designed to be a good reflection of a democratic society ...We are to set aside the judgment of those whose duty it is to legislate only if there is no reasonable basis for it..." (Abraham 94). With that in mind, deference to the administrative state was long defined as a guiding principle in courts; their policies were not to be second-guessed via judicial meddling.
Pursuant to this principle, the PLRA seeks to limit the circumstances in which courts may intercede in prison policy on the inmates' behalf—be it through injunctions or consent decrees. In the past, both were roundly criticized for placing tiresome restrictions on the governance of prisons. Correctional managers complained that such measures interfered with their ability to use "ingenuity and initiative" in resolving issues unique to their prisons (Sullivan 430). Similarly, correctional administrations decried it as a means of undermining carceral authority and emboldening prisoners to disobey their keepers. Cases such as Cullum v. California Dep't of Corrections (1962) warned that "if every time a guard were called upon to maintain order he had to consider his possible tort liabilities it might unduly limit his actions" (Branham 482); while Golub v. Krimsky (1960) supported that "to allow such actions would be prejudicial to the proper maintenance of discipline" (Goldfarb and Singer 365). With these demerits in mind, the PLRA's enactment seeks to reassert the supremacy of federalism as a governing principle—for courts and corrections alike.
Certainly, with the passage of the PLRA, courts have resumed deferring to prison administrators. In a potent reminder of the power of institutional context, no recent legislation has been introduced to either change or repeal the Act. Indeed, it has been argued that the PLRA is the carceral "Iron triangle" writ large: a ternary rubric of prison autonomy, cost containment, and effective procedural channels for inmates (Adlerstein 1681-1685). At the same time, it stirs heated arguments among scholars and stakeholders, for whom the PLRA embodies the grim normalization of punishment and control. Far from allowing legal processes and civil liberties to keep apace one another, it widens the gap between them in a cruel rubicon against inmate rights. These critics, gaining volume as the PLRA enters its adulthood, are restarting the conversation on prison conditions, and challenging the policymaking flaws of the Act as a whole. Their stances will be summarily examined in the next section.
Stakeholders: The Opponents
Critics of the PLRA consist of judges, attorneys, academics and human rights organizations. At the helm of recent calls to dismantle the Act are the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC). Forming a coalition with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak—a network of prisoner rights advocates based out of South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institution—the IWOC have steadily worked towards improving the conditions of confinement within prisons, while also initiating large-scale dialogue and social awareness. The Committee strives to spark a "mass movement - inside and out - to abolish prison slavery." Their core values include emancipation, equal rights and community safety (Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee 1). On August 21, 2018, commemorating the death of activist George Jackson of the Black Panther party, the IWOC rallied together with inmates across 17 prisons to stage a three-week strike protesting inhumane prison conditions. The strike was spurred in part by a riot in South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institution—one of the deadliest in the past two decades. According to reports, seven inmates were killed, and twenty-two required hospitalization. Prison guards and EMTs, rather than interceding in the violence, simply looked the other way (FITSNews "Inmate On Inmate..." 1). The incident, according to the IWOC, is emblematic of deteriorating prison conditions nationwide, while its sparse media coverage marks a strategic suppression campaign by the Department of Corrections to prevent inmate narratives from reaching the public's ears.
Following the strike, inmates outlined ten demands, including better living conditions, the expansion of rehabilitative programming, and, most significantly, the rescission of the PLRA (Corbitt 1). The IWOC bolstered these demands by pointing out that however "civilly dead" prisoners may be, they are not exempt from certain Constitutional rights (Dubber 123). Most relevant are those afforded by the Eighth Amendment, which states that they must have basic needs met during their confinement—such as adequate sanitation, ventilation and medical care (Herman 1242-1245). The IWOC therefore holds the PLRA responsible for the degeneration of prison conditions, as it impedes inmates' from challenging them. Rife with "loopholes," and financially "taxing", it renders few other viable conduit for redress apart from protests. A jailhouse lawyer, under the pseudonym 'George', complains that, “You have to go through all these different steps, all these different mechanisms. By the time you hit the court, a lot of times the issue is moot... So you’ve lost your lawsuit altogether, and it’s not because your lawsuit doesn’t have merit" (Sonenstein 1).
Quoting Chief Justice Rehnquist's analogy of a prior deficient legislation ("...the watchdog did not bark that night"), Chief Judge Boyce Martin, a prominent critic of the PLRA, wryly noted that "When Congress penned the Prison Litigation Reform Act . . . the watchdog must have been dead" (Reid 566). Accordingly, opponents of the PLRA are wont to scrutinize it through a lens of Constitutional rights, fairness and efficacy. For them, the PLRA's "Exhaustion" and "Three-strike" provisions are two prongs of the same offensive: quashing prisoners' rights. They argue that, far from mitigating the federal workload, the PLRA has in fact generated more litigation revolving around its interpretive application. Worse, by redoubling the barriers already in place before prisoners can access courts, they reduce inmate claims to a zero-sum game. Prisoners cannot speak out and risk jeopardizing the prison's prerogative for autonomy; prisoners cannot remain silent and allow carceral administrations to function with impunity at the expense of their constitutional rights (Branham 493-498).
On the subject of prison grievance systems, a federal judge complained in a 2005 case, Campbell v. Chaves (2005), that they are often "a series of stalling tactics, and dead-ends without resolution" 1109). With that in mind, opponents of the PLRA state that, whatever the superficial gloss of legitimacy loaned to internal grievance mechanisms, their success is mere lip-service unless they achieve their intended goal. Unfortunately, their very set-up creates a conflict of interest. Prisoners who complain about abuses at the hands of staff must, in effect, enjoin the same staff to help them in submitting grievance forms. Such administrators would have the incentive to procedurally stymie a claim, regardless of its seriousness, thereby discouraging judicial intervention. Although the Supreme Court deems internal grievance mechanisms a "meaningful opportunity for prisoners," it fails to take into account that "those same officials have a self-serving interest in preventing the most meritorious claims from ever seeing the light of day" (Honick 178). This dilemma is highlighted by cases such as Sanders v. Bachus (2008) and Snyder v. Whittier (2009). In both instances, inmate-based complaints of excessive force were summarily dismissed for failure to exhaust, despite the plaintiff's explanations that they feared retaliation from the guards who assaulted them. More troubling still, according to the PLRA's opponents, is the fact that procedural defaults are no guarantor of impartiality. In Cleavinger v. Saxner (1985), the Court contended that the "relationship between the keeper and the kept... is hardly conducive to a truly adjudicatory performance" (Carmen 59).
Opponents of the PLRA argue that the very existence of the "Administrative Exhaustion" provision undermines this dictum. Rather, it serves as syllogism intended to "immunize" prison officials from accountability (Palmer 380). Objections are also raised about the hermetically sealed environment of prisons, within which a culture of reprisal reigns supreme. In such confined spaces, administrative exhaustion mechanisms can be wielded as tools for coercion, and may serve as a daunting maze for inmates with legitimate or even life-threatening issues. As Marissa C.M. Doran remarks, "American prisons are beset by... retaliation. In the prison context, this translates to a pattern in which officials punish prisoners who file grievances protesting the conditions of their confinement or exposing the behaviors of their jailors. (1028).
Equally problematic, according to the PLRA's opponents, are the lack of clear-cut definitions on what constitutes "administrative remedies... available" (Gullett 1189). Following the passage of the Act, a great deal of litigation was devoted to clarifying and delineating the term. However, between the resounding Congressional silence and the broadness of the phrase, courts found themselves split on its precise definition. For the Third, Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, it implied that exhaustion was mandatory even if the internal procedure did not result in a resolution of the issue. For the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Circuit, however, the phrase seemed to denote the opposite (Doran 1045). It was not until the landmark ruling of Booth v. Churner (2001) did the Supreme Court rectify the split ("we think that Congress has mandated exhaustion clearly enough, regardless of the relief offered through administrative procedures" 1825). However, the decision also highlighted, for the PLRA's critics, the amorphous, and conversely, ministerial, nature of its provisions. Worse, they contend that despite the definitions laid out by the Supreme Court, the Act continues to consume judicial resources. Due to the compulsory exhaustion requirement, inquiries must be made as to whether or not internal procedures were fulfilled, rather than the case being handled on its own merits. More tiresome still, they argue, is that upon failure to first exhaust all available administrative remedies, the case must be dismissed and re-filed, thereby wasting valuable judicial resources (Slutsky 2320).
An equally strident criticism deals with the Act's "Three-strike" provision. As mentioned, this stipulation is intended to ensure that once an inmate has had three civil cases dismissed by a court, he or she cannot claim indigent status and have the filing fees waived in future cases. Opponents argue that this is tantamount to stonewalling inmates out of courts, given the meager income of most, and the fact that the filing fee in federal courts is $400. More pertinently, they deride the language of the provision as rhetorical smokescreen. While the PLRA states that "an action or appeal" denotes a strike, circuit courts have since expanded its meaning to each stage of the judicial process. This implies that an inmate's claim can accrue a strike at three stages—in trial court, in the appeals court, in the Supreme Court—despite only having a single case. The PLRA's use of the term "frivolous" has also come under sharp criticism from opponents. A number of scholars have attempted to deconstruct the 'frivolity' of inmate claims: its semiotics and semantics alike. An equal number of attorneys and judges have endeavored to understand frivolity in conjunction to the Act's "strike" zone. On the whole, opponents argue that its application has been overly aggressive in courts (Puritz and Scali 86-88). Cases such as Gonzales v. Wyatt (1998) highlight how closely inmates must adhere to the PLRA's rules, lest their case be struck down. In this particular case, having filed an excessive force lawsuit with the assistance of another inmate, the plaintiff was transferred to a different prison and his legal paperwork confiscated. His friend filed an unsigned copy of the suit on his behalf, in tandem with a signed copy of his own. However, the court designated the suit as frivolous, not on the basis that it was meritless, but due to failure to submit a signed copy by the deadline (1021). Critics argue that tossing out cases on the basis of technical errors does not deter frivolous lawsuits, but all lawsuits in their entirety.
Indeed, the predominant criticism of the PLRA deals, at its crux, with its Constitutional undermining. Opponents point out that, far from adhering to the safeguards of a civilized society, the PLRA eviscerates the most fundamental Constitutional right afforded to inmates. By severely limiting their channels for meaningful redress, it deprives them of pivotal rights such as due process, open access and petitioning. The latter is especially vital, given that petitioning arose as means of mutual information-flow between individuals and the government. Historically, it holds the capacity to grant both individual relief and structural remedies. In eighteenth-century Virginia, for instance, a majority of the bills enacted by the state legislature arose as petitions (Bailey 200). Similarly, modern-day petitions function as "a vehicle for effective political expression and association, as well as a means of communicating useful information to the public" (Borough of Duryea, et al. v. Guarnieri 16). As such, the freedom to petition, especially in total institutions such as prisons, is necessary not just for structural vitality but as an outpost of democracy. It "enhance[s] the integrity and quality" of conditions within correctional systems (Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia 580-81). Opponents argue that the PLRA effectively compromises this necessary exchange between public and private realms, enshrouding unsound—and unconstitutional—prison policies within a red tape of balancing tests.
To date, no attempts to repeal the PLRA have been successful. This is certainly not for lack of trying. In 2007, the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section urged Congress in a report to "repeal or amend specified portions" of the Act. It also requested that the Act's provisions be re-examined for the broadness of their scope, and their hindrance in sifting meritorious from non-meritorious legal claims ("CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECTION Report to the HOUSE OF DELEGATES" 3-13). However, as Kermit Roosevelt notes, "the statute has survived judicial scrutiny essentially unchanged" (1805). This has not, however, deterred organizations and inmates from taking a stand against the more repressive aspects of the Act. The IWOC, for instance, continues to be actively instrumental in developing movement organizations both inside and outside prison walls. In addition to endorsing nationwide prison strikes, and offering them a platform to lay out their demands, the organization has started up call-in campaigns, or 'phone zaps,' intended to increase public pressure into prisons. “From past strikes," an activist explains, “what we did learn is that from the outside, the more people that tend to stand up, demonstrate from the outside, particularly demos at the prisons, what it does is it incites. It incites inside and this is why prisons have a problem against it" (Losier 1). That said, there is no denying that momentum for such a movement will be slow-going, if not outright impossible. As mentioned, prisoners constitute an invisible segment of society. Neither beloved nor popular, their plight will invariably be subsumed by more noticeable issues on the outside. However, as opponents of the PLRA note, this makes it doubly pertinent to dismantle the Act, the better to initiate a dialogue, and understand the shadowy flipside of what occurs in society's name behind "steel doors and concrete walls" (Daly 230).
Analysis of Arguments: Merits
Both the proponents and opponents of the PLRA raise valid arguments. However, it is pertinent to examine these arguments through their accompanying political optics. In terms of doctrine and practice, both sides have widely conflicting interpretations of the Act—a polarization stemming as much from dialecticism as empiricism. For its proponents, the PLRA is intended to rectify the dangerous slip-slide towards interventionism by the post-Civil Rights era courts. For its opponents, it is an administrative quagmire, within which the intersecting rights of due process and open access are unconstitutionally curbed. Hand-in-hand with this "war of extremes" are heavily politicized attacks lobbed by either side of the aisle, with each party attempting to shape the narrative of prisoners' rights (Schlanger 1569). This is not to say that either side's viewpoints are asinine. Far from it; the lens of their analysis proves extremely instructive, revealing a shared interest in streamlining the mechanisms for inmate litigation and ensuring that adequate avenues are in place before and after a federal claim is initiated. Where they differ is in how they view the content inmates bring to court: frivolity versus civil rights violations. Thus, when going about an analysis of their argumentation, it is essential to disengage the political 'spin' from the factual basis.
Having carefully weighed the supporting evidence on both sides, this writer admits that the proponents of the PLRA offer a persuasive range of viewpoints. Values such as dedication, integrity, collaboration, cooperation and inclusiveness may seem at odds with more pragmatic goals such as procedural efficiency, economization, and judicial detachment. However, these goals need not be conflated with short-sighted agendas or crude instrumentalism. Far from it, when interwoven with the NAAG's core values, the PLRA exemplifies a careful grounding of institutional and structural enhancement, and a deliberate balancing of the means-ends rationale. For instance, with its "Administrative Exhaustion" provision, the Act has succeeded in preventing courts from being crippled by groundless claims—while simultaneously allowing inmates access to alternate grievance avenues within the prison itself. The focus is not on blocking inmate suits in their entirety. Rather, it is on assessing their legal sufficiency. Margo Schlanger, despite being one of the most strident critics of the PLRA, has acknowledged that prisoner litigation is, "absolutely speaking, quite low in 'merit'" (1599). Similarly, legal commentator Eugene J. Kuzinski has written that, while not all inmate claims are invalid, "the problem is that meritorious claims are the exception, rather than the rule" (364).
Bolstering this is data indicating that, from 1990 to 1995, eighty-two percent of inmate cases resulted in unsuccessful pretrial judgement for inmates ("The Indeterminacy of Inmate Litigation..." 1670). While critics of the PLRA cry foul about inmate suits being caricatured as little more than squabbles over peanut butter, the fact remains that a majority of suits indeed fall short of the acceptable legal standard for merit. More to the point, their flimsiness is not the focus, so much as the larger phenomenon of excessive inmate litigation they represent. In floor speeches preceding the PLRA's passage, Senator Reid, for example, decried that "notwithstanding the odds against prevailing, inmates continue to file suits" ("Congressional Record..." 27043). Similarly, Senator Kyl bemoaned the tendency of inmates to "[file] free lawsuits in response to almost any perceived slight" regardless of "their legal merit" (Quirk 275). The "Administrative Exhaustion" provision, therefore, has less to do with barring laughable inmate claims in their entirety, than in nipping low-merit cases in the bud. This proves beneficial for both parties, as prison officials can deal with an issue swiftly and efficiently, rather than allowing it to ripen into a lengthy (and oftentimes desultory) lawsuit. For critics to therefore make a subjective pounce on administrative remedies as arm-twisting rather than as interpretive conflict, seems a touch hyperbolic.
Much is also made about how the Act's "Three-Strike" safeguard. Critics claim it imposes impossibly "high hurdles" for prisoners to access courts ("The Indeterminacy..." 1671). However, this too proves to be a largely semantic rather than a doctrinal tug-of-war. Firstly, where opponents of the PLRA weigh frivolity according to its ability to make inmates' lives more difficult in confinement, supporters of the PLRA are more interested in contemporary legal thresholds. Secondly, not enough attention is devoted to understanding the divergent definitions of 'frivolity' both within and beyond correctional institutions. Given that the prisoner's world is limited to the four walls of the prison, their idea of 'serious issues' is markedly different from a non-prisoner's. As such, "[w]hat to most people would be a very insignificant [matter] becomes, because of the nature of prison life, a matter of real concern to the inmate" (Jacobs 203). This is, however, not enough qualify a claim as worthy of the federal court's attention. Indeed, when measuring the low success rates of inmate claims by legal standards as opposed to politicized ideals, there is no denying that inmate litigation is too insufficient in content to withstand court review. While it can be argued that the definition of frivolity is subject to court interpretation, this alone is no basis for designating the Act a failure. U.S law is, at its crux, interpretive in nature (Hunter 99). As such, the PLRA cannot be demonized each time judges establish too-high or too-low thresholds for lawsuit meritoriousness. While opponents may contend that frivolity is wielded as a repressive hammer by conservative courts, such an argument is "inherently political rather than empirical" ("The Indeterminacy..." 1671).
Certainly, in terms of straightforward execution, the PLRA has fulfilled its role in unburdening the federal docket. There is no arguing that since its passage, the volume of inmate litigation has slimmed down remarkably. Between 1995 (prior to the Act) and 2000, the amount of civil rights suits dropped by forty percent, from 41,679 to 25,504. Similarly, the filing rate (measured as per one thousand inmates) declined from thirty-seven to nineteen (Scalia 1-8). With that in mind, "to the extent that success can be measured by the volume of suits, the PLRA has worked .... [The] substantial decrease ... is all the more impressive when considered in light of the growing prison population" (Roosevelt 1779-80). To add to that, Margo Schlanger has admitted that, prior to the PLRA, there was credible proof that high case volumes prevented courts from screening solid claims: "It is difficult to see how judges could adequately process so many non-settling cases in so little time" (1590). Citing New York Assistant Attorney General Alan Kaufman's interview with the Times ("It's a struggle not to throw out the baby with the bath water"), she further remarks that the PLRA has had an undeniable effect on each aspect of the inmate docket (Dunn 1). From state courts, to habeas petitions, to jail and prison filings, courts are processing a "reduced caseload" with more speediness (Schlanger 1643). The Bureau of Justice Statistics, reporting a five-year study about inmate-filing trends, reached similar findings, noting that from most respects, the Act was a "success" (Hudson 25).
From a federalist standpoint, the PLRA has succeeded too, in allowing the courts and corrections systems to function side-by-side without impinging on each other’s territories. With its "Three-Strike" provisions, it has promulgated guidelines for what claims may reach the court docket, versus which ones may be dismissed from the outset. This enables both corrections departments and courts to establish an initial burden that inmates must meet. Similarly, with its "Administrative Exhaustion" prong, it delineates mechanisms within the prison for when inmates have an issue—and whether it warrants attention beyond the prison walls. While the boundaries between the judicial and legislative branch are not "hermetically sealed," the Act thus prevents the two spheres from infringing on each other’s' functional prerogatives (Buckley v. Valeo). As such, the PLRA succeeds in two counts of its intended purposes: keeping federal dockets unburdened while simultaneously preventing the judiciary from appropriating control of the state correctional system. As Justice Clarence Thomas makes clear, "State prisons should be run by the state officials with the expertise and the primary authority for running such institutions. Absent the most extraordinary circumstances, federal courts should refrain from meddling in such affairs. Prison administrators have a difficult enough job without federal court intervention" (Carlson 522).
Certainly, the fact that the PLRA continues to stand strong, two decades after its passage, seems a testament to its general applicability. Broad enough for corrections systems to apply it flexibly but specific enough for individual prisons to use it as an underlying framework, it remains the go-to statute for corrections administrators to outline their internal and external mechanisms on prisoner suits. Given its empirical successes, it is difficult to dismiss the Act as the most inefficient extreme of carceral logic. If anything, its legislative history makes clear that it was meant to sift through the morass of inmate suits "clogging" the Federal court docket, so that resources could rightfully be allocated to meritorious litigation (Hudson 22).
Analysis of Arguments: Demerits
Unfortunately, the fulfillment of these goals cannot eclipse the unsavory undercurrents surrounding the PLRA's passage. The road to its evolution was shaped as much by a voluble anti-inmate platform as by the tough-on-crime social tenor that characterized the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Criminal justice became a vibrant talking point by 1968, when Republican challenger Richard Nixon decried the burgeoning crime rate as the direct offshoot of the Warren Court's lax liberalism, wherein the rights of defendants appeared to be disproportionately favored in criminal cases. The solution to this crisis was to "reestablish the principle that men are accountable for what they do" (Marion 522). Harsher law enforcement and more punitive sentencing would become a critical facet of the elections, both then, and thereafter. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan would emulate Nixon's stance, conflating the "crime issue" with liberal failing. Advocating for harsher mandatory sentencing programs and greater use of the death penalty, Reagan's election victory marked the "enduring power of criminal justice as an emotive issue, and its strong correlation to the success of candidates for national office" (Sullivan 427).
To be sure, there was an uptick of crime from the 1970s to 1990s. Several pundits posit that this led to correspondingly high incarceration rates. However, there is scant data to support this theory. Rather, research suggests that politics play a far stronger role in punishment trends—not just in the United States but several Western Democratic countries. Although the rate and severity of a crime may contribute to the initial design of sentencing structures, a greater influence still is exerted by the policy decisions of public officials (Tonry 519-524). Certainly, the spike in prison populations across the UK, the Netherlands, and in particular the United States, was the result of politicians' rallying outcry to get 'tough on crime.' This in turn cultivated an atmosphere of penal populism—a term for criminal justice policies that satisfy the public but fail to consider overall effectiveness and community views (Pratt 194). With ideological hallmarks such as the War on Drugs and Zero Tolerance Policing defining the era, the criminal justice system would see itself revamped as the vanguard of safety and security—arguably at the cost of redlining communities of color (Lusane and Desmond 25-53).
The Democratic Party, not blind to this formula, echoed Republican calls for stricter laws during the Clinton era. What followed was the steady normalization of longer sentences and less diversionary programming. As mass incarceration skyrocketed, prison overcrowding and deteriorating conditions—best cataloged in Brown v. Plata (2011)—would see sanitation and essential resources so reduced that the prison facilities constituted little better than "cruel and unusual punishment" (2-18). Far from resigning themselves to the squalor, inmates filed a swelling number of suits in federal court. Indeed, by the 1990s, "state prisoners challenging the conditions of their confinement accounted for the single largest category of civil lawsuits filed in U.S. district courts." In 1996 alone, prisoners brought forward about 41302 lawsuits (Ostrom et al. 1525). While organizations such as the NAAG were quick to dismiss these claims as toothless (as evidenced by their list of Top Ten Prisoner Suits) the fact remains that reports of abuse against prisoners "...were neither infrequent nor geographically limited (Mathews 537)."
Indeed, regardless of the meritless nature of inmate suits, their underlying seriousness was tragically mischaracterized. Professor Kermit Roosevelt notes that, while inmate suits may be frivolous, the ones distributed by the media at the behest of the NAAG were anything but. Rather, the very perception of the "frivolous" inmate lawsuit was sparked by a smear-campaign spearheaded by congressional officials and state attorneys general (1771-1776). The paradigmatic inmate lawsuit, wherein a prisoner was upset over the substitution of creamy peanut butter with chunky, best exemplifies the propaganda. As Judge Jon O. Newman notes:
...The prisoner did not sue because he received the wrong kind of peanut butter. He sued because the prison had incorrectly debited his prison account $2.50 under the following circumstances. He had ordered two jars of peanut butter; one sent by the canteen was the wrong kind, and a guard had quite willingly taken back the wrong product and assured the prisoner that the item he had ordered and paid for would be sent the next day. Unfortunately, the authorities transferred the prisoner that night to another prison, and his prison account remained charged $2.50 for the item that he had ordered but had never received (521).
Similar suits, touted by the NAAG as typical of the inmate docket, reveal the unfair myths perpetuated about prisoners. In what the ACLU refers to as a time "when state and federal lawmakers were enacting restrictions on prisoner rights," the PLRA seems to have emerged less on the basis of careful research than on snide anecdotalism ("Top Ten Non-Frivolous Lawsuits..." 1). While undeniably successful at trimming down an overgrown court docket, the rudimentary jurisprudence that went into its creation cannot be ignored. If anything, it comes off largely as a reactionary backlash against inmate rights. More disquieting still is the legislative strong-arming that led to the Act's enactment. While preliminary data suggests that the Act passed, as mentioned, "with strong bipartisan support" — closer examination tells a different story (Ostrom et al. 1536). As it turns out, the support that the PLRA garnered was based less on transparency than on dissimulation. Packaged as an appropriations bill rider, the Act was buried beneath other bills and did not receive the same attention it would have warranted as a standalone. Indeed, the PLRA's passage appears to have been rooted in "fiscal exigency" rather than "sound policy" (Sullivan 433). Disguised as the unreadable "fine print" rather than the centerpiece for legislative attention, the Act received only a perfunctory review—an action that is directly in violation of the deliberative process laid out in Article I of the Constitution (Branham 538). As such, the PLRA's provisions do not receive the robust debate due to such a sweeping piece of legislation. Such dubious beginnings make it difficult to accept the PLRA as foolproof. As Kyle Sullivan notes, "...a primary criticism of the PLRA is not that it is bad law, but that it is not law in the truest sense. Legislation-by-misdirection ...undermines the spirit of the Constitution and, in the case of the PLRA, facilitates violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights" (433-434).
Indeed, the First, Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments prove the most tendentious pivot upon which the PLRA's legitimacy rests. Although the Act's "Administrative Exhaustion" and "Three-strike" safeguards were promulgated to reduce the judicial workload, the fact remains that by establishing thresholds for "frivolity" in different aspects of prison life, the Act reduces the Eighth Amendment from an indomitable fact to a sidebar with a broad "margin for toleration. By curtailing such a critical Constitutional right, the PLRA not only allows prison abuses to abound unchecked, but functions as a grim "self-fulfilling prophecy" (Sullivan 434). Brimful with the language of restriction, it instills in prison administrators the idea that its stipulations not only work to suppress inmate complaints, but allow their own duties to fall below the Constitutional barometer of acceptability. The PLRA also creates a troubling dichotomy in the Equal Protection clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. A report published by the Human Rights' Watch (HRW) illustrates how the Act creates a "separate but unequal" legal framework by hectoring only the lawsuits brought by inmates. The HRW further add that they are currently "not aware of any other country in which national legislation singles out prisoners for a unique set of barriers and obstacles to vindicating their legal rights in court" (Fathi 47).
No matter the insubstantial nature of inmate litigation, the fact remains that prisoners are a highly powerless faction of society. Viewed with almost universal distrust, their claims are often written off before they even reach court. Prisoners must contend with a plethora of generic barriers: under-resourced and underpaid counsel; impediments to access for individuals with mental disabilities; time constraints; sparse avenues for alternative dispute resolution (Calavita and Jenness 10-148). In addition, prisoner civil rights claims are hampered by a deferential standard—both du jure and de facto—established in Turner v. Safely (1987). This prevents court officials from subjecting prisons to "an inflexible, strict scrutiny analysis" on the rationale that it would hinder the day-to-day operations of the institution (1). The PLRA, by introducing another layer of opacity into the functioning of prisons, therefore deprives prisoners of the most effective remedy that isn't confined to the prison's internal operations. Worse, by blocking both individual and collective rights, and corraling them strictly to the "Administrative Exhaustion" mandates, prisoners are left vulnerable to retaliation from prison officials. Given that many administrative measures are "hyper-technical" and intricate enough to discombobulate even the most seasoned attorney, the PLRA "severely inhibit[s] prisoners' abilities to protect themselves from the crimes it commits against them" (Ross 28).
Finally, through the lens of the First Amendment, the PLRA invalidates not only the interests of the individual, but those of the state. By obstructing prisoners' access to the courts, it diminishes the communicative power of lawsuits to air not only personal grievances, but to fulfill their "information function" for the outside world (Doran 1061). This esteem for petitioning is not a philosophical, but a Constitutional right. Justice Blackmun once noted that, for individuals who are convicted, the right to "file a court action stands ...as his most ‘fundamental political right, because [it is] preservative of all rights'" (Palmer 169). Thus, if inmate litigation is based on merit, the right to access the courts becomes doubly germane as it can be used to address constitutional violations. The PLRA interferes with this right on a two-fold level: first by blocking the protections enshrined in the Petition Clause, and secondly by denying the public access to information within penal systems in their entirety (Borough of Duryea, et al. v. Guarnieri 2495). Worse, by treating free speech and petitioning as theoretically proximate, rather than distinct, it stymies prisoner's voices within bureaucratic mechanisms meant for internal communication.
When taking all the aspects of the PLRA into consideration, this writer concedes that while the Act has benefits, these are subsumed by its drawbacks. However assertive the stance of its proponents, the fact remains that the PLRA has the dark potential to transform prisons into brutal fiefdoms unto themselves. What's more, in the long-term, its goals of cost-cutting, efficiency and independence will not be reached—not if it is at the expense of running transparent and accountable corrections systems. Instead, devoid of oversight to dispense so much as a slap on the wrist to prison administrators, the Act reduces prisoners to their earliest status of "slaves of the state" (Ruffin v Commonwealth 1). The values of dedication, integrity, collaboration, cooperation and inclusiveness espoused by the NAAG cannot be reconciled to such an autocratic framework.
