Popular Culture Exam #1

What is Pop Culture?

The beliefs and practices, and the objects through which they are organized, that are widely shared among a population

What is a cultural object?

tv shows, films, news programming etc.

What is hegemony?

the production of consent to alternate versions of social reality, in which cultural beliefs and ideas justify social hierarchies, making them appear normal, natural, and inevitable

How is Pop culture and hegemony related?

Can be hegemonic or counter-hegemonic

What does mass production reflect?

the interests, beliefs, and desires of socially powerful groups, can lead to racial disparities in Hollywood, eurocentric beauty standards, etc.

Are representation and diversity always counter hegemonic?

No, Ex. just adding a black cop to a show that lacks black characters doesn’t challenge hegemonic beliefs about race that were criticized

What is the relationship between us and pop culture?

All of us are embedded in a society and influenced by popular culture, we also all exert influence on popular culture to varying degrees

What is the significance of Florida Man?

• Relies on emphasizing the bizarre

• Relies on, a particular image of crime as a result of “crazy” people who are not like “us”

• Affirms ugly ideas we have about race, class, gender, and crime – which makes it easier for us to laugh at Florida Man, rather than feel sorry for him

Significance of rednecks, hillbillies and “white trash”?

• Associated with poor white people

• Stereotypes derived from anxiety that white, urban Americans hold concerning the white underclass

How does the “white” in white trash violate the hegemonic norms?

• Decorum, education, financial success, etc.

• The features we associate with hegemonic whiteness are those that support racial hierarchies with whites on top

• Whites who cannot or will not perform those ideals are targets of ridicule 

Why we should care about Florida Man?

1. Degrading portrayals of large groups of people, especially as criminals, increases support for harsh (and counterproductive) criminal-legal approaches

2. “Florida Man” detracts attention from real issues shared across the nation

3. Florida Man’s popularity is owed in part to our tendency to publicly humiliate “white trash” for their perceived distance from hegemonic ideals of whiteness 

What is deviance?

Acts that differ from what the social majority considers normal or acceptable

What is a social majority?

The most dominant group in a given time and place – the powerful and influential not numerical majority

What is crime?

• Acts prohibited by law

  • Divided into infractions/violations, misdemeanors, and felonies

What are infractions/violations?

acts not punishable by incarceration

What are misdemeanors?

acts that can be punished by fines, probation or imprisonment for one year or less

What are felonies?

acts punishable by fines or incarceration for more than one year

What is the myth of crime?

the belief that there is an underlying quality that fundamentally defines criminal acts across time and place

What is the federal code for violence?

“crimes of violence” are acts that include the use of physical force against the person or property of another as an element of the crime

How much crime is violent?

• 47% of people locked up, are there for violent crime

• Based on plea deals and prosecutorial decisions

• Reflects who is incarcerated, not how many crimes ocurred recently

Most fear of crime is a fear of what?

Violence

What is categorical contagion?

citizens project the murderous intentions they fear most onto a broad range of crimes and criminals

What is the Broken Windows Theory?

• small signs of disorder, like broken windows, motivate additional disorder – one unrepaired broken window will lead to all the windows being broken

• Used to justify aggressive policing

• Fear of disorder → fear of violent crime

What was the 1969 Zimbardo experiment?

• Researchers parked an abandoned car w/plates removed and hood up in both locations

• Once moved on campus to Stanford University where they used a sledgehammer to break the windows

• What happened there suggested that crowd mentality, social inequalities, and community anonymity could prompt ‘good citizens’ to act destructively

• Shows this can happen anywhere if under the right circumstances

What theory was the Zimbardo Experiment connected to?

Its retelling is evidence of the broken windows theory as massively influential for policing and criminology – and shaped a generation’s idea about crime

What is social harm?

a concept to encompass multiple kinds of harm, which an emphasis on crime excludes

What is physical harm?

car accidents, dangerous work environments, exposure to toxins etc.

What is financial harm?

poverty, fraud, price fixing etc.

What’s cultural safety?

autonomy, development and growth, etc.

What is covert institutional violence?

• the unethical, illegal, and destructive actions of powerful individuals, groups, and institutions in our society that is normalized and accepted 

• Violence is presented as the exclusive property of the poor in the slums, the minorities, street gangs, etc.

• Much of our political and economic system thrives on violence

What did the Hurricane Katrina documentary show?

