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5 - Beyond The Wire: The Racialization of Crime in Film and TV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

Martin Glynn
Martin Glynn
Affiliation:
Birmingham City University
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Summary

Chapter summary

This chapter explores considerations about black depictions and representation in relation to the racialization of film and TV formats. Fast forward: Watching George Floyd being murdered in front of my eyes on YouTube was no longer the domain of slickly produced TV and cinematic portrayals of police brutality. Like the Rodney King beating in 1991 and later the O.J. Simpson case in 1994, the visual spectacle of ‘trial by media’ has now been replaced by the equally distasteful ‘trial by social media’, where the general public, can shoot, edit, and upload crimes in real time. Fast forward: Dance group Diversity performed a routine inspired by Black Lives Matter on an episode of Britain's Got Talent in September 2020; complaints made to the media regulatory body Ofcom rose to over 20,000. Diversity's choreographed piece depicted a white police officer kneeling on the Diversity star and temporary Britain's Got Talent judge Ashley Banjo, echoing the killing of George Floyd in the US. The group all took the knee before the start of the song ‘Black Lives Matter’ by Dax, which included the lyric ‘I can't breathe’, the last words uttered by Floyd. Suddenly, the right to freedom of expression was under siege.

Whose cinematic representation is it?

Film and TV in contemporary society are important mediums that provide influential entertainment, insights, and values, that seep into society's consciousness. I remember the rapturous applause that greeted the arrival of the groundbreaking movie Black Panther, which depicted the African nation of Wakanda, a fictitious world occupied by black people. As much as I enjoyed the spectacle of seeing a predominantly black cast, with a wonderful cinematic representation of futuristic black life, I did not jump up and down with glee. For me, the cinematic portrayal of black lives in relation to the criminal justice system has seldom been portrayed accurately, sensitively, or with any great depth. Ta-nehisi Coates is the writer of the comic book series Black Panther, who also wrote a spinoff entitled Black Panther and the Crew, which got cancelled after a few episodes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reimagining Black Art and Criminology
A New Criminological Imagination
 , pp. 67 - 80
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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