The stance taken by the PLRA's opponents, therefore, outweighs that of its proponents. Championing to dismantle the Act, organizations such as IWOC are more closely aligned with the values of emancipation, equal rights and community safety (Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee 1) as compared to the NAAG. Whatever one's political disagreements over the meaning of lawsuit frivolity, the fact remains that the PLRA creates a dichotomy by measuring the needs of the prisoner against those of the courts. In due process terms, it suggests that the government is not unitary, but a tricky balancing act wherein the judiciary and the executive are engaged in a tug-of-war. More disturbingly, the Act suggests that superficial efficiency among the courts serves as a vindication for eroding inmates' Constitutional rights. No culling of the court docket or cost-cutting of the federal judiciary can justify this stance. Prisoner petitions may oftentimes lack in merit. But they symbolize more than a complaint of distasteful prison conditions. They are a means of communication to the courts—and the outside world at large. More to the point, they are petitions, which signify "constitutional concerns," acting as a forum for the "preservation of rights." Such petitions do not belong in the realm of the "managerial" but in the context of governance. They support "competing values and expectations" as a hallmark of public negotiation (Doran 1069-1083). The "Three-strike" and "Exhaustion" mandates of the PLRA are stifling these petitions. As Robert L. Tsai notes,
The inmate, a classic 'deviant' whom the modern state separates, isolates, and controls absolutely, must seek relief from non-traditional quarters. Even more so than other political minorities for whom some measure of progress has been made in improving accountability and influence, the courts remain for these despised individuals "the sole practical avenue open to ... petition for redress of grievances (896).
Ostensibly, the PLRA operates to clear the clutter of federal dockets. However, it also deprives prisoners of a humane remedy—or indeed, any remedy at all—for violations of their rights. Such a framework cannot be beneficial in the long term, for courts or corrections alike. When it comes to civil rights violations, the adage of 'out of sight out of mind' will not do. Sweeping inmate lawsuits aside will not make prison abuses go away. If anything, embittered prisoners will be more likely lash out with violence. The incident at South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institution stands as testament to this fact. Allowing prisoners a channel to air their grievances, therefore, is cathartic as well as cost-effective. It may allow for a maintenance of order and compliance within prisons, and preclude explosive—and potentially expensive—acts of rebellion from taking place.
Moral Reasoning
Taken together, this writer contends that the "Three-Strike" and "Administrative Exhaustion" prongs of the PLRA should be struck down. Indeed, the PLRA should be rescinded in its entirety. The writer holds dear the values of equality and transparency. More to the point, she cherishes the Kantian tenets of universal human rights and a moral basis behind each action. The PLRA, upon careful examination, fails to deliver these values. Far from it, it strains the precepts of the Constitution. It reduces the steadfastness of the Eighth Amendment, sidelines the enumerated due process rights of the Fifth and Fourteenth, and undermines the First into a residue of speech rather than a "reasonable right of access to the courts" (Hudson v. Palmer 1). From a Kantian standpoint, such a legislation cannot stand. Arisen from dubious legality and cruel misconceptions of inmates, the Act cannot fulfill its intended purpose without trampling the welfare of the vulnerable. Certainly, the Act has played its part in reducing the number of meritless inmate claims in the court docket. But it has done so at the expense of exposing grave prison abuses. Proponents of the PLRA may argue that the restriction of these suits is intended to serve a cost-effective solution. However, Kant rejects such a Utilitarian principle wherein the end justifies the means (i.e. the greatest happiness for the highest number). For him, such a calculation reduces personhood, and redefines justice as a mechanism to maximize welfare simply for those with the loudest voice. More troubling still, it attempts to derive moral vindication from mere empirical consideration (Banks 10-120).
For Kant, respect for human dignity is paramount. Rather than morality being contingent on interests and desires—which are variable from moment to moment—he argues that each person is worthy of respect, not because of their utility, but because they are rational beings, capable of thought and free choice. With that in mind, the PLRA fails emphatically at recognizing prisoners as people. By curbing their right for legal redress, it denies them the freedom of self-expression. Conversely, by denying the public access to the goings-on within prisons, it diminishes the utility of prisons themselves in the long term. It treats both parties as instruments whose goals should not intersect for the sake of general welfare—creating a legally enforced dichotomy of worthy and unworthy, enslaved and free. As Kristian Cedervall Lauta notes, the legitimization of such a framework gives birth to a "shadow system" where "security is the raison d'etat" (68). This echoes eerily with Supreme Court Justice William Brennan's metaphor of the prison environment as a "shadow world" (Schmalleger and Atkin-Plunk 102; O‘Lone v. Estate of Shabazz 354-55). It also drives home the concept of a state divided into two spheres: "Normal constitutional conduct, inhabited by law, universal rules and reasoned discourse; and a realm where universal rules are inadequate to meet the particular emergency situation and where law must be replaced by discretion and politics" (Lobel 1390)
In the latter sphere, the prisoner is reduced to an object whose erasure is necessary for the happiness of others. Persons within such a system exist, not for their own sake, but as widgets to fulfill a politicized agenda. For Kant, this is sorely lacking in moral worth. As he notes, each action comprises not of its consequences, but the intentions from which the act springs forth. Motive is more critical than means, and the former must have redemptive value. As he writes, "A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes. It is good in itself, whether or not it prevails... it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself" (Sandel 111). When scrutinizing the PLRA through this lens, it fails once more to meet the Kantian threshold. The origins of the Act were suffused with legal subterfuge, the language for its support imbued with a deep-rooted contempt for prisoners. This questionable subtext makes it difficult to reconcile oneself to the PLRA's presentation as a balanced protector of both court interests and inmate rights. If anything, it appears disproportionately to favor the former over the latter. For Kant, motives such as these—referred to as "motives of inclination"—clash with the motive of duty. As he states, only actions done out of the motive of duty possess moral worth (Bird 237).
Proposed Solution
The problems posed by the PLRA—ethical, legislative, political—cannot be remedied overnight. To be sure, the Act must be repealed. However, regardless of whether it remains or goes, there must be alternative methods in place to guarantee prisoner welfare. The solution, then, is to re-introduce a measure of transparency into prison systems, without impinging on the independence of the executive and the judiciary. A body of correctional oversight—detached from both—appears the most feasible solution. I base this conclusion as much on my own research, as on my interviews with two individuals most suited to identifying the potential merits and demerits of correctional oversight. The first is Professor Michele Deitch, senior lecturer at the University of Texas Austin. An attorney with over thirty years of experience in the arenas of criminal justice, corrections and juvenile justice policy issues, she has published a number of works about mechanisms for prison oversight, as well as developing a fifty-state inventory of prison oversight models. She has also served as a federal court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system. According to Prof. Deitch, oversight is not a one-size-fits-all strategy, but an "umbrella" concept entailing at least six vital functions: regulations, audit, accreditation, investigation, reporting, and inspection. Each of these, successfully combined together, contribute the overall objective of a transparent carceral system (1696).
The second individual, echoing Prof. Deitch's stance, is Dr. Leonard Peck. Currently an assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at Texas A & M University, Dr. Peck spent several years prior to entering academia with the TDCJ General Council's office. Having gained extensive experience in institutional corrections and prison population trends, Dr. Peck believes it is imperative to have a system in place that supplements, if not outright replaces, litigation as an inmate redress vehicle. As he makes clear, the frivolity of inmate suits tends to drown out the more serious cases, "What happens is that these guys generate enough trash that they aggravate judges. So every now and then, when someone's really been wronged, the judges—because they've been burned by so many jerks—lose track of the guy who was really injured" (Draper 55). Although, as opposed to Prof. Deitch, Dr. Peck believes the PLRA exists as a safety valve to keep federal courts unencumbered, he also believes that additional prison monitoring bodies could certainly be useful in alleviating the inmates' over-reliance on the judiciary.
To be sure, greater transparency in carceral systems is essential for prisoners' rights, and the welfare of the prison institution itself. In 2006, a conference sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, in conjunction with Pace Law School, invited numerous scholars on corrections policy to Austin, Texas. Their aim, as aptly stated by the conference's title—Opening Up a Closed World: What Constitutes Effective Prison Oversight?—was intended to explore multi-faceted mechanisms for inspecting prisons (Mushlin and Deitch 1383). One of the academics at the conference, Professor Stan Stojkovic, was quick to demonstrate how prison oversight can prove beneficial from both an administrative and Constitutional standpoint. In his work, titled Prison Oversight and Prison Leadership, he explains how prison oversight aligns with democratic values: "The prison is, for the most part, a public concern and requires public oversight... The objective is transparency, nothing more, nothing less. The essence of democracy is that sunlight can get into institutional settings, especially those that have a history of being hidden. Operating from a position of transparency, prisons are seen with all their faults" (1478). Reiterating this assertion, the American Bar Association (ABA) passed a resolution in 2008, urging the government at multiple levels to establish public monitoring entities to discern the conditions of detention facilities. Detailing how external oversight is not only cost-effective but advantageous for future sentencing and correctional policies, the ABA states that courts cannot solely be relied on for enforcing the necessary standards of humane treatment. Rather, an independent and neutral entity can more effectively fill in the judicial vacuum, providing regular monitoring that not only addresses civil rights abuses, but circumvents them before prison conditions deteriorate to the point where they occur (Mushlin 246).
In her article, The Need for Independent Prison Oversight in a Post-PLRA World, Prof. Deitch delineates a number of workable schemes to make prison oversight a reality. One method is judicial overseership in the form of a court-appointed Special Master, who would enjoy unhindered access to documents and staff alike, assessing the progress of prison officials and holding them accountable for delays in litigation. This system was employed in the case of Ruiz v. Estelle, where Judge William Wayne Justice selected law professor Vincent Nathan, along with a handful of attorneys, as full-time monitors for the state prison facilities. They were responsible for tracking the prison's fulfillment of the express terms and conditions of consent decrees. Alternately, if such a mechanism hearkens back to the ominous specters of judicial hijacking and diminished federalism, Deitch proposes that we turn our attention to "peer nations" such as the United Kingdom (239). There, inmates do not use national courts as a last resort for redress. Instead, following a 1990 public inquiry spearheaded by Lord Justice Woolf, which exposed the deplorable prison conditions in the UK, an independent body titled the Prison Inspectorate was created. Charged with reporting on prison conditions in England and Wales, this government body is headed by a Chief Inspector with unrestricted access to each prison facility under his/her aegis. As Andrew Coyle notes, this method of independent scrutiny, guided by international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, serves to maintain a standard of decorum in the day-today management of prisons (1508).
However effective the role and function of independent oversight entities, Deitch relents that they are nonetheless lacking in one critical area: the "enforcement ability" to enact punitive measures against recalcitrant prison officials. Typically, oversight bodies make advisory recommendations, wielding their power through proposed policy changes and funding. However, it is the Federal courts that continue to enforce the "heavy hammer" of accountability over penal systems. As such, Deitch argues that federal courts must remain the "fail-safe protector of prisoners’ rights, regardless of the existence of an independent government monitoring body" (242). Ultimately, Deitch's approach to correctional oversight is polycentric. In addition to both internal and external layers of scrutiny into the prisons themselves, she asserts that the federal judiciary must have the final word on reform and punishment, reviewing the the findings of the prison monitors and doling out the necessary arbitration. This writer agrees. The PLRA, on the pretext of preserving judicial independence, has sought to wrench the courts and corrections systems apart—not as "separate spheres," but as diamagnetic forces that ought to be repelled by one another (Davidov 237). In doing so, the Act not only guarantees the "thinness of constitutional law" for inmates, but limits the authority of the federal courts to intervene in cases of civil rights violations (Flemming 239).
Repealing the PLRA will not be easy. Not only does the Act have the backing of powerful stakeholder groups, but it represents, on the surface, good legislative safeguards, intended to keep meritless lawsuits from overpopulating court dockets. The fact that these suits come from prisoners—a highly reviled section of society—does little to muster support for their cause. However, the Act's history also illustrates the impact of conflating malicious propaganda with empirical truth. In doing so, it has eroded the essential rights of prisoners by stymying their voices, to the point where they are invisible in social discourse. Until the PLRA is repealed—if it ever is—this damning practice will continue. Worse, by successfully enacting a theoretical enterprise where certain groups are outside the system's protection, it will become easier for conceptions of 'worthy' vs. 'unworthy' to extend beyond prisons themselves, to population blocs perceived by the majority as gaining traction at the expense of their own cherished rights—regardless of whether or not it is true.
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ESSAY: The Walsh Case - Background & Repurcussions
In an era marked by mounting public hysteria over 'stranger-danger' and child predators, the Walsh case is considered by many to be the tipping point, fueled by its own momentum of perceived legal and societal failures to protect children.
From Charley Ross to the Lindbergh Baby, incidents of children abducted by strangers have gripped public attention with a pervasive horror. The idea of childhood as a place of danger rather than security becomes a cruel inversion of social paradigms – particularly when children are snatched from under their parents' noses during humdrum activities. The underlying message – that it could be any child, any time, any place – threatens the very bastion of American society: the family.
Yet few cases have transformed the landscape of American culture as utterly as the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh. In an era marked by mounting public hysteria over 'stranger-danger' and child predators, the Walsh case is considered by many to be the tipping point, fueled by its own momentum of perceived legal and societal failures to protect children. Not only would it catalyze the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), but it would lead to missing-child safety programs such as Code Adam, as well as the emergence of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. Adam's death would also inspire two highly acclaimed made-for-TV films: Adam (1983) and its sequel Adam: His song Continues (1986). Additionally, the tragedy would see Adam's father, John Walsh, channel his grief into activism, going on to establish the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, as well as starring as the iconic host of America's Most Wanted.
Section I: Background
To adequately frame the phenomenon in its historical context, it is essential to return to the day of Adam's abduction. On July 27, 1981, Revé Walsh, a housewife in Hollywood, Florida – a seaside city nestled between Fort Lauderdale and Miami – was out running errands, with her six-year-old son Adam in tow. Her husband, a marketing manager for a local hotel company, had earlier called to mention that some brass barrel lamps were on sale at the Sears in the old Hollywood mall. The Walshes often frequented the store, which was a mile and a half from their home. Recalling that fateful afternoon trip with her son, Revé uses phrases such as "I parked as I always did" and "I held Adam's hand, as usual," to underscore its routine nature (Walsh, 1997, p. 112). That particular day, Adam was wearing green running shorts, a striped Izod shirt, yellow flip-flops, and an oversized captain's hat. After his disappearance, the outfit would be described down to the minutest detail in missing-child posters.
Once inside Sears, Revé and Adam took their habitual route through the toys department. At a kiosk, around which other children were flocked, was a video display with Atari 2600 games (Fig. 1.0). Adam asked his mother if he could stay behind and play. By Revé's own admission, this was a common occurrence. "That was our ritual: Going in the north door... And Adam begging me to let him play the video game." The lamp section was not far off; Revé felt comfortable with leaving Adam alone, because he did not have a tendency to wander off. In the Lamps section, Revé discovered that the brass barrel lamps were unavailable, and left her name with a request to have someone call her when they arrived. The task, according to her statement in the police report, took about ten to fifteen minutes (Donahay, 1981). However, when she returned to the toys department, Adam was gone. Her initial assumption was that he had drifted off into the adjacent aisles. However, when she called his name, and received no response, Revé confessed to getting a "strange feeling." As she explains, not only was Adam missing, but so were the gaggle of children at the video game kiosk (Walsh, 1997, p. 93-95).
Combing through the aisles, Revé came upon a boy with a captain's hat similar to the one Adam was wearing. Upon asking him if he had seen a boy with a hat like his, the child pointed outside the mall's west door. However, Revé dismissed this as impossible, since she and Adam never used that particular exit. Instead, Revé tried to enlist store employees' help in finding her son; her first efforts were met with dismissal and minimization: "No one paid any attention to me. They were acting like I didn’t exist. Invisible." This is particularly noteworthy, as it reveals the total absence of any programs or special alerts designed to locate missing children in department stores during the era. As Revé recounts, she was left to search by herself, joined later by her mother-in-law, who was coincidentally also at the mall. But even after Revé managed to flag down an employee to page Adam on the intercom, the announcement – "Adam Walsh, please come to customer service" – was not conducive to her purpose, because the average six-year-old would not know what customer service is (Standiford & Matthews, 2011; Walsh, 1997, p. 97-101).
Over forty-five minutes passed, but there was still no sign of Adam. At this point, the Hollywood Police Department (HPD) were summoned. However, their initial response was tepid at best. Apart from gathering information from Revé, and issuing a Be On the Lookout radio call, the officers seemed at a loss about what to do. As they explained to Revé, they dealt primarily with runaways; they suggested that perhaps Adam had simply wandered out of the store, become confused, and started walking home. As Revé writes, "It seemed like they were trying to get out of doing anything. There was apparently nothing in the book, no page in the manual, for what to do in this emergency. What to do if a little boy went missing"(Walsh, 1997, p. 104).
Ultimately, Revé's husband, John, was called. Together, the Walshes searched the mall, while police officers fanned out around the store in the approximate radius they believed a child in flip-flops might cover. Their search yielded no luck, and eventually, every available police officer was requested to search for Adam, with an alert sent to the Hollywood Citizens' Crime Watch. The scale of the search-party was massive, with the entire detective bureau and twenty-two patrol officers scouring everything from canals to dumpsters. By nightfall, unable to find Adam, the Walshes vacated to the police station opposite to the mall. They left Revé's unlocked car in the parking-lot, piled with blankets, toys, books, and a note visible behind the windshield, saying, "Adam, stay in the car. Mommy and Daddy are looking for you" (Standiford & Matthews, 2011, p. 56)
It was not until much later that Revé would remember being approached by a store security guard: seventeen-year-old Kathy Shaffer. She describes Shaffer as appearing upset because that same afternoon, she had broken up a scuffle between a group of boys – two white and two black – in the Toys section. She had put the black boys out of the north door, and the white boys out of the west door. While uncertain at the time about whether one of the boys was Adam, she would later state during a follow-up interview that she was eighty-five percent certain it was (Walsh, 1997; Mundy, 1996) (See Fig. 1.1). If that were the case, then Adam would have been disoriented, left outside an exit he was unfamiliar with. According to John and Revé, he may have not even have told the security guard that his mother was inside, because "he was a timid child and mindful of authority" (Reauthorization and Improvement..., 2009, p. 225).
Whatever the case, Adam's brief moments alone were enough for a drifter named Ottis Toole to lure him into his car with promises of toys and candy. Once Adam was inside, Toole took off north on i-95, heading toward his home in Jacksonville. During the initial journey, Adam appears to have been compliant; however, as the unfamiliar scenery passed by, he panicked and began to cry. Toole hit him several times to silence him, eventually "wallop[ing] him unconscious." Soon after, Toole pulled over to an empty service road north of the Radeburgh Road overpass, where he strangled Adam to death with a seatbelt. After dragging his body into a clearing between the brush and trees, Toole then decapitated him with a bayonet. He claims to have thrown the boy's head in a canal in Fort Lauderdale, and disposed of the body by incinerating it in an old refrigerator in Jacksonville (Chermak & Bailey, 2016, p. 824).
Of course, these details would not emerge until Toole's confession (among a slew of others) two years after Adam's disappearance. In the interim, a large-scale investigation was launched as the police's focus shifted from a lost child to a potential kidnapping. Jack Hoffman, the Hollywood detective leading the case, stated, "This is not the type of child to just walk off. But we don’t have any clues whatsoever what the motive would be." Flyers bearing Adam's picture – a quintessentially all-American boy with a red baseball cap and a cheerful gap-toothed grin – were distributed throughout the city (Fig. 1.2). The Walshes offered up a $5000 reward for the safe return of their son. As the days wore on, the amount was bumped up to $100000. However, despite countless tips and false leads, no one came forward with solid information about Adam's whereabouts (Walsh, 1997, p. 221).
Then, on August 10, 1981, two weeks after Adam's disappearance, a grisly discovery was made. While fishing on the banks of a drainage canal alongside the Florida Turnpike, two ranch hands glimpsed what appeared to be a doll's head floating in the water. However, when they paddled closer in a rowboat, they saw that it was human. The Florida Highway Patrol was summoned, as were the police and fire rescue from the neighboring Indian River County and St. Lucie County. Together, they attempted to search for Adam's remains, but were unsuccessful (Fig. 1.3 – 1.4). With the aid of Adam's dental records, the HPD were able to positively identify the recovered head as Adam's. The coroner, Dr. Wright, ruled the cause of the boy's death as asphyxiation. Judging by the liquefaction of the brain, Adam had been dead for approximately sixteen days after his disappearance. A machete or cleaver had been used for the decapitation itself; Wright stated it unlikely that Adam was alive when it occurred. To this day, the rest of Adam's body remains unrecovered (Standiford & Matthews, 2011).
Section II: The Victims
The primary victim of this tragedy is Adam Walsh. Described by his parents as an "introverted, sheltered, but very bright little boy," six-year-old Adam undeniably fits the criteria of the ideal victim/positive type, stirring public empathy as a "faultless innocent who has had crime visited upon them by a wicked perpetrator" (Hartman, 1981; Spencer & Walklate, 2017, p. 115). Media, volunteers and authorities alike flocked to his search; the news of his murder had manifold ripple effects, leaving not only his family but an entire nation shaken in its wake. The ramifications it would hold for both the social climate and the legal system will be touched upon later in this paper.
As mentioned, Adam was abducted from the Sears mall by Ottis Toole, chiefly because he was alone. In a number of statements made to the police, Toole would recount the different methods by which he murdered Adam – only to recant each confession. Sometimes, he stated that he had acted alone; other times he claimed he had an accomplice (his partner, Henry Lee Lucas.) His motive for kidnapping Adam would also change. Sometimes he claimed he had snatched the boy because he wanted to adopt him as a son; other times his reasoning was more predatory (Hickman & Hoffman, 1983). This would prove immensely frustrating for the investigation team, given that there was little physical evidence (largely due to mishandling on the part of the police and the crime lab) to otherwise connect him with the crime. It also meant that Toole, while incarcerated for other murders, was not specifically convicted for Adam's – causing no small amount of distress for Adam's parents, the secondary victims.
Directing our attention to John and Revé Walsh, it is essential to understand the mind-frame of these parents, who endured two weeks trapped in a limbo between hope and despair. The apprehension of Adam's would-be killer should have afforded a sense of grim closure, if nothing else. However, the HPD's mishandling of the case prolonged their ordeal over a span of decades. The department, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of Adam's case, and ill-equipped to conduct such a complex investigation, ended up withholding or overlooking key pieces of information. Chief among these was their neglecting to mention the green shorts and yellow sandals (matching Adam's outfit) that were found buried in Toole's yard, losing the vehicle which purportedly contained samples of Adam's DNA, and their failure to send the state attorney a graphic extortion letter Toole had written to John Walsh, confessing to Adam's murder (Standiford & Matthews, 2011). The Walshes were understandably appalled by the negligence; their lawyer went so far as to declare, "...[the] Hollywood police are the biggest bunch of bungling idiots since the Keystone Kops" (Walsh, 1997, p. 481).
Further contributing to the Walshes distress was the unusual nature of Adam's case itself. Studies conducted by the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrown-away Children (NISMART-2) place Adam's disappearance in the category of "nonfamily abduction," specifically stereotypical kidnapping. These are the rarest and most dangerous types, estimated at 115 per year, with the victims at a much higher risk of death than other abducted children (O'Brien & French, 2008; Sedlak, et al., 2002) (Fig. 1.5). The rarity of the crime, coupled with systemic failures – such as the fragmented nature of statewide databases for missing children at the time, and the inadequacy or outright absence of programs to provide comprehensive services for crime victims – would leave the Walshes feeling overwhelmed and isolated as they attempted to navigate through an alien world of criminal procedure.
Given the multiple layers of trauma, the Walshes would experience a vast spectrum of emotions: sadness, anger, despair, frustration, confusion, guilt and fear. They had thrown themselves into Adam's search as a means of keeping a semblance of control: "We were trying to fill every possible vacuum, with work, with effort, and with strategic planning." Understandably, the news of Adam's death struck a devastating chord of helplessness as well as personal loss. In his autobiography, John Walsh recounts how utterly the tragedy warped his and Revé's fundamental schemas of selfhood, and of the world itself. "...the scariest thing about Adam being murdered was that the world kept going on as it had been... It was as if nothing had changed." Besieged by intrusive thoughts of Adam's last moments, the couple had difficulty sleeping, eating or engaging with the outside world. "We were like two helpless children. We were reduced to being children." Revé was particularly affected because two weeks before Adam's disappearance, she had broken off an extramarital affair with a family friend, Jimmy Campbell – a fact that needlessly diverted the focus of the police investigation, served up salacious fodder to the press, and strained her relationship with her husband for a time. Similarly, John describes moments of suicidal ideation coupled with reckless behavior – including a close call with a hang-glider that crashed into the water. "...Throughout my life, I had survived ... so many brushes with death. But now, this time ... there didn’t seem to be any point" (Walsh, 1997, p. 147-615)
In addition to grappling with Adam's loss, the Walshes were thrust into the limelight and affixed with the label of mourning parents – an inherently limiting designation that placed any reaction diverging from the 'normal' paradigm under attack. John notes that it is fortunate he and Revé were white, middle-class and telegenic; otherwise their case would never have garnered national attention. That said, the scope of the attention was oftentimes intrusive. Not only did the media infringe on the family's privacy, but it opened up John and Revé to judgement during an especially sensitive time. Revé, for instance, was criticized for appearing too aloof during press conferences – "[not] acting the way they thought a grieving mother should" (Walsh, 1997, p. 611). Consistent with a tendency toward 'mother-blaming,' her supposed carelessness in leaving Adam unsupervised at the mall was also alighted upon (Ladd-Taylor & Umansky, 1998).
Understandably, the Walshes faith in institutions – the HPD, which bungled Adam's investigation from start to finish; the FBI, which refused to investigate Adam's disappearance in favor of searching for a missing $500,000 horse; the media, which exploited their grief for profit – was fundamentally shaken (Walsh, 1997, p. 252). The failure of these agencies would constitute what Martin Symonds refers to as a "second injury," wherein victims are further betrayed as they do not receive the support they are entitled (2010). Lastly, in terms of spirituality, it is equally likely that the Walshes – who identified as Catholic – would find religion either a source of comfort, or begin to question the core tenets of their faith.
In their work, Beyond the "victim": Secondary traumatic stress, Figley and Kleber note that secondary victims, despite experiencing the event indirectly, are oftentimes equally traumatized. Described as a "secondary traumatic stressor," or vicarious victimization, this holds a number of psychological consequences, from addictive behaviors to feelings alienation in interpersonal relationships (1995). Research delineates five particular areas which undergo cognitive disintegration: safety, trust, control, esteem, intimacy (McCann, Sakheim & Abrahamson, 1988). Similarly, multiple psychological publications emphasize the loss of a child as one of the most distressing events an adult can experience, catalyzing changes in their daily interactions and redelineations of social roles (Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Klass, 1988; Conrad, 1998). Further exacerbating the Walshes ordeal would be, not the extent of social support, but its nature and effectiveness. A study conducted by Sarah K. Spilman describes social support as a buffer that can aid in successful coping when parents lose a child. However, a protraction of the stressful situation often sees a concurrent diminishing of support, usually due to impediments in maintaining social relationships. Outsiders may lack the knowledge and awareness to respond appropriately to the secondary victims' needs. Worse, the social stigma that accompanies victimization, whether primary of secondary, often contributes to an inherent discomfort among nonvictims. For reasons ranging from the "just world" hypothesis to preconceptions of safety and goodness, victims may be perceived as anomalies because they challenge others' inherent beliefs (2004). As John Walsh notes, "People couldn't stand us ... Revé and I were in a place that they didn’t know anything about, and they weren’t sure how even to be around us" (1997, p. 243).
Understandably, as the parents of a murdered child, and as multifaceted individuals in their own right, the Walshes needs are complex. In addition to requiring a continuum of consistent support through the different stages of their journey, they might benefit from counseling, as well as from a functional social support network of parents facing similar crises. A focus, not on conventional psychodrama but sociatry, might also aid their healing process. Defined by Moreno as the "healing of normal society...of inter-related individuals and of inter-related groups," this sociometric focus on broader issues within the communal fabric, with an emphasis not on linear/sequential healing, but on processing trauma as a cyclical entity with its own ebbs and flows, may be useful in allowing them to find a place within a chaotic universe, especially after such a fundamentally damaging shift in their world-view (Bloom, 2011, p. 113).
Additionally, following Toole's apprehension, the Walshes would seek access to the criminal justice system, the better to feel like active participants rather than passive bystanders in the construction of their son's case. Victim assistance professionals could bolster them in various ways: by coordinating with the family throughout the justice process, by providing them with both information and support during court proceedings, by serving as mediators between them and the press, and by encouraging them to offer input during and after the case's resolution – whether in the form of impact statements, or, on a legislative level, during the review or revision of statutes (Walklate, 2017).
