CAGING WOMEN: PUNISHMENT, JUDGMENT, REFORM, AND RESISTANCE IN WOMEN IN PRISON FILMS by Suzanne Bouclin A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF LAWS (LL.M.) 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Canada THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES •kit -kifk COPYRIGHT PERMISSION Caging Women: Punishment, Judgment, Reform, and Resistance in Women in Prison Films BY Suzanne Bouclin A Thesis/Practicum submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree Of Master of Laws Suzanne Bouclin © 2007 Permission has been granted to the University of Manitoba Libraries to lend a copy of this thesis/practicum, to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to lend a copy of this thesis/practicum, and to LAC's agent (UMI/ProQuest) to microfilm, sell copies and to publish an abstract of this thesis/practicum. This reproduction or copy of this thesis has been made available by authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research, and may only be reproduced and copied as permitted by copyright laws or with express written authorization from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: Disciplinary Terrain and Conceptual Framework 1.1 Disciplinary Frameworks: Mapping the Law and Film Terrain 7 1.1.1 Real and reel lawyers and legal systems 9 1.1.2 Learning and Teaching law through film 13 1.1.3 Establishing the law and film terrain: Defining the 17 'law film' 1.2 Legal and Filmic Reading of Women In Prison Films: Approach to Analysis 20 1.3 Guiding Principles 22 1.3.1 Law / Power: Lessons from Postmodern and Cultural Theorists 23 1.3.2 Women and Power: Lessons from Feminist Intersectional Theories 26 1.3.3 Disruptive Representations: Lessons from Film Studies 30 CHAPTER TWO: Add Women and Stir: A Genealogy of Women in Prison Films 2.1 Breaking Away from the Father: WIP as Sub-Genre 37 2.2 Narrowing the Field: A Genealogy of Women in Prison Films 42 2.2.1 Format: Fiction Films 42 2.2.2 Themes: Physical and Metaphorical Imprisonment and the Possibility of Resistance 43 2.2.3 Setting: Women's Incarceration in the United States 45 2.2.4 Plot 49 2.2.5 Stock Characters 53 2.3 From Dames to Babes to Something in Between: Caged and Caged Heat 57 CHAPTER THREE: Women in Prison Films: Reading the Sub-Genre 3.1 Fans / Film Critics 61 3.2 Film Studies 66 3.3 Socio-Legal Readings 74 3.4 Expanding Understandings of WIP Films 81 CHAPTER FOUR: Punishment, Judgment, Reform, and Resistance in Caged and Caged Heat 4.1 'Will she come out a woman or a wildcat?' - Caged 86 4.1.2 Caged as Social Problem Film: Context and Paratext 94 4.1.3 'Desperate Women Because the Law Forgot Them!' Cinematic Judgment and Judging Subjects in Caged 97 4.2 'Seething Hell of Steel and Stone' - Caged Heat 104 4.2.1 Exploitation and Subversion in Caged Heat: Context and Paratext 109 4.2.2 'We have a Violent Sorority Here:' Interlocking Oppressions and Resistance in Caged Heat 113 4.2.2.i Curing Criminality: The Intersection of Medical and Legal Discourses 113 4.2.2.ii 'Women who Live to Kill now Kill to Live:' Blurring the Victim / Offender Dichotomy 118 4.3 Judging Women: Intertextual Dialogues in Caged and Caged Heat 121 FINAL THOUGHTS 126 APPENDIX: A Partial Annotated Filmography 130 REFERENCES 157 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thus, without expectation, One will always perceive the subtlety; And, with expectation, One will always perceive the boundary. I am indebted to my advisor, Professor Anne McGillivray, for her incisive commentary and far-reaching analysis and her delicate negotiation of expectations. I thank my Committee members, Professors Rebecca Johnson and Debra Parkes for their constructive suggestions and comments, and especially Professor George Toles, an invaluable resource on all things film. I am also grateful for the encouragement I received from the faculty at Robson Hall. Extra special thanks to the library and support staff. 1 L. Tzu, The Tao of power: a translation of the Tao te ching by Lao Tzu 1st ed., (New York: Doubleday, 1986) at p. 27. ABSTRACT For people who occupy spaces of privilege, an understanding of the criminal justice system and the prison in particular, often remains a mediated one, understood through news media and fictional narratives. This mediated experience is significant because the prison itself is both a system of surveillance and relatively hidden from the public eyes. This thesis examines the relationship between film and the law by focusing on a particular cultural artifact - women in prison films (WIP). My starting point is that engagement with this relatively obscure sub-genre of popular film can be a powerful impetus to revision law in ways that challenges the criminalization of particular groups of women. Rather than measuring the realism of WIP films, this research provides a more nuanced inquiry which considers the dialogical or intertextual relationship between films about women in prison and the manner in which the criminal law operates in women's lives. I conclude that WIP films may offer ways to imagine the violence of state practices and the inhumanity of total institutions, and suggest broader gender, race, and class injustices that render certain women more vulnerable to criminalization. To this end, attending to the interaction between law and WIP films can enable a more complex picture of the construction of women's victimization and culpability. Bouclin Introduction Introduction Did you ever do anything illegal Maybe Maybe Not Depends on your definition of legal1 Marlene Tromp argues that Victorian sensation fiction interrogates social policies, standards of normality, and morality. Similarly, when fictional film leaves us "feeling vexed, unsettled, discomforted," it "may be providing us with a cue for social change."3 Films can elicit strong emotional responses and can intervene in social and political environments in subtle though sometimes "unwelcoming and even dangerous ways."4 At their best, they "confront what was, what is, what might be, multiply, fluidly, and often in ways that are hard for us to grasp."5 In this thesis, I examine the relationship between film and the law by focusing on women in prison films (hereinafter "WIP"). My starting point is that engagement with this relatively obscure sub-genre of popular film "can be a powerful impetus to reconceptualize law," 6 here in ways that challenge the criminalization of particular groups of women. My overarching question is not whether filmic images reveal anything about the actual conditions of incarcerated women. WIP films, like any other kind, vary in their cultural verisimilitude. The social purpose WIP films of the thirties to the mid- 1 CD. Wright, One Big Self: An Investigation (Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 2007) at p. 32. 2 M. Tromp, ed., Popular Fiction and Domestic Law: East Lynne, Justice and the 'Ordeal of the Undecidable'(Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 197-211 at p. 197. 3 Id. 4 M. Shiel, "Cinema and the City in History and Theory" in M. Shiel and T. Fitzmaurice, eds., Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context (Oxford and Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001) 1 at p. 7. 5 A. Sarat, "Imagining the Law of the Father: Loss, Dread, and Mourning in The Sweet Hereafter" (2000) 34 Law and Society Review 3 at p.40. 6 A. McGillivray, "Recherche Sublime: An Introduction to Law and Literature" (1994) 27 Mosaic at p.vi. 1 Bouclin Introduction n fifties claimed in advertising to depict "the story of a women's prison today," Whereas the exploitation films offered "caged passions igniting in carnal confinement and Q exploding into violence." Neither delivers exactly what it promises.