Translating a popular novel from one culture into a film aimed at another is certainly fraught with challenges. It’s essentially an act of double translation: from one culture to another and also from one artistic genre to another.
A host of artistic choices have to be made. Whatever the end result, it isn’t merely a matter of transposing the content from Form A to Form B.
Yet how odd it initially seems that an American film version of a European crime thriller omits a jail term served by one of the key characters. That is what writer / director David Fincher chose to do, however, in his Anglo Saxon take on the sensational Swedish novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
In the Stieg Larsson original, muckraking journalist Mikael Blomkvist must serve a couple of months in jail as part of his sentence after being convicted of libeling a notorious business tycoon. In Fincher’s film, the sentence consists only of fines, with no jail time or even probation.
One might have thought that including the jail term would be quite natural in a film aimed at American audiences. After all, we are the country that leads the world in incarceration rates, the country sometimes called A Nation of Jailers.
Fincher probably felt that the very liberality of the conditions of Blomkvist’s confinement would make it unintelligible to many Americans. For example, Blomkvist gets to choose when he will serve his jail term. Such discretion is little known in our system, geared as it is toward punishment.
Similarly, the jail term itself, when Larsson’s Blomkvist does serve it, turns out to be a positive experience for him - more like going to a summer camp than to a hellhole. This contrasts sharply with the American perception that a jail term must inevitably evoke constant fear and trembling.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A Meta Question For Criminal Justice Research
America spends massive amounts of money on criminal justice — especially on prisons.
It’s big business in a country that incarcerates over two million people and keeps millions more on probation or parole. Nationally, the annual cost to incarceate so many people approaches $70 billion, according to estimates by the Economics of Crime working group at the Bureau of Economic Research.
Of course, America does tend to do things in a big way. I was reminded of this tonight, when listening to Fresh Air. The guest was author Matthew Aid, who said that the number of intelligence analysts working for Uncle Sam has ballooned to 210,000 in the wake of 9/11.
This led me to wonder: If America can afford 210,000 intelligence analysts, what about criminal justice analysts? Is the amount of research that is done to help guide decisions in our sprawling justice system even remotely proportionate to the system’s expense?
The healthcare system has the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and other institutions devoted to research. Their funding is quite ample and their role in developing guidelines for hte delivery of care is significant.
What about criminal justice? It’s true that the National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Justice, supports research and issues grants for demonstration projects. There are also various research agencies at the state and sometimes even the local level.
But does our society really invest in enough research to develop an adequate level of knowledge about how the criminal justice system is performing?
It’s big business in a country that incarcerates over two million people and keeps millions more on probation or parole. Nationally, the annual cost to incarceate so many people approaches $70 billion, according to estimates by the Economics of Crime working group at the Bureau of Economic Research.
Of course, America does tend to do things in a big way. I was reminded of this tonight, when listening to Fresh Air. The guest was author Matthew Aid, who said that the number of intelligence analysts working for Uncle Sam has ballooned to 210,000 in the wake of 9/11.
This led me to wonder: If America can afford 210,000 intelligence analysts, what about criminal justice analysts? Is the amount of research that is done to help guide decisions in our sprawling justice system even remotely proportionate to the system’s expense?
The healthcare system has the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and other institutions devoted to research. Their funding is quite ample and their role in developing guidelines for hte delivery of care is significant.
What about criminal justice? It’s true that the National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Justice, supports research and issues grants for demonstration projects. There are also various research agencies at the state and sometimes even the local level.
But does our society really invest in enough research to develop an adequate level of knowledge about how the criminal justice system is performing?
Monday, January 9, 2012
Charlie Rose and Criminal Justice: The Dog That Did Not Bark
Charlie Rose's talk show on PBS is a quite remarkable, if highly selective, record of our times. Visiting foreign ministers, actors touting a current movie, and an array of authors make the visit to Rose's studio in New York.
One subject Rose scarcely touches, however, is criminal justice. In the decade that I've been watching the show off and on, I've never seen one devoted to any aspect of the justice system.
This very absence says something about the lack of public dialog of policing, sentencing, and corrections in our public culture. It reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes drew telling inferences from a dog that did not bark.