The necessity of restoring both safety and agency in the Walshes day-to-day lives would also be paramount. As mentioned, the conception of trauma as absolutely random, rather than guided by latent principle of justice, can be terrifying for one's core belief-systems. Many victims, following the aftermath of a crime, find a measure of comfort in the idea – especially if denied the reality – of personal choice in how they choose to process negative outcomes. This freedom to rebuild their inner world on their own terms, at their pace, undoubtedly serves as a springboard for reshaping their roles in the external world. Whether this is via grasping a voice through advocacy/policy-making, forming local coalitions with other victims' rights groups on a local or national scale, augmenting sources of funding for other crime victims etc, such recourses are a source of empowerment, as they allow individuals to confront their experiences and reestablish a vestige of positive purpose in their lives (Laxminarayan, 2015). On a more tangible level, the local law enforcement could adopt schemes of collaborative problem-solving within the community itself, to restore essential components of safety to the Walshes' lives. A study conducted by Eileen E. Rinear revealed that of a sample of 200 parents whose children were lost to homicide, a quarter reported concerns for the safety of themselves and their surviving children (1988). Given how extensively Adam's case was mishandled by the HPD, it is imperative to cross-train law enforcement personnel on cases of missing children. Additionally, the development of an agency-wide victim assistance program may foster greater cohesion between the HPD and those it serves. For the Walshes, the aforementioned steps might be beneficial in negating, if not erasing, the negative sequelae arising from Adam's murder – particularly an inherent feeling of insecurity, since the kidnapping occurred in their hometown, under their parental aegis.
Section III - Advocates and Exposers
From the beginning, one of the most salient aspects of Adam's case is the incredible momentum behind it. Described as one of the largest missing-child searches in Florida, Adam's disappearance would see Crime Watch volunteers, the media, law enforcement, psychics, politicians, non-profit organizations, and ordinary people from different walks of life rallying to his cause. More noteworthy is the fact that, rather than enlisting support from missing-child advocacy groups, Adam's case would instead be the source-material from which prominent organizations for abducted children would spring forth. As John Walsh recalls, he was approached during the early days of Adam's disappearance by state-based groups such as Child Find – a New York organization for missing children run by Kristin Cole Brown, and by Julie Patz, whose son Etan's disappearance led to May 25th as being designated National Missing Children's Day – largely to enlist his support in championing for missing children on a national level (Walsh, 1997). Independently, these groups and individuals could wield little clout; however, John was one of the few visible white males fighting for change in this arena, with a drive and dynamism that appealed to media groups. With him as the vocal figurehead of a growing missing-children movement, it would not be long before their cause garnered legislative attention.
One of the first people to contact the Walshes in the interest of juridical change was Ivana DiNova, the president of the now-defunct Dee Schofield Awareness Program. Based in Brandon, Florida, the organization's primary goal was to aid families of missing children, in memory of Ivana's niece Delilah, who went missing in 1976 (Good, 2004). DiNova was campaigning for the passage of a bill known as the Missing Children Act, which would require that a centralized database on missing children be maintained by the FBI. Assisting in her efforts were Florida's Republican senators, Paula Hawkins and Lawton Chiles, both of whom had cosponsored the bill. Hawkins was particularly enthusiastic in enlisting the Walshes' support (Standiford & Matthews, 2011). Critics of the bill had argued that it would invade privacy and violate personal freedoms. However, with someone as well-known as John Walsh lobbying on their behalf ("their poster-person," as Walsh describes himself), the bill's proponents hoped to sway the general public alongside official policy (1997, p. 586). While it would be cynical to dismiss these overtures as strategic, it is also essential to keep in mind that such movements on the social and legislative front were emblematic of a greater paradigmatic shift in the 1980s from rehabilitation to retribution, in the wake of a violent crime surge. Unfortunately, hand-in-hand with this tough-on-crime stance was an appeal to moral authority, frequently with emotive rhetoric and the conflation of fact and fiction, as part of the claims-making process. In their work, Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media, Critcher notes that "The example of the missing-children problem suggests that rhetoric plays a central role in claims-making about social problems. Atrocity tales typified the missing children problem..." (2011, p. 209). Indeed, testifying before the Senate committee, John Walsh cut a tragically dignified figure. Lamenting the fragmented nature of law enforcement agencies across different jurisdictions, he would call for a more unified system, while painting a grim picture of a nation beset by child abductions. "This country is littered with mutilated, decapitated, raped and strangled children" (Jones, 2015).
The media would alight upon the dire pronouncement. Despite statistical evidence to the contrary, missing children came to be portrayed as a national epidemic, lured from their homes by psychopathic strangers to be despoiled and murdered. Walsh would go as far as to warn that 50000 American children were snatched by strangers per year – despite data from the FBI collected in 1984, which put the number firmly at 67. While there were, certainly, a large number of reports concerning missing children, a majority were runaways, with the remainder taken by non-custodial parents (Silverman, 2009; Waxman, 2016). However, based in part on what Turvey and Patherick refer to as the availability heuristic, media groups would evoke images of a society fallen to chaos, with child-abductions by strangers – once a rarity – burgeoning into a terrifying daily phenomenon. Articles on missing children would be published in the Newsweek, Times, Psychology Today, and even Penthouse. Semi-fictional works such as the television miniseries Adam would have the twofold effect of immortalizing Adam's legacy while sparking fears of serial killers prowling for innocent children in playgrounds and neighborhoods. Schools would implement educational programs for youngsters to recognize signs of "stranger-danger," and hyperintensive "helicoptor parenting" would transform the geography of childhood from one of carefree idealism to unceasing vigilance (Best, 1993; Wojcik, 2016). Paula S. Fass notes that the omnipresent threat of child-abduction became the Agony of the 80s, remarking, "...the poster children, the billboard children, and the Advo card children of all colors, both genders, and a variety of ages became everpresent, a psychic scar in American culture" (1999, p. 237; 2007).
This is not to say, of course, that the Walshes concerns were entirely ungrounded. There was, indeed, a linkage gap between law enforcement agencies across different states – not to mention a dearth of nationwide databases for missing children. The Walshes were determined to rectify this problem, the better to raise awareness and help families in similar predicaments. It was in this spirit that they founded the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children in 1981. A nonprofit sustained on donations, the organization had three initial goals: Campaigning to assist Paula Hawkins in passing the Missing Children Act; aiding police agencies in the recovery of missing children; and offering a $100,000 reward for information on Adam's potential killer. Over time, however, the organization would receive support from numerous entities – from the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law, which continues to work for advancements in children's' rights through justice, knowledge, practice and public policy, and Child Advocacy, Inc., a Florida-centered nonprofit specializing in education and training on children’s issues. These organizations, and a myriad of others, would merge with the Adam Walsh Outreach Center to become national movement (Walsh, 1997).
Finally, in 1982, Congress would enact the Missing Children Act, allowing the entry of missing child information into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. By 1984, former President Ronald Reagan would officially establish the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and the Adam Walsh Outreach Center would integrate with it to become the first national clearinghouse for information on missing and exploited children. To this day, the NCMEC remains an active force in matters of child safety and prevention, as well as in victim and family support (Fig. 1.6). They have a 24-hour toll-free hotline (800-THE-LOST) as well as a website, (www.missingkids.com) that functions as a de facto database for abducted/victimized children. The organization's goals are to disseminate information on children reported missing, to assist physically and sexually abused children, offer case analysis, support and training to law enforcement, and to distribute vital safety information to families. They have a sister network, the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children, that operates in twenty-two countries in conjunction with Interpol. The organization has also created a CyberTipline to make it easier for online computer users to report information regarding child enticement, child pornography, sex tourism, and molestation (NCMEC, 2017). By 2001, the tipline received more than 38,000 reports of child exploitation to be forwarded to designated law enforcement agencies. In 2017, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awarded the organization up to $28.3 million in funding, as support for it continued efforts to promote child safety (Missing and Exploited Children: Background and Policies, 2017).
Section IV: The Law
Prior to Adam's abduction, the abysmal absence of any coherency or cohesion in statewide databases has been noted. Indeed, throughout his crime-fighting career, John Walsh would decry the lack of centralized databases, much less any federal mandates to trace missing children, as a national failure. This became his chief impetus for lobbying for the passage of the Missing Children Act. Testifying before the Senate in 1981, Walsh would remark that the very creation of the FBI was "to assist in the war on kidnapping," – a reference to the earliest federal kidnapping act of 1932, the Lindbergh Law (Walsh, 1997, p. 253). Created after the horrific and highly mediated abduction and murder of Charles Lindbergh's son, the law dictated it a federal offense to transport victims across state lines or utilize mail services for ransom notes. While intended to give the FBI greater authority in pursuing kidnapping cases, Les Standiford notes that the agency "... maintained a long-standing reluctance to interfere with local police in such matters. It often made for bad politics, for one thing; for another, most kidnapping cases turned out to be the result of messy, interfamilial wrangling" (2011, p. 148).
However, Walsh remained steadfast in his advocacy, enlisting support from the media. While the initial Senate hearing's publicity was eclipsed by the assassination of Egypt's president, Anwar el-Sadat, Walsh, in tandem with Julie Patz and other parents of missing children, made an appearance on the Phil Donahue show. Described by Lisa R. Cohen as highly "substantive," and "topical" during the era, the show provided Walsh with a sweeping platform (2012, p. 71). Over eight million viewers would tune in to hear the tragic stories of Adam and other missing children, and be urged to write to their state representatives for the passage of the Missing Children Act. Walsh would also make the rounds of Washington, attending summits with politicians, child advocates and law enforcement, speaking at length in news conferences and appearing on popular shows such as Good Morning America and NBC's Real People. Prominent public figures such as Dr. Frank Osanka would deliver lectures on "The Other Adams: Facts About Child Abductions in America;" Sociologists such as Michael Agopian, director of the Child Stealing Research Center, would declare that there were "tens of thousands of additional Adams that [were] not so prominently reported by the media" (Best, 1993, p. 29; Gardner 2009; Missing Children's Assistance Act, 1984; Walsh, 1997).
It would take almost a year for the legislation to be signed into law, and another two years for the establishment of the NCMEC – but media pressure would be instrumental in bringing everything to fruition. Florida representative Clay Shaw would go as far as to remark, "I have in my office received literally thousands of names on petitions and letters" – a fact he would attribute to the vast television coverage on the issue (Cohen, 2009, p. 72). Of course, to solely credit the media as spearheading the missing-child movement is simplistic. However, increased news cycles and milk carton campaigns certainly lent higher visibility to what in truth were rare occurrences (See Fig. 1.7). Popular made-for-television films such as Adam and its sequel Adam: His Song Continues would galvanize the public into demanding the enforcement of harsher laws to prevent child victimization. John Walsh would also become increasingly prominent as a bereaved parent-turned-celebrity, serving as an embodiment of the agonies of stranger-abduction while explicitly and implicitly shaping public views of the problem through activism and show-business alike (America's Most Wanted and The Hunt with John Walsh to name a few). As mentioned, a sociological shift toward punitive criminal justice policies and hardline tactics was already burgeoning during the era. However, the abductions of children such as Adam, Etan Patz, and Steven Stayer would fan the flames of moral panic to new heights (Fass, 2007; Negra, 2010). The multifaceted range of media, from local TV broadcasts to highway billboards, would saturate public consciousness and leave parents with a sense that child-abductions were snowballing beyond the control of law enforcement. Psychotherapist Nicholas Kardaras notes how the era marked "a turning point in our society. It was a beginning of a new age of worry for parents, and many of the 'kid freedoms' that people from an earlier generation remember [were] now a thing of the past" (2017, p. 190).
Whatever the case, the Missing Children Act would herald a slew of legislation from the late 1980s all the way to the 2000s, in the interests of protecting children. By 1990, the National Child Search Assistance Act would require local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to enter information concerning missing children into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database without a waiting period. Barely four years afterward, the Wetterling Act would be implemented with the purpose of requiring states to maintain a sex offender and crimes against children registry. 1996 would see the enactment of Megan’s Law, which demanded community notification of sex Offenders, and the Lychner Act, which implemented offender registration on the national level. By 2000, the Child Abuse Reform and Enforcement Act (CARE) would be passed to "promote the improvement of information on, and protections against, child sexual abuse." Most recently and pertinently, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was signed into law by then-President George W Bush in 2006. Commemorating Adam's twenty-fifth anniversary, the act boasted a number of stricter provisions, including the increase of mandatory minimum sentences for sex offenders, the upgrade of sex offender registration and tracking, the creation of a Sex Offender Management Assistance program (SOMA), under which the Attorney General may award grants to jurisdictions to alleviate the costs of implementing the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), and the establishment of an Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking Office (SMART Office). The late 1980s would also see several malls and department stores adopting a special alert known as Code Adam, when customers reported a missing child. First established by Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs, "Code Adam" would be the precursor to the well-known "Amber Alert," which serves today as means for broadcast-based community notification (Federal Child Protection Law, n.d; Sprague, 2013; SMART Office, n.d.; Wilson, 2009).
The Walshes' home state of Florida, would also see prominent laws enacted following Adams disappearance. By 1997, under the Public Safety Information Act, Florida would became the first state to list sexual predators and offenders on the Internet, allowing the information to be available via a 24-hour hotline. A year afterward, the Jimmy Ryce Act would be passed unanimously by the Florida legislature, calling for inmates with a history of sex offenses to be reviewed by the Department of Corrections to determine their risk level for re-offending. In 2005, the Jessica Lunsford Act would call for the legal classification of sexual acts on a person under the age of 12 as a life felony, with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and a lifetime electronic monitoring. (ICPC State Pages, n.d.; Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement, n.d; Jessica's Law, 2010; Jimmy Ryce Act, 2017.)
By far one of the most polemical aspect of the Walsh Act and its successors has been their infringements on privacy. By resorting to what many opponents perceive as Federal coercion, the laws' broadened criteria for sex offenders burdens not only the states, but resorts to ill-begotten methods of punishment and ostracism that increase rather than decrease recidivism. Yet, when examined holistically, these ever-evolving laws are also reflective of the social anxieties and political agendas marking the era. Beginning with the fateful day of Adam's abduction, they reveal the power of the press, the general public, policymakers – and above all the victims – to transform the landscape of both American culture and official policy alike.
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Having submerged himself in the undercurrents of the Islamic world – arguably the Other in the contemporary political climate – Wright's convictions as an American waver and strengthen throughout the course of the documentary.
Based on the eponymous one-man Broadway play, My Trip to Al-Qaeda is a documentary that boasts Alex Gibey (of "Taxi to the Dark Side" fame) at its helm and collaborates with Pulitzer-prize winning journalist/writer Lawrence Wright. A modest eighty-six minutes in length, the film functions in equal parts as a chroniclization and a self-reflection of Wright's experiences in the Middle East – both post-and-pre 9/11.
At its most basic, My Trip to Al-Qaeda is a narrative that traces the roots of Islamic extremism – spanning across Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia – and attempts to decode and condense it in a manner palatable to Western audiences. At its more complex, it is an American journalist straddling two different – often disparate sociopolitical viewpoints – and struggling to maintain objectivity due to his unique positioning. Having submerged himself in the undercurrents of the Islamic world – arguably the Other in the contemporary political climate – Wright's convictions as an American waver and strengthen throughout the course of the documentary. On the one hand, invested with the acuity of an outsider in the Middle East, he is able to criticize aspects of the cultural strata that its denizens may fail to identify themselves. On the other hand, after becoming so deeply invested in the nuances of a different social realm, his own optimistic belief in America's strategy against global terrorism turns into deep uncertainty as he is forced to grapple U.S foreign policy measures from the perspective of those it targets.
Unfortunately, because Wright's own weltanschauung is so enriched by different – frequently contradictory – elements, the documentary seems to lose sight of its premise. Tackling the theme of terrorism and its brutal beginnings is already an ambitious endeavor. But Wright braids it with a multitude of secondary issues: from the United States' missteps in countering global terrorism, to the dissolution of its once-sacrosanct ideals of freedom and justice, to the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, to the brutality of Egyptian prisons, to the ennui and aimlessness endured by young men throughout parts of the Islamic world. This in itself would not be troublesome, except Wright's own viewpoint is woven too thickly throughout the documentary, layered over every conversation, every videoclip and interview. The result is equal parts compelling and disjointed. Certain topics enjoy too much focus; others, not enough. It all seems to depend of what holds Wright's personal interest.
That said, as someone who has spent several years in the Middle East, as well as in the United States, Wright's stance is both familiar and sympathetic. His observations on the lifestyle in Saudi Arabia, with its outsized focus on shopping as both a social outlet and an extracurricular activity, ring amusingly true. So, too, does his connection between the currently combustible environment in Egypt, Syria, Iran, etc, and the upheaval of revolution that heralded it. As Wright himself notes, "Change does not equal progress."
At the same time however, his position as a cultural interpreter is somewhat flawed, in part because he wears the fabric of Americentricism too blatantly. Whether by accident or intent, he portrays much of the Middle East in the same manner that it is caricatured by a majority of the conservative Western media: as a breeding ground of inequality and fanaticism, into which the U.S. political model of democracy should be neatly exported. He does not, however, devote nearly as much time to the USA's own contentious history, or the issues currently brewing in its own backyard. Personally, I would have preferred a balance between the two.
On a more positive note, the documentary is atmospheric and gripping. Interspersed with dozens of historically iconic cut-scenes, and stretching across a number of countries, from the United States to Egypt, Wright interviews several individuals – Muslim and otherwise – in order to offer American audiences a fine-grained view of life 'across the pond,' so to speak. In each case, he delves into the social norms with astuteness and sensitivity, from accurately describing the gender-segregated practices in Saudi Arabia and the troubles they spawn among its youth, to his veracious remarks on why Egyptian prisons, with their particular brand of cruelty, are able to breed such dangerous jihadist zeal among prisoners. The issue, unfortunately, is that each topic, while a compelling opportunity to explore each country's cultural and religious psyche, is initially handled promisingly, then hastily concluded as a mere widget for illustrating Wright's own one-liner theories, from "hypnotized chickens" to "wild dogs." For example, having touched upon the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, Wright criticizes his veiled colleague for actively choosing the hijab, thereby assisting in her own oppression. However, he fails to recognize that Saudi women develop this rationalization out of necessity, as flouting the country's strict social norms can result in both religious censure and communal ostracism. A deeper exploration into the subject would be helpful, but Wright has already moved on to a different theme.
On the whole, My Trip to Al-Qaeda is an illuminating film for anyone requiring a fresh perspective on the ongoing war on terror. For audiences with a minimal understanding of Islamic nations in all their vagaries, the film offers a geographically and culturally pertinent outline. In many respects, it may even function as a 'gateway' documentary, inspiring younger viewers to dig deeper into the roots of current affairs via other sources of media. For those already absorbed in the by-play of global events, the film is a trenchant reminder of the complexities of civilizations, be they Islamic or Western. Its point of failure, sadly, lies in the untidy knot of themes that stretch throughout the narration. Wright's need to paint a vivid cultural picture, only to hastily generalize it in order to rush to his own judgement and conclusion, lacks subtlety. His personal opinions – and, indeed, his desire to be the primary focus of the audience's attention – overshadows the film's more sensitive messages.
Personally, while I find that Wright has sketched a wonderfully accurate shape of the Middle East, and its troubled geopolitical zeitgeist, he has overlooked its deeper intricacies. There is no overarching root of Islamic fanaticism that can be faithfully captured through a single documentary. The issues besieging the Middle East – and, indeed, the entirety of the world – are immeasurable. Nor too is the "Arab perspective" Wright attempts to highlight so static and one-dimensional that it can be easily pegged. The Islamic psyche is an organic, multilayered, ever-changing bricolage – much like that of any civilization. However, these factors are not allowed the full breathing space necessary to develop.
Overall, Gibey's talents as a director cannot be faulted. The documentary caught and held my attention from start to finish. Wright, too, shows great potential in his dual roles as storyteller and social commentator. The messages he brings forth, while not brand-new, are nonetheless deeply empathetic, and I would recommend the film to friends and family without reservation.
ESSAY: "Mad, Bad, & Dangerous to Know"- Narratives of Female Killers in Law & Media
The accepted roles of women continue to be those of nurturers, and idealized conceptions of womanhood remain tied to vulnerability, gentleness and self-sacrifice. Consequently, the element of female violence becomes doubly jarring.
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In both reality and virtuality, the phenomenon of the 'female killer' is imbued with the illicit charisma of transgression. History is woven with literary and cinematic portrayals of women who kill, their personas mythologized until they have become staples in the popular imagination. Biblical archetypes such as Lilith, Salome and Jezebel are steeped in evocative subtext of the predacious, pre-patriarchal feminine entity. Similarly, the tautological relationship between the femme fatale and the film noir genre has long since been established, with the femme serving almost as a repository of everything irresistibly devious, yet simultaneously aberrant to the prescribed roles of her gender. Indeed, when perusing any account of female murderers, from fictive to real-life, there is an implicit sense that violence is the realm of the masculine. Women who traverse into this sphere, therefore, are aberrations – not just at the societal but the biological level. Although 'femininity' is an ever-evolving concept, it remains entrenched in patriarchal presuppositions. The accepted roles of women continue to be those of nurturers, and idealized conceptions of womanhood remain tied to vulnerability, gentleness and self-sacrifice. Consequently, the element of female violence becomes doubly jarring. It challenges society to reassess its established standards of sex/gender, exposing the deeply-embedded binarizations and prejudices still in play.
In order to rationalize the seemingly arbitrary behaviors of female murderers, two stock narratives are often employed by law, media and fiction. Known predominantly as the "mad/bad" dichotomy, this construction can be traced as far back as Lombroso and Ferrerro's seminal criminological work, The Female Offender. Intended to explain non-stereotypical female crimes, such as homicide and filicide, Lombroso first delineates the essence of "normal womanhood" – a paragon of passivity, guided by pure maternal instinct and utterly devoid of sexual desire. Women who depart from this definition are "closer to [men]... than to the normal woman," yet the masculinization does not elevate them shoulder-to-shoulder with their male counterparts. Rather, the criminal woman is a hybridized sub-species closer to children and animals. Firstly, as a creature of "undeveloped intelligence," she is riven by irresistible impulses and ungovernable emotions, thus susceptible to "Crimes of Passion/Mad Frenzy." Secondly, she exhibits a "diabolical" cruelty that far exceeds that of the male criminal, owing to a biological predisposition wherein her "evil tendencies are more numerous and varied than men's" (31-183). As Lombroso sums up,
"...in women, as in children, the moral sense is inferior... That which differentiates woman from the child is maternity and compassion; thanks to these, she has no fondness for evil for evil's sake (unlike the child, who will torture animals and so on.) Instead... she develops a taste for evil only under exceptional circumstances, as for example when she is impelled by an outside force or has a perverse character (80).
While such gendered contradistinctions have long since fallen into disfavor in criminological research, the "mad frenzy" versus "diabolical" categories continue to determine how female violence is portrayed in both media and legal discourse. Described by Brickey and Comack as a "master status template," these trajectories of 'mad' or 'bad' either victimize or pathologize female offenders, displacing the focus off the crime and onto the woman's inability to fit into predesigned boxes of normality, and more significantly, femininity (167). For instance, in the 'mad' polarity, the woman's agency is diminished in favor of painting her as a victim: "depressed," "traumatized," "deranged," and ultimately at the mercy of her emotions. It glosses over the killer's responsibility as an equal citizen under the law, falling back on archaic feminine tropes of passivity and helplessness that serve only to reinforce gender stereotypes. Granted, while mental illness can and has been a valid defense against culpability, it proves problematic when it reduces women who kill to Lombrosian roles of primitive infantalism. They are not dynamic actors in their own right, but tragic casualties of female physiology gone awry. On the 'bad' end of the spectrum, female killers are subsequently masculinized as per Lombroso's model, then stripped of all 'womanly' attributes, i.e. morality, kindness, delicacy. The language employed by media, literature and law alike tends to vilify them as deviants, beyond redemption or reform – and thus beyond the realm of humanity (Cranford 1426).
Both these approaches prove detrimental for a number of reasons. First, they force attention away from treating female offenders as nuanced singularities whose motivations are fluid and complex. Second, an outsized focus on their perceived biological or psychological failings does not offer a broader understanding of criminogenic behaviors at a macro-structural level. Indeed, it can be argued that such simplistic typologies as 'Victim' or 'Monster' serve only to highlight and feed harmful gender stereotypes, reducing these women to grotesque spectacles of 'Otherness' based on their deviance from the discursive framework of femininity.
To be sure, women who kill are statistically rare. Data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2003-2012 revealed that males carried out the lion's share of homicides at 88% ("Ten Year Arrest Trends by Sex"). When filtered through the designative lens of serial murder, i.e. "…a series of three or more killings… having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor," the number of female offenders dwindles further ("Serial Murder" 7). In his work, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, Peter Vronsky remarks that only one in almost every six serial killers in the USA is a woman (3-5). Studies conducted in the early 1990s also revealed that men were six to seven times likelier to kill others – strangers or relatives – than women (D'Orbán 560-571; Kellermann et al. 1-5). Similarly, Harrison and others found substantial effect sizes between both genders, in addition to marked sex differences in their modi operandi, i.e. males conforming to a "hunter" strategy of stalking and killing, while women resort to "gatherer" behaviors by targeting victims in their direct milieu for profit-based motives (295-306).
While these findings might explain the tenacious constructions of femininity – and subsequent 'deviance' – that still cling to the overall subject of female killers, they do not excuse them. Indeed, it can be argued that popular media portrayals of women who kill further fuel these stereotypes. News, infotainment and cinema alike employ a highly effective formula whose pivotal components are simplification, sex, violence and graphic imagery (Jewkes 43-60). Female killers cannot fully satisfy this sensationalist criterion except as caricatures. Otherwise, as highly complex and richly variegated individuals, their existence would prove to be a messy fissure within the neat constructions of gender and power dynamics – a status quo that the media arguably serves to reaffirm and maintain (Kirby 165-178).
It is unsurprising, then, that a marked dichotomy can be observed in the portrayals of male versus female killers. As previously noted, male serial killers are believed to exhibit "hunting" behaviors, with their crimes seen as the evolutionary offshoot of "unconscious drives" (Harrison 304-6). Applying this hypothesis under the aegis of patriarchy, men who kill subsequently become distortions of the masculine ideal: the quintessential hunter. The nature of their crimes is at once instrumental and agentic; their actions are rooted in destructive hypermasculinity – but masculinity all the same. Their actions are shocking, but in their own way they serve as paradigms of nonconformity. They have broken free from the artificial constraints of society, rejecting the very source that dares to judge them. Certainly, for Lombroso, the male killer was often coupled with genius, and his deviance linked to retrograde evolution, wherein his sloughing-off of societal norms, and ultimately sanity, was a biological reaction to being excessively endowed with high intellect. For Lombroso, while female killers were a biological anomaly, the males were often a trailblazing nexus between exceptionality and atavistic brutality – "creators of new forms of crime, inventors of evil" (74). In their book, The Murder Mystique: Female Killers and Popular Culture, Laurie Nalepa and Richard Pfefferman remark that:
Murderers are not heroes. But killing— whether motivated by passion, greed, thrills, madness, ideals, or desperation— is an extraordinary act; not an honorable one, to be sure, but undeniably extraordinary. And extraordinary acts— even depraved ones— tend to have the effect of elevating the perpetrator to iconic cultural status (4).
It is unsurprising, then, that the media deifies such individuals by capitalizing on their very notoriety. They are bestowed catchy yet edgy nicknames such as Boston Strangler, Skid Row Slasher, Night Stalker, etc. Their exploits receive exuberant, stylized coverage, while their actions are profiled and dissected to the point where they eclipse needful attention to their victims. History recalls with a horrified yet titillated clarity the names of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez. However, their victims are seldom so fervently immortalized. The implication is that these killers are superstars within their own sensationalist dramas, whereas their victims function as mere props to drive the narrative forward. As Lisa Downing notes in her book, The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer, "...a pervasive idea obtains in modern culture that there is something intrinsically different, unique, and exceptional about those subjects who kill. Like artists and geniuses, murderers are considered special ... individual agents" (1).
Cinema, too, reinforces the phenomenon by lending male killers, both real and fictional, a disreputable mystique – often elevating them to the status of cult fixtures. Examples of this trend include the critically-acclaimed American Psycho, which juxtaposes orgiastic violence with careless misogyny, but is nonetheless lauded as a masterpiece of urban self-satire, as well as the fast-paced psychedelia of Natural Born Killers, where chaotic murder-sprees are translated as thrilling acts of rebellion and self-expression against a hypocritical society. Similarly, the mythic Hannibal Lector, in Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs, is portrayed as a ruthless strategist whose skills, while undoubtedly evil, can also be harnessed for good because of their collective desirability. Lector the killer may be abhorrent and ghoulish; however, Lector the man holds something of an esoteric appeal. His very transgressions serve to glamorize him as a shadowy figure of fascination and reverence (Roy 61-92).
The cinematic emphasis on male killers as paradigms of intelligence and charisma doesn't extend to pure fiction. Recent docufilms such as Joe Berlinger's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile – which focuses on the exploits of real-life serial killer Ted Bundy, as played by the photogenically clean-cut Zac Effron – further underscore the tendency to glamorize male killers. As Anne Cohen notes, far from throwing a necessary spotlight on Bundy's victims, the film reduces them to irrelevant footnotes against a fawning narrative of Bundy's private life, as served up from the POV of his then-girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall. While the film's original intent may be to illustrate how Bundy's boy-next-door glibness could successfully fool his intimate circle, it arguably overshoots the mark by romanticizing Bundy to the extent that the audience becomes just as infatuated with him as Elizabeth. As Cohen states, "There's only so many times we can watch Ted’s tender acceptance of [Elizabeth] as a single mother, his devotion to her daughter Molly, his thoughtful gestures — cooking breakfast, playing in the snow, wearing a lame birthday hat — before we… start to feel enamored" (1). The subsequent backlash after the biopic's premiere, coupled with the perverse flurry of online admiration it rekindled for Bundy, is a classic case of the film's message becoming lost in translation (Millard 1). It also serves as a potent reminder that framing, whether intentional or accidental, allows male killers to invariably maintain the pedestal of cultural obsessions. As critic Richard Lawson puts it,
It’s indeed a wicked bit of casting. In addition to his heinous crimes, Bundy was famed for being disarmingly good-looking and charming. But he certainly wasn’t an Efron-level sun-god—so Efron’s presence in the movie lends the proceedings an extra otherworldliness, heightening the insidious appeal of American serial-killer lore to something almost pornographic (1).
