Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society

by Nicole Rafter

Movies play a central role in shaping our understanding of crime and the world generally, helping us define what is good and bad, desirable and unworthy, lawful and illicit, strong and weak. Crime films raise controversial issues about the distribution of social power and the meanings of deviance, and they provide a safe space for fantasies of rebellion, punishment, and the restoration of order.

In the first comprehensive study of its kind, well-known criminologist Nicole Rafter examines the relationship between society and crime films from the perspectives of criminal justice, film history and technique, and sociology. Shots in the Mirror begins with an overview of the history of crime films and the emergence of various genres, surveying important films from the silent era, the early gangster films of the '30s, classic film noir, the work of Hitchcock, and recent innovations by Scorsese, Tarrentino, and the Coen brothers.

Keeping pace with the evolution of crime films, Shots in the Mirror has been updated to respond to recent developments, trends, and shifting circumstances in the genre. This new edition expands the scope and increases the depth and variety of the previous edition by including foreign films in addition to American movies. Rafter also integrates an entirely new body of literature into the study, reflecting the rapid expansion of scholarship on law-related films over the past three years. She has added a chapter on psycho movies, a previously unrecognized subcategory of crime films. Another new chapter, "The Alternative Tradition and Films of Moral Ambiguity," focuses on recent sex crime films. This new final chapter grows organically out of the first edition's distinction between traditional crime films, with their easy solutions to social problems, and those more unusual critical films which belong to the bleaker, morally ambiguous, alternative tradition.

Rafter examines more than three hundred films in this study, considering what they have to say, socially and ideologically, about the causes of crime, and adding valuable contributions to the on-going debate on whether media representations of violence cause crime. Shots in the Mirror is both a marvelous history of crime films and a trenchant analysis of their complex relationship to larger society.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Sociology

233 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1900

About the author

Nicole Rafter is Professor Emerita of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.

She achieved her PhD in Criminal Justice from State University of New York. Albany sparked her academia career in feminist criminology. She began writing on delinquent individuals from the time of her very first publication in 1969.

In 1977 Rafter began teaching at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice in Boston, Massachusetts. Here she developed one of the country’s first courses on women and crime as well as a course on crime films.

In 1999 she resigned her position as a full-time professor to focus on her writing projects. In 2002 she resumed teaching at the College of Criminal Justice with a graduate course in Biological Theories of Crime.

Her most recent two awards are the American Society of Criminology's Sutherland Award in 2009 as well as the Allen Austin Bartolemew award for Best Paper for Criminology's Darkest Hour: Biocriminology in Nazi Germany.

Reviews

[zar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice insight into crime films (one of my favorite film genres) and their set-up, plot-lines , stock characters, etc. I primarily read this for uni so a lot of what Rafter said coincided with the movies we watched in class and that made understanding the nuances of each so much better. 3.75/5

[div · Rating 3 out of 5]

the textbook for my popular culture and crime class so it’s cool but just not that interesting at times. read almost all of it (we didn’t cover the introduction or chapter one), but most chapters were interesting to read. some weren’t that interesting in my opinion though lol, but it was exciting to read about some of the movies i’ve seen and how they’re analyzed as a criminal justice and criminology major!

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about the film genre, specifically the crime film genre and the implications of these films in real life!

[J T · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read. Organized around big issues, but so clear and definite in its details.