Ruth Penfold-Mounce

The Wire as social science-fiction?

This article examines the HBO television series The Wire as an example of a popular cultural form that stimulates the sociological imagination. It provides some examples of how it functions to do this. A brief case study of one character — ‘Snoop’ — is examined to illustrate a set of more general observations. It is suggested that The Wire, although still containing strong narrative elements, provides an intriguing popular cultural example of what Andrew Abbott has recently called a ‘lyrical sociology’.

Consuming criminal corpses: Fascination with the dead criminal body

Abstract The body of the criminal has long held a macabre fascination. From the earliest times to the nineteenth century, the public execution of criminals in Britain and America drew large crowds to witness the punishment being carried out. Even after the termination of public executions, the fascination with death through the criminal corpse has continued. This is demonstrated by a tourist-like interest and curiosity emerging to the extent of celebrated status being attained by certain criminals and their deaths. This article engages with the macabre fascination and celebration of death and the criminal corpse by exploring the gruesome tourism and pursuit of souvenirs relating to specific dead criminals in Britain and America. Using a broad sweep of case studies dating between 1800 and the 1970s – including Scottish body snatchers Burke and Hare, and murderers, William Corder, and Gary Gilmore – the enthralment with the criminal corpse will be examined and conceptualised. I draw on Seltzers notion of wound culture, whereby society is fascinated and thrilled with violence and death, to argue that the consumption of criminal corpses is a grisly aspect of contemporary consumer culture in which even the macabre can gain celebrated, or celebrity, status.

Researching glossy topics: the case of the academic study of celebrity

The launch of Celebrity Studies journal represents an ideal opportunity to reflect upon the general trajectory of celebrity as an academic topic. This is a particularly pressing task given the increasingly uncertain socio-economic conditions within which we find ourselves. To this end, we draw upon the recorded outputs of the academy to provide a quantitative visualisation of the study of celebrity. To complement this statistical overview we weave in a cursory narrative that revolves around selected works that have shaped the study of celebrity (see also Ferris 2007). The piece approaches celebrity as an example of what we refer to as ‘glossy topics’, the study of which might be found to be increasingly difficult as a consequence of the economic downturn and the burgeoning necessity, across many national contexts, for disciplines to be vocal and explicit about their purpose, value and direction.

Celebrity Gossip and the New Melodramatic Imagination

This article uses a range of media sources to ‘follow’ or ‘trace’ the well-known celebrity Miley Cyrus. Through the development of the concept of a new melodramatic imagination the case study develops the methodological potentials of the types of online archives that now exist. In this instance the authors exercise their own melodramatic imaginations to draw out substantive issues relevant to the case of Miley Cyrus. The article therefore has two aims, the first is the exploration of a particular approach toward understanding transformations in popular culture, and the second is to draw out the types of ‘grammar of conduct’ that face those who assemble the information about celebrities into consumable narratives. The piece considers how people, in what has been called the Web 2.0 context, assemble melodramatic narratives amongst celebrity gossip that might then shape everyday experiences, understandings and practices.

Corpses, popular culture and forensic science: public obsession with death

Abstract The cadaver has been heralded as ‘pop culture’s new star’. Foltyn’s claim will be expanded in that it does not adequately consider the underlying components of the rise of the corpse in popular culture. It will be argued that forensic science portrayals in popular culture play a critical role in fuelling public obsession with death and cadavers. A particular focus will be taken upon the sociological concept of the gaze and using it to explore how watching the dead is influenced through popular culture forensic work portrayals. The gaze is used to highlight how forensic science in popular culture provides a softening lens through which death and corpses are viewed and how this leads to the normalisation of consuming the dead by the public. Finally, this article will propose the notion of morbid space which is argued to be part of the process in which public fascination with death, dying and corpses is experienced and normalised.

Politicians, celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?

ABSTRACT With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks to investigate the informalisation thesis by applying it to data from young people aged 16–21 years in Australia, the UK and the USA, asked about the way politicians and celebrities use social media. Findings reveal respondents’ desire for more authentic and accessible politicians, but this was in direct tension with traditional views and expectations of politicians needing to be professional, informed and worthy of respect. Informalisation amongst politicians is evident and welcomed by young citizens but persistent traditional views means it also threatens their credibility.