Ultimately, whether biopic or fiction, these films swim through similar undercurrents: within a patriarchal framework, the male killer is a magnetic symbol of human impulse. A dark reflection of reality, certainly – but not, as is the case with female killers, a deflection of it. In contrast, paradigmatic examples of female killers as Lombrosian aberrations exist abundantly in film. Cinematic classics such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction both feature psychopathic female leads, their much-vaunted sex appeal serving as a sinister smokescreen for their more bloodthirsty agendas. Underpinning their sanguinary appetites however, is the implicit strain of 'deviance' that first lures in, then terrorizes, their hapless victims. In Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone's neo-noir femme fatale Catherine Tramell is portrayed as a bisexual, hard-partying thrill-seeker who indulges solely in her own mordant whims. Every facet of her character serves to scandalize the audience – a framing that calls to attention the more docile, morally acceptable standards of femininity, as well as their ubiquity and pervasiveness within society.
However, for all Tramell's seductive dynamism, it is arguable whether hers is an empowering or feminist icon. Her body serves too blatantly as an erotic spectacle for male fantasy, effectively displacing her more human complexities (if they exist at all.) While Berlinger's Extremely Wicked offsets Bundy's erotic charge with a trickster's charm, and humanized nuances of emotion, Tramell's character remains a succubic enigma from start to finish. If anything, she appears to function as a two-pronged warning for male viewers. Firstly, that uncontrolled, untamed and non-heteronormative female sexuality is intrinsically rooted in criminality (Davies and Smith, 105-107). Secondly, that independent and sexually-dominant women are only palatable when their characters are flattened into pornographic caricatures (Meyers 300). In her book, The Dominance of the Male Gaze in Hollywood Films, Isabelle Fol remarks that the film "... appeals in particular to men to avoid deviant women and settle for a homely girl in order to evade the castration threat" (69).
This fact is seemingly underscored by the film's ultimate, ambiguous scene, where Stone and Douglas' characters are locked in a voracious embrace in bed. A foreboding, Hitchcock-esque refrain rises to crescendo and the camera pans down to reveal an ice-pick – Tramell's weapon of choice – concealed beneath the bed. It is through this scene that Tramell's inherent irredeemability asserts itself most explicitly. Granted, she eludes the fate inevitable to a majority of Hollywood vamps – death as fitting punishment for rejecting the traditional roles of womanhood. However, by no means has she been 'cured' by the hero's love. If anything, the scene highlights her perpetual threat as the castrator. The moment the male protagonist fails to satisfy her, she will dispose of him with brutal efficiency before moving on to her next victim. In that sense, she is the 'bad' female killer par excellence, her perceived deviance serving only to reaffirm the status quo rather than dismantle it.
Similarly, Fatal Attraction follows a well-known cinematic formula. A flawed but sympathetic hero – Michael Douglas' philandering Dan Gallagher – is beguiled, bedded then ultimately betrayed by the volatile femme fatale, who refuses to be relegated to an inconsequential fling and instead seeks to invade every sphere of his life, with the intent of eclipsing the very bedrock of patriarchal stability: the nuclear family. In doing so, the femme becomes, by her very nature, deviant – and must be quashed for the threat of chaos she represents. Certainly, the film goes to great lengths to paint Glen Close's character – the seductive and mysterious Alex Forest – as an unstable force who upends the hero's life with escalating levels of terror. An outspoken career woman, Forest also serves as the perfect foil for Gallager's more docile wife Beth – a whore/madonna dualism that is nearly as prevalent in cinema and literature as the mad/bad dichotomy.
Of course, where the latter is concerned, Forest is emphatically depicted as 'mad.' Her behavior is increasingly irrational and demanding, ranging from plaintive entreaties to Dan to return to her, to obsessively calling him at work and at home, to playing on his sense of guilt by announcing she is pregnant with his child, to throwing acid at his car, to killing and boiling his daughter's pet rabbit, to ultimately attacking his wife Beth in her bathroom. The film's penultimate scene, where she is shot dead by Beth after a frantic, bloody struggle with Dan, is represented as both triumphant and wholly justified. The survival of the male hero, as well as the continued sanctity of the family, is contingent on the demonization of the 'Other Woman' – and on her violent expulsion from the narrative. The film's final, lingering shot of the Gallaghers' family portrait acts as a sanctimonious reminder of who the audience is meant to cheer for, from beginning to end. In her book, International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction, Cynthia Weber notes that,
...Fatal Attraction is far from a gender-neutral tale. It is the tale of one man's reaction to unbounded feminine emotion (the film's symbolic equivalent for feminism) which he views as excessive and unbalanced. And his reaction is a reasonable one ... because it is grounded in Dan's (and many viewers') respect for traditional family. ... Alex has a very different story to tell about her affair with Dan, one that the film works hard to de-legitimize (96).
Taken individually, the narratives of these films – rooted in facile, frivolous fantasy – hardly seem to warrant academic scrutiny. However, central to their criticism is the idea of reflection theory, which purports that mass media is a prism through which core cultural values shine through, combining misinformation and mythology into a seamless real-life spectrum (Tuchman et al. 150-174). That the media bears a cumulative, subliminal impact on its viewers goes without saying. However, so prevalent is its influence on how we perceive gender-traits that we also fail to question the ubiquitous, ultimately harmful constructions concerning women and deviance at both judicial and psychological levels (Gilbert 1271–1300). In their work, Judge, Lawyer, Victim, Thief, renowned criminologists Nicole Hahn Rafter and Elizabeth Anne Stanko remark that one-dimensional portrayals of women in media not only feed damaging cultural assumptions, but also contribute to countless "controlling images" in the sphere of criminal justice. Pigeonholed into tidy categories such as "woman as the pawn of biology," "woman as passive and weak," "woman as impulsive and nonanalytic," "woman as impressionable and in need of protection," "the active woman as masculine," and the "criminal woman as purely evil," these images saturate legal literature and obstruct worthwhile theoretical discourse. More to the point, they lead to sentencing outcomes where impartial justice often takes the backseat to parochial presumptions (1-6).
While it is tempting to succumb to the notion that sentencing guidelines in criminal law are based on airtight logic and objective fact, discretion—and its arguable corollary of discrimination—remains pivotal in shaping legal policy. The law is neither impartial nor inviolate, but as weighed by normative baggage and sociocultural discursivity as any other man-made construct. As Tara Smith remarks, "Law's meaning is not objective, and law's authority is not objective. The "objective" on its view, simply is: that which certain people would say that it is" (159). With that in mind, the actors in court (judge, jury, prosecution, defense) can sometimes play roles that are as rooted in confirmation-bias through the prism of storytelling as they are in factualism. Typologies such as 'mad/bad' can serve as legal polemics against non-stereotypical female crimes, creating blurred lines between lived events and textual constructions as truth. More importantly, the evidence itself can go beyond context-specifity, not standing alone so much as being subject to common-sense fallacies of personal interpretation. As Bernard Jackson remarks,
...triers of fact [i.e. judges, or, in some countries, the jury] reach their decisions on the basis of two judgements; first an assessment is made of the plausibility of the prosecution's account of what happened and why, and next it is considered whether this narrative account can be anchored by way of evidence to common-sense beliefs which are generally accepted as true most of the time (10).
Two particularly notorious cases of female killers, which illustrate the simplistic narratives employed by law and media, are those of Aileen Wournos and Andrea Yates. In each instance, the women committed crimes of a similarly egregious magnitude. However, swayed by a rash of emotive media coverage, where one woman's perceived fragility was poignantly spotlighted while the other was emblazoned as a remorseless outcast, both women received opposite – and in the eyes of the public, apposite – sentences. Aileen Wuornos, for example, was fallaciously touted as the first 'postmodern' female serial killer – a gender-averted Ted Bundy. Working as a smalltime prostitute in Daytona Beach, Florida, Wuornos was charged with the murder of seven male 'Johns' between 1989 and 1990. In each case, the victims were shot at point blank range with Wuornos' .22 pistol. During her prolonged and extraordinarily-publicized trial, Wuornos' rationale for killing the men would vary. Initially, she claimed to have committed the murders in self-defense, as the men either had or were about to rape her. Later on, her accounts took on a darker, more mercenary tinge, with her motives rooted in theft and revenge. After ten years on death row, she was ultimately executed by lethal injection in 2002. So mesmerizingly grotesque was Wuornos' misfit persona – at least as it was painted by the media – that her murder-spree served as inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Monster, a title that seems at once apt and ironic.
On the other hand, Andrea Yates was a housewife in Houston, Texas, who was charged in 2001 with committing filicide on her five children by drowning them in the bathtub. Yates was suffering from post-partum psychosis which, coupled with extreme religious values, led her to believe she was under the influence of Satan, and that by killing her children, she was saving them from hell. Having called 911 shortly after her crime, then confessing once the police arrived, she was convicted of capital murder. Her case was at once highly publicized and polarized, with many condemning her actions while others sought to neutralize her culpability by focusing on her mental illness. The media, in particular, seized upon the latter aspect to portray Yates as a beleaguered and misguided woman whose crimes were merely a distorted translation of mother-love. Initially pronounced guilty, she was nonetheless spared the death penalty, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. In 2005, the verdict was overturned based on the erroneous testimony of an expert psychiatric witness. In her retrial the following year, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and committed to North Texas State Hospital (Williams 1). She currently continues to receive medical treatment at Kerrville State Hospital ("Where in Andrea Yates now?" 1)
From an objective standpoint, it could be argued that Yates' crimes were diametrically opposed to Wuornos' on the murder spectrum. The latter had no intimate connection to her victims. They were adult strangers – albeit ones who reportedly sought to harm her. Yates victims, on the other hand, all but epitomized stark, jarring helplessness: five children ranging from seven years to six months old. During their court trials, both the women's histories of mental illness were presented as mitigating factors. Yet the outcomes of both cases were vastly different – owing, at least in part, to the different ways in which deviance and agency were conflated, then used to either repudiate or amplify each killer's crimes based on Lombrosian-style archetypes (Nalepa et al 137). As mentioned previously, Lombroso, one of the earliest proponents of pathologizing female criminals, believed that women were by default amoral, with their redeeming feature being their maternal instincts. Devoid of this quality, the masculinized criminal female was ten times deadlier than the male, and inherently irredeemable (183). Despite the outdatedness of this paradigm, a thorough examination of the semantic fields forged by media and law reveals its disturbing prevalence during both Yates and Wuornos' trials. Each woman's description, peppered with loaded language and equivocal statements, served almost as implicit invitations to the jury and bystanders alike to mold the story into the most suitable configuration by filling in its gaps.
In Andrea Yates' case, the media seized upon her status as a housewife, former nurse and high school valedictorian to symbolically separate her from the flagitious nature of her crime. In an illustration of insidious agency-denial, the focus was afforded to the underlying excuses behind her crime, as opposed to her actions themselves. Articles from the NY and LA Times, utilizing statements such as, "Andrea Yates was incapable of determining her actions were wrong... she was ... driven by delusions that they were going to hell and she must save them" as well as "a simple, unremarkable Christian woman. She wore neat spectacles and had streaming hair ... the Yates were an attractive family," all promulgated notions of helplessness and desperation, while also imparting Yates's crime an aura of impossibility (Stack 25; "Killings Put Dark Side of Mom’s Life in Light" 20). This was a sweet, submissive, God-fearing homemaker whose entire life revolved around her family. Her actions were a mysterious, once-in-a-lifetime tragedy, springing from utterly alien internal forces.
Yates' status as a mother – a role that is so often pedestalized and mythologized – was further spotlighted to render her somehow pristine: a murderer, yet morally inviolate because the filicide occurred while she was under extreme duress. Her defense attorney went so far as to state that, "jurors…should pity a woman who was so tormented by mental illness that she killed her children out of a sense of 'Mother knows best'" (Weatherby et al 7). Whether intentional or accidental, the discursive outcome allowed for the construction of an utterly 'mad' woman – paranoid, pitiful, but most importantly passive – thus decimating the challenges Yates might pose to our conceptions of both femininity and motherhood. In her paper Women Who Kill Their Children, Jayne Huckerby went so far as to state that Yates, as a white, middle-class suburban mother, served as a "poster girl" for the romanticized cult of motherhood. Her actions, albeit deviant, were seen as an isolated incident rather than symptomatic of any greater systemic ills. Moreover, affixing her with the 'mad' label – thus focusing solely on her medical malady – allowed her case to be elevated to a political cause. Interest groups such as NOW vehemently advocated against Yates' execution, citing her depression, schizophrenia and hallucinations as excuses. The phrase mental 'state' was used repeatedly during Yates' trial – with clear connotations of its temporal and disjunctive nature. Yates, judicial and media discourse seemed to imply, was not the killer. Her mental illness was. This combinatorial tactic of medicalization and politicization garnered Yates extraordinary support – and quite likely owed to the lenience of her sentence (140-170).
To be sure, Yates' postpartum illness was not a fictional spin – but a legitimate diagnosis that affects women in everyday life. A Brown University study cited about 200 cases of maternal filicide in the US per year, from the 1970s to the early 2000s. It also suggested that psychiatric or medical disorders that lead to a reduction in serotonin levels heighten the risk of filicide (Mariano 1-8). In the US, both antenatal to postnatal depression continue to be debated as mitigating circumstances for murder (Carmickle, L., et al. 579-576). However, in other countries, the close ties of birth and its attendant biological changes to mental illness have been legally acknowledged. Nations including Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, Turkey, New Zealand and the Philippines have some form of "infanticide laws," allowing for leniency in cases of postpartum-linked mental illness (Friedman et al. 139).
In Andrea Yates' case, it could be argued that her declining mental health did not arise in a vacuum. Indeed, the highlights of Yates' psychiatric history, even prior to her children's' murder, reveal a woman beset by proverbial psychological demons. In 1999, following the birth of her fourth son, Yates was already suffering from severe depression, and struggling with a feeling that "Satan wanted her to kill her children." That same year, she attempted suicide by overdosing on medication, reportedly in a misguided attempt to protect her family from herself. She was subsequently hospitalized for psychiatric care, only to be discharged and then make a second suicide attempt five weeks later. by cutting her throat She was eventually diagnosed with Major Depressive Episode with psychotic features. After few months' treatment via outpatient appointments, Yates dropped out on the claim that she was "feeling better." Also, despite the warnings from her treating psychiatrist about the recurrence of postpartum depression, she and her husband decided to have another child. Following the birth, Yates went on to be hospitalized thrice more for psychiatric treatment. Her last unsuccessful suicide attempt involved her filling the bathtub, with the vague explanation that, "I might need it" (Resnick 147-148).
Leading up to the mass-murder of her children, Yates continued to display psychotic symptoms, including the belief that the television commercials were casting aspersions on her parenting, that there were cameras monitoring her childcare, that a van on the street was surveilling her house – and finally, that Satan was "literally within her." Convinced that her bad mothering was to blame for her children's' poor development, she fixated on the biblical verse from Luke 17:2, "It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown in the sea than that he should cause one of the little ones to stumble." Ultimately, on June 20, 2001, Yates would wait until her husband left for work, then proceed to drown her five children in the bathtub. When the police arrived, Yates stated that she expected to be arrested and executed – thereby allowing Satan to be killed along with her. Of her children, she would say, "They had to die to be saved" (Resnick 150).
While Yates' actions shocked the collective public conscience, they also garnered an intense outpouring of sympathy. Partly, it was because, as Skip Hollandsworth remarked, "Yates came with no baggage." From her ordinary appearance to her uncheckered background, Yates had the makings of an All-American mother, who "read Bible stories to her five children... constructed Indian costumes for them from grocery sacks...[and] gave them homemade valentines on Valentine’s Day with personalized coupons promising them free hugs and other treats" (1). Her daily routines were familiar, her struggles relatable. It was easy to cast her as a stand-in for other suburban mothers, with her decision to murder her children serving to darkly mirror their own worst fears. As Newsweek's Anna Quindlen noted, "Every mother I’ve asked about the Yates case has the same reaction. She’s appalled; she’s aghast. And then she gets this look. And the look says that at some forbidden level she understands" (1). Ultimately, Yates' status as a suburban housewife allowed her to occupy the pedestal of the Everywoman. The predominant narrative, as imbricated by the law and media, was that of someone unstable, delusional, overwhelmed – yet undeniably feminine. Through her, the more negative extremes of womanhood had been allowed unfortunate expression, a fact that served to render her less culpable rather than more (Phillips, et al 4).
In direct contrast, Aileen Wuornos' narrative was afforded little opportunity for feminization, much less humanization. Rather, her status as a prostitute and lesbian was immediately seized upon by the law and media – then highlighted with pejorative, condemnatory rhetoric. Capitalizing on the strong stigma attached to prostitution, in conjunction with Wuornos' gruff, belligerent, decidedly un-feminine manner, the dominant 'bad woman' narrative was invoked. Central to the trial and its accompanying media coverage was the sense of Wuornos' inherent 'unfitness' – on both a gendered and societal scale. Caroline Picart remarks that, "Wournos, even if given the title of being America’s first female serial killer, in comparison with heterosexual male serial killers, was not generally perceived as a skilled serial killer but, rather, as being a woman who did not know how to be a real woman" (3). In point of fact, Wuornos' designation as the 'first' female serial killer was an embellishment: there are other women who would have just as readily fit the mold of the serial killer. However, prior to Wuornos' arrest, women who killed were stereotypically shrouded behind a ladylike mystique, their modi operandi veering from arsenic and cool calculation, as with Anna Maria Zwanziger, to maternal instincts warped by insanity, as with Brenda Drayton, to Angels of Mercy whose nurturing demeanor hid a crueler edge, such as Beverley Allitt.
Wuornos, conversely, did not fit into any of the conventional molds of wife, widow, mother, nurse or daughter. If anything, she subverted the very conception of prostitutes as disposable victims, prowling along the same highways where numberless streetwalkers met their end. More to the point, her sexual preferences and choice of work marked her as a hostile threat to society – and more specifically to patriarchal stability. When interviewed by the TV show Dateline, she attempted to justify her killings by reminding audiences of the extreme dangers of prostitution. However, she failed to grasp that delving into the gory minutiae of such a socially-reviled profession did her defense no favors. In prostitutes, society too often finds convenient scapegoats. Shunned as breeders of contagion and social ills, they are reduced to receptacles for everything heteronormative family-life pretends to disavow. Yet their role as the integral underbelly of society also necessitates their invisibility – and, by extension, disposability – in order to preserve the immaculate image of the nuclear family. With that in mind, perhaps it is at once ironic and unsurprising that Dateline's co-anchor Jane Pauley states, "This is a story of unnatural violence. The roles are reversed. Most serial killers kill prostitutes" (Hart 142).
The media, of course, ruthlessly weaponized Wuornos' 'outsider' against her. Her checkered history was touted as proof of her immorality, with news coverage running the gamut from mean-spirited to sensationalist. The NY Times was quick to point out that "Ms. Wuornos served a year in prison in 1982-83 for armed robbery…she also faced charges of vehicle theft and grand larceny," "She was a prostitute part of the time," "residents can now rest easy," "Ms. Wuornos was ‘a killer who robs rather than a robber who kills" (Smothers 16). Meanwhile, the LA Times ran an interview with police officers stating that, "We believe she pretty much meets the guidelines of a serial killer" ("Transient Woman Accused in Florida Serial Killings" 40). Every aspect of Wuornos' life was vilified and picked apart, the better to construct the image of an unnatural creature. Even descriptions of her physical appearance underscored the extremes to which the media tried to demonize her. A 2002 article at the Palm Beach Post describes her as "a haggard-looking drinker and heavy smoker…her weathered face has a cold, dead stare that morphs into a wildeyed laugh" (Wells 5). By so assiduously focusing on Wuornos' negative traits, the media sought to render her as unrelatable, and ultimately undeserving of human sympathy. However, at the crux of her deviance was not the violent nature of her crimes, but how far she had strayed from the boundaries of traditional femininity. Wuornos – caricatured as a monster of sheer lunatic aggression, wanton sadism and unmitigated cruelty – was not a 'real' woman. As Jeffner Allen notes in her work, Lesbian Philosophy: Explorations, "Violence is defended as the right to limit life and take life that is exercised by men... A woman, by definition, is not violent, and if violent, a female is not a woman" (22-30).
Similar to Andrea Yates, Wuornos grappled with mental illness. During her trial, both the defense and prosecution employed psychologists who testified that she suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), in addition to symptoms of posttraumatic stress. First used by analyst Adolph Stern in 1938, BPD describes patients who are at the border between neurotic and psychotic. Individuals with BPD may suffer from patterns of instability in mood, jobs, relationships and self-image. The diagnosis is applied predominantly to survivors of sexual abuse. (Giannangelo 19). In Aileen Wuornos' case, her experiences of sexual abuse from childhood to adulthood, her violent and unstable years as a transient, in addition to her ninth-grade education level and mental disabilities, were well-documented. However, the prosecution minimized these factors during the trial, insisting that they were not "substantial" and in no way impaired Wuornos' capacity as an instigator of violence. As the district attorney claimed in his closing statement, "Aileen Wuornos at the time of the killing knew right from wrong."
This focus on individual action is by itself hardly noteworthy, if not for the courts' further descriptions of Wuornos as "primitive" and "damaged" – a subhuman designation at odds with the portrait of the controlled and calculating serial killer (Sarat 75-77). In Wuornos, the courts attempted to reconcile two seemingly-contradictory, yet equivalent extremes of 'badness' – the Lombrosian archetype of the atavistic female, a primal degenerate driven by a cruel thirst for sex and bloodshed, and the paradoxical essence of 'evil' as it applies to the feminine shadow, with an ice-tipped propensity for malice and manipulation. Yet, where the male killer wears both these discrepant masks of wildness and wit with a dynamic ease, embodying within himself a transcendental self-mastery beyond moral codes, homicidal females such as Wuornos find their narratives consistently entrenched in gendered morality. Even when afforded agency for their own crimes, their humanity (three-dimensional, flawed, self-directed) is downplayed in favor of a wholesale monstrosity. Their true crime is not taking a human life. Rather, it is straying, with eyes wide open, beyond the province of womanhood. As Ashley Wells remarks,
What’s fascinating about Aileen is how little her own mental illness played into her trial and the media hoopla surrounding it... There was no narrative in place for female serial killers the way there was for male ones. So instead of focusing on her mental illness or her horrific childhood, the way we might for a male serial killer now that we have so many to choose from, the media latched onto the fact that Wuornos was a prostitute and a lesbian, some sort of unholy alliance of the two types of women it only knew how to deal with in the broadest possible stereotypes (1).
It goes without saying that criminologists have embraced a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives, from sociological, philosophical and psychoanalytic, the better to explicate the disturbing relationship between law/media and homicidal women. Predominant among them is Labeling Theory, which can be traced back to Frank Tannenbaum's 1938 work Crime and the Community. Chiefly focused on self-identity, Labeling Theory purports that deviant behavior – both singular and recurrent – is predicated on external categorizations, i.e. the self-fulfilling prophecy of stereotypes. Social categorizations function in pernicious ways, wherein people will subconsciously or deliberately begin altering their behavior to conform to the labels they are placed within.
In the case of Andrea Yates, Labeling Theory asserted itself on multiple levels. First, it was present in the defense constructed by Yates' lawyers, who cleaved tenaciously to the idea that she was a loving mother whose crime – while terrible – was episodic, and fueled by depression. The media too, seized this narrative and ran with it: the poignant image of Yates as a mother who had, quite literally, loved her children to death. Lastly, the insidious strength of labeling manifested itself through the personality of Yates herself. Her terror of failing to conform to the image of a perfect mother, by damning her children to Hell, led her to a shocking act of filicide. Rosenblatt and Greenland note, “it is the very attempt to fulfill her culturally defined role as wife and mother in our society which is often at the source of much of her violence” (180). Certainly, everything about Yates corresponded with the cultural view of women as emotional, flighty and easily led astray. Even her classification as 'mad' came to be viewed with the more sympathetic connotations of the word. Ultimately, it was that exculpatory label that framed the way Yates was perceived – by the courts and public alike (Weatherby et al 3).
Skip Hollandsworth, as previously noted, drove home Yates' appeal as the Everywoman, due to her lack of "baggage" (1). Ironically, the coverage of Yates' case was laden with it. The LA Times, for instance, noted that in the first four weeks of Yates' trial, "more than 1, 150 articles" were devoted to dissecting her morality versus her mental health (Gamiz 3). Early public opinion was sharply polarized, with some comparing her to the vindictive modern-day Medea of Greek mythology, while others condemned, not Yates herself, but her husband, her psychiatrist, her neighbors, and even the societal constructions of motherhood at large for allowing the rigors of childcare to overshadow Yates' clinical emergency. Ultimately, both arguments allotted focus, not to Yates' crime, but to how inextricably it was fused to both sympathetic and censorious conceptions of motherhood. During the early parts of the trial, for instance, the prosecution clung to the scheming Medea narrative, claiming that she had deliberately faked her postpartum issues, in order to coerce her husband into buying her a house (the family lived in a schoolbus before moving to a house in Clear Lake, Houston.) Meanwhile, the defense, and the mainstream media, veered toward the Madonna archetype, wherein Yates' mental collapse sprang from trying to attain the impossible ideal of the perfect mother. In either case, the disparate opinions were not an ideological 'split' so much as two sides of the same coin: the saturation of gender in "neutral categories of criminality and intent" (Hyman 193-208).
Unsurprisingly, while Labeling Theory offers an opportunity to examine its impacts on female filicidal perpetrators within criminological discourse, male perpetrators receive very different socio-legal epithets. As the Yates case makes apparent, both law and media doggedly adhere to the exaltation of certain social characteristics, (white, female, attractive, middle-class). In order to exculpate the offender, most, if not all, these boxes must be checked. Filicidal men, however, cannot readily satisfy this criterion. Cases similar to Yates', such as that of Adair Garcia in 2002, highlight the lopsided nature of both media coverage and legal sentencing. Like Yates, Garcia was suffering from mental illness, and mistakenly gripped by the delusion that by killing himself and his children, they would be "going to be a better place, a painless place." After putting his six children to bed, he disconnected the smoke detector and phone at his home, then lit the charcoal in the barbecue grill, and placed it in the hallway. By the next morning, five of his children had died, although Garcia and his eldest daughter, who was nine at the time, survived. Despite the defense's arguments that Garcia had sunk into a deep depression after his wife left him, and was "unable to think straight," he was found guilty of the five counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder, then sentenced to life without parole (Wang 1).
Despite the similarities in both Yates' and Garcia's cases, there was a striking divergence in the media coverage. Compared to the widespread scrutiny garnered by the Yates' family, a paltry 77 articles were devoted to the Garcia case (Gamiz 3). This fact that did not go unnoticed by The Globe and the Mail's Doug Saunders. "The distinction," he wrote, "lies deep in human psychology. When fathers kill their offspring, it is viewed as a serious crime; when mothers do it, it is seen as a deep sickness, one that garners both sympathy and profound horror" (1). Subsequent disparities would also be observed in the tone of media articles, with Garcia pegged as "twisted" and seeking "revenge" on his spouse, whereas Yates would categorically be described as a "Houston mother," with news articles posing headlines such as "What drives a mom to kill?" and "Andrea Yates 'still grieves for her children'" (Adams 1; Landau 1; "Twisted Dad…" 1). The contrasting narratives are a grim reminder that violence, even from filicidal fathers, is perceived as biological hardwiring, and somehow emblematic of men as a gender. As Hollandsworth remarks, "Men who go mad do not interest us. But women who go mad are haunting" (1).
Ultimately, it was this feminized conflation of madness with victimhood that diffused Yates' responsibility as a murderer. By clinging to labels that separated her from her crime, and yet sought to "preserve [her] femininity, fidelity and commitment to motherhood," her agency as an individual with complexity and self-determination was utterly disregarded (Hyman 208). Nancy Taylor Porter, in her book, Violent Women in Contemporary Theatres: Staging Resistance, describes Yates as a "cipher" (297). In both literature and cinema, "ciphers" are characters who bear similarities to the writer – "attitudes, traumas, even life events" (Boyd 1). However, in Yates' case, her cipher status rendered her not polysemantic, but faceless. Beyond simply a woman who "lost herself," she was someone who appeared to have never been found: she seemingly had no personal desires to dissect or decode. ("She was always trying to be such a good girl," her mother would remark in a Newsweek interview. "Always thinking of other people, never of herself.”) In Yates, both the courts and media constructed a figure that was less a person than personae. She was an empty vessel waiting to be filled with the most socially-appropriate label, and made significant through said label (Hollandsworth 1).