Example of overemphasizing crime 

What is UCR?

police reported crime data

• used to discuss crime rates

What is NCVS?

nationally representative survey data on crime victimization

What is the Gold Standard of crime measurement?

• Homicide

•  useful comparison for harder to measure violent crimes, less influenced by reporting practices

• If different types of violence share common causes, homicide trends should look similar to trends in other violent crimes

What does the UCR data say about trends of violence?

violence climbed from 1970 until the “great crime decline” in the 1990s

What does NCVS data say about trends of violence?

violence was highest in the 1970s and fluctuated until the great crime decline

What are homicide rates positively correlated with?

rates of unemployment, young adult disengagement, consumer pessimism, and inflation; higher incarceration rate negatively correlated with homicide in the next year

NCVS rates vs UCR rates (homicides)

• NCVS violence rate is consistent with correlates of homicide

  • shaped by victim-reporting trends, but appears more valid for studying long-term trends in violent crime

• UCR violence correlations are not consistent

  • shaped by police practice (recording crimes in their jurisdiction and reporting crimes to UCR), which has changed substantially over time

What are the perceptions of crime rates?

• Most Americans believe crime is increasing – even though it isn’t 

• 77% believe this nationally, 55% believe this locally

Republicans vs Democrats views on crime

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to view violent crime as a very big problem in the country as a whole, there is little difference between the parties’ supporters in how they consume information about local crime and how concerned they are about it

What is Media Conglomeration?

• Several large corporations own and/or influence US news media organization

  • exerts editorial control over news content - ex. Sinclair

What is a crime wave?

• a kind of social awareness of crime, crime brought to public consciousness

  • Crime waves as produced by news media’s search for themes

What is a news theme?

• an overarching theme that helps news media transform an incident into an instance of some larger phenomenon – a carjacking into “yet another youth joyrider”

  • Police data itself can shape the themes available 

What is the pressure to produce?

Emphasis on producing content requires journalists to locate, problematize, and report on even minor crimes

What is the journalistic ideal of balance?

• reporting on “reliable, legitimate, and credible sources competing to advance alternative narratives”

• Journalists rely on police views

• Public and journalist belief that arrest & indictment rely on extremely strong evidence and therefore demonstrate probable guilt

• Negative depictions of defendants: mugshots, etc.

Overrepresentation of Crimes

• Overrepresentation of homicide: only 38.7% of firearm deaths are homicides, the rest are accidents and suicides

• Overrepresentation of mass shootings: 4% of firearm deaths and 7.5% of firearm injuries 

Underrepresentation of Crimes

Domestic violence and drive-by shootings were underrepresented: highest share of firearm-related deaths and injuries yet only 6% of news reports concern them

Why are mugshots significant?

inform what many people believe “perpetrators look like”, even though these individuals have not been found guilty

What is colorblind racism?

ideology which “explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics”, like the market economy, culture, or preference

• ex. mugshot galleries

What is Halloween Sadism?

random vicious, unprovoked attacks by strangers

What is the significance of the Fear of Candy Case Study?

• Halloween candy tampering & fear of crime

• Evidence shows this is almost always a hoax

• Murder of Timothy O’Bryan

What were the 1982 Tylenol Murders?

At least 7 people died from cyanide-laced Tylenol – no murderer was ever charged, though one person took responsibility

What was the Satanic Panic in the US?

tied to concerns about the degradation of the family, childcare, religious decline

Why is fear mongering still a thing?

• Misleading reporting

• Legacy of the “drug pusher” figure

Existing Fentanyl Myths

• Touch and inhalation overdoses among law enforcement

• Research demonstrates that it’s not possible to OD on fentanyl through touch alone; inhalation OD would require a huge dose and extended exposure

What is the Mafia Mystique?

the popular perception that the Mafia “transcends its criminal character” by virtue of special, mysterious qualities not shared with other criminal organizations

Why are myths significant?

• Inform us about what “is” in our society and what “should be”

• Smooth contradictions between social beliefs and realities

What are the three primary themes in mafia mystique?

• The familial nature

• Financial success

• Not constrained by laws and limitations

What is the racial ethnic character of the Mafia Organization?

• Sicilian descent

• Familial strength as a racial-ethnic quality

• portrayed as perpetually foreign

What is the historical context of mafia mystique?

