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Law Gender & The Law

Women, Film, and Law

Cinematic Representations of Female Incarceration

by (author) Suzanne Bouclin

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Mar 2021
Category
Gender & the Law, Film & Video, Penology, Women's Studies
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774865869
    Publish Date
    Mar 2021
    List Price
    $75.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774865890
    Publish Date
    Mar 2021
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774865876
    Publish Date
    Nov 2021
    List Price
    $32.95

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Description

Entertainment and profit constitute the driving forces behind most popular representations of incarcerated women. Some cinematic representations, however, and the women-in-prison genre especially, can generate complex legal meanings and leave viewers feeling unsettled about women’s incarceration. Focusing on five exemplary films and one television series, from 1933 to the present, Women, Film, and Law asks how fictional representations explore, shape, and refine beliefs about women’s incarceration. Suzanne Bouclin convincingly argues that popular depictions of women’s prisons can illuminate multiple forms of marginalization and oppression experienced by women in conflict with the law.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Suzanne Bouclin is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. She has published in both French and English in a wide array of periodicals, including the Canadian Journal of Women in the Law, Public Law, the Canadian Journal of Law and Society, and the e-journal Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-Speaking World.

Editorial Reviews

An excellent analysis of the social significance of the women-in-prison genre.

Criminal Law and Criminal Justice