Ironically, this same vein of reductionism in the media's stance led to Aileen Wuornos' widespread condemnation, and later execution. While Labeling Theory is certainly influential in examining the coverage and outcome of her trial, more fitting still is the theory of Double Deviance, developed by a number of contemporary feminist criminologists. (Heidensohn 102; Chesney-Lind 115; Berrington & Honkatukia 50-72). According to Double Deviance theory, women who commit crimes are punished twice as harshly – owing to the fact that they have transgressed not only criminal law but procreative norms. Certainly, this element of condemnation can be observed in Wuornos' journalistic treatment. Whereas Andrea Yates was afforded the protective barrier of respectability (a former nurse, a mother, a suburban housewife), Wuornos, as a prostitute and a lesbian, was regarded as depraved in mind, body and moral fiber. Hers were crimes not just against her victims – but against her gender itself. The harsh – almost dyslogistic – language used by media both addresses and feeds her status as a pariah. Certainly, one might argue that 'first female serial killer' would not be such a shocking designation if women weren't so intrinsically linked to passivity. For a taboo to be broken, it is essential to recognize the unwritten rules that preside over our existence; the intangible myths that are enforced as reality through tradition and repetition. Similarly, femininity, softness, or mercy would not be sacrosanct for society if they were not also concepts that were fragile and vulnerable to violation. With that in mind, a woman transgressing laws, either man-made and 'natural', is perceived as openly more agentic – therefore deviant – than the woman who simply disavows those same boundaries.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Wuornos received such widespread censure. Granted, the nature of her crimes was brutal. But that very brutality – so masculinized and deliberate – was what shocked the public and jurors alike. Not only were a majority of her victims found stripped naked and riddled in close-range gunshot wounds, but Wuornos also divested them of their wallets and other valuable possessions, in addition to stealing their cars. How could the public reconcile these predatory actions with a woman – the so-called weaker sex – unless she was somehow quintessentially evil? When Wuornos' profession, sexual orientation, and poverty were brought to light, it seemed only to exacerbate her guilt. This wasn't a 'normal' woman – the scope of normality here being limited to the white, heterosexual, middle-class population – but an anomaly.
An article from the Washington Post illustrates the tenuous position that Wuornos – brash, foul-mouthed, stridently unrepentant – occupied in society: "Women do this kind of thing? Poison, yes, and the occasional queenly beheading, but can women be serial murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy? Spiderwoman! Avenging angel!" (Allen 1) Although the appellations bear a tinge of humor, they also serve to emphasize the essential absurdity of a homicidal woman. Such an individual becomes an incongruous breach within the fabric of our dominant cultural framework. More to the point, she is a blot on the pristine mythology of the perfect woman. This is precisely what makes the heinousness of her offense so blatant, and her stigmatization that much harsher (Phillips, et al 10).
To be sure, Wuornos was not alone in being pathologized and pigeonholed as a grotesque aberration of womanhood. Similar judicial and media language was used in the case of Myra Hindley, an English serial killer who, alongside her partner, Ian Brady, raped and killed five children between 1963 and 1965. Although both were eventually apprehended, tried, and found guilty, he of three counts of murder and she of two, the subsequent media attention surrounding the couple was noteworthy for the gendered lens of exceptionality versus abnormality that came into play. Although equally agentic in terms of planning and implementing the sexual assaults, Hindley would be dubbed "The Most Evil Woman in Britain," an incendiary label that far exceeded, and outlasted, the public's condemnation of her male counterpart, Brady (Cummins 115). Further legal and press discourse would reduce the pair to a heteronormative microcosm of gender roles, with Brady serving as the cunning mastermind, while Hindley served as the obedient helpmate. However, this stereotypical slant, far from minimizing her responsibility as a killer, horrified the public, precisely because Hindley was a member of the supposed fairer sex. In an article for the Independent, Geraldine Bedell wrote: "Higher standards are expected of women when it comes to the care of children: Myra betrayed her sex and exploited her sex so that children could be sexually assaulted, tortured and killed" (1).
Similar disparities would arise during the trial, with Brady's attitude toward children being only cursorily examined, while Hindley was lengthily and harshly grilled for her absence of maternal instinct toward her victims, ("The screams of a little girl of ten… Did you put your hands over your ears…?... Or get the child out of the room and see that she was treated as a woman should treat a female child, or any other child…?") Comparable to Wuornos, the crux of the issue was less that Hindley had failed by the moral standards of society, but by the social constructions of femininity. Also like Wuornos, everything from her appearance (“the Medusa face of Hindley, under the melon puff-ball of hair") to her sexuality ("longstanding and passionate affairs with other prisoners… she had them all eating out of her hand") were fair game for vilification. Her face would be emblazoned across newspapers and magazines as an icon of evil, comparable to the "image of Medusa" (Birch 32), and similarly mythologized as a one-dimensional symbol of monstrousness (Birch 51; Goodman 159-224; Jones 163; Stanley n.p). In contrast, her partner-in-crime, Brady, would slip through the cracks of collective societal memory, meeting the prosaic fate of living and dying in prison. Helena Kennedy, who once represented Hindley, notes,
We feel differently about a woman doing something consciously cruel because of our expectations of women as the nurturing sex. The adage is that women who commit crime are mad, bad or sad. The bad may be few in number, but once given the label there is no forgiving. It defies explanation that someone, especially a woman, stood by and allowed torture to take place, but it is important to remember that women did it in the concentration camps, and evidence is emerging that women are doing it in Syria and Iraq with Islamic State. Terror is a man, but wickedness is a woman (1).
Jaques Derrida, citing Montaigne, has famously stated, "There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things" (278). This certainly applies to the mandate of womanhood in legal discourse, and the pernicious effects it exerts on sentencing outcomes. Jaques Lacan, one of the most influential psychoanalysts of the twentieth century, has gone further by emphasizing the role of language in social and gendered regulation. That the proliferation of stereotypes has been absorbed into the fabric of language goes without saying. But more intriguing is Lacan's theory that the very bedrock of linguistics is the system of binary opposites: male/female, good/evil, self/other (Bertens 44). This proves problematic when the subject of homicidal women arises. Aggression is, by and large, considered an essential component of masculinity. Therefore murders committed by men, across the varied spectrum of violence, are easily equated with maleness. More perverse still – as the celebrity status of Ted Bundy or Charles Manson testifies – they are often lauded as exceptionalities, a type of Nietzschean superman beyond mundane moral codes (Waller 7). Conversely, female killers disrupt the very workings of cultural codes, due to their incompatibility with gender roles. Their discursive constructions by law and media are therefore intended to either squeeze them into a narrow, comprehensibly feminine niche (the 'mad' woman) – or to viciously excise them from the social script (the 'bad' woman). As Helen Birch remarks in her work, Moving Targets: Women, Murder and Representation, "... we do not have a language to represent female killing, and [cases like these disrupt] the very terms which hold gender in place (61)."
The solution, then, as Derrida puts it, might be to deconstruct the overriding 'mad/bad' narratives as they apply to homicidal females. Only through unraveling these binary systems is it possible to expose the interstitial spaces where these women exist as multifaceted beings with depth, nuance and agency. There is, by and large, no static or singular explanation for why women kill. Their motives and methods are an evolving, organic bricolage that is shaped by family, education, economics, religion and a host of other institutional configurations (Yardley et al 1-26). By superficializing each individual case study – thus treating the women's proclivities as either anomalies or generalities – we are in fact sacrificing knowledge at both the macro and micro level. What is essential, instead, is to look beyond social paradigms, and comprehend that guilt/innocence is in truth merely an effect of how it is interpreted, framed, and eventually typified in order to perpetuate and protect dominant mythologies. True, breaking free from the security of labels might place us in the disquieting position of owning our own ambiguous natures. However, it may also challenge us to examine women as hyper-specific (individual) and sometimes self-contradictory beings – and to further apply that ambiguity to homicidal women. To successfully do so is to confront aspects of human nature – and criminogenic behavior – that would otherwise be invisible beneath the shadow of institutionally-generated abstractions. Dichotomizing female killers as 'Victim' or 'Monster,' on the other hand, serves only to perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes, reducing such women to grotesque spectacles of 'Otherness' based on their deviance from the discursive framework of femininity.
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ESSAY: The Shōjo Heroine - Vaulting Geographic Barriers in Japan & Beyond
...The shōjo heroine, despite exemplifying fluid, nearly ephemeral identity, holds a multicultural allure seldom seen in Western works—one that allows her to straddle different cultures and continents while remaining quintessentially Japanese.
X-Posted at Apollon Ejournal
Within the dynamic realm of Japanese pop culture, the mediums of animanga have burgeoned into a fascinating contemporary phenomenon. What began as an obscure niche met with disparagement at best, dismissal at worst, has since then permeated markets on an international scale: from the cutesy craze of Pokemon to quintessential girl-power staples like Sailor Moon to critically-acclaimed masterpieces like Miyazaki's Spirited Away. The genre enjoys colorful permutations, raunchy or artistic, violent or thoughtful—sometimes in the same breath. Yet one of its most salient aspects is its recurrent use of young girls as both storytelling motifs and cultural icons. Their manifestations are nearly as kaleidoscopic as the source material they spring from: doe-eyed lolitas in frothy Victoriana, spunky schoolgirls in sailor uniforms saving the world, flame-haired spitfires wielding outsized swords, magical girls whose psychedelic transformation sequences carry the visual fanfare of a butterfly erupting from its chrysalis—the list goes on, often coexisting and overlapping in a disjointed medley that functions in equal parts as a paean to, and a pastiche of, femininity. Sometimes these girls serve as one-dimensional eye-candy within the mise-en-scène. Other times, they are the protagonists and the key players upon whom the plot itself pivots—at once powerful exemplars of gender-identity and Derrida-esque deconstructions of it.
Of course, one might argue that Western media is steeped in similar portrayals of femininity that either defy or mold themselves to patriarchal presuppositions. What, then, lends the figure of the archetypal animanga girl such transnational allure? Some argue that she represents female empowerment in its most multi-layered and triumphant form. She subverts pervasive stereotypes of Japanese women as submissive and sweet, while resonating with female audiences globally by shedding light on uniquely personal facets of 'girlhood' left unexplored by Western media. Others argue the opposite: that she holds such salacious sway largely because she is so fetishized and objectified as to become a ghastly chimera of borderline, if not outright, pedophilia—not to mention a damaging perpetuation of Japan itself as a bizarre wonderland of sexual vagaries.
However, one might just as easily argue that her appeal is rooted neither in gender boundaries, or their subversion. Rather, it is in the shadowy lacuna she occupies in the middle, as a liminal fantasy-figure of both transformation and possibility, whose struggles toward selfhood are at once uniquely Japanese and universal. At home she embodies the attractive nexus of nostalgia and hope: the bittersweet stage of girlhood that must yield inevitably to adult responsibilities of marriage and motherhood. Abroad, she epitomizes the classic stage of youth that is the threshold to something greater, but which in itself can never be recaptured—the ideal metaphor not only for coming-of-age, but for finding within that ephemeral space the freedom to discover oneself in a globalized sphere.
By themselves, of course, anime and manga increasingly occupy a critical space within the larger framework of non-diasporic globalization. Surfing a wave of popularity across different peer-to-peer platforms; fervently discussed and dissected on public and private forums across the Internet; pirated, scanlated, fansubbed and widely shared across networks—the mediums have engendered their own subcultures within a free-flowing landscape unbound by both legal and geographic constraints. According to Japan's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, anime outrivals the rest of the nation's TV exports at a shocking 90%. Similarly, manga sales in the US alone have witnessed exponential growth, skyrocketing from $60 million in 2002 to $210 million in 2007 (Suzuki, 2009). The sheer saturation of these mediums across global markets has lent them the term "meta-genre," raising compelling questions about the crux of their appeal (Denison, 2015).
A number of scholars have weighed in on the subject, with many arguing that the je ne sais quoi of animanga lies beyond conceptual occurrences such as synecretism and (pop) cultural osmosis. Rather, it is in the vacuity of the genre itself, not as a quirky emblem of 'Japaneseness' but as its total negation. Koichi Iwabuchi, in his most celebrated monograph Recentering Globalization, refers to this as "cultural odorlessness," or mukokuseki. In Iwabuchi's view, the critical markers of 'Japaneseness'—whether racial, cultural, symbolic or contextual—are absent from animanga, allowing for their easy diffusion throughout the world (2007, p. 24). Similarly, in her work Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, sociologist Sharon Kinsella equates the ubiquity of manga to 'air,' owing as much to the diversity of the genre as to its scope of dissemination—one that nearly verges on cultural dilution (2005, p. 4).
Charged within the non-quality of 'odorlessness,' however, are compelling historical undercurrents. Scholars such as Hiroki Azuma argue that the cultural nullity of manga and anime is rooted as much in Japan's humiliating defeat in WWII as it is in its desire to reinvent itself on the global stage. Similarly, Joseph S. Nye equates the easy circulation of animanga with the careful crafting of a frictionless "soft power." Indeed, he speculates that the strategy proved imperative for a nation that had renounced its militaristic ambitions, and whose past was already embroidered with rich narrative threads of cultural eclecticism and fusion (2009). Similarly, in his article The Other Superpower, journalist Douglas McGray remarks that, "At times, it seems almost a strange point of pride, a kind of one-downmanship, to argue just how little Japan there is in modern Japan. Ironically, that may be a key to the spread of Japanese cool" (2009). Of course, the very notion of "soft power" belies the apparent frivolity of animanga's commercial success. After all, Nye avers that the concept of soft power is entrenched in two-thirds statist influence, in particular political ascendancy and the assertion of foreign policy. The underlying purpose is to enhance the nation's scope of influence by lulling foreign audiences with appealing values, whether genuine or simulated, that the nation allegedly embodies.
Naturally, this is no guarantor that the strategy will prove lasting or effective. As Nye notes, "Excellent wines and cheeses do not guarantee attraction to France, nor does the popularity of Pokemon games assure that Japan will get the policy outcomes it wishes" (2009, p. 14). However, there is no denying, either, that the mediums of anime and manga, while perceived as 'odorless,' are nonetheless imbued with a distinct whiff of Japaneseness. This proves apparent in everything from their production to their absorption. Despite transcending national borders, their characters attractively packaged in ambiguously 'Western' skin-tones, hair-colors and attitudes, their realms of storytelling blatantly divorced from superficial signifiers of Japan, they still carry within them undeniably Japanese themes and ideologies. Series such as Blood+ blend trenchant international intrigue with a vampiric appetite for gore, yet tie the value of family to a poignantly Okinawan catchphrase—Nan-kuro-naisa, or It will all work out (2006). Similarly, the technologized labyrinth of Ghost in the Shell boasts a polyphonous, fragmented and multi-ethnic universe that practically embodies the liminal edge of cyberspace itself, yet within which Japan asserts its presence as a shadowy nation state, as well as through characters with patently Japanese monikers such as Makoto Kusunagi, Batou, Saito etc (2002). In his work, Paradoxical Japaneseness: Cultural Representation in 21st Century Japanese Cinema, Andrew Dorman stresses that such narrative elements of Japaneseness are not accidental but deliberate, remarking:
As a method of successfully adapting films for a wider, more diverse audience, cultural concealment softens the impact of Japan's cultural presence in the global marketplace. Yet this does not constitute an erasure of Japaneseness, as indicated by Iwabuchi's concept of cultural 'odorlessness.' In anime's case, Japaneseness is inherent rather than explicit... Rather than disappearing, Japan asserts its presence in ways that are paradoxical, contradictory, and, as anime demonstrates, disorienting. 'Japaneseness' is very much fluid... there can be a distinctly Japanese method of appearing culturally ambiguous with Japanese exports (p. 45).
Similarly, in his book, Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America, Andrew C. McKevitt points out that, "...Cultural odor is relative to the nose of the smeller, what seem[s] denationalized to a prominent anime director could smell a lot like Japan to a young person in California" (p. 182). Indeed, even a cursory examination of Japan-centric scholarship—both among Western academia and otherwise—yields a fascinating oeuvre concentrated entirely on animanga: proof in itself that despite being lauded as hybrid marvels of transnationalism, within these works lingers a manifestly Japanese identity. To alight upon the genre as a stillborn phantom of Japan's ambitions for global leverage, only to then trivialize it because of the chameleon-like mutability of its nature, is missing the point entirely. The more Japan sheathes its cultural specificity within an aestheticized facade of multicultural ephemera, the easier it is to forget that this decontextualization is deliberate, and that it is part of Japan's broader efforts to re-situate itself within a fluctuating globalized sphere—on its own terms.
What better figurehead, then, for a metaphoric yacht of such intangible yet undeniable force than a young girl on the cusp of maturity? Her faces and personalities are kaleidoscopic; yet in her essence she is singular, precisely because she is always amenable to transformation and transmutation, accretion and erasure—much like modern Japan itself. Anime and manga abound with her image: whether as a dreamy Miko resplendent in a white kimono and red hakama, the breeze stirring her hair alongside delicate drifts of cherry blossoms, to a bratty Yakuza princess complete with a chauffeur-driven car and a Chanel handbag, to a shy high-school girl with a pleated sailor fuku and tragic secrets lurking behind her guileless eyes. From warrior to idol singer, magical girl to maid, she has no fixed personae. Instead, she enjoys numberless variations of tropes, numberless ways of veering between cute and cutthroat, dark and light. Her character design is often seamlessly entwined to a target audience: a playful vixen from a bishōjo, or "beautiful girl," series aimed largely at men, a voluptuous sidekick from a seinen (young boys) manga, or a cutesy superheroine hailing from the shōjo (young girls) demographic.
The treatment of the shōjo heroine in animanga is of particular interest, owing as much to the wild popularity of works such as Sailor Moon as to the prevalence of young female leads in renowned films such as Princess Monoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Blood: The Last Vampire, and The Girl that Leapt Through Time. Embraced by audiences both in Japan and abroad, she appears to be as much a national emblem as a state of being. In her work, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, Anne Allison notes that, "...The shojo (as both subject and object) has come to stand as counterweight to the enterprise society: a self indulgent pursuer of fantasy and dreams... shojo have been given a cultural and national value of their own (p. 187)."
What, however, does the term shōjo encompass? At its simplest, the word is used in Japan's publishing industry to refer to a female target-demographic, typically pre-or-post adolescent. However, at its most complex, shōjo has evolved as a genre unto itself, spanning multiple styles, from romance to sci-fi, as well as accruing viewership both young and old. Far from a notch on the proverbial totem pole of social development, the shōjo protagonists of animanga have come to represent an intriguing hybrid space. They are defined as feminine, yet not: the badge of true womanhood naturally bestowed upon wives-and-mothers, with their would-be lofty goals of childbearing and nurturance. The shōjo heroine, however, is unfettered by such constraints. She exemplifies within herself the endearing nativity and brash independence of childhood.
The history of the shōjo's intriguing cultural construct can be traced back to the Meiji period, when the nation's efforts to promote female literacy led to the creation of the Higher School Order in 1899, and the subsequent establishment of all-girls' schools. The era also saw a plethora of text-based and illustrative magazines aimed specifically at young girls—originally to enculture them on government-sanctioned ideals of chastity and domesticity. With the passage of time, however, these girl-oriented communities increasingly became a space to explore femininity through a polychromatic lens, as opposed to a narrowly monochrome beam of patriarchy. Freed from the masculine aegis, this was one arena where young women could unlock otherwise stymied voices and discover their true selves.
Novelists such as Yoshiya Nobuko gained particular renown for heroines who wore the fabric of empowerment so daringly yet delicately, celebrating rather than denying their femininity. The theme of Nobuko's works seldom revolved around marriage; rather, they cast a soft focus on the hidden worlds of the feminine, from navigating the complex waters of sexuality to bittersweet lessons in friendship and heartbreak. Indeed, a number of Nobuko's stories, such as Hana Monogatari (Flower Tales), have wielded considerable influence on contemporary shōjo classics, from Chiho Saito's Revolutionary Girl Utena to Ai Yazawa's Nana, both of which chronicle, not the protagonists' relationships with men, but the curious and complicated lives of the women at the heart of each narrative (Abbott, 2015; Robertson, 1998).
As expected, the shōjo genre's blithe subversion of gender standards did not sit well with Japanese society. In her work, The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, Anne Walthall remarks that, "The treatment of ... the shōjo period by the popular media in turn-of-the-century Japan reveals a Janus-faced object and subject of scrutiny... [It] began to grow into a life-cycle phase, unregulated by convention, as more and more young women found employment in the service sector of the new urban industrializing economy" (2004, p. 158-159). By the time of the Taishô democracy, the ranks of shōjo were graced by another, more contradictory feminine aesthetic— the flirty, flapper-esque "modern girl," or moga. Outgoing and brazenly occidentalized, the moga was cast by popular media as the antithesis of ryōsai kenbo (good wife and wise mother). She represented, in many ways, Japan's uneasy, almost bipolar relationship with Western modernity. With her sleekly bobbed hair and the swish of her short skirt, she trod carelessly over the sacred orthodoxies of gender and tradition. In spurning the conventions of marriage and motherhood, she was deemed aimless, vapid, and, in her own way, deviant. Indeed, it was not long before the very notion of shōjo, originally a benign emergent space within a modern but quintessentially Japanese framework, became perceived as its Ruben-Vase opposite: a symbol of Western decadence and disorder. The shōjo heroine, toppled from her pedestal of pure and timorous girlhood, came to occupy a freakish position outside the gender binary. In her work, Transgendering Shōjo Shōsetsu: Girls' Inter-text/Sex-uality, Tomoko Aoyama likens the shōjo girl to almost a third sex, describing her as "free and arrogant, unlike meek and dutiful musume [daughter] or pure and innocent otome [maiden]" (2005, p. 49).
Both daughter and maiden are, of course, patriarchal determinants. By providing a rebellious counter-note to these traditional roles of sweetness and submissiveness, the shōjo heroine distinguishes herself on yet another level—she is so profoundly Othered as to become an abstraction. This makes her nearly the ideal mascot of any genre in animanga: action, horror, comedy, romance. It is easy to either deify or eroticize an abstraction; like a blank slate, she can be inscribed with whatever values, or lack of them, that her creators (or the nation itself) wish to promulgate. Similarly, audiences can project on to her dreams and desires, whether empowering or exploitative, depending on their lens of scrutiny.
This duality of interpretation has been observed frequently, with the shōjo heroine being lauded simultaneously as a feminist icon, and as a lurid object of fetishization. On the one hand, many have argued that, far from being powerful assertions of the female body's agency, these girls are merely trapped within misogynist narratives. Even in instances when they appear to wield force against their foes, the angle and framing render them objects of male desire, rather than subjects with the freedom to pursue their own (Brazal & Abraham, 2014). Series such as Cutey Honey and Kill La Kill, for example, feature fierce warrior girls battling against insurmountable odds, yet are peppered with cheeky fanservice; diegetically, the girls may be the 'stars' of the show, but in terms of textual construction, they serve as the prurient centerpiece of a visual buffet. On the other hand, it has been argued that, far from depersonalized chess pieces within the plot, such characters are the embodiment of the modern girl's dreams, with the freedom to be both strong and self-indulgent, both desirous and desirable. If they flaunt skin or flout the maxims of modesty, it is because their interpretation of empowerment is a playfully Sadean paradigm, with desire as an act of transcendence.
Whether one interpretation deserves merit over the other is beside the point. The fact remains that animanga's treatment of the shōjo heroine is too self-reflexive to pigeonhole as sexist or feminist, largely because her portrayals play intensely with narrative traditions of reality and fantasy, strength and subjugation. In his forward of Saito Tamaki's book, Beautiful Fighting Girl, J. Keith Vincent notes that people often assume that the animanga heroine is " ...in some sense a reflection of the status of girls and women in Japan... What these analyses often miss, however, is that [she] is also a fictional creature in her own right, and one capable of fulfilling functions other than straightforward representation" (p. 4). One might argue, of course, that the same can be said of any character in popular culture. Good fiction, after all, necessitates a degree of abstraction; characters must be hyper-specific and nuanced enough to seem human, yet deindividualized enough as a walking vacant space so that audiences can slough their skins on and off, say the things they are saying, do the things they are doing. When done correctly, these characters resonate across different social and cultural spectrum, while remaining firmly rooted in their own particular narratives, enabling the audience to achieve a twofold sense of safety and discovery. When done wrong, these characters become bland placeholders who dissolve as little more than white-noise within the narrative itself.
Yet the shōjo heroine, despite exemplifying fluid, nearly ephemeral identity, holds a multicultural allure seldom seen in Western works—one that allows her to straddle different cultures and continents while remaining quintessentially Japanese. In that sense, she almost personifies the essence of Japan's 'soft-power:' disarmingly sweet yet imbrued with all the fluid symbolism of the nation's past, and all the hopeful reinvention of its future. Certainly, Japan's national identity has often seemed a paradoxical blend of East and West, technology and mythology, tradition and innovation, apocalypse and rebirth. The shōjo heroine reflects this cultural propensity by amalgamating within herself these disparate elements in order to create a fresh and unexpected identity of her own. In his work, Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool, Brian Ashcraft remarks that she represents:
...both gruff samurai, strong and powerful, and demure geisha, beautiful and coquettish. Decked out in her Western-influenced uniform, she brings these elements together into a state of great flexibility—the ability to be strong or passive, Japanese or Western, adult or child, masculine or feminine. At home and abroad, she is a metaphor for Japan itself (p. 3).
However, one might argue that, beyond a metaphor for Japan, the archetype of the shōjo heroine proves effective as both a cultural exemplar and an international ambassador because she gives center stage to the realms of fantasy and freedom. This goes considerably beyond puerile leaps of fancy or shallow substitute worlds; she is neither a proxy nor an escape hatch, and for all her trappings of feminism, her narratives are often noticeably depoliticized (although there are exceptions).
Yet within that conspicuous absence of political semiotics, she is hailed as an icon of free-flight on a multiplicity of levels. Part of it has to do precisely with her femininity; otherwise, it could be argued that a young boy would function just as well as a diegetic symbol. Essayist Carmen Maria Machado remarks that being a woman, for better or worse, is intrinsically tied to the uncanny. "Your humanity is liminal; your body is forfeit; your mind is doubted as a matter of course" (Kuhn, 2017, p. 1). This unfixed and mutable image allows for a platform of reinvention and dissolution wherein anything goes, and where dreams or nightmares can be made or unmade.
The shōjo heroine takes full advantage of this transformative capacity. Her different personae allow her to bring something meaningful to extant social reality, by inviting audiences to delve into multifaceted territories and unfamiliar modes of being. Through her, mundane reality acquires a sheen of novelty and mystery; once-unshakeable truths are challenged as the porous constructs they are. The human condition itself is thrown into riveting relief against a larger backdrop, both global and cosmic. Her diverse manifestations offer, as Roland Kelts states in his book Japanamerica, an "increasingly content hungry world with something Hollywood, for all its inventiveness, has not yet found a way to approximate: the chance to deeply, relentlessly and endlessly immerse yourself in a world driven by prodigious imagination" (2006).
The shōjo heroine's cutesy facade does not hinder this approach, but instead enhances the experience for audiences, largely because her character becomes a nucleus of empathy. The formula is successfully employed in several renowned shōjo-genre works. The heroines in series such as Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu and Revolutionary Girl Utena, for instance, approach with insightfulness and sensitivity the agonies of growing up, using their female leads as loci of identification. Equal parts naive and resilient, these heroines exude an endless capacity for hope; although superficially childlike, their warmth becomes a source of strength for other characters, and by proxy the audiences. At the same time, each series employs magic as both a narrative vehicle on the journey toward selfhood, and as a leitmotif of covert psychological meanings. In her work, Magic as Metaphor in Anime, Dani Cavallaro notes that anime employs fantasy tropes, magic and the supernatural as a stylistic vehicle of communication, revealing,
... an increasing tendency to articulate subtly nuanced psychological dramas, pilgrimages of self-discovery and, fundamentally, mature speculations about the nature of humanness and the meaning of living as humans... magic ... by recourse to a paradox, [becomes] a form of obscure illumination: the revelation, by cryptic means, of powerful but often unheeded forces swirling at the core of existence (2010, p. 1-5).
Of course, in Japanese tradition, magic and the human condition have never existed as binary opposites, but as facets of a single quantum spectrum. The fact can be evinced in the nation's culture, both contemporary and historic, within which both Shinto animism and Buddhist values dance hand-in-hand, absorbing into themselves the more recent rhythms of Western occupation, the better to compose astonishing fusions of both indigenous fantasy and fluctuating global trends. The animanga heroine, by virtue of her 'unformed' and 'incomplete' shōjo status, neatly functions as a meta-triage of these forces. However, her true talent is for fusing her self and the audience together through an honest exploration of human experience at its simplest—and its most vulnerable—as well as in her ability to embrace the deficiencies, cracks, and inconsistencies as part of a reassembled whole (Chee & Lim, 2015).
Taken in that sense, one could almost describe her as a microcosm in feminine wrapping. Through her, audiences worldwide witness a smooth synthesis of overarching global vicissitudes and personal instabilities. Sometimes this is achieved lightheartedly, almost hilariously—such as in Cardcaptor Sakura or Kill La Kill, both of which employ a visual extravaganza of mess and mayhem to tartly parodize the everyday pathos of coming-of-age. Other times, her character occupies an ontological penumbra that spans both individual griefs and grave social issues, such as in Madoka Magica or Hell Girl, both of which highlight the particular dangers of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood in a modern era.
