Social Sciences

Sample Reviews

Alzena MacDonald

Egger, Steven A. 'Serial Murder: A Growth Industry.' The Killers Among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and its Investigation. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1998. 85-90.

Egger argues that serial killing is spectacularized by the mass media in its discursive production of a genre that satisfies the culture's obsession with violence. He acknowledges that, while the concept of 'serial murder is important to the press, the electronic media, screen writers, and movie producers' (85), these forms of representation offer only fictional accounts that manipulate reality and effectively perpetuate a generic myth about serial killers and their 'work.' Egger notes that central to these fictional portrayals is the notion of the profile--a summary of the offender's 'criminal background, his motivation, the type of victim he selects, and how the police will eventually catch him' (88). The depiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as 'experts on the phenomenon of serial killing' (89) and responsible for the creation of the profile, functions to validate the purported authenticity of these accounts. Egger proposes that violence and the mass media are interdependent, each reinforcing the presence of and need for the other. He attests that the media does not relay accurate reports, but rather distorted and intensified images of torture and mutilation to a society that 'enjoys' serial killing, that is anaesthetized to the effects of its practice, and reads the shocking realism as if it were 'an art form' (90). He suggests that the desire for sadistic pleasure may be because 'we no longer have public executions or flaying' (86), so instead rely on horror film and sensational media reports to satisfy our thirst for the macabre. The discursive production of the serial killing genre fulfils the culture s craving for compulsive violence, and is exemplified in the popularization of the serial killer films in the 1980s and 90s.

Foucault, Michel. 'The Eye of Power.' Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Sussex: Harvester, 1980. 146-65.

In this conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot, Foucault argues that Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was written in the end of the eighteenth century, describes a new technology of power designed to solve the problem of surveillance of an increasing urban population. The principle of the Panopticon is a ring of prison cells, surrounding a centrally positioned tower in which stands an overseer. The key to the modus operandi of the Panopticon is the architecture of 'illumination.' Each cell has two windows, the exterior allowing daylight in, and the interior facing the windows of the tower. This configuration permits the visibility of individuals, their bodies and gestures under a system of centralized observation, without the object's knowledge. Foucault asserts that, in this model of 'visibility,' the exercise of power and the registration of knowledge are simultaneously achieved by a continuous, dominant overseeing 'gaze.' He argues that the Panopticon's formula of 'power through transparency' (154) operates as a disciplinary mechanism with 'no need for arms, physical violence, [or] material constraints' (155). The internalization of the 'omniscience' of a penetrating, inspecting gaze is sufficient to ensure the individual becomes a willing and competent judge of her/himself. Foucault regards the Panoptic apparatus as an 'infernal mode' (156), in which essentially no individual is privileged, that is, neither the watcher nor the watched can escape its power relations. For Foucault, the Panopticon delineates a power that is no longer possessed, but is, rather, a 'machinery that no one owns' (156).

Dennis O'Donovan

Blaikie, Andrew. Ageing and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Blaikie argues that, while the emergence of discourses of positive ageing has destabilised medico-scientific perceptions of the elderly, it has also intensified the binary between post-retirement and deep old age. This study is a crucial step in the development of a critical sociology of old age, balancing empirical detail with a constructivist and postmodernist methodology and thus situating ageing within social and historical contexts. Blaikie examines the legitimation of biological reductionist, psychological, and social justifications for the marginalization of the ageing in modernity. These discourses operate both to homogenize the ageing and present them as a social problem. He suggests that the emergence of grey markets in the 1970s represents a marked shift in perceptions of the elderly, and encourages them to engage in leisure pursuits, acknowledge their sexuality and to 'socialize in ways indistinguishable from those of their children s generation' (104). However, the preoccupation with youth positive ageing implies ignores the problems of deep old age, for whom 'the future holds fears, either of decline or decrement, or simply of interminable boredom' (215). Blaikie enlivens his critique by analysing a range of mostly visual sources, including photography, film and advertisements. He contends that popular culture is a key site for examining how much perceptions of the ageing have changed in contemporary society. The prevalence of discourses of positive ageing in contemporary popular culture represents a marked improvement on the stereotypical depictions of the elderly dominant in the mass media of the post-war period. Blaikie successfully problematizes both the formation of limiting stereotypes of the ageing in the early twentieth century and the consumerist, positive ageing discourses so prevalent in contemporary society.

Heilbronn, Lisa. Domesticating Social Change: The Situation Comedy as Social History. Berkeley: California UP, 1986.

Heilbronn proposes a triangular relationship among advertisers, the television industry and the audience, suggesting that, from the mid-1970s onwards, the desire of advertizers to target specific demographic categories has resulted in the incorporation of alternative depictions of family, gender, age, race and class. She utilizes a sociological and mass communications methodology to trace changes in the constitution of the family, particularly the rise of divorce, the advent of feminism and decreasing levels of extended families. These shifts become steadily integrated into the domestic representations of the situation comedy, particularly from the 1970s onwards, when advertisers recognized demographic data as an effective way to reach new consumers. Advertisers and network directors began to target 'the largest numbers from a particular slice of the population' (91) rather than a mass audience, the project of situation comedies in the 1950s and 1960s. Heilbronn posits the ageing audience as one of the demographics which received particular attention from this conceptual shift, suggesting that the dual impacts of an ageing population and an increase in single aged person households encouraged networks to develop 'a new and more respectful look at the older audience' (86). However, while the 1970s saw more social groups depicted in situation comedies and in more diverse and progressive ways, most programs favoured situations least objectionable ideologically and emphasised consumption through product placement and the depiction of relatively affluent characters. Heilbronn successfully links the popularity of situation comedy to its marketability, and thus suggests the diversity of representations in these programs from the mid-seventies onwards cannot be separated from consumerism.