Description
Book SynopsisAmerican police departments have presided over the business of motion pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made, promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police explores the history of film''s entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium. For the New Jersey State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means of making the agency world-famous as early as 1896. Beat cops became movie stars. Police chiefs made their own documentaries. And from Maine to California, state and local law enforcement agencies regularly fingerprinted filmgoers for decades, amassing enormous records as they infiltrated theatres both big and small.As author Noah Tsika demonstrate
Table of ContentsIntroduction: "The Glorification of Policemen" Chapter 1: Cinema's Municipalities: Industrial Expansion and the Locations of Policing Chapter 2: Cinematic Badges: Conventions, Complications, and "Films for Cops" Chapter 3: Veto Power: Film Censorship as Discretionary Policing Chapter 4: Ballistics, Bertillonage, and Ballyhoo: Selling the Science of Crime Detection Chapter 5: Filmgoers' Fingerprints: Supporting Carceral Expansion Through "Lobby Gags" Chapter 6: From Kiddie Cops to the Coal Police: Private Proxies and the Production of Criminological Common Sense Chapter 7: Coda: 2020 Vision
