Hooked: Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S.

by Susan C. Boyd

Overview

Drug prohibition emerged at the same time as the discovery of film, and their histories intersect in interesting ways. This book examines the ideological assumptions embedded in the narrative and imagery of one hundred fictional drug films produced in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. from 1912 to 2006, including Broken Blossoms, Reefer Madness, The Trip, Superfly, Withnail and I, Traffik, Traffic, Layer Cake, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Trailer Park Boys, and more. Boyd focuses on past and contemporary illegal drug discourse about users, traffickers, drug treatment, and the intersection of criminal justice with counterculture, alternative, and stoner flicks. She provides a socio-historical and cultural criminological perspective, and an analysis of race, class and gender representations in illegal drug films.

This illuminating work will be an essential text for a wide range of students and scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, media, gender and women’s studies, drug studies, and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135909246
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/13/2010
Series:	Routledge Advances in Criminology
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	262
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Susan C. Boyd is an Associate Professor in Studies in Policy and Practice and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Victoria's Centre for Addiction Research in BC, Canada. She is the author of From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy (2004) and Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending the Myths (1999).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Moral Regulation, Film Censorship, and Law 2. Illegal Drug Users and Addiction Narratives: The Early Film Years 3. The 60s On: Counterculture, Addiction-as-Disease, and Mandatory Treatment Narratives 4. Ruptures in Addiction Narratives: Pleasure, Harm Reduction, Consumer Culture, and Regulation 5. Drug Dealers: A Nation Under Siege 6. Vilified Women and Maternal Myths 7. Challenges to the Drug War: 1980 to 2006. Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Craig Reinarman

'Fear of drugs has been carefully cultivated in myth and propaganda for over a century. The construction and manipulation of that fear is why punitive prohibition persists despite its savage failures. Susan Boyd's important new book shows how film has played a starring role in this drug drama. Her insightful analysis of so many classic movies is so well written and entertaining you hardly notice that it is a work of deep scholarship, about drug problems themselves as well as their cinematic representations.'

Editorial Reviews

'In Hooked, Susan Boyd provides a useful and substantive contribution both to the literature on drug representations and to a larger body of developing cultural, feminist and critical criminology... Boyd insists that the negative mythologies of drug use persist across the US, Britain, and Canada, with Hollywood productions the most deeply bound up with war-on-drugs/law and order drug war ideologies... Ultimately, Boyd makes a critical contribution that marks how positive and alternative images of drug use and altered states of consciousness are difficult to find.'—Michelle Brown, Canadian Journal of Sociology

'Fear of drugs has been carefully cultivated in myth and propaganda for over a century. The construction and manipulation of that fear is why punitive prohibition persists despite its savage failures. Susan Boyd's important new book shows how film has played a starring role in this drug drama. Her insightful analysis of so many classic movies is so well written and entertaining you hardly notice that it is a work of deep scholarship, about drug problems themselves as well as their cinematic representations.'

—Craig Reinarman, Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz and author of Crack In America

From the Publisher

'In Hooked, Susan Boyd provides a useful and substantive contribution both to the literature on drug representations and to a larger body of developing cultural, feminist and critical criminology ... Boyd insists that the negative mythologies of drug use persist across the US, Britain, and Canada, with Hollywood productions the most deeply bound up with war-on-drugs/law and order drug war ideologies ... Ultimately, Boyd makes a critical contribution that marks how positive and alternative images of drug use and altered states of consciousness are difficult to find.'

Michelle Brown