rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Imagining the American death penalty
    sub title: the cultural work of popular visual representations
  name:
    name part: Christ, Birte
    name part: 1977-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  genre: Electronic books.
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    date issued: 2025
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: remote
    extent: 1 online resource (unpaged)
  abstract: The book traces the U.S. American cultural imaginary of capital punishment through popular visual representations from the 1890s to the twenty-first century. It focuses on three generic and historical clusters of representations: early film from the 1890s through Intolerance (1916), crime film noir of the 1950s and 1960s, and legal TV series from the 1990s through the early 2000s. The book makes two central arguments. First, it demonstrates that an increased concern with the death penalty in popular media does not mean that these texts promote an abolitionist agenda: their cultural work is ambiguous at best. Early film is enchanted with its own representational possibilities due to the progress of technology and, in analogy, with the progress in execution technique, specifically the electric chair. In film noir, genre conventions and the legal back-and-forth before and after Furman predicate ambiguity. In legal TV series, the genre's ensemble casts and its focus on conversational exchange invite open debate. The second argument is that popular visual representations consistently whitewash the death penalty. The book demonstrates that this is the case because the most common narrative around executions in film and TV is to cast the condemned man as a hero who defies the violence of the state, gains dignity by accepting his fate and faults, and in some ways triumphs over death. The American imaginary, until very recently, did or could not imagine Black men to possess that measure of agency that it attributed to its white heroes.
  table of contents: New technologies of representation and death -- Scenes of execution -- Before Furman : ambiguity in law and film -- Hollywood's “mixed verdict” -- New abolitionism, new genre -- Multiple audience positions in legal series -- Conclusion : entertaining ambiguity, and imagining new Black men and women.
  target audience: Specialized.
  target audience: specialized
  note: Birte Christ.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    geographic code: n-us---
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment in motion pictures
    topic: History
    temporal: 20th century
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment in popular culture
    geographic: United States
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment
    geographic: United States
    topic: Public opinion
  subject:
    topic: Peine de mort
    geographic: États-Unis
    topic: Opinion publique
  subject:
    topic: Criminal Law
  subject:
    topic: LAW
  subject:
    topic: 20th Century
  subject:
    topic: Modern
  subject:
    topic: History & Criticism
  subject:
    topic: Film & Video
  subject:
    topic: PERFORMING ARTS
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment
    topic: Public opinion
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment in motion pictures
  subject:
    topic: Capital punishment in popular culture
  subject:
    geographic: United States
  subject:
    topic: Films, cinema
  subject:
    topic: Performing Arts
  classification: PN1995.9.C3325 C47 2025
  classification: 791.43/6556
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Imagining the American death penalty
    name:
      name part: Christ, Birte, 1977-
    origin info:
      publisher: Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]
    identifier: (DLC) 2024952681
    identifier: (OCoLC)1484905653
  identifier: 9780198935117
  identifier: 0198935110
  identifier: 9780198935094
  identifier: 0198935099
  identifier: 9780198935100
  identifier: 0198935102
  identifier: 9780198935087
  identifier: 0198935080
  identifier: http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login
  record info:
    record content source: STBDS
    record creation date: 250423
    record change date: 20260319210120.7
    record identifier: in00005728317
    language of cataloging:
      language term: eng