Carceral horror: Punishment and control in <i>Silent Hill</i>

Steinmetz, Kevin F.

doi:10.1177/1741659017699045

Cited by 19 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…As the application is open for public access, field research involved downloading 4 and using the application on a daily basis for a two-month period. I wrote a daily user log to document historical and theoretical connections (Altheide, 1987) while applying autoethnographic reflection (Denzin, 2014; Ferrell, 2012; Jewkes, 2011; Steinmetz, 2017). This meant tracking local police news, offender information, and crime updates in the region.…”

Section: Methods and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Now you’re connected”: Carceral visuality and police power on MobilePatrol

Revier

2018

Theoretical Criminology

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Police increasingly rely on new media software for public communication and policing operations. One such software is MobilePatrol: Public Safety App, a free to use mobile phone application marketed by data and analytics company Appriss Safety. It compiles information including mug shot photos, sex offender lists, and most wanted profiles for public access. To capture carceral visuality on the application, I conduct an ethnographic content analysis of police use in upstate New York. I penned a daily user log, took in-app “screenshots”, and analyzed user product reviews. I find that MobilePatrol reinforces an emerging new carceral visibility where an assemblage of police records are rapidly disseminated for widespread consumption, further driving data-led state entrenchment into the public sphere.

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Section: Methods and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Now you’re connected”: Carceral visuality and police power on MobilePatrol

Revier

2018

Theoretical Criminology

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“…ECA is the preferred method for identifying how methods of communication, and their meaning, "reflect other aspects of culture" (Altheide and Schneider, 2013: 27), and has been used to identify themes in a variety of texts including news (Vickovic et al, 2013), websites (Fishwick and Mak, 2015), and social media policies (Rodesiler, 2017). Furthermore, ECA has been used to analyze images and narratives in television (Kuhn-Wilken et al, 2012) and video games (Steinmetz, 2017), as well as posts on social media, including Twitter (Lemke and Chala, 2016) and Facebook (Gajaria et al, 2011). We diverge from these studies in that rather than focus on one text, we use the results of the news article analysis to guide our engagement with social media, allowing for representation of the intertext.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vigilante or Viking? Contesting the mediated constructions of Soldiers of Odin Norge

Castle

Parsons

2017

Crime, Media, Culture

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In 2015, Europe experienced the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Along with terrorist attacks in Europe over the last decade, the refugee crisis has fueled a rise in the popularity of both far-right political parties and extremist groups—such as Finland’s Soldiers of Odin ( S.O.O.). The group debuted in late 2015, but quickly spread throughout Scandinavia. The popularity of S.O.O. coincided with a resurgent interest in Viking culture, and new country groups have been reported worldwide. This article explores the contested identity of the Norwegian chapter, Soldiers of Odin Norge ( S.O.O.N.), in national news (Norge) and networked spaces (social media). The mediated discourse was analyzed using ethnographic content analysis, with an appreciation for the intertextuality of the ambiguous political rhetoric. We found social media to be an important site for contesting the dominant narrative of ‘vigilante’ identified in the news articles. Drawing from cultural criminology, we further explored the contrast between mediated images, where Viking culture became the symbolic identifier for S.O.O.N., and the collective construction of meaning in the discourse. Finally, we argue that because the group’s identity was forged from, and exists because of, media-related communications, S.O.O.N. could be characterized as a ‘media-based collectivity’ (Couldry and Hepp, 2017).

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“…Both games depict surveillance cameras around the penal space that keep the inmate, and Batman, under observation. As Steinmetz (2018) describes,Surveillance is intimately linked to confinement, as such strategies often involve the monitoring of bodies in space for the purposes of control (real or imagined). Silent Hill is rife with surveillant mechanisms designed to disorient the player and engender feelings that they are under supervision.…”

Section: Players and Game Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Supposed methods of treatment and rehabilitation are depicted as archaic, brutal and violent, reinforced by the player’s actions as Batman. As Kevin Steinmetz (2018) explains in his analysis of Silent Hill ’s carceral horror, ‘Perhaps Silent Hill thus signals a concern that we have ourselves become monsters in pursuit of carceral vengeance. Like the mob that pursued Frankenstein’s monster with torches and pitchforks, those driven to destroy the monstrous risk becoming monsters themselves’ (p. 282).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carceral violence at the intersection of madness and crime in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City

Fawcett

Kohm

2019

Crime, Media, Culture

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The action-adventure video games Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Batman: Arkham City (2011) draw on familiar comic book narratives, themes and characters to situate players in a world of participatory violence, crime and madness. In the first game, the player-as-Batman is situated in Arkham Asylum, a high-security facility for the criminally insane and supervillains that also temporarily houses a general population of prisoners from Blackgate Penitentiary. The elision of criminality and mental illness becomes amplified in the second game with the establishment of Arkham City, a combined facility that conflates asylum and prison, completely dissolving any distinction between crime and madness. We draw on Rafter’s conceptual framework of popular criminology to seriously interrogate the representation of violence, crime and madness in these games. More than simply texts offering popular explanations for crime, the games directly implicate the player in violence enacted upon the bodies of criminals and patients alike. Violence is necessary to move the action of the game forward and evokes a range of emotional responses from players who draw from personal experience and other cultural and media representations as they navigate the game. We argue that while the game celebrates violence and the brutal conditions of incarceration, it also offers possibilities for subversive and critical readings. While working to affirm assumptions about crime and mental illness, the game also provides a visceral and visual critique of excessive punishment by the state as a source of injustice for those deemed mad or bad.

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Carceral horror: Punishment and control in Silent Hill

Cited by 19 publications

References 39 publications

“Now you’re connected”: Carceral visuality and police power on MobilePatrol

“Now you’re connected”: Carceral visuality and police power on MobilePatrol

Vigilante or Viking? Contesting the mediated constructions of Soldiers of Odin Norge

Carceral violence at the intersection of madness and crime in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City

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