The dearth of discussion about justice policy on Charlie Rose is like Holmes's dog that did not bark. What is the silence saying?
One subject Rose scarcely touches, however, is criminal justice. In the decade that I've been watching the show off and on, I've never seen one devoted to any aspect of the justice system.
This very absence says something about the lack of public dialog of policing, sentencing, and corrections in our public culture. It reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes drew telling inferences from a dog that did not bark.
The dearth of discussion about justice policy on Charlie Rose is like Holmes's dog that did not bark. What is the silence saying?
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Earth Stood Hard as Iron
Tonight my friend Lynne sang In the Bleak Midwinter at 5 o'clock worship. It was very affecting; a beautiful song, beautifully sung.
In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone.
Christina Rosetti was not writing about prison on a literal level. She was writing about the moment before the Incarnation, before a people in darkness saw a great light.
Figuratively, however, Rosetti's imagery evokes the winter of the heart that prison must be. The isolation and hopeless desperation experienced by many inmates are hard for those of us on the outside to understand. But we should not doubt the depth of the despair within the walls.
Prison ministry seeks to respond to this terrible void, in a place where all seems hard as iron. That is why I serve as a board member of Prison Congregations of America, which works to organize church communities within prisons.
In such a community, centered on Christ, the spirit flows. Water is no longer like a stone, but rather a cup of kindness to each storm-tossed soul.
In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone.
Christina Rosetti was not writing about prison on a literal level. She was writing about the moment before the Incarnation, before a people in darkness saw a great light.
Figuratively, however, Rosetti's imagery evokes the winter of the heart that prison must be. The isolation and hopeless desperation experienced by many inmates are hard for those of us on the outside to understand. But we should not doubt the depth of the despair within the walls.
Prison ministry seeks to respond to this terrible void, in a place where all seems hard as iron. That is why I serve as a board member of Prison Congregations of America, which works to organize church communities within prisons.
In such a community, centered on Christ, the spirit flows. Water is no longer like a stone, but rather a cup of kindness to each storm-tossed soul.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Paradigm Shift Shall Surely Come
This blog turned three yesterday.
Depending on how one measures, that is arguably a fairly long time. Senator Jim Webb’s proposal for a national sentencing reform commission, for example, has come and gone.
By broader measures of duration, however, three years is not that long at all. The dominant paradigm of mass incarceration remains very much in place in American criminal justice.
Yes, there are some reform experiments underway in cash-strapped states that can longer afford to lock so many people up for so long. But the fundamental focus on prison and punishment remains very much in place as 2011 draws to a close, just as it did in 2008 when I put up my first post.
Paradigm shift shall surely come to American corrections. It just won’t come on cue, merely because one year gives way to another.
Depending on how one measures, that is arguably a fairly long time. Senator Jim Webb’s proposal for a national sentencing reform commission, for example, has come and gone.
By broader measures of duration, however, three years is not that long at all. The dominant paradigm of mass incarceration remains very much in place in American criminal justice.
Yes, there are some reform experiments underway in cash-strapped states that can longer afford to lock so many people up for so long. But the fundamental focus on prison and punishment remains very much in place as 2011 draws to a close, just as it did in 2008 when I put up my first post.
Paradigm shift shall surely come to American corrections. It just won’t come on cue, merely because one year gives way to another.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Glen Loury on Factories For Producing Inmates
Glen Loury’commentary on America’s correctional Leviathan came to my attention in 2009. Though I knew he taught at Brown, I didn’t realize until I watched this video that his primary discipline is economics
The economic perspective is a valuable one in approaching questions of incarceration, class, and race.
How is it, for example that most of the people who go to prison for involvement with drugs are poor and non-white? And how is it that America, with five percent of the world's population, has 25 percent of the world’s prison population?
Loury describes the American criminal justice system as “an engine for producing and reproducing racial inequality. “ In certain neighborhoods, he argues, jails and prisons are essentially “factories for producing inmates.”
The factory works by constantly exposing new generations to a culture of entrenched interaction with the prison system. Young men in these poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods tend to have few positive role models in their lives — in large part because widespread incarceration has taken such a toll on their social networks.