Considering the shōjo heroine's history, there is a certain delightful irony to this fact. Originally, as mentioned, the very premise of shōjo arose out of rigidly parochial system in Meiji-era Japan. Yet, within the very space meant to subdue her, she has paradoxically been transformed into an icon of magic and mystery, transgression and self-discovery. At once a pop-cultural emblem of Japan and an international superstar, her true appeal, however, lies in the shadowy lacuna she occupies in the middle—as a liminal figure of possibility, whose struggles echo the more universal themes of reinvention and imagination. At home she is the sprightly figure of a girlhood lost, an epoch of innocence that seems at once eternal yet eyeblink-brief. Abroad, she is imbued with the fleeting transience that practically epitomizes the traditional Japanese aesthetic: a stage of youth that is the threshold to something greater, but which in itself can never be recaptured—the ideal metaphor not only for coming-of-age, but for finding within that amorphous space the freedom to dream, and to grow both roots and wings in a volatile globalized backdrop.
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In examining the plight of the Bhutanese refugees, it becomes evident that Bhutan, despite its rigid adherence to cultural integrity, is not immune to Arjun Appadurai's idea of flows of globalization – in particular his locution of ethnoscapes, the more dramatic of which is forced migration, and its wide-ranging impacts on the peoples, the host countries, and the nation-state itself.
Hailed as the Last Shangri La for its pristine rivers, soaring monasteries and verdant landscapes, Bhutan has gained prominence in international circles for its unique ethos of 'Gross National Happiness' (GNH). Coined by its king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, as an alternative to the Western paradigm of Gross National Product, GNH is considered a spiritual spectrum by which to measure the nation's socio-economic development, environmental conservation, culture and governance. Indeed, as one of the few remaining vanguards of a unique corpus of Vajrayana Buddhism, with a newly-minted constitutional monarchy, a beloved Harvard-educated sovereign, and a rich cultural heritage largely untouched by globalization, Bhutan has captured the Western imagination as a haven of serenity, navigating with grace through the currents of modernity while simultaneously maintaining its core identity.
However, many deride its idyllic facade as political propaganda, pointing out that behind Bhutan's carefully-crafted brand of happiness lies a darkly Le Guinian legacy of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. Indeed, hand-in-hand with the moniker of the Last Shangri La, the nation also holds the dubious designation of one of the world's highest per capita creators of refugees – a fact that has drawn little international attention, but which serves as ironic proof in itself of Bhutan's turbulent and ongoing dance with the centrifugal versus centripetal forces of globalization ("Nepal: Bhutanese Refugee Screening," 2015).
Of particular focus is the mass exodus of Bhutan's Lhotsampas population. Once considered the nation's fastest-burgeoning ethnic Nepali minority, the Lhotsampas (literally "people of the South") were first recruited by the Government of Bhutan in the late nineteenth century, as laborers to cultivate the patchwork of arable lands in the southern regions. With the passage of time, the Lhotsampas prospered and rose to respected heights in Bhutanese society as educators and government officials. By 1958, with the issuance of the Bhutanese Citizenship Act, they were granted citizenship, given land tax receipts, and offered incentives to intermarry within Bhutan's diverse ethnic groups. However, the increasingly multicultural nature of the population was soon perceived as a threat to the nation's cultural homogeneity. In 1989, the then-king Wangchuk promulgated the "One Bhutan, One People," policy. In a series of edicts, the indigenous Buddhist language, religion and practices of the Ngalong Drukpa were given precedence over those of the predominantly Hindu Lhotsampas. Nepali, once the accepted lingua franca, was banned from classrooms, and all citizens were to adhere to the codes of Driglam Namzha, or The Rules for Disciplined Behavior. This included wearing traditional Bhutanese attire of Gho and Kina, even during religious rites and festivals; schoolgirls forcibly having their hair cut short; and Nepalese textbooks being publicly burned. Lhotsampas in the south were also expected to produce the 1958 land tax receipt; failure to do so would see them branded as "illegal immigrants" (Basu, 2009; Pulla, 2016; Subba & Sinha, 2017).
Understandably, the decrees generated friction among the populace; initial peaceful protests grew fiery when a number of southern youth publicly burned their Drukpa attire in an act of symbolic defiance. The royal security force branded them as dissidents and traitors of the state, retaliating with arrests and expulsion of all those perceived as involved in the uprisings. Tens of thousands of Lhotsampas were driven from their homes under the threat – and oftentimes the reality – of harassment, forced firings, property confiscation, rape and torture. Several were made to sign 'voluntary' migration forms at the border, to lend the impression that they were leaving of their own volition. By the early 1990s, nearly one-sixth of Bhutan's population found themselves stranded on the southeast fringes of Nepal. Their ancestral nation was far from welcoming. Classifying the refuges as citizens of Bhutan, Nepal denied them work permits or documentation for citizenship, instead calling upon the aid of the UNHCR. Seven refugee camps – Beldangi I, Beldangi II, Beldangi II extension, Goldhap, Khudunabari, Timai, and Sanischare – were established to house the refugees. Here, they have languished for two decades, caught in an uncertain limbo of both literal and ontological homelessness.
The Bhutanese government continues to dismiss them as illegal immigrants, and to resist attempts at repatriation – despite the fact that many refugees can readily produce documentations of citizenship (Basu, 2009; "Global Trends," 2005; Mørch, 2016). Indeed, this adherence to monoculturalism can be seen as a forceful mediation of the dangers of global influence; in a transcript from Bhutan's National Assembly meeting of 1989, the Deputy Home Minister of Bhutan deplored multiculturalism as a death-sentence for their national character, claiming, "in a small country like ours it would adversely affect the growth of social harmony and unity among the people" (Gellner, Pfaff-Czarnecka & Whelpton, 2005, p. 136). Yet the displacement of the Lhotsampas serves as an ironic reminder that, for all Bhutan's attempts at insulating itself from globalization, it is still caught in the undercurrents of it: transcultural flows and frictions that often serve to reinforce rather than diminish ethnic, racial and cultural absolutism (Thiranagama & Kelly, 2012). More to the point, despite how often globalization itself is valorized as a unifier and universalizer of nations, its broader impact oftentimes simply mutates socio-spatial boundaries in shape and nature, their delineations dictated by reactionary politics that can be violent, suppressive – and deadly.
For the Bhutanese refugees, their multiple belongings and affiliations are evident. Predominantly Nepalese by descent, Hindu by religion, Bhutanese by citizenship, they are a diverse group with further variegations in background. Some have high literacy levels; others close to none. Many were driven out of their villages and into refugee camps during the draconian campaign of forced evacuation; others were born on the camps themselves, and know no other home. Among the older generation, there is an impetus, to this day, to return to their homeland; many of the younger refugees, meanwhile, have been resettled in the recent years in the US, Canada, and other European nations, shrinking the seven original Nepalese camps down to two. Yet, for those who remain, there is a grim sense of belonging nowhere but within the diaspora. The Nepali government impedes any efforts at local integration, and curtails the movements of refugees beyond the camps. The assistance programs focused on providing refugees with food, fuel, medical care and other resources are dwindling, and living conditions are increasingly harsh. This phenomenon of 'refugee warehousing' feeds an atmosphere of bleakness within the camps themselves: the lack of agency in the refugees' lives, coupled with stymied progress in bilateral talks between Nepal and Bhutan, and growing restlessness among youths about future prospects, have culminated in high levels of substance abuse, domestic violence and conflict in the camps (Pula, 2016; Ridderbos, 2007).
Different uncertainties await those who are open to third-country resettlement. In 2006, the USA unveiled a program with the intention of resettling nearly 60,000 refugees within its borders (Shrestha, 2008). While the offer lit a spark of hope for many of the refugees, there were also high undercurrents of anxiety. The selection process and criteria were described as ambiguous, with refugees apprehensive about educational and employment opportunities in the host country. Concerns also arose over the prospect, or lack of it, of citizenship. Given the cruelly arbitrary crackdown and expulsion they endured in Bhutan, many Lhotsampas were unwilling to resettle without the ironclad promise of citizenship in the new host-country. Within the camp, many refugees also resist the prospect of resettlement, as they believe it serves as implicit green light for Bhutan to expel other Lhotsampas. There is also a widespread concern that the prospect of resettlement abroad will conversely lead to the impossibility of repatriation in Bhutan, since it will undermine pressures on the nation-state to accept its ejected citizens back into the fold (Ridderbos, 2007).
Through the lens of social justice, it becomes dismayingly apparent that the Lhotsampas refugees occupy a tenuous position. Rootless and stateless, confined to camps that were never designed for such protracted use, lacking opportunities for employment and education and grappling with a deep sense of displacement, the population is outplaced in every sense, and vulnerable to abuse on a multiplicity of levels (Agier, 2016). Not only are there high levels of depression within the camps themselves, but the trauma and marginality carries through during resettlement to host countries. Financial woes, difficulties in communication, absence of family ties and community support, are reported as being among the primary stressors leading to troubling patterns of suicide among Bhutanese refugees in the USA. For those remaining in the camps, circumstances are equally challenging, if not moreso. Not only are these rising incidences of crime, but women refugees are particularly susceptible to sexual abuse and gender based violence ("Trapped by Inequality," 2003). In an interview with the Human Rights Watch, an elderly refugee remarks, "This problem is due to so many people being packed so tightly together. As long as we are in these camps, in such cramped conditions, such problems will exist. No amount of social awareness training will be able to deal with this. To remove this problem, there has to be a permanent solution for the refugees" (Cubie, 2017, p. 224). For the young children in the camps, misgivings about the future have given way to flagging morale and a lack of motivation in schools. One young refugee states, "We have schools but I get frustrated because I don’t know what my future will be. My mind is always filled with unclear thoughts about my future" ("Meet the Young Photographers," n.d., p.1).
In examining the plight of the Bhutanese refugees, it becomes evident that Bhutan, despite its rigid adherence to cultural integrity, is not immune to Arjun Appadurai's idea of flows of globalization – in particular his locution of ethnoscapes, the more dramatic of which is forced migration, and its wide-ranging impacts on the peoples, the host countries, and the nation-state itself (2010). As he suggests in another of his works, the interstitial status of minorities attracts both scapegoating and violence, because it "create[s] uncertainties about the national self and national citizenship ... globalization, being a force without a face, cannot be the object of ethnocide. But minorities can" (2007, p.44-45). Yet, as Michel Foucault reminds us, those living on the fringes of society – whether in invisibly ubiquitous institutions such as prisons and mental hospitals, or in peripheral spaces such as border zones and refugee camps – are instrumental in highlighting not only the micro-mechanisms of social behavior, but also the macro structures of power and institutions within a would-be deterritorialized, post-Westphalian society (2005). Particular focus should be given to the fact that the very status of refugee arises, not because of the dissolution of national borders via globalization, but the continued construction of these borders, with their clear-cut designations of insider versus outsider. With that in mind, the responsibility of caring for these disenfranchised groups becomes not a domestic, but an international one. A number of strategies devised in the workshop, for instance, included repatriating the refugees back within Bhutan's borders, introducing ways to integrate them within Nepalese society, and establishing Lhotsampas communities in host-nations such as the United States, Canada and the UK – all via the enactment of international pressure and cooperation.
The first option – repatriating the refugees within Bhutan – would no doubt appeal to the first generation of refugees, as it would restore a sense of both belonging and national identity that was stripped from them. As per international law, refugees have a right to return to their homeland with dignity and security. Given the specious Voluntary Migration forms the Lhotsampas were coerced into signing, in addition to the fact that many can still produce documentations of Bhutanese citizenship, it is imperative that the international community persuade Bhutan to respect its citizens rights, and allow them safe haven within its borders again. Particularly vocal in this role should be the core network of nations that share cordial relations with Bhutan: Austria, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland (Ridderbos, 2007). Japan, as a vital development partner of Bhutan's agricultural sector, could wield particular clout in convincing Bhutan to rectify the refugee situation (Choden, Kusago & Shirai, 2007). However, the prospect of such a strategy succeeding is bleak, largely owing to how Bhutan has been exalted via its own carefully-constructed government campaign, and by glowing tourism reports, as a mythical haven of peace, thereby allowing it to elude any accountability for the gross human rights abuses of decade ago. Brandishing its alluring philosophy of Gross National Happiness and its paradisiacal image of untouched landscapes and glittering temples in distinctly new-age packaging, Bhutan carries an undeniable soft power that allows it to forge its own narratives. What's more, given Japan's own propensity for historical revisionism, and the strong sense of Buddhist fraternity between both nations, it is unlikely that the Lhotsampas refugees will see much support – or attention – to their crisis from that particular front.
The alternative, then, is to ensure that the refugees have the freedom and resources to integrate locally in Nepal. Of paramount importance is providing them with citizenship, and enjoining the Nepalese government to provide work permits that allow them to engage in income-generating activities. As it stands, a majority of Bhutanese refugees cannot integrate economically within the host nation as they are consigned to their congested camps, dependent on diminishing aid and with no viable source of income. To exacerbate their dilemma, children born in the camps, and therefore scions of the soil, are denied naturalization. It falls to the international community, through diplomacy and assistance packages, to both ease Nepal's already-strained resources, and offer an additional incentive to provide the refugees a fair and transparent citizenship process. Unfortunately, this may take considerable time; over the past few decades, one of Nepal's primary justifications for denying the refugees naturalization is the assertion that they are Bhutan's responsibility. To seamlessly accept them as citizens is to indirectly justify the original expulsion, without truly holding Bhutan accountable. With that in mind, while naturalization may not be a concrete possibility for the refugees, global pressure to provide them with work permits and easy access to information regarding third-country options becomes the only viable alternative (Banyan, 2010; Ridderbos, 2007).
The final option, to resettle the Lhotsampas refugees in other countries, is unfortunately contingent upon the political climate of that particular nation. Given the virulently anti-refugee sentiment spreading through the United States, Europe and the UK, in tandem with close political control and stricter vetting processes, the prospect of gaining entry and establishing themselves abroad proves increasingly difficult. Just this year, for instance, the U.S administration's refugee ban saw several Lhotsampas trapped in a bureaucratic limbo, unable to enter America or to return to the camp. As one refugee remarks, "Everything was going well, but then this order came, and it left us dejected" (Adhikari, 2017, p. 2). For those who do manage to successfully arrive in the different host countries, it is imperative that they receive education and support as they embark on the complex journey of assimilation. A particular policy proposed during the workshop was the development of predominantly Lhotsampas communities built to cater specifically to the needs of refugees, lending them a necessary sense of belonging that would reduce their isolation in a strange environment, while providing them with training and resources that would ease their transition and allow them to secure employment. While such paradigms would certainly be beneficial for the refugees' welfare, both short-term and long-term, it is equally vital for their host-nations to keep pressuring the Bhutanese government to introduce repatriation as an option. In the interim, to mitigate the vulnerability and uncertainty these populations are subject to, a comprehensive and unequivocal process for citizenship, or at least permanent residence, should be made possible.
The Bhutanese refugee crisis, while neither recent nor likely to be easily-resolved, nonetheless contributes to a grim understanding of the core challenges besieging a globalized society. Particularly noteworthy is the way the refugees' current predicament is not rooted in conflict, but in protracted refuge situations that have spanned decades, with no potential resolution in sight. The impact of this prolonged encampment not only holds dire implications on human rights and economic mobility, but also contributes to a tremendous drain on the host country. Further complicating the matter is Bhutan's refusal to repatriate its disenfranchised citizens, and the reluctance of the global community to confront or repudiate the nation for its abuses. Yet for all those who decry the refugees' resettlement in third countries as an indirect reward for Bhutan's past atrocities, others point out that it is unfair for these groups to be kept in indefinite suspense while desultory Nepal-Bhutan dialogue is lobbed back and forth. Meanwhile, for Bhutan – however much it distances itself from the horrific Lhotsampas exodus – it is also pertinent to remember that the nation is no less immune to globalization than at the beginning of its "One Bhutan, One People," policy. As it opens its doors for tourists, positing itself as a mythical paradise untainted by outside influence, it will nonetheless feel the impact of its own exposure in myriad ways. Whether it responds to those factors as a sinister megaprocess slowly undermining its national character, or as a novel dimension of change to be embraced, may regrettably reveal itself in future cultural anxieties and potential violent enactments on its minorities – whomsoever it chooses this time around to fulfill that role.
References
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Appadurai, A. (2010). Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Banyan, B. (2010, December 27). Unhappiness exported. Retrieved October 07, 2017, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/12/refugees_bhutan
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Choden, T., Kusago, T., & Shirai, K. (2007). Gross national happiness and material welfare in Bhutan and Japan. Thimphu: Centre for Bhutan Studies.
Cubie, D. (2017). The international legal protection of persons in humanitarian crises: exploring the acquis humanitaire. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.Gellner, D. N., Pfaff-Czarnecka, J., & Whelpton, J. (2005). Nationalism and ethnicity in a Hindu kingdom: the politics of culture in contemporary Nepal. Amsterdam: Harwood.
Global trends: refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, internally displaced persons and stateless persons. (2007). Geneva: UNHCR.
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Shrestha, M. (2008, March 25). First of 60,000 refugees from Bhutan arrive in U.S. Retrieved October 07, 2017, from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/25/bhutan.refugees/
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At its crux, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is about more than the social dynamics of the corporate world. Germinating within its edgy, dramatic content is a quiet lambastation of corporatism, within which Enron's downfall is portrayed as a symptom rather than an anomaly.
Alex Gibney's directorial talents shine through once again with his 2005 documentary-film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Based on the homonymous book by Fortune reporters Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind, Gibney's page-to-screen adaptation layers vibrancy and pathos over the bestselling chronicle's already socially-relevant commentary. Like the book itself, Gibney's documentary traces the rise and fall of the megalithic corporation Enron, which is today synonymous with skullduggery and corruption. Also like the book, Gibney succeeds in demystifying a world of complex numbers by focusing on its intensely human underpinnings.
However, while Mclean and Elkind's book serves as a nuanced analysis for those already familiar Wall Street's basic workings, Gibney's documentary will undoubtedly succeed at resonating with wider audiences. Young adults and veterans of the early-2000s recession alike will appreciate its content, which is attractively-packaged and divided into mini-chapters with catchy titles ("Kenny Boy", "Everybody Loves Enron", "Guys With Spikes," etc) and set to a soundtrack that is at once over-the-top and fitting.
At its crux, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is about more than the social dynamics of the corporate world. Germinating within its edgy, dramatic content is a quiet lambastation of corporatism, within which Enron's downfall is portrayed as a symptom rather than an anomaly. As Peter Coyote dourly remarks in the voiceover narration, "Was Enron the work of a few bad men, or the dark shadow of the American dream?"
Although I was quite young at the time of Enron's bankruptcy, its collapse created a butterfly effect that was difficult to ignore. Equally impossible was remaining ignorant of the legal trials of its CEOs, which were recounted incessantly on television, and in magazines and newspapers. However, it was not until 2013 that I personally read the book by Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind. As such, I found the documentary to be a fairly accurate condensation of the source material.
Unfortunately, the book and documentary differ substantially in tone. Whereas Mclean and Elkind are scholarly in their attempt to trace the rise and fall of Enron, the documentary oftentimes reduces its content to schlocky drama. To be sure, Enron is at its core a study of human tragedy. But the point is hammered in so often that it grows tiresome. Thankfully, the film's saving grace is that even when resorting to truisms and cheesy metaphors, the impact is made fresh by the accuracy of Sherron Watkins and Bethany Mclean's closing observations. "Looking at Enron is like looking at the flip side of so much possibility because like most things that end terribly, it didn't start out that way. It started with a lot of people who thought they were changing the world."
From the start, the film incorporates into its chronological narrative a near-ideal combination of cinematic foreboding and heavy-handed intrigue. With gravely lines from Tom Waits' "What's He Building?" interspersed between cut-scenes of a bleak Houston cityscape, the effect is at once fascinating and seedy. However, it is not until a re-enactment of Cliff Baxter's suicide, followed by shots of Jeffrey Skilling at the inquisition, that viewers are lured deeper into the sleazy charisma of sensationalism. In many ways, the recreation of the suicide is tasteless. Yet it serves its purpose: wreathing Enron and all its players within an atmosphere of danger and deception. Gibney's framing makes it clear: this is a glittering world of secrets that outsiders are not privy to. However, the documentary also offers its audiences the sly, tantalizing promise of playing fly-on-the-wall within this intricate corporate machine.
Structurally, the film's chronological order is easy to follow. Audiences trace Enron's rise and fall through a lens of interspersed interviews, audio tapes and video footage. We are introduced in dynamic, engaging detail to Enron's star players: Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, with segments devoted to their backgrounds and personalities. Kenneth Lay's close relationship with the Bush family is also touched upon, but within Enron's overarching structure of corruption, the fact seems to be almost tangential. In many respects, the Bush-Lay friendship comes across as the byplay of America's culture of wealth and exclusivity, rather than a political conspiracy to be explored.
As the film progresses, Enron's exploits – the positive and negative – are portrayed vividly. There is a sense of awe at the fact that a small-time Texas company was able to rise with such dizzying speed into a multinational corporation. By the late 90s, Enron was not just involved in the gas and energy business, but in broadband, steel, shipping, plastics, weather risk management, and petrochemicals. There is also a quiet admiration for the fact that, despite its cutthroat business tactics, Enron was nonetheless one of the era's great innovators. Ideas such as commodifying energy for trade, the (failed) Blockbuster deal to rent movies online (a precursor to Netflix!), the focus on derivatives instead of hard assets, are all relevant to the current era. Unfortunately, Enron did not seem to grasp that the virtual marketplace came with rewards and risks in equal measure. Rather than owning up to its losses, it chose to sweep them under the rug in the form of illegal partnerships and fraudulent accounting.
Chillingly, there were ever-cropping red flags of Enron's unscrupulous practices early on. The documentary does not disregard these: incidents such as the Valhalla Scandal of 1987, or the disastrous Dahbol power-plant in Maharashtra, India, or sale of Nigerian energy barges to Merril Lynch, are all given careful attention. However, it is not until the chapter 'Kal-ee-for-Nyah', that Gibney brings Enron's corruption into sharp focus. Audiences cannot help but be appalled by Enron's tactics for gaming the Californian market. Business strategies boasting names such as 'Death Star, 'Black Widow,' 'Get Shorty' and 'Fat Boy' are intermixed between audiotapes of Enron traders flippantly discussing ways to bleed the state dry. As Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, remarks, "Those guys at the flip of a switch could just yank the California economy on its leash whenever they wanted to. And they did it, and they did it, and they did it. And they made so much money." It becomes eerily apparent that the firm's mentality was not just amoral, but deliberately malicious. During the California energy crisis, not only did they defraud the state out of billions of dollars, but they seem to have treated it as an elaborate shell-game.
Even from this mid-point of the documentary, it is clear to audiences that Enron's downward spiral is inevitable. In many ways it has become a Frankenstein monster that its own creators cannot control. It does not help that they are largely surrounded by enablers and sycophants who create a cavernous echo chamber. Neither renowned banks nor Wall Street analysts seem to question Enron's skewed accounting. To add to that, Arthur Anderson, then a leading auditing firm, chooses to look the other way when Enron decides to adopt mark-to-market accounting. The business press only feeds Enron's delusions of grandeur. Magazines such as Forbes and Fortune present it as a rising star in the business firmament. For years, the company embodies the zeitgeist of the 90s – riding a wave of innovative globalization and fast wealth. Given the weight of such fantastical expectations, it is no wonder that Enron's eventual collapse sends tremors throughout the economic world.
While the documentary is not filmed in a variety of international locations, it more than makes up for it with its diverse cast. Co-writers Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind both contribute to the narration, and Gibney interviews a number of second-tier executives, attorneys, governors, and friends of Enron CEOs. With their input, Gibney is able to condense and simplify the complexities of the business world without sacrificing the nuances of its human side. Likewise, Enron's entourage of executives are shown to be competitive and resourceful, driven by a need to be the best in the game. Some, such as Kenneth Lay, born to a poor family in Tyrone, Missouri, are self-made successes who practically embody the American dream of rags to riches. Although the documentary details many of their questionable decisions as Enron executives, it does not gratuitously demonize them. Rather, they are portrayed as "victims of their own greed" – the byproducts of an overarching culture that rewards ruthlessness as long as the profits are big enough. Indeed, by the time the documentary ends, audiences are left not with a sense of smug self-righteousness, but immense sadness at what Enron could have been, as well as the still-rippling disasters that could have been avoided had it not fallen prey to avarice.
Overall, one of the most engaging aspects of the documentary is its message. At many points the narrative threatens to morph into a morality play, complete with fallen heroes battling against the Seven Deadly Sins. Its saving grace is how it stretches into an incisive assessment of corporate America, which, with its outsized focus on superficial appearances and financial success, often endorses the same mercenary values it claims to vilify. Another aspect I found pleasantly surprising was how Gibney does not veer into conspiracy theories and political propaganda, which is unfortunately the case for many documentaries. Granted, he has an angle – as many directors do. But he does not let it interfere with even-handed storytelling.
At the same time, one of the film's drawbacks is its Hollywood-esque gimmickry. "Show, Don't Tell" is the dictum for many successful works of art and media, and in this case I would have preferred less of the latter. Gibney's penchant for edgy, artistic mood-building – most apparent in the imagery and soundtrack – is undoubtedly captivating. But it can also be heavy-handed and tacky. Certain dramatizations – such as Cliff Baxter's suicide set to strains of Billie Holiday's God Bless the Child – are in poor taste. So too are recollections of Enron's enigmatic executive Lou Pai, whose penchant for strippers is juxtaposed with intercuts of topless dancers in low red lighting – an effect that comes across as more gratuitous than anything.
On the whole, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a testament to Gibney's craft. Alternately gripping and horrifying, it displays an astute understanding of human nature, at its best and worst, as well as the way wealth and power can function as the potent nuclear force of social dynamics. Ultimately, if there is anything audiences will take away from the film, it is how skillfully Gibney exposes aspects of corporate culture that we are often too uncomfortable to confront ourselves.
Review: Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Embedded within the text is Nietzsche's disdain for the collective morality that defined his era, where nationalistic arrogance served as fuel for militaristic agendas, and where group solidarity becomes a means to legitimize coercive belief systems.
Hailed as one of the most dynamic and polarizing icons of postmodern philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche's oeuvre tackles a breadth of cultural, ethical and metaphysical questions that continue to carry weighty relevance today. In his work, Beyond Good and Evil – widely regarded as exemplary of his core doctrine – Nietzsche delivers an alternately biting and insightful deconstruction of Judeo-Christian morality, in addition to critiquing the stultifying influences of ideological dogma. Too often, this aversion to religious institutions, coupled with his scathing denouncement of conventional principles, has led critics to accuse Nietzsche of egotistic nihilism at best, immoral hedonism at worst. In truth, a deep strain of morality runs through Nietzsche's works, tied closely with the exaltation of self-aware individuals who cast aside trivial preoccupations with 'good' and 'evil' in order to fulfill their highest potential as human beings.
Central to Nietzsche's work is the concept of 'will to power' – defined at once as an inherent psychological phenomenon and a biological drive. Although interpretations differ, it is largely understood as a natural force that – once recognized and channeled with the proper strength of mind – will enable us to overcome all obstacles. The will to power exists in a state of chaotic, continuous discord within human beings, who contain multifaceted centers of this force, each vying for domination. In many of us, the strength to conquer any one single, purified drive abides only in a dormant fashion, unable to manifest externally. A select few, however, will possess the gift to achieve this exalted state – but only after casting off the herd mentality so synonymous with institutional dogma, be it cultural, political or religious.
Embedded within the text is Nietzsche's disdain for the collective morality that defined his era, where nationalistic arrogance served as fuel for militaristic agendas, and where group solidarity becomes a means to legitimize coercive belief systems. Within such a state of intellectual suppression, where free thought and individual action are viewed as subordinate, it will become impossible for human beings to achieve their inner ideals. The outcome is a climate of inertia and self-delusion, within which all the qualities antithetical to human growth and emancipation, are lauded as virtues. From the beginning, Nietzsche cautions against the dangers of this state, which he likens to the Christian distortions of democracy itself, laden with absolute binarizations of right/wrong: “For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular variations and antithesis of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives...?” (Nietzsche 2)
Indeed, throughout the text, Nietzsche challenges readers to reassess their entrenched ideas of truth and morality, and to develop a more comprehensive, critical purview of human life. While the conventions fed to us as facts may be comforting in their familiarity, Nietzsche invites us at every turn to question what, in the end, constitutes as reality, and what is merely fabricated and arranged in order to further a specific agenda. In order to dismantle these concepts, he further stresses the withdrawal from institutions – and by proxy groups of people – which are geared toward crushing the human spirit. Indeed, Nietzsche stresses the importance of solitude as both the fuel and the vehicle for enabling self-evolution. Given the pressures and constraints inherent in public life, where self-compromise and deception are often the sum of human interaction, isolation becomes a necessary state of convalescence – and eventual self-renewal. “Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the majority – where he may forget ‘men who are the rule,’ as their exception...” (27).