Conducting frivolous research in neoliberal universities: what is the value of glossy topics?

Back in 2010, for the launch of Celebrity Studies, David Beer and I wrote a Forum piece making the case for academic study of celebrity as an example of ‘researching glossy topics’, which are topics that might be considered to be of public interest but are perhaps not considered to be of public value (Beer and Penfold-Mounce 2010, p. 363). We explored the growth in volume of outputs of the study of celebrity to challenge scepticism towards the value of glossy topics. Since our call, existing challenges facing higher education have intensified whilst new ones have emerged to call into question the burgeoning field of glossy research. Higher education is being widely described by scholars as experiencing neoliberalisation within its structure, style, teaching and financing, aligning department and student identities with neoliberal practices and ideology (Peck 2010, Gane 2012). This poses a potential threat to research priorities affecting some research fields’ status and scholarly value if they lack perceived social usefulness. Consideration of the issue of perceived values is therefore crucial in understanding how glossy topics, such as celebrity, contribute towards the future of our disciplines. One of the consequences of such a neoliberal environment is arguably the quenching of creative or innovative research that is not easily measurable or there is the risk it will not provide sufficient, to borrow a key word from our times, impact. In many cases this might well be true, but celebrity studies does not fit into this analogy. For despite rising neoliberalism it would seem that celebrity-based research remains in ‘rude health’ (Holmes and Redmond 2013, p. 113). In fact it would appear that academic research into the perceived frivolous and glossy is an anomaly in the current climate as it is facing a significant boost to its perceived academic value and legitimacy within neoliberal universities. This therefore leads to the question of why glossy topics such as celebrity are thriving, particularly when they also epitomise the societal discourse of concern regarding an apparent ‘drift toward cultural relativism and the supposed “dumbing down” of academia’ (Holmes and Redmond 2010, p. 1). Although perceived as a lowbrow area of scholarship, celebrity studies continues to stimulate notable interest among students and the wider population. The challenge for those researching glossy topics has long been to find ways of generating and conveying the value of researching the frivolous; of ‘converting interest into value’ (Beer 2013, p. 363). The pertinence of this need to create value from interest is reflected by Holmes and Redmond (2013, p. 133) asserting that the success of research in celebrity studies is ‘something we feel we should acknowledge and champion more, so that our work is seen to matter more in the public sphere’. It

William Corder and the Red Barn Murder: journeys of the criminal body

At the heart of this text is the argument that many criminal bodies are reborn due to their notoriety and their bodies become commodities, demonstrating them to contain not only power but also value. In focusing on a single case study of the ‘dangerous dead’ (p. 2), McCorristine succeeds in providing a detailed account of the Red Barn Murder and what happened to the perpetrator William Corder. The text is well researched with in-depth reflection upon this notorious murder case in 1827. A threepart structure is adopted whereby the murder narrative is outlined before moving on to explore the ‘criminal body dismembered’ which tracks the journey of Corder postdeath as his partially dissected body is publicly viewed and then anatomically dissected by medical professionals. The third and final chapter examines the ‘criminal body remembered’, which is potentially the most intriguing, via an exploration of the consumption of the criminal corpse through products and popular culture including puppet shows, songs, waxworks and theatrical productions. What is unique about the book is that it brings together through a case study the issues of power surrounding the celebrated criminal corpse and how its presence can hover ‘like a contagion around other crimes’ (p. 56). Corder as a celebrated criminal corpse demonstrates the power to permeate public consumption of news, culture and entertainment. In other words, criminal celebrity corpses have product value and can become a sensational commodity marketable to all ‘in an economy of spectacle’ (p. 33). The text takes the unusual and risky step of including fairly vast appendices that comprise interesting data-sets but which regrettably make up half the book content. The strength of this text should, and could, have been via analysis of the gathered data and unique thought provoking observations in an under researched arena. Although the thought provoking observations are at times present, these are not sufficiently unpacked. Instead, the book descends into a collation of interesting data and narrative interspersed with sparks of stimulating insight. This is particularly evident in the provocative idea that the ‘sense of place’ contributed to the celebrated status of the Red Barn Murder. McCorristine argues that the picturesque village of Polstead became a destroyed Eden, whilst the Red Barn came to represent promiscuity, immorality coupled with violence, death and concealment; it was ‘a location of remembrance and consumption’ (p. 58). This notion of morbid space and how it locates public understandings remains tantalisingly underdeveloped. Despite these flaws, the book remains an excellent chronicle of the Red Barn Murder and creates a springboard for further critique and consideration of the power and value of the criminal corpse. McCorristine’s ‘dangerous dead’ are poised to be a catalyst for debate and further much needed research into culture, death, cadavers, fame and criminality. Mortality, 2016

