Prison Films: An Overview

Hedges, Inez

doi:10.1080/08854300.2014.963955

Cited by 2 publications

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“…By focusing on hyperreal punishment and taking the perspective of the warden and his accountant, Tom Six brings attention to institutional violence more than the typical prison film. Finally, unlike the move toward documentary films on imprisonment and the turn to realism in prison film (Hedges, 2014), HC3 does not operate in a realist register of meaning. It engages in the realm of schlock, and verisimilitude.…”

Section: Representing Prison and Punishment In Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deforming justice: Representing punishment in The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence

Kohm

Walby

2021

Crime, Media, Culture

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We analyze the 2015 horror film Human Centipede III: Final Sequence (HC3), written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six. Engaging with literature on torture porn and body horror, we argue that this film reflects and refracts ideas about crime and punishment including a critical view on mass incarceration in America while critiquing a culture of institutional violence in Western society. By critiquing the institutional violence of the prison in a satirical and visceral manner, we argue Tom Six evades dominant tropes (liberalism, reform, rehabilitation, and escape) prevalent in other prison films and avoids the cinematic tendency to naturalize and reproduce the legitimacy of the prison. We also contend that the film operates at a meta-level to address criticism about the dangers of graphic violence in horror films. HC3 thus offers insight on the disingenuous nature of censorship in a society that condones mass suffering behind bars, systemic racism, and institutionalized punishment of the body for millions.

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Section: Representing Prison and Punishment In Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deforming justice: Representing punishment in The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence

Kohm

Walby

2021

Crime, Media, Culture

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Hard yards, vulnerable bodies: Tenderness in two recent prison films from Argentina and Chile

Bollig

2023

New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

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Prison literature from Latin America has been a topic of growing interest for literary scholars of and from the region in recent years. This reflects wider attention in cultural studies dedicated to ‘heterotopias’ or ‘other spaces’, while building on the work of sociologists who have studied prisons and prison reform in countries there. Less has been written, however, about films set in penitentiaries. Building on recent work (Podalksy) that examines the depiction of feelings and emotions in cinema, as well as writing on depictions of the Latin American jail on page and screen (Whitfield, Aguilar) this article addresses the cinematic portrayal of a perhaps unlikely feeling, tenderness, in two prison films from the Southern Cone, one fictional, El Príncipe (Sebastián Muñoz, Chile, 2019), and one documentary, Rancho (Pedro Speroni, Argentina, 2021). In both films, feelings traverse the body–mind divide and cross between people, while portrayed with what we shall argue is a form of filmic tenderness.

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Prison Films: An Overview

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Deforming justice: Representing punishment in The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence

Deforming justice: Representing punishment in The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence

Hard yards, vulnerable bodies: Tenderness in two recent prison films from Argentina and Chile

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