Criminology Goes to the Movies - by Nicole Rafter & Michelle Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Investigating cinema under the magnifying glass

From a look at classics like Psycho and Double Indemnity to recent films like Traffic and Thelma & Louise, Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown show that criminological theory is produced not only in the academy, through scholarly research, but also in popular culture, through film. Criminology Goes to the Movies connects with ways in which students are already thinking criminologically through engagements with popular culture, encouraging them to use the everyday world as a vehicle for theorizing and understanding both crime and perceptions of criminality. The first work to bring a systematic and sophisticated criminological perspective to bear on crime films, Rafter and Brown's book provides a fresh way of looking at cinema, using the concepts and analytical tools of criminology to uncover previously unnoticed meanings in film, ultimately making the study of criminological theory more engaging and effective for students while simultaneously demonstrating how theories of crime circulate in our mass-mediated worlds. The result is an illuminating new way of seeing movies and a delightful way of learning about criminology.

Review Quotes

"An interesting...book."-- "CHOICE"

"Authors Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown have come up with an effective way of keying theory to film...[they] have managed to present a coherent summary of the most important theories that seek to explain crime, and to do it in a readable (sometimes even amusing) way."--Ben Pesta, California Lawyer