Zombies and the Sociological Imagination: The Walking Dead as Social-Science Fiction

What is scarier than a dead body that moves? A key dynamic of the zombie genre is the ‘re-animation’ of lifeless corpses, granting movement where there should be none. At their inception, they are characterised by (unnatural) movement and (heightened) emotion. However, there is more to the zombie genre than it simply being frightening and gruesomely violent. Zombies, and more particularly the zombie apocalypse, are a backdrop and context for human drama. They allow a commentary on issues of consumerism, interpersonal cooperation and conflict, gender and race relations, highlighting that ‘Zombie films are about the humans. They [the humans] are the problem’.1 The mechanism by which they draw out these issues is by disorienting the audience through the depiction of extremes (violence and depravity such as cannibalism) and then reorienting audience experience through the narrative structure to make an ‘unsettling point, usually a sociological, anthropological, or theological one’ (Paffenroth, 2006, p. 2). We are less concerned with repeating these points than looking to extend beyond this content to grapple with wider conceptual issues. The zombie genre’s narrative energy is premised upon a ‘what if question, set in a fantasy world. In this sense such enquiries draw upon the concept of social-science fiction whereby fiction can encourage engagement of a non-sociologist with social-science themes and issues (Penfold-Mounce et al., 2011) through speculative ‘breeching’ (Garfinkel, 1967) or sociological provocation — in this case a playful evocation of ‘anti-structure’ (Turner, 1969).

Book Review: Crime, Culture and the Media: Eamonn Carrabine Cambridge: Polity, 2008. 234 pp.. £15.99. ISBN 0745634664

The lesson of Carrabine’s book is that a fi rst reaction is not necessarily the right one. This book is not just another bite at the ‘crime and media’ cherry, instead it is a refreshing and sophisticated look at this hotly contested area of debate within criminology and media studies. Tackling this topic with undoubted fi nesse, Carrabine adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon a solid wealth of existing literature from a variety of fi elds, including fi lm studies, sociology and criminology along with history and psychology. The result is an accessible text that lays a foundation of knowledge by tackling old and existing debates by updating them with the latest research and providing a useful engagement with pertinent material for the study of crime and media to students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. In approaching crime and the media Carrabine chooses to use a three-part structure – audiences, representations and industries – in order to focus his analysis and to guide the reader through an otherwise dizzying array of material. This allows for a complex narrative synthesizing a large range of relevant issues within an accessible structure. Consequently it would appear that despite the longevity of the debates surrounding the study of crime and media there is still much to say and it is deserving of continued scholarly attention. The pervasive and somewhat subtle theme threading through the book is signifi cant in that it emphasizes the role of popular representations of crime and deviance. Therefore rather than producing a criminology book that considers the role of the media or a media studies book that looks at crime and deviance, Carrabine binds these approaches together and creates a text that successfully straddles the two fi elds drawing on their united strengths, suggesting the importance of ‘popular criminology’. In engaging with audiences in the fi rst part of the three-section book structure, Carrabine draws together research to illustrate the different ways in which audiences can be studied, and highlights the tension between the different approaches. Beginning with the most researched area of the media Carrabine discusses the effects of media representation of violence on its audience. Although this debate is familiar territory to scholars, the text provides an easy way in to those who are investigating this area for BOOK REVIEWS