Review of Punishment in Popular Culture by Charles Ogletree Jr. & Austin Sarat, eds.

The editors of Punishment in Popular Culture remind us that through practices of punishment ... cultural boundaries are drawn, that solidarity is created through acts of marking difference between self and other, that these processes proceed through disidentification as much as imagined connection. (p. 2) This is no doubt true about the organization, justification and reception of various forms of punishment in society. It is no less true about the creation and cultivation of popular cultural forms of entertainment such as television and film. To be sure, punishment acts directly on bodies. And cultural forms-visual or texual stories about punishment or justice-act on bodies less directly. But both act on us, constituting individuals and communities as subjects, shaping our expectations and desires, implicating us in the moral points made. Narratives do not stand outside social authority - they are part of it. (Binder and Weisberg 2000: 23