Young men in this setting often become enmeshed with the law themselves and get sent to prison. The percentage of such men who are from racial minorities is far disporportionate to those groups' percentage of the U.S. population as a whole.
Upon returning to the neighborhood after serving a prison term, these men (and a few women) face daunting challenges in finding proper employment. The Great Recession and its high-unemployment aftermath have only added to these challenges.
Yet the Recession has also spurred efforts in some states to reform a prison system that has become too costly to sustain. To use economic parlance, what’s needed is a change in the business model for the whole system.
The economic perspective is a valuable one in approaching questions of incarceration, class, and race.
How is it, for example that most of the people who go to prison for involvement with drugs are poor and non-white? And how is it that America, with five percent of the world's population, has 25 percent of the world’s prison population?
Loury describes the American criminal justice system as “an engine for producing and reproducing racial inequality. “ In certain neighborhoods, he argues, jails and prisons are essentially “factories for producing inmates.”
The factory works by constantly exposing new generations to a culture of entrenched interaction with the prison system. Young men in these poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods tend to have few positive role models in their lives — in large part because widespread incarceration has taken such a toll on their social networks.
Young men in this setting often become enmeshed with the law themselves and get sent to prison. The percentage of such men who are from racial minorities is far disporportionate to those groups' percentage of the U.S. population as a whole.
Upon returning to the neighborhood after serving a prison term, these men (and a few women) face daunting challenges in finding proper employment. The Great Recession and its high-unemployment aftermath have only added to these challenges.
Yet the Recession has also spurred efforts in some states to reform a prison system that has become too costly to sustain. To use economic parlance, what’s needed is a change in the business model for the whole system.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Setting Free the Captives, Literal and Figurative
Advent imagery is very strong on release of prisoners.
One example is in a hymn called Hark the Glad Sound, which we sang at worship in the sanctuary at Shepherd of the Valley in Apple Valley, Minn., over the weekend.
He comes the prisoners to release
In Satan’s bondage held
The gates of brass before him burst
The iron fetters yield.
Such imagery is scarcely surprising, when one considers the source. It comes right out of the prophet Isaiah, who sought to offer a prophetic word of encouragement to Israelites exiled in Babylon.
But in what sense are people today prisoners in need of release? The anwer turns, of course, on how one understands the reality of sin.
During the Reformation, Luther and Erasmus had a lively debate about what sin does to the concept of free will. Luther argued that sin throws the will into bondage. Erasmus thought that view was too extreme and discounts the degree to which, despite sin, humans are still made in God's image.
Reflecting on the concept of captivity from the comfort of a comfortable suburban home is a rather odd experience. Though I live far from any literal prison, I see four possibilities:
• Literally in prison, but spiritually free
• Literally in prison, and also spiritually in bondage
• Literally free (not in prison), but spiritually in bondage
• Literally and figuratively free
Given these logical possibilities, it makes sense that St. Paul was such a formative explicator of the concept of spiritual freedom. For Paul, after all, spend considerable time in a literal prison cell.
One example is in a hymn called Hark the Glad Sound, which we sang at worship in the sanctuary at Shepherd of the Valley in Apple Valley, Minn., over the weekend.
He comes the prisoners to release
In Satan’s bondage held
The gates of brass before him burst
The iron fetters yield.
Such imagery is scarcely surprising, when one considers the source. It comes right out of the prophet Isaiah, who sought to offer a prophetic word of encouragement to Israelites exiled in Babylon.
But in what sense are people today prisoners in need of release? The anwer turns, of course, on how one understands the reality of sin.
During the Reformation, Luther and Erasmus had a lively debate about what sin does to the concept of free will. Luther argued that sin throws the will into bondage. Erasmus thought that view was too extreme and discounts the degree to which, despite sin, humans are still made in God's image.
Reflecting on the concept of captivity from the comfort of a comfortable suburban home is a rather odd experience. Though I live far from any literal prison, I see four possibilities:
• Literally in prison, but spiritually free
• Literally in prison, and also spiritually in bondage
• Literally free (not in prison), but spiritually in bondage
• Literally and figuratively free
Given these logical possibilities, it makes sense that St. Paul was such a formative explicator of the concept of spiritual freedom. For Paul, after all, spend considerable time in a literal prison cell.
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