A final, crucial corollary of Nietzsche's work is his unshakable belief that anything of intrinsic value must be fought and struggled for. Much in the same way the compendium of his works – trenchant and ponderous in turns – is not always easily accessible, Nietzsche's emphatic contempt of conventional morality as a suppressor of natural curiosity, as well as his critique of religious institutions for inhibiting admirable human capacities, is rooted in the belief that such systems breed inertia and complacence among individuals. Worse still, they serve as a cushion that makes it more difficult to sacrifice a life of convenience in favor of seeking difficult answers to the caprices of life. For Nietzsche, however, it is those difficult answers – and the hardships they entail – that allows us to lay claim to that very life-force that ultimately liberates us: a sublime realm which, unscathed by social corruptions, represents human achievement in its purest form. “The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul—has it not been bestowed through suffering?” (56)
Alternately dismissed as darkly nihilistic, or appropriated by dictators as a justification for violent military agendas, Nietzsche's ultimate goal is in fact to lay bare the failings of collectivist-driven societies, particularly those which exonerate their members from the practice of individual thought and action. For Nietzsche, the latter two are integral for human beings to achieve true fulfillment. Although scathing rhetoric and exceptionally iconoclastic precepts are among the core components of his work, Beyond Good and Evil is in truth a refreshingly unsentimental snapshot of the universe as it is: in a constant state of flux, shaped by narratives that are disguised as objective truths, and where everything must be questioned with an open and skeptical mind. Yet, within this tide of cosmic and worldly instability, Nietzsche offers hope, reminding us that we are capable of shaping our own lives. Self-mastery does not arise in a vacuum, but resides within us, ready to be cultivated and perfected with each hardship we face. In that sense, Nietzsche is uniquely contemporary in his outlook, reminding us that we are not passive widgets fulfilling institutional agendas, but agentic beings who can create – or destroy – our own chances of sublime happiness.
Works Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Judith Norman. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.
Foucault's main focus is to illustrate how, despite our self-congratulatory complacence at moving away from the barbaric model of medieval punishment, we have in fact transferred the imperatives of controlling human beings – be they deviants or conformists – from their bodies to their souls.
Published in 1975, Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish has gained widespread recognition as one of his most intriguing and subversive works – and, conversely, his most accessible. A majority of the Foucauldian oeuvre is densely-packed with semiotic theories of language that are difficult – if not impossible – to immediately decode. However, this very richness of text attests to the depth of Foucault's scholarship, which reconstructs a picture of modern society not simply from conventionally-academic viewpoints but from an astonishing wealth of sources, including history, science, philosophy and art. Foucault is determined not to be beholden to any particular school of thought, but instead to forge unique standards of interpretation – or, failing that, to at least expose ubiquitous social and ethical narratives as the arbitrary fabrications they are.
This focus on deconstructing social mechanisms, indeed, is a crucial frame for Discipline and Punish as a whole. Utilizing a genealogical historical lens, Foucault traces the slow and oppressive transformation – as opposed to 'evolution', a phrase often touted by proponents of liberal reform – of the Western penal system. Foucault's main focus is to illustrate how, despite our self-congratulatory complacence at moving away from the barbaric model of medieval punishment, in favor of gentler and more civilized modes of discipline, we have in fact transferred the imperatives of controlling human beings – be they deviants or conformists – from their bodies to their souls. As Foucault states, "Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights," thus intimating that the organs of institutional control have not grown less harsh or restrictive, but simply less overt (11). Indeed, by relying on a framework of internal rather than external constraints, it has become possible to erode the very modicum of individuality, reducing human beings to what Foucault describes as "docile" bodies complicit in their own exploitation.
Foucault goes on to remark that, "…the 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines" (222). Certainly, a central component of Foucault's work is how it calls into question the universal binary model of crime and punishment, and how this binarization contributes to social regulation. By dividing individuals into categories of deviants and conformists, it is possible to contribute to a system of ritualistic exclusion, which in turn sanctions disciplinary structures designed to surveil and control both groups – one in the interest of their safety, the other out of the necessity to contain and subdue them, thereby expanding the net of power. More disquietingly, the net's very ubiquity serves to render it invisible, and, eventually, an acceptable and even necessary component of society.
Foucault further develops this concept by examining the concentrated power-structures of non-penal institutions, which nonetheless share core similarities with the penal model. For instance, schools, hospitals, workplaces, courts, are all part of an interlocking disciplinary web, within which hierarchical judgement, control, and examination are normalized as part of the daily process. As he succinctly puts it: "We are entering the age of the infinite examination and of compulsory objectification" (189). Foucault lays the blame for this phenomenon on a capitalist system whose economic and political trajectory has led society to a place of commodification and classification, where the complexities of dynamic individuals are pared down into reductionist categories of 'acceptable' or 'unacceptable.' According to Foucault, surveillance and regimentation as a means of producing compliant individuals is the crux of modern economies, to the point where society has transformed into an industrial panopticon – a nightmarish perversion of Jeremy Bentham's original ideal. As such, whether individuals live as offenders within a prison, or as free citizens, is irrelevant. The scant difference in both their constraints is measured by mere degrees.
On the whole, Foucault's works have been influenced by a number of prominent theorists, from Deleuze to Nietzsche. His ideas of coercion and control through ubiquitous surveillance, in turn, have inspired countless compelling interpretations on how disciplinary organs can permeate society in its entirety, to the point where the disciplinary gaze of outside institutions becomes a harsh internal scrutiny to which we subject both ourselves and others, while simultaneously shaping our behaviors to the conventional standard. These aspects of Foucault's work, while not in themselves new, are nonetheless bitingly insightful and timelessly pertinent, having outlasted postmodernism to be applied at multiple levels to the era in which we exist today.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Random House LLC, 1977. Print.
The women in Hidden Figures are presented as under-respected harbingers of an era that dissolves borders, in no small part thanks to their own convictions that such dreams can become reality.
X-Posted at Forbes & Fifth
Based on the eponymous non-fiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures is a semi-biographical drama film that boasts Theodore Melfi (of "St. Vincent" fame) at its helm. A modest one-hundred-and-twenty-seven minutes in length, the film functions in equal parts as a chroniclization and a social commentary of the struggles endured by female mathematicians at NASA during the 1960s, when both the Civil Rights movement and the Space Race were at their zenith.
At its most basic, Hidden Figures is a counter-narrative that offers illuminating insights into the lives of these pivotal African-American women, whose efforts undergirded one of America's crowning achievements – but who were swept into obscurity by the tide of mainstream history, the flow of which is arguably dictated by white androcentrism. At the same time, the film masterfully interweaves the parallel trajectories of the aerospace industry and the Civil Rights era in such a way that they complement, rather than negate, one another in order to catalyze some of the most conspicuous manifestations of globalization. Their scope includes the launching of satellites for both global surveillance and rapid channels of communication, to the birth of information technologies that sparked trends in global networking and organizations built on international cooperation, to new platforms for social movements championing equality, which re-scaled the contentions around racial justice to worldwide dimensions.
These advancements are significant not only for their historical clout, but because the undercurrents continue to carry through in social dynamics and technological achievements today, offering potent clues about human societies and their continued survival. Indeed, Hidden Figures, at its crux, is about survival – whether through individual ingenuity in the face of blatant prejudice and subtle microaggressions, or through the slow but deliberate erosion of hierarchical structures entrenched in racism, sexism, and tribalism.
Tackling any one of these issues on its own would prove an enormously tall order. Exploring all of them, concurrently, runs every risk of dissolving the plot into a chaotic tangle of hopelessly overambitious themes and saccharine, oversimplified messages à la Hollywood. Yet, for the most part, the film avoids them with both cleverness and panache – largely by never losing sight of its premise as both a foundation and a fulcrum.
More than an amusing pun on the infallible logic of numbers when used and applied correctly, or the deliberate erasure of those who made those same complicated calculations possible, Hidden Figures explicates, via its three main characters, the nuances of power, tension and belonging in segregation-era America, while each woman moves through varying social structures. They are hidden figures not merely in the context of their underappreciated work, but because they are invisible yet immensely influential widgets cultivating broader social change – even if said change may not be fully visible until years or even decades afterward. We meet Taraji P. Henson's indomitable Katherine Goble, who first steps with trepidation into the cluttered, all-white, nearly all-male whirl of the Space Task Group Office, and is alternately ignored or demeaned by her colleagues, yet ends the film in the tracking control-room, shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of NASA's most brilliant minds as John Glenn is launched into space. Moving forward, we are introduced to Janelle Monáe's zesty and plainspoken Mary Jackson, who successfully petitions the Hampton County Courthouse to attend an all-white school despite her husband's well-meaning skepticism, then goes on to become NASA's first black female engineer. Finally, we get to know Octavia Spencer's salt-of-the-earth Dorothy Vaughan, who gathers the mettle to demand a promotion after being perpetually taken for granted, and ultimately triumphs as the first black woman to supervise a staff at NASA's center. The film makes it clear that these women are pioneers not simply owing to their individual merits, but because they represent the larger group of black female mathematicians who toiled tirelessly in their offices, unrecognized yet integral to winning the Space Race.
Detailing the struggles each woman endures is daunting enough, yet there are far more subjects successfully interwoven through the fabric of the film. There is U.S history, global politics, social disorder, gender dynamics, professional uncertainties and mutually-encouraging friendships in a kaleidoscopic mélange. These are tackled through the film’s exploration of the awkward position Katherine occupies as the only African-American woman in her workplace, and simultaneously as a single mother of three daughters at home. They are further highlighted in the myriad obstacles women of color, and in this particular context, African-American women, had and continue to struggle against owing to both gender-and-racial-biases. Finally, they are present in the film’s palpably tense portrayal of life in Cold War America, and in the violent social disruptions that characterized an era of rising Pan-Africanism, giving voice to bitter complexities of black social and political identity, but also to the technological leaps that were seminal to the globalization process.
Many might argue that Melfi has bitten off more than he can chew. The film is brimming with clips and offhand references to historical events – from Russia's successful launch of Sputnik, to snippets from Kennedy's iconic speech, ("We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,") to references to the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education in the context of Virginia's dogged adherence to segregation, to footage of the KKK firebombing of the Freedom Riders' bus in '61 – yet the outcome is atmospheric rather than forced. The characters portrayed by Henson, Spencer and Monáe are not bland placeholders within a didactic history lesson, but dynamic players in a social drama that they also have the power to shape. Their victory is not exclusively in the swiftness of the short-term outcome, but in the new avenues it forges, allowing these women, and others like them, to march forward and push for greater change in the future. In his work, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Robin D. G. Kelley remarks that when examining groups that advocate for social progress, there is a tendency to view them through the lens of whether or not they "succeeded in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves (9)." Not only does this encourage audiences not to succumb to the 'horse-race' fallacy of prior historians, but also to remember that change is not always apparent and instantaneous.
With that in mind, another commendable aspect of the film, despite its inherently busy narrative, is that the individual and social changes rarely feel forced and come across natural to real life. For instance, Katherine does not receive respect and recognition for her efforts overnight (indeed, the fact that the original Katherine Goble did not receive an Astronomical Society Walker II Award until 2016, is meta-level irony at its finest – or cruelest). Instead, the film makes it clear that it is the pivotal launch of Sputnik, and America's frantic efforts to play catch-up, that lead to the Space Task Group, under pressure from the top, to recruit an Analytic Geometry specialist: "You know what's dangerous? Inaction. Inaction and indecision. The Russians have a spy satellite lapping the planet… No more delays… just get us up there"(00:09:16).
In his work, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s, historian Allen Matusow remarks that Sputnik "...struck a devastating blow at America's self-regard and sense of security. If the Russians had Sputnik, a host of commentators concluded, they probably had intercontinental ballistic missiles. If they beat us into space they must be forging ahead in science, technology, education." In the wake of this unsettling new reality, Americans were forced to confront real or perceived failings in their systems. Social criticism "… became fashionable again (9)." Small wonder, then, that there was a dramatic shift in the nation's educational policies, and that African-American groups were vociferous in their demand that black students receive both academic resources and recognition, as ignoring such an "untapped resource of intellectual and scientific brainpower would be a foreign policy disaster for the U.S during the Cold War (Thompson 20)."
Within this volatile social climate, the demand for math wizards like Katherine arises out of brute expedience rather than genuine meritocracy – a fact that is further testified by the prejudicial and obstructionist treatment she receives from her colleagues. NASA's milieu of cutting-edge technology, blackboards covered in complicated equations, suited men in sleek office spaces and gravely-dignified meetings filled with an implicit drive to achieve the unachievable, juxtaposed with the disrespect Katherine is subject to, all highlight the gulf that exists between America's technological advancements and its social equalities. More to the point, they are reminders that NASA cannot justifiably break barriers in space without addressing the insidious but no less damaging ones that exist within and among its own people. In his book Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, Neil Maher discusses the tendentious relationship between the Civil Rights movement and the Space Race during the 1960s, intimating that the failings of one could not be corrected without addressing the needs of the other:
In an attempt to appease criticism … NASA engineers and scientists reoriented some of their space technology toward more pressing urban problems, especially those affecting African-Americans, including air and water pollution for sewage and garbage disposal and unhealthy living conditions. The civil rights movement in other words was bringing the Space Race back down to earth. ... [Ultimately, NASA] transformed civil rights by shining an extremely bright public relations spotlight on the movement. In the Kennedy Space Center VIP viewing area, as they waited for hours for the Apollo 11 countdown, [Ralph] Abernathy and the families joining him consciously worked the captive audience. 'This is really Holy Ground,' he stated during an impromptu address to the politicians, foreign dignitaries, movie stars, and, most important, the dozens of reporters who were all waiting for the rocket to roar into the air. 'But it will be even more holy once we feed the hungry and care for the sick and provide for those who do not have homes' (50-51).
Yet, for these bleak and lopsided social dynamics, the film's message is tinged with hope. Time and time again, the protagonists are told, "That's just the way it is," yet they respond not with passive resignation but a quiet resolution to take matters into their own hands. At each turn, Melfi reminds audiences that ironclad conceptions of reality within specific societies, and their surrounding notions of naturalness, are in fact arbitrary constructs that can be shaped and re-shaped according to human efforts. At the outset of the film, Katherine's boss, frustrated and stymied by their team's repeated failures to launch ships into orbit, questions whether it is even possible to make his dreams of reaching the moon a reality. By the climax of the film, although NASA has not achieved the desired moon-landing, they have nonetheless launched John Glenn into space – a series of ascending leaps that can only guarantee they will soar higher. In the process, the organization has also made small but hugely significant steps towards an environment of greater equality and acceptance, from desegregating the bathrooms, to hiring Mary as their first black engineer, to allowing Katherine, as the first ever woman, to attend the highly-classified NASA briefing. Each time, the achievements are quiet, understated, yet carry potent resonance: a reminder that human beings have the capacity to shape the space around them, on both an individual, national and ultimately global scale. The film's ultimate scene -- where Katherine sits in the near-empty Space Task Group Office, typing up a report bearing both hers and her initially-hostile colleague Paul Stafford's names in tandem, while Paul himself, in a gesture of matter-of-fact camaraderie, brings her a cup of coffee – is touching not only for its redemptive warmth, but for the lack of fanfare that characterizes it (01:58:14-01:58:20).
Similarly, the film does not aggrandize NASA's technological breakthroughs, but calls the audience's attention to the innovators who not only made such achievements possible, but who are the literal and metaphoric 'hearts' that keeps them alive. In an earlier scene, Katherine, Mary and Dorothy nervously discuss the eventual operation of the IBM – the first transistor-based computers, meant for the scientific computing that was previously done by their department. They are prepared to accept the machine's superiority to them in terms of efficiency and speed, but are nonetheless determined to understand and master its intricacies: "It'll run eventually. We have to know how to program it once it does. Unless you'd rather be out of a job?" (00.59:22). The IBM computer, and to an even greater extent, the satellite, are both NASA-spawned innovations that were perfected during the Cold War, yet instrumental in ending it as they ushered in what sociologist Robert Roland defines as the "fifth phase" of globalization, within which the world came to be defined not "in itself" but "for itself," with all the uncertainties and possibilities that go hand-in-hand within a transnational realm of shrinking boundaries.
Yet, as the women in the film remind us, the march of globalization does not necessarily trod humanity underfoot, but can be mastered as another extension of our dreams, whether individual or collective. Similarly, societal haves and have-nots do not exist as a disembodied vacuum, but as an expression of symbolic, political and economic disparities, allowed unchecked reign. The women in Hidden Figures are presented as under-respected harbingers of an era that dissolves these borders, in no small part thanks to their own convictions that such dreams can become reality. Yet Melfi's message is neither cloying nor moralistic; the film is a critical reminder that the struggle towards equality and unity is far from over. At the same time, there is an implicit exhortation to never stop fighting for that change. Within an increasingly globalized sphere, birthed by the innovations – technological, social – of NASA, change is the only constant, and the transformations sparked by globalization are not simply part of the world, but, conceptually, an ever-breathing, ever-expanding imprint of it. It is an imprint that we ourselves can shape, through both the existing wisdom of those who fought before us, and also through the clarity and knowledge that any phenomenon that fails to bring true equilibrium, inward and outward, will ultimately collapse beneath its own weight.
For Hidden Figures, it is not enough to interweave the parallel trajectories of the aerospace industry and the civil rights era to highlight globalization in its most pivotal manifestations. Rather, it is to ensure that we, as the audience, understand that those manifestations are thanks to individuals too-easily forgotten within a fast-paced and self-serving world – but who must be remembered, lest we forget the very lessons our future is built upon, and our capacity to see the world as one.
Works Cited
Kelley, Robin D. G. Freedom dreams: the Black radical imagination. Boston, Beacon, 2002.
Maher, Neil M. Apollo in the Age of Aquarius. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2017.
Matusow, Allen J. The unraveling of America: a history of liberalism in the 1960s. Athens, Ga, University of Georgia Press, 2009.
Melfi, Theodore. Hidden Figures. 20th Century Fox, 2016.
Robertson, Roland. Globalization: social theory and global culture. London, Sage, 2000.
Thompson, Mark A. Space Race: African American Newspapers Respond to Sputnik and Apollo 11. Dissertation, University of North Texas, 2007, UMI: 1452031
...The Dhammapada is the ideal model for dissecting the universal human experience, any potential platitude made fresh by how it transforms the lofty abstractions of philosophy into concrete steps for personal transformation and transcendence.
One of the most celebrated and spiritually-resonant Buddhist texts, the Dhammapada distinguishes itself among the Pali Canon – the oldest surviving scriptures of Theravada Buddhism – for its extraordinary accessibility. Whereas a majority of the Tripitaka are liturgical in nature, focused on rules for monks and nuns within the sangha, the Dhammapada is addressed to the laity, novices and clergy alike. Given the cultural psyche of Vedic, pre-Buddhist India, with its strict stratification of caste, gender and faith, this is in itself remarkable. More startling still is how effortlessly the Dhammapada balances high-minded spiritual ideals with pragmatic, down-to-earth advice. Despite belonging to the Khuddaka Nikaya ("Collection of Little Texts") within the Sutta-Pitaka, its universal allure has allowed it to transcend the narrow niche of aphoristic scripture and to occupy the proud pedestal of a world-renowned classic.
Although it is simplistic to declare that the Dhammapada capsulizes every possible theme within Buddhism, it nonetheless serves as a rich compendium of Buddhist doctrine. Contained within its modest anthology of 423 slokas are the core values of the Dhamma, or Universal Law, which in turn offer us an inspirational mapwork for personal edification. Indeed, the very arrangement of its verses, at once harmonious and contrasting, speaks of the dichotomous nature of human existence, where happiness cannot exist without suffering. The beauty of the Dhammapada, of course, lies in the gentle reminder of how everything is interconnected, and that only by understanding the causal nature of our suffering can we seek to transform it into happiness. In that sense, the Dhammapada is the ideal model for dissecting the universal human experience, any potential platitude made fresh by how it transforms the lofty abstractions of philosophy into concrete steps for personal transformation and transcendence.
The text unfolds with a beautiful simplicity, each chapter – or vagga – carrying within its particular theme the fine-grained nuances of spiritual and visceral truth. The first chapter, Dichotomies, is a brilliant condensation of the Dhammapada as a whole. Special emphasis is placed on the mind, which is presented as both the obstacle and the gateway to awakening our full consciousness, as well as to pragmatically engaging with both suffering and happiness as a means to navigate through the world. "All experience is preceded by mind/Led by mind/Made by mind/Speak or act with a corrupted mind/And suffering follows/As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of an ox ... Speak or act with a peaceful mind/And happiness follows/Like a never-departing shadow" (Buddha Ch. 1, 1-2).
The message offered here – that both karma and self-actualization are not external impositions, but things that bloom from within – will hold an intense appeal for a wide swath of readers. With the first few stanzas, the Dhammapada effectively decimates stereotypes of Buddhism as fatalistic, based on the idea that one's present conditions are predetermined by his or her past karma. Rather, the text makes it clear that karma revolves around the idea that we create our own futures. By disciplining the mind, it is possible to take one's life into one's own hands, and to reap the rewards of one's thoughts and actions. "Don't disregard evil, thinking/'It won't come back to me!'/With dripping drops of water/Even a water jug is filled./Little by little/A fool is filled with evil/Don't disregard merit, thinking/'It won't come back to me!'/With dripping drops of water/Even a water jug is filled./Little by little/A sage is filled with merit" (Ch. 9, 121-122).
Much of what keeps the Dhammapada so timeless, of course, is the emphasis on suffering as a ubiquitous aspect of the human condition. Frequently, this is misinterpreted to mean that Buddhism as a whole equates existence with suffering – unremitting, overwhelming – and that the Buddha's ultimate dictum is to resign oneself to it. However this assumption is the furthest from the truth. The quintessence of Theravadaic Buddhism can be found in the fourteenth chapter, The Buddha. Here, readers are introduced to the integral linchpin of Buddhist philosophy, namely the Four Noble Truths – "Suffering/The arising of suffering/The overcoming of suffering/And the Eightfold Path/Leading to the ending of suffering" (Ch. 14, 190-191). These fundamental "pillars" of Buddhism explain both the root and the cure of human unhappiness. The first Truth is that life is dukkha, which can be interpreted as sorrow. The second Truth identifies the root cause of sorrow as tanha – thirst – more commonly translated as craving. In this instance, it refers to our self-serving desires, which we are desperate to satisfy at the expense of both others and ourselves. The third Truth, the cessation of suffering, can be interpreted as the conquest of those selfish desires. To achieve this state, it is necessary to tame the destructive whims and caprices of our mind. Only by mastering such impulses can we detach ourselves from the delusion of the "self" as a separate entity, and acknowledge that we are all intertwined within the fabric of cosmic existence. As such, it is essential to be kind, selfless and mindful in our thoughts, speech and deeds alike.
It is the Forth Noble Truth, however, that is the apotheosis of Buddhist practice. Here, we are introduced to the method that will bring an end to dukkha: the Noble Eightfold Path, also known as the Middle Path. The focus is on a life of neither stringent self-denial, nor complacent self-indulgence. Rather, through Right Understanding, Right Purpose, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Attention, and Right Meditation, it is possible to achieve both internal and external balance. "...This is the secure refuge; this is the supreme refuge" (Ch. 14, 192).
Of course, while the text of the Dhammapada holds an elegant simplicity, its content also succeeds in encompassing a larger, more practical message. From the beginning, it is clear that disciplining the mind and following the Middle Path is no easy feat. However, through dedication and effort, it is infinitely possible; every human being has the capacity to evolve into a Buddha, awakening to the knowledge of their oneness with the cosmic realm. The progress may seem unbearably slow, but this inherent slowness is what both enables and necessitates spiritual evolution. It is too easy to veer toward extremes, to force change through violence inflicted upon others or ourselves in a misguided effort to achieve our goals. What such reckless desire achieves, in fact, is to undermine our happiness and enslave us to worldly expectations. The Dhammapada admonishes readers against such a path; a balanced, self-reflective approach rooted in one's own efforts is the key. "Admonish yourself/Control yourself/O bhikkhu, self-guarded and mindful/You will live happily/Oneself, indeed, is one's own protector/One does, indeed, make one's own destiny./Therefore control yourself/As a merchant does a fine horse" (Ch. 25, 378-380).
Throughout the Dhammapada, it is equally clear that the most powerful of all the invisible strings – the potent nuclear force of our daily lives – is craving. When we wander the world in search of external satisfactions, focused purely on our selfish goals, we lose sight of our inner-potential, our capacity for spiritual growth shackled by the imperatives of worldly regimentation. However, these sensory distractions not only fail to cure the underlying crux of our suffering, they often serve to multiply our desires. It is not enough to kill them through unhealthy self-abnegation. They invariably regenerate and strike back with doubly potent force, rather like the mythological Hydra, which grew two heads for every one struck off. Intemperance is not the solution either; little by little, our insatiable desires feed and transform these slow-burning impulses into destructive, outsized blazes. The way to achieve victory over desire is not through suppression, but careful sublimation. By urging our desires to a higher, more sublime level, we can ultimately gain mastery over our passions, and therefore of our lives. "The craving of a person who lives negligently/Spreads like a creeping vine... Sorrow grows/Like grass after rain/For anyone overcome by this miserable craving/And clinging to the world... Dig out the root of craving/As you would the fragrant root of birana grass... Use insight to cut it at the root" (Ch. 24, 334-340).
The Dhammapada is never less than astute about identifying human dilemmas, and unfailingly pragmatic on the ways and means of curing them. It is a brilliant and equally pertinent guideline for scholars or teachers, the young or the elderly, the intellectual or the merely curious, encompassing within its text conceptual gems of Buddhism that can be applied to the problems of daily life. More compelling still is how the very insights that blossomed in the Buddha's heart are connected and communicated throughout its verses in a strong, straightforward and infinitely sympathetic manner. It is almost as though, in reading the Dhammapada, readers are engaged in close conversations with the Buddha himself. The advice tendered in each verse is encouraging and empathetic, endowing those who comprehend it with the ability to grasp the world in its true dimensions, and to recognize suffering and happiness for what they are. In that sense, the Dhammapada is the ideal model for dissecting the universal human experience, each platitude made fresh by how it transforms the lofty abstractions of philosophy into concrete steps for personal transformation and transcendence.
Works Cited
The Buddha. The Dhammapada. Translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambhala, 2008, Boston, pp. 1-93.
A koan, often presented as a metaphor, or a story, is meant to engage readers by means of intuitive rather than rational reasoning.
In Zen Buddhism, it seems no great feat to challenge the limits of material and solipsistic existence in all its guises, or to transform abstract dogma into concrete understanding. Indeed, a crucial corollary of Buddhism is its gift for teaching through experiential rather than conceptual recognition. It allows individuals to grow by unfolding the deepest layers of their consciousness, instead of imprisoning them in the dichotomy between the 'self' and the world as an unfathomable 'other.' One of the truly ingenious methods Zen Buddhism has employed to unlock the gates of enlightenment is koan practice. A koan, often presented as a metaphor, or a story, is meant to engage readers by means of intuitive rather than rational reasoning. Within each provocative paradox lies the secret of breaking free from the confines of dualism.
Too often, our minds are entrenched in cognitive traps that regard the self as a fixed singularity, instead of fluctuating ephemera that is vulnerable to both perception and rationale. By means of koans, Zen Buddhism allows us to transcend these preconceptions, which are merely obstacles to discovering the deeper facets of our true consciousness. Only by freeing ourselves from logical constraints of 'self/other' can we understand the truth of how, just as the universe exists within us, we exist within it; the only illusion is that of separation.
One of the most famous koans, found in the Diamond Sutra, perfectly exemplifies the dilemma of self-hood: “Out of nowhere, the mind comes forth.” Here, nowhere is not equated with a negative state. Rather, the word is translated in Sanskrit as sunyata, or "zero-ness." Although its meanings differ in both Mahayanaic and Theravedaic Buddhism, at its crux it is defined as what remains after everything that is dependent on cause/effect (karma/vipika) is taken away. Early on in the Buddha's Awakening, he recognized the inherent limitations of language. Because written and verbal communication is so fraught with inconsistencies, its purview so narrowed by logic, it was necessary to create new concepts that transcended the stodgy framework of traditional practice. For that purpose, the implicit emptiness of silence became not a barrier, but a unique solution.
One of the most renowned dialogues in Buddhist text is between the Buddha and his devotee, Malunkyaputta. Doubtful of the contingencies of the self – of its tangible and intangible relationships with the universe – he sought the Buddha out to answer his queries. However, the Buddha refused to be drawn into such metaphysical discourse; he simply maintained his silence.
This episode enjoys a number of interpretations. On one level, it implies that our urge to classify, separate, and thus dispel the shadows of the unknown does little more than perpetuate the self-other dichotomy. Another interpretation is that while the Buddha considers these questions legitimate, they are ultimately unanswerable because they exceed the demarcations of human language and thought. More to the point, they are irrelevant, because the ultimate goal of Buddhism is not to become tangled in abstract philosophy. Rather, it is to find a pragmatic solution to end human suffering and discontentment. For Buddhism, it is clear that even the profoundest philosophical tenet should hold an element of concreteness, an awareness of the present moment. By completely divorcing ourselves from the material realm, and retreating into intangible contemplation, it will be impossible to appreciate the marvel and unity within everyday existence.
Here is where the necessity of mindfulness comes into play. In Buddhism, it supports living in the here-and-now, in sharpening the perception and consciousness, thus guiding us toward transformation beyond the self. According to the Buddha, every human being is a composite of aggregates (skandha). These can be described as ingredients, or elements, that every individual shares with the rest of the world – from the insects to the rivers to the trees. As such, it is impossible to consider the 'self' as disconnected from the realm of existence. Everything is an integral stitch within an enormous, interconnected fabric. The question "Who am I?" is therefore little more than a self-enforced separation: fallacious, and ultimately futile. The egotistical self – the one that causes endless suffering in an attempt to satisfy its hubristic appetites – is merely a single layer of our integral self. That we are not simply our physical mind goes without saying. But we are not what the mind contains, either. Our memories, dreams and desires are fleeting; they are in constant flux, ever-changing. They are not our true self.