• Appears after WWII

• A social problem

• Role of immigration policy

Immigration Timeline, Mafia Mystique

• 1850: 9.5% of the US population was born elsewhere

  • More than 2 in 5 immigrants born in Ireland

• 1890: 14.7% of US population born elsewhere

  • Diversification of country of origin

• 1920: 12.8% of US population born elsewhere

  • Racist and nativist immigration policy begins

What is Eugenics?

the “scientific” theory that human beings could be perfected and social problems could be eliminated by controlling reproduction

• Biological understanding of poverty, illness, crime, etc.

• Extends to immigration policy: preventing immigration of the ‘unfit’ protects the ‘gene pool’

What is nativism?

• anti-immigrant political and social movements

  • Initially organized against Irish and German immigration and then spiked in response to growing immigration from southern and eastern Europe, especially Catholic and Jewish immigrants

Organized Crime Before WWII

• Gambling & prostitution rings

  • Policy rackets (illegal lotteries, essentially)

• “Black hand” extortion rackets

  • Misconstrued as organized by a single organization

• “Social athletic clubs”

  • New-immigrant (white) gangs sponsored by politicians

Significance of prohibition in 1920

• Bootlegging as source of enormous profit

• Existing organized crime groups participated

• New benefits to cooperation between groups

• Violence to defend monopolies increases

Significance of Mafia in Madison

• Greenbush as murder & bootlegging hotspot

• Public support for discriminatory policing, inflammatory rhetoric, and KKK marches against Madison’s Italian community

• Home Owner’s Loan Corporation maps from 1937: specifically cites “Italian” and “Sicilian” neighborhood as “most troublesome” – redlined greenbush, causing economic decay

What were two important changes to Italian racism?

• The Great Migration (1910-1970): two waves of African American migration, generally from the South to urban centers in the North - 7 million moved

• WW2 and the decline of eugenic thought

What are the origins of the Mafia Mystique?

• Growing acceptance of Italians as ‘white’

  • Mafia remained relevant after Prohibition in other illegal businesses

  • accounts of the Mafia’s success “provided living and visible proof that Italians possessed the ‘innate intelligence’ and drives to overcome their origins

What was the difference between organized crime and gangs in the midcentury?

• Black and Latino gangs were historically prevented from expanding outside of segregated neighborhoods, and larger organizations

  • began to operate similarly to the “social athletic clubs” of the early 1900s

  • incarceration actually strengthened gangs that maintained ties to those on the outside

What are transnational gangs?

• New fears of criminality involving migrants and immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America

• Gangs in some immigrant communities formed for protection, responding to perceived threats without calling police

  • Especially relevant for undocumented people, who feared police involvement

What is RICO?

RICO originally passed in response to an “urgent need to protect American society from criminal groups like the Mafia to now black and Latino gangs

What is California’s Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act?

it’s a crime to actively participate in any criminal street gang, have sentencing enhancements extended to those who commit felonies under this

Who determines who’s in a gang?

• Police testimony is key in asserting gang membership

• Gang databases allow police to track individuals affiliated with a gang

• Deeply discretionary; police gang experts as primary judges of what constitutes gang affiliated clothing, behavior, language etc.

What are Gang Stereotypes?

• Law enforcement and prosecutorial focus on racially associated groups leading to suspicion of racial minorities broadly

• Popular media contributes to this stereotyping, with unnamed “thugs” and "gangsters" disproportionately played by Black actors

What was the Earliest Federal Hate Crime Statute?

Part of Civil Rights Act of 1968, hate crime was defined in relation to federal activities

What was the Shepard-Byrd Act?

Removed federally protected activities and expanded to cover gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability

What are the State Hate Crime Laws?

• Varies

• 5 states had no criminal hate crime statutes or had statutes that were functionally impossible to enforce due to vagueness

• Many states exclude sexual orientation from their hate crime laws, and even more exclude gender identity

What is the prevalence and reporting of hate crimes?

• Half are reported to police, and half are described as a hate crime

• Less likely than victims of non-bias violent crimes to report

• Strained relationship with police & victims

Reasons to Report a Hate Crime

• To stop the incident 

• Preventing future instances against self and others

Reasons to not Report a Hate Crime

•  Reported to a different official

• Not important to police

• Personal matter

How do Prosecutors conceptualize hate crimes?

