| In 1970, less than 300,000 citizens were incarcerated in the United States. In 2009, more than two million men and women are incarcerated in this country, making the United States the world's leading incarcerator. In the midst of the unprecedented growth of the prison system, the American public has remained relatively silent. This study argues that, in part, this silence emerges in a "culture of fear," where an active network of mediated representations present the prison system as a form of entertainment, an opportunity to enact surveillance, or both. The competing cultural discourses surrounding the prison system and the system's pervasive presence and influence in contemporary U.S. culture make penology an interesting site of investigation for communication scholars. This study brings together theories of the spectacle (Debord) and theories of surveillance (Foucault) to make a critical commentary about the way nonincarcerated citizens experience the prisons system through mediated representations.;This study employs critical ethnographic methods to examine three mediated representations of the prison system in the United States. The first text analyzed is Alcatraz Island, a popular tourist attraction offering citizens the opportunity to walk the halls of a historic prison. The second is The Angola Prison Rodeo and Crafts Fair at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the United States' largest maximum-security prison, which opens its gates to tourists for a prisoner-produced crafts fair and rodeo. This event "stages" the contemporary prison for visitors. The final text is HBO's OZ, a series that for six seasons (1997-2003), brought viewers inside the fictionalized Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary and the experimental unit of Emerald City. OZ provided nonincarcerated audiences a raw glimpse of the prison of the future in the United States. Despite Foucault's announcement of the death of the spectacle and the emergence of a culture of surveillance, this study illustrates that in a highly mediated and technologically advanced culture, the contemporary prison system exists as both a spectacle and a site of surveillance. Taken together, these three texts--- Alcatraz, Angola, and OZ---portray a multilayered story about the United States prison system's past, present and future. |