For Buddhism, it is clear that in order to intuitively connect with our pure, inexpressible self, we cannot follow the premeditated blueprint of rational thought. Rather, it is only by using as a starting point those half-formed flashes of non-verbal intuition, can we awaken our dormant gift for experiencing divinity. This embryo of enlightenment does not grow from perception, but by delving through our innermost layers to arrive at the place where perception itself is born. It is here that we discover the illusion of the self, by comprehending that there is no fixed singularity that can even be labeled as the 'self.' Like a ripple in a pond, while the self is visible, it is beyond a specific or everlasting identity. The ripple expands, merges and fades; the water remains.
In that sense, the "nowhere" discussed in the koan is not a theoretical superfluity, but the essence of freedom from an inimical physical world. In its emptiness, one can find his or her own unique connection with the cosmic realm, eliminating the distance between the perceiver and the perceived. Clearly, in Buddhist philosophy, things matter simply for what they are, rather than what they signify or the sensations they elicit. As a result, transcending the self means not simply knowing it to its darkest depths, but partaking of its connection to the universe through one's entire sensorium – an implicit exhortation to acknowledge the divinity in us, and the ability to see the world as one.
At once a down-to-earth narrative and a multifaceted spiritual drama, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.
For years, the Bhagavad Gita has distinguished itself as a masterpiece of spiritual and philosophical scripture. Beautifully condensing Upanishadic knowledge, the Gita traverses a number of subjects – from duty as a means toward liberation (moksha), to the risks of losing oneself to worldly temptations, to the dichotomy between the lower self (jiva) and the ultimate, eternal Self (atman) – as well as detailing a vast spectrum of human desires, treating them not as one-dimensional abstractions, but as the complex combinatorial dilemmas they are in real life. Written in the style of bardic poems, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.
Recounting the dialogue between Arjuna, the Pandava warrior-prince, and Lord Krishna, his godling charioteer, the text covers a wide swath of Vedantic concepts which are then left for Arjuna to either follow or reject. This element of personal autonomy, and how it can lead to self-acceptance, environmental mastery and finally the spiritual path to one's true destiny, is an immensely alluring concept for readers today. But Arjuna's positioning is the real crux of the Gita: his conflicts between personal desire and sacred duty are the undercurrent of the tale, and the text offers equally spiritual and practical insights in every nuance.
The Gita begins with two families torn into different factions and preparing for battle. The sage Vyasa, who possesses the gift of divine vision, offers to loan the blind King, Dhritarashtra, his ability so the King may watch the battle. However, Dhritarashtra declines, having no wish to witness the carnage – particularly since his sons, the Kauravas, are arrayed on the battlefield. Instead, the sage confers his powers to Sanjaya, one of Dhritarashtra's counselors, who faithfully recounts the sequence of events as they unfold. From the start, readers' introduction to the Gita is almost sensory, with the battlefield stirred into action by Bhishma, who blows his conch horn and unleashes an uproarious war-frenzy, "conches and kettledrums, cymbals, tabors and trumpets ... the tumult echoed through heaven and earth... weapons were ready to clash." These descriptions serve as marked contrasts to the dialogic exchange that follows between Arjuna and Krishna, which is serene and private in tone, the two characters wearing the fabric of intimate friendship effortlessly as they are lifted out of the narrative, suspended as if in an aether where the concept of time becomes meaningless.
Arjuna – whose questions carry readers through the text – stands with Krishna in the heart of the battlefield, between the two armies. However, when he sees the enemy arrayed before him, "fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons and friends," he falls into the grip of a moral paralysis. His whole body trembles and his sacred bow, Gandiva, slips from his hands. He tells Krishna, "I see omens of chaos ... I see no good in killing my kinsmen in battle... we have heard that a place in hell is reserved for men who undermine family duties." As Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton remark in the book, Altruism in World Religions, "To fight his own family, Arjuna realizes, will violate a central tenet of his code of conduct: family loyalty, a principle of dharma." The concept of dharma holds an integral place in Hindu-Vedantic ethos, with Sanatana Dharma (eternal and universal dharma) regarded as a sacred duty applicable to all, and Swadharma (personal and particular dharma) sometimes coming into conflict with the former. It is this inherent contradiction that catalyzes Arjuna's self-doubt. "The flaw of pity blights my very being; conflicting sacred duties confound my reason."
It is Krishna who must inspire him to fight, through comprehensive teachings in the essentials of birth and rebirth, duty and destiny, action and inertia. There is an allegorical genius here that will appeal tremendously to readers. The military aspects of the Gita can easily serve as metaphors for not just external real-life battles, but internal battles of the self, with the two armies representing the conflict between the good and evil forces within each of us. In that sense, Krishna's advice to Arjuna – the seven-hundred slokas – becomes a pertinent, pragmatic guide to human affairs. With each verse, both Arjuna and the readers are offered perspectives and practices which, if followed, can allow them to achieve a robust understanding of reality.
With the spiritual underpinnings of the wisdom known as Sankhya, Krishna explains different yogas, or disciplines. Readers slowly begin to encounter all the components of humanity and the universe, through the lens of Arjuna, whose moral and spiritual weltanschauung undergoes a gradual metamorphosis – from, "If you think understanding is more powerful than action, why, Krishna, do you urge me to this horrific act? You confuse my understanding with a maze of words..." to "Krishna, my delusion is destroyed... I stand here, my doubt dispelled, ready to act on your words."
We are introduced in slow but mesmerizing detail to the wisdom within Arjuna himself; an omniscience that eluded him because it was hidden beneath illusion, or maya. Indeed, Krishna makes it clear that the very essence of maya is to conceal the Self – the atman – from human understanding by introducing the fallacy of separation, luring individuals with the promise that enlightenment springs not from within but from worldly accouterments: in sensual attraction, in the enticements of wealth and power. However, Krishna makes it clear that the realm of the senses, the physical world, is impermanent, and always in flux. Whereas he, the supreme manifestation of the divine and the earthly, the past, present and future, is there in all things, unchanging. "All creatures are bewildered at birth by the delusion of opposing dualities that arise from desire and hatred."
Although these themes are repeated often throughout the Gita, in myriad ways, not once do they become tiresome. Although Krishna's role in much of the Mahabharata is that of a Machiavellian trickster, invested in his own mysterious agenda, he does eventually reveal himself to Arjuna as the omniscient deity. Yet never once does he coerce Arjuna into accepting his teachings, though they are woven inextricably and dazzlingly through the entirety of the Gita. Rather, he gives Arjuna the choice to sift through layers of self-delusion and find his true Self. This can be achieved neither through passive inertia, nor through power-hungry action, but through the resolute fulfillment of duty that is its own reward. In order to dissolve the Self, the atman, into Brahman and achieve moksha, it is necessary to fight all that is mere illusory temptation. Just as Krishna promises Arjuna, victory is within reach, precisely because as a Kshatriya-warrior, it is his sacred duty – his destiny – to fight the battle. More than that, the desire to act righteously is his fundamental nature; the rest is pretense and self-delusion. "You are bound by your own action, intrinsic to your being ... the lord resides in the heart of all creatures, making them reel magically, as if a machine moved them."
Although the issues that Arjuna grapples with often become metaphysical speculations, never once does it dehumanize his character. His very conflict between the vacillations of the self and sacred duty assure his position as something greater and more complex than a mere widget fulfilling Krishna's agenda. It is through the essence of Arjuna's conflict that he grows on a personal and spiritual level. Conflict so personal and timeless is inextricably tied to choice. In Arjuna's case, the decision to shed the constraints of temporal insecurities and ascend toward his higher Self – freed from the weight of futile self-doubt and petty distractions – rests entirely in his hands. Krishna aids him through his psychospiritual journey not with a lightning-bolt of instantaneous comprehension, but through a slow unraveling of illusions so that Arjuna will arrive at a loftier vantage, able to reconnect with his true Self, and to remember his sacred duty. The answers are already within him; the very purpose of Krishna's counsel is merely to draw it out. "Armed with his purified knowledge, subduing the self with resolve, relinquishing sensuous objects, avoiding attraction and hatred... unposessive, tranquil, he is at one with the infinite spirit."
At its core, the Bhagavad Gita is timelessly insightful and life-affirmingly human, an epic that illustrates the discomfiting truths and moral dilemmas that continue to haunt modern-day readers. Despite its martial setting, it is fueled not by the atrocities of battle, but overflowing with the wisdoms of devotion, duty and love. Its protagonist is inclined by lingering personal attachments, but compelled by godly counsel, to surpass both the narrow private restrictions of self-doubt and the broad social framework of family, in order to reconnect with his pure, transcendental Self. However the Gita does not offer its teachings as rigid doctrine, but as a gentle framework through which readers can achieve a fresh perspective on the essential struggles of humankind. At once a down-to-earth narrative and a multifaceted spiritual drama, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.
...Kali is, at her core, the embodiment of opposites. Through her, Hinduism has syncretized a variety of extremes: destruction and creation, death and rebirth, mother-love and sovereign sexuality, primordial violence and self-sacrificial wisdom.
Among the multifaceted pantheon of Hindu deities, the goddess Kali occupies perhaps the most fascinating yet frustratingly misunderstood position. Her iconography – filtered through the lens of parochial presuppositions – often distorts her persona into that of an ogress: bloodthirsty and warlike, with a penchant for destruction. However, this prescribed identity disregards the rich nuances of Kali's origins, reducing her instead to a chimera that arguably embodies the submerged fears of the archetypal, independent feminine. Too often, in text and media, she has been either devalued or demonized, consigned to the same spectrum of mythological would-be villainesses as Lilith, Hecate or Morrigan. New Age depictions of Kali are equally suspect for flattening her into a mere tool for social discourse. Neo-paganists and Western Kali enthusiasts have been accused of appropriating the goddess as a one-dimensional figurehead for Mother Earth, or as a self-serving expression of radical female sexuality, without taking into account her deeper symbolism within Hindu philosophy.
Modern cross-fertilization between the two cultures, thankfully, has allowed academics to defuse these seemingly irreconcilable caricatures. Today, a wealth of literature is devoted to understanding Kali's complex character and role. By navigating the maze between misconception and truth, what emerges is the realization that Kali is, at her core, the embodiment of opposites. Through her, Hinduism has syncretized a variety of extremes: destruction and creation, death and rebirth, mother-love and sovereign sexuality, primordial violence and self-sacrificial wisdom. Kali's incarnations, whether tranquil (saumya) or fearsome (rudra) are simply manifestations of omnipotent cosmic energy (sakti) which is the fuel within and behind every phenomenon of the manifested world. Kali, in short, is the fulcrum around which the cosmos revolves, and she wields her power in both transformative and terrifying ways.
Perhaps most remarkable is that, in Hinduism, Kali is affectionately referred to as Maa, or Mother. This title of respect, with its intimate subtext, is important not because her devotees attempt to distinguish between the maternal Kali and the sanguinary Kali, but because in Hinduism, destruction and creation are regarded as complementary, rather than diametrical, facets of a single continuum (Kinsley 15). With each rebirth, human beings are free of the negative traits conducive to social and personal downfall: cruelty, greed, egotism, self-interest etc. This blank slate goes hand-in-hand with the opportunity to do good karma. Each birth is a new beginning, a fresh start to awaken one's potential for self-transformation. Death, therefore, is not a stillborn story, but one that begins, instead of ending, with the power to sidestep adharma and tread fully across the true dharma path. To accomplish this, Kali is instrumental. She is the Divine Mother who frees her children from the limitations of the physical realm – in this case the cyclical tedium of samsara. Infinitely patient and benevolent, she nurtures the souls (atman) of human beings until they have perfected their understanding of the Ultimate Reality (Brahman) and achieved liberation (moksha). Her color, the pure black of nothingness, can be viewed as the primordial womb within which the enlightened souls merge (Frawley 133).
Of course, to fully appreciate Kali's extraordinary complexity, it is necessary to delve into her etymology and history. In his book, Devī-māhātmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition, Thomas B. Coburn remarks that while Kali is simply a feminine play on the adjective Kaalam, or "darkness," the latter can also be linked to the derivative noun Kaala, or time. Kali, then, is meant to symbolize "that which brings all things to an end, the destroyer" (108). Kali's mythology and the beginnings of her worship are difficult to trace. However, the earliest known mention of Kali is observed in the Mundaka Upanishad, where she is the name of one of the seven terrible black tongues of the fire-god, Agni. In the Mahabharata, she makes a token appearance as one of the "mothers" who become companions of Karttikeya as he boldly ventures forth to slay the demon Taraka. But it is not until the Markandeya Purana, within the chapter Devi Mahatmya ("Glorification of the Goddess") that she makes her awe-inspiring debut. Here, Kali is depicted as both the purest manifestation of divine wrath, but also as the delivering heroine who is summoned to salvage a disaster that threatens to tear apart the fabric of the cosmos itself. Her mission is to destroy the demon-lord Rakhtabeeja (blood-seed) who possesses the power to generate clones of himself with every drop of his blood spilled to the ground. In the book, Kali: The Feminine Force, Ajit Mookerjee describes how Kali:
...manifested herself for the annihilation of demonic male power in order to restore peace and equilibrium. For a long time brutal 'asuric' (demonic) forces had been dominating and oppressing the world. Even the powerful gods were helpless and suffered defeat at their hands. They fled pell-mell in utter humiliation, a state hardly fit for the divine. Finally they prayed in desperation to the Daughter of the Himalayas to save gods and men alike. The gods sent forth their energies as streams of fire, and from these energies emerged the Great Goddess Durga. In the great battle to destroy the most arrogant and truculent man-beasts, the goddess Kali sprang forth from the brow of Durga to join in the fierce fighting. As the 'forceful' aspect of Durga, Kali has been dubbed 'horrific' or 'terrible' in masculine-biased commentaries, without understanding of the episode's inner meaning (21-55).
It is certainly true that Kali contradicts the ideological construct of the feminine as subordinate to the masculine. However, while Hindu philosophy binarizes its deities into symbols of male and female energy, it should be noted that there is an implicit androgyny within each depiction. Collectively, the Hindu pantheon represent the various spatial aspects of Brahman. Each god is an alternate component to a singular theistic unity. Gender is not always integral to this classification, although one can argue that within the social framework of Hinduism, which is heavily male-dominated, it carries significant weight. But that is, perhaps, what makes Kali all the more fascinating. Here is a goddess whose depictions are unabashedly female, yet who embodies the integral Hindu tenets of power and nature (sakti/prakriti), while simultaneously defying orthodox constraints of traditional Indian womanhood. In the book, Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices, Lynn Foulston and Stuart Abbott remark that, by transgressing the limitations of conventional Hindu womanhood, Kali represents the "transcendence of social and worldly values and the freedom this brings... As one of the Mahavidyas (i.e. one of the ten aspects of the Goddess Shakti), Kali can be understood as a liminal symbol, both occupying and traversing the very boundaries of social purity and order, danger and pollution" (118).
The diverse Puranic oeuvre only heightens Kali's uniqueness. Mother, lover, warrior, martyr – her story runs the whole gamut of human experiences. In popular folklore, for example, Kali slays the demonic Daruka and consumes his blood. However, she becomes dangerously intoxicated by the evil flowing through her veins, driven into a rampaging bloodlust. Like an embodied natural disaster, she sweeps across the earth, spreading catastrophe in her wake. Implicit in this tale is the theme of self-sacrifice. While the ferocious Kali is born to vanquish evil, it is clearly at the cost of herself (157).
Other versions present a more empowering outlook. In the book, Questions on Hinduism, John Renard recounts how, in a desperate attempt to cool Kali's wrath, her consort, Shiva, throws himself beneath her feet. This act establishes him as her more passive counterpart, playing on the pun Shava (corpse). More to the point, Kali's story clearly "identifies the female as the energy, the divine spark at the heart of reality, which confers on creation the power of transcendence" (124). Indeed, in traditional as well as contemporary artwork, Kali is often depicted as dancing upon Shiva's supine form. In these portrayals, titled the Dakshinkali, she embodies the unstoppable dance of Nature, while her mate, Shiva, becomes the manifestation of Consciousness. Rather than an active force, Consciousness plays a silent witness to the dynamism of Nature. Shiva, sprawled pale and corpselike beneath Kali's foot, illustrates how all that Consciousness perceives is the force of Nature (Pattanaik 53-67).
In other versions, Shiva does not throw himself beneath Kali's feet, but transforms into a bawling baby. When Kali hears the cries, her fury is subsumed beneath a flood of maternal instinct. Gathering the baby to her breast, she nurses him; her violent potential is thus sublimated into motherly largesse. While this retelling can be criticized as a patriarchal misappropriation – a blatant attempt to tame seemingly-destructive female independence through motherhood – it can also enjoy a kaleidoscope of interpretations. In contemporary Western feminism, it is perhaps not always fashionable to exalt motherhood, which so often conflicts with female self-expression and autonomy. However, the fact that Kali, whose persona is so fearsome, is woken emotionally by a child, and is able to discover opposite yet apposite aspects of her own fiercely protective nature, holds a life-affirming sweetness (Mohanty 55-70).
Other narratives completely dispel the notion that even the all-powerful Kali is inherently submissive to the male form of the divine. In the Tantric version of the Kali's battle, Shiva assumes the guise of a beautiful man and lays himself across Kali's path. Here, as in other adaptations, Kali ceases her rampage after stumbling across Shiva's chest. However, in this case, it is because she is consumed with lust. Flouting the conventions of decency, she straddles Shiva out in the open and begins to make love to him. For many, this combustible blend of violence and sexuality is an empowering motif with a potentially subversive edge. For others, however, it comes as no great shock that Kali, as the purest and most dynamic representation of sakti, is equally unapologetic of her desires (75).
Indeed, Tantric depictions of Kali engaged in coitus with Shiva, which shocked early British settlers as prurient, in fact held intensely ritualistic and symbolic underpinnings. According to Tantric doctrines, the human body symbolizes the microcosm of the universe. As such, Kali's union with Shiva is neither sinful nor shameful, but integral to the process of creation. In the book, Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West, Rachel Fell McDermott et al. analyze this particular myth, faithfully recreated in ancient and contemporary artwork: "Siva is the inert soul, purusa, whereas Kali is the active, creative prakriti.... Tantra emphasizes the 'erotic' (that is, the simultaneously sexual and religious) symbolism of the image. In defiance of conventional sexual mores, Kali engages intercourse with Siva in the 'reverse position' ....since siva depends on sakti for the ability to orchestrate creation, preservation, destruction" (53-55).
Equating this unadulterated female power with the negative – a proclivity often seen in patriarchal interpretations – would be fallacious here. So too would be the tendency to pedestalize the divine, to fit female deities into tidy, distinct boxes of "maidenly" or "motherly." Kali's very mythology allows these generalizations more breathing space. Her destroyer/creator/mother/warrior/temptress/martyr mystique encompasses every facet of existence, from the beautiful to the horrifying. At the most fundamental level, her mythos serves to provoke a reaction – primeval, visceral – from observers and devotees alike. Rather than reducing her extremes to intellectual abstractions, her stories allow her to feel close and human. One might even argue that Kali's presence extends beyond liturgy and theology. Hers is a tactile and emotional experience; she exists equally in the frailties of human life and in the inevitability of death, in the fierce desire to nurture but also to defend, and in the human capacity for infinite, unceasing transformation.
Iconography, of course, serves to highlight her polysemantic and multifunctional role. Every aspect of her appearance carries a potent philosophical epithet. She is often depicted as a ferocious four-armed woman with either pitch black or dark blue skin, a mane of matted hair, three blazing-red eyes, sharp white teeth and a lolling red tongue. She is typically nude, festooned only in a necklace of skulls and a girdle of severed limbs. In two of her four arms, she wields a scythe (kharag) and a severed male head; the remaining two arms are positioned in hasta mudras that communicate the seemingly-ironic message 'Do not fear.' Despite this frightening visage, she is sacrosanct for well-grounded reasons. Her dark skin is tied to earth and space; to the fertile soil of the physical realm and the infinite darkness of the primordial cosmos. Much like black represents the all-encompassing quality of darkness, so too is Kali's darkness the signifier of her benevolent and accepting nature (Harding 38-52).
Equally powerful is the message behind Kali's nudity. She is described as garbed in space, or sky-clad, and this "absence of clothes denotes the absence of illusion" (Mascetti 47). In that sense, she is Nature at its most sublime, transcending the boundaries of name and form. As the Universal Truth, she has conquered the illusory trappings of maya. Through her, devotees can transform blind consciousness into perception, just as a wash of intense light illuminates dark corners, dissipating the shadows of ignorance. Her unbound hair, too, is charged with symbolic and cosmological significance. In the book, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās, David R. Kinsley suggests that Kali's disheveled mane of hair, such a jarring contrast to the way traditional Hindu women plait their hair in deference to social order, is indicative of Kali's unbridled independence. "Kali is free from convention, wild and uncontrolled in nature, and not bound to and limited by a male consort." In the same vein, Kali's loose curtain of hair is interpreted as the swathe of Space-Time, with its tangled mass suggesting the dissolution of cosmic balance. "Her hair has come apart and flies about every which way... all has returned to chaos. The 'braidedness' of social and cosmic order comes to an end in Kali's wild, unbound, flowing hair" (83-85).
Similar dualistic interpretations are found concerning Kali's tongue – blood-smeared and protruding. According to Puranic lore, Kali's lolling tongue allows her to slurp up the blood of Rakhtabeeja, before it can drip to the ground and spawn clones. In other narratives, Kali's outstretched tongue takes on broader, more psychological connotations. In The Book of Kali, Seema Mohanty states that, "With the outstretched tongue, Kali teases and mocks her devotees. She sees through their social façade and knows the dark desires they try so hard to deny or suppress. She provokes them to delve into their subconscious and confront all those memories and thoughts that they shy away from" (10).
For the colonial West, of course, this aspect of Kali's iconography seemed to fuse sexuality with brutality, social perversion with graphic violence. In the book, Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West, McDermott et al. remark that Kali's tongue, filtered through the Western lens, became a blatantly phallic symbol, her persona little more than a terrifying figurehead of idolatrous depravity. Indeed, McDermott argues that for the colonial imagination, Kali was the embodiment of India itself, "imbued with debauchery, violence and death. Objectified under the 'colonial gaze'... Kali has always been an ambivalent source of mixed horror and fascination, of simultaneous revulsion and lurid attraction" (170-178). Unfortunately, such depictions, rooted in Eurocentric ambivalence, fail to appreciate Kali's full complexity. As a goddess, Kali explores and symbolizes all the uses and expressions of submerged human desire. It should be noted that in this instance, desire does not refer simply to biological imperatives with their natural rhythms of arousal and satiation. Nor is it linked purely to the erotic desire that is cloaked in visual and textual symbolism. This is desire at the cosmic, primordial level, beyond limits and civility. Taken in that sense, Kali's tongue "denotes the act of tasting or enjoying what society regards as forbidden, foul, or polluted... an indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors.' What we experience as ... polluted ... is grounded in limited human (or cultural) consciousness ... Kali invites her devotees to taste the world in its most disgusting and forbidden manifestations in order to detect its underlying unity or sacrality, which is the Great Goddess herself" (Kinsey 81-83).
Kali's ornaments and weaponry, too, carry a reservoir of allegorical and mystic nuance. Her garland of severed heads represent the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. These seedlings (beej) of sound – particularly the eternal syllable, Om – are the source of all creation. Adorned in the essence of reality, Kali is therefore the repository of eternal knowledge. She "decapitates words so that the seeker of truth is liberated from the limitations imposed by language" (Mohanty 13). Similarly, her girdle of severed limbs represents karmic annihilation. Each arm symbolizes the binding effect of deeds – karma – that Kali effortlessly chops down. Thus, she is instrumental in liberating her devotees from the cruel cyclicity of samsara, allowing them to achieve the ultimate spiritual realization (14).
Completing her otherworldly allure, the conjunction of femininity, monstrosity and strength, are Kali's four arms. According Bob Kindler's book, Twenty-Four Aspects of Mother Kali, her arms symbolize the cosmic circle of creation and destruction. The upper and lower right hands confer gracious and protective boons, the hands positioned in the Abhaya and Varada mudra respectively. The former is "a mystic gesture indicating the Divine Mother's serious warning to negative forces that attempt to harm Her precious spiritual children." The latter, meanwhile, signifies "gifts to those who approach Her for refuge" (22). Her left arms, brandishing the bloodied scythe and the severed head, symbolize Kali's power to eradicate ignorance. The head represents false consciousness, or the ego; the scythe is the weapon of knowledge. Thus, by slicing through the obstacles of ignorance, Kali frees her devotees from temporal bindings. Finally, her three eyes speak of her omniscience: they represent the sun, moon, and fire, which she uses as mediums to unlock the three facets of time – past, present and future (Kinsley 86-90). In ancient Greece, the ouroboros – a primeval serpent devouring its own tail – served to symbolize the coincidence of opposites, the infinite oscillation between destruction and creation, death and rebirth. In the same manner, Kali perfectly embodies the circular transience of being, the pivot upon which cosmic equilibrium rests.
Both legends and iconography reiterate her gift for transcending the broad spectrum of dichotomies because it is relevant. At her core, Kali's myth defies humanity's efforts to classify and control the unknown as a way of asserting its standing as a rational, privileged species. She corrects us of the dangerous misconception that human beings are a dominant outside force, rather than fragile stitches within the cosmic fabric itself. By understanding Kali, it is therefore possible to spark a genuine relationship with Nature in its manifold forms, and beyond them, with the all-pervasive life-force – sakti – that flows through the universe in its entirety. Renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, in his classic work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, states it best:
The goddess is the fire of life; the earth, the solar system, the galaxies of far-extending space, all swell within her womb. For she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin. She encompasses the encompassing, nourishes the nourishing, and is the life of everything that lives. She is also the death of everything that dies. The whole round of existence is accomplished within her sway, from birth, through adolescence, maturity, and senescence, to the grave. She is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow. Thus she unites the "good" and the "bad," exhibiting the two modes of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as universal (95).
For the curious academic or the passionate devotee, there is no doubting Kali's appeal. But her paradoxical nature is the true crux of her uniqueness: at once a singularity and a multiplicity, she is immeasurable. Conceptually, Kali's presence is not just a part of the cosmos, but the same size as it. On one level, she is an abstract force that flows beyond the nacreous spectrum of time and space. On another level, she is a tangible, living presence swimming through the undercurrents of the real world we inhabit every day. Her voice may not always be audible to us, but the occasions when we do hear it are full of intimacy and truth.
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973. 95. Print.
Coburn, Thomas B. Devī-māhātmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984. 11-112. Print.
Foulston, Lynn, and Stuart Abbott. Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices. Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2009. 110-160. Print.
Frawley, David. Inner Tantric Yoga: Working with the Universal Shakti: Secrets of Mantras, Deities and Meditation. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus, 2008. 130-136. Print.
Harding, Elizabeth U. Kali the Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Newburyport: Nicolas-Hays, 1993. 38-52. Print.
Kindler, Bob. Twenty-four Aspects of Mother Kali. Portland, OR: SRV Oregon, 1996. 22. Print.
Kinsley, David R. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās. Berkeley: U of California, 1997. 29-90. Print.
Mascetti, Manuela Dunn., Jennifer Woolger, and Roger Woolger. Goddesses: Mythology and Symbols of the Goddess. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1998. 47. Print.
McDermott, Rachel Fell., and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Berkeley: U of California, 2003. 21-152. Print.
Mookerjee, Ajit. Kali: The Feminine Force. New York: Destiny, 1988. 21-55. Print.
Mohanty, Seema. The Book of Kali. New Delhi: Penguin India, 2004. 6-100. Print.
Pattanaik, Devdutt. 7 Secrets of the Goddess. Chennai: Wastland, 2014. 53-67. Print.
Review: Wink on Pink - Interpreting Japanese Cute as It Grabs the Global Headlines by CR Yano
Yano's style is at once academic and tongue-in-cheek, interrogating the concept of Kitty as a nexus of both performative and subversive femininity, but also an icon of hugely successful soft power whose worth is nearly $7 billion yearly...
Exploring the cultural and commercial phenomenon of Hello Kitty, Christine Yano's work, Pink Globalization traces the inception of Sanrio's most distinctive product from a simple vinyl coin purse in the 1970s to an omnipresent staple of Japan's kawaii segment that has captured droves of consumers at home and abroad. Yano's style is at once academic and tongue-in-cheek, interrogating the concept of Kitty as a nexus of both performative and subversive femininity, but also an icon of hugely successful soft power whose worth is nearly $7 billion yearly, all but outshining and outrivaling her Western counterpart Mickey Mouse as a global household name.
Yano does not lose sight of the anthropological lens, particularly her analysis of Kitty as the cutesy, benign, "chibified" emblem of post-war Japan that is being deliberately (as she insists) posited abroad under the guise of innocence, sweetness and sincerity – all the while tipping a "wink" to her consumers about her dual and ambivalent nature.
Unfortunately, this discursive angle becomes difficult to swallow the more Yano prolongs her analysis. Yes, there is no denying that the lurking behind Kitty's appeal may be an economic strategy cloaked in sweet rhetoric and visual playfulness. Yet the idea of her as being symbolic of postfeminist subjectivity – a girly-girl brand cleverly complicit in her own commodification and subtly exhorting her female consumers to juxtapose independence with coyness as a means of tweaking parochial power structures – is a troubling modality in and of itself, but also positively reeking of lipstick feminism à la Sex in the City, with "girl-power" still entwined to male sexual codes.
More disquieting still is the idea of a sexual dimension to Hello Kitty's marketing, with innocence purportedly being consumed as yet another translation of marketized sexiness. Then again, perhaps this interpretative license is further proof of Kitty's success as a blank slate. Depending on who appropriates her, from children to adults, from academics to advertisers, she can take on any meaning we assign her – and within that cipher-like quality lies the secret to her value.