1. Comparing cases against a typical or normal hate crime (gender vs race)

2. Looking for something that is obvious or explicit (saying racial slurs)

3. Informally adopting the standard of ‘but for’, meaning that but for the hate, the crime wouldn’t have been committed

4. Looking for hate as the sole motivation for the crime and largely ruling out cases where dual motives are present 

Who are hate crime perpetrators?

• Overrepresentation of poor people and people of color as perpetrators

• Regardless of state level disparities, data shows they are primarily male and white 

Transphobic Violence

• 32 murdered in 2024

• Many were killed by a romantic sexual partner, friend, or family member

• “Groomer” conspiracies

Significance of the Civil Rights Cold Case Initiative?

• Revival of FBI attention to Civil Rights era cold cases of racially motivated murders

• Families and activists teamed up with journalists to investigate these crimes – leading, in some cases, to them being solved or prosecuted

Cold Case Documentary

• Charles Moore & Henry Dee, two black 19 year olds had been kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the KKK in Mississippi, now investigated by Thomas Moore

• They got the case to go in front of a grand jury

Significance of criminals as a group?

• defined by their individual “criminality”, which refers to some definable increased risk of committing illegal acts

• criminals are the cause of crime

• Criminals as ‘abnormal’, tangibly different than ‘normal’ people

What does the Crook County article say about Monsters and Mopes?

Monsters or mopes are the two primary ways that court professionals see defendants

What are mopes?

• stupid, unskilled, failing at conventional life and therefore committing crimes that pollute the court system

• Connection between intelligence and criminality goes back to eugenic era

Significance of Morons, Imbeciles, and the Feebleminded?

• Interchangeable eugenic terms that put developmental disability on one end of a spectrum and “dullness” on the other – with the feebleminded as closest to normal people, and therefore the most dangerous because of their relative invisibility

• Introduction of IQ tests “allowed them to argue that they were not being arbitrary in what groups were targeted for control

What is an Imbecile?

• Inferior

• Academically backward

• Impulsive, poor judgement

• risk severe punishment for the sake of some slight gain which appeals to their personal desires

How were Morons determined at Ellis Island?

• 1912: Goddard stages ‘study’ of immigrant intelligence at Ellis Island and “discovers” at least half of those ‘visually identified’ for testing were “morons”

• Could their failure be a result of testing conditions, of weakness, fear, or confusion, rather than of innate stupidity?

What conclusions were made from intelligence testing of Army Recruits?

1. Average mental age of white American adults was “just above the edge of moronity at a shocking meager 13

2. European immigration can be graded on their country of origin, the average man of many nations is a moron

3. Black people lie at the bottom of the scale

Significance of Intelligence Testing in 1921?

• Depending on the image, class, race, and place people are from could impact whether or not they know what is missing

  • Isn’t common sense for everyone and doesn’t measure intelligence

What does the intelligence-crime connection insinuate?

• Association of Black people and immigrants with criminality

• Support for white, upper-class social privilege, influence, and dominance

• Justification of social inequality as a result of biologically inherited defects

• Justification of racist and nativist ideations

Dehumanization of Mopes in the System

• Justification of extended sentences for victimless crimes, denial of treatment or diversion programs when requested, and overall violent and derogatory treatment of defendants

• Perception of reoffending as “like trash in the ocean” - inevitable and intrinsic

What is the paradox related to the mope construct?

• dehumanizes defendants to help make sense of low-level offenders as still deserving of mass criminal punishment, social exclusion, cruelty and humiliation

• But it simultaneously can lead to minimizing the severity of a given crime

Significance of homeless people?

• Persistence of homelessness in the US is framed as a crime issue

  • People experiencing homelessness, addiction, and mental illness are not inherently “criminal” despite popular portrayal

• Unhoused people are more likely to be arrested, but for overwhelmingly nonviolent crimes

Significance of the opioid epidemic?

• Dramatic increase in opioid addiction and overdose in the US, driven by prescribing practices and the growth of synthetic opioid availability

  • Associated with white, rural, and suburban populations

Why are white opioid users being g treated differently than white meth users?

1. The social class of the imagined users, with prescription opioids was to suburban, privately-insured clientele

2. Link between opioid addiction and legal prescription use vs meth being illegally distributed

How does the mope construct relate to the opioid epidemic?

• Users as drain on taxpayers

• Users as choosing addiction over gainful employment

• Users as negligent parents

  • Especially relevant for perceptions of women