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Prompt: The Conjuring Verse is notable for being one of the few film franchises that would not be categorized as belonging to the 'action' genre. So, what can we conclude about franchise horror's possibilities and/or limitations by considering this example?

The conjuring verse was and is successful in planting easter eggs in its movies, similar to Marvel movies. With these plot points mentioned but not addressed, it allows for the continued exploitation of the original movie. The original contouring film follows a relatively ‘boring’ couple as they manipulate families dealing with trauma and attempt to rid them of this trauma; however, at the end of each movie, we see the Warrens place another artifact in their museum, this gives the viewer a taste of what could be next. This drives interest in future movies, plus the draw-in of “a true story.” This falls into the pitfall of true crime, which people have been increasingly interested in consuming in recent years. 

The conjuring movies do so well with film franchisement because of the true-crime aspect of the films. People in recent years have been indulging in true crime heavily; look at all the serial killer adaptations on Netflix or podcasts on Spotify.  This is an advantage for the conjuring, as Ed and Lorraine Warren were investigators for years, allowing the movie makers to pick from any of their files. However, the films could be more diverse in any sense of the word. All the main protagonists are white, christian, and follow the nuclear family structure. The plot is often carried on Lorraine's back, and there are often no people of color with sustenance in the whole film, leading to consumers' disinterest. Viewers are looking for more dynamic movie experiences, and the Conjuring movies follow the same plot structure with the same pro-Christan narrative, never really diverging from that. So, while the film would make excellent franchisement material a few years ago, the consumer's interests have changed, and they desire more depth. The conjuring movies are only surface-level.

This paper is going to talk about the portrayal of prison inmates in media and how their dehumanization is part of why we see an uptick in incarceration. The reason why this is the topic in a paper about feminist and anti-feminist issues is because of the division in how the prison system affects Americans. As many people are aware, the judicial system oftentimes shows favoritism to white cis men, which inherently allows cis Black men and other minoritized groups of people to be harshly sentenced or to be the target of programs such as the say ‘No to Drugs’ era during the Reagan administration. But the reason why the racism in these types of programs is so prevalent is due to manipulative propaganda or negative portrayals in media that go out to American consumers. In this paper, we're going to be seeing media from YouTube that talks about Holes and how it portrays the prison industrial complex. Also, in that same vein, we're going to talk about Criminal Minds and how their portrayals of prison lean into some of bell hooks arguments about white innocence. From there, we're going to look at a TED Talk talking about how the dehumanization of prison inmates leads to an inability to properly reassimilate and truly be rehabilitated. Unless they were going to talk about how universities are being tough on crime and how that presents itself as inherently Pro police in the eyes of students that don't want Police on campus due to the inherent policing of minoritized students who are more likely to be racially profiled than white students. leading back to minoritized communities being portrayed as inherently violent through media consumption about prisons and perpetrators of violent crimes. 

Film 

Holes & The Prison-Industrial Complex | Criminal Minds 

In Yhara Zayd’s youtube video Holes & The Prison-Industrial Complex, Yhara discusses the parallels between Camp Greenlake and the prison system. This includes how poverty and homelessness are two of the many reasons why children end up at Camp Greenlake. These examples, whether intentional or not, are, in fact, two of the largest reasons why people end up in prison or juvenile detention centers in the first place. Many people often don't think about how poverty can affect one's outcome in life, especially when the outcome eventually ends in a prison or detention center, with the exploitation of hard labor and how it equates to changed behavior. Another topic this movie also demonstrates is the inherent racism in the prison system and the portrayal of inmates in prisons. Yhara gives us the example of Zero and how he is living at the intersection of Blackness, poverty, and illiteracy. With this combination of disenfranchisement, the viewer sees how Zero is treated at the camp and his treatment once trying to improve his ability to read and write. So this very particular instance falls in line with how people treat passed felons when trying to better themselves. 

Washington, DC has a 46.31% Black and African American population; however, this same group of people has a 25.64% rate of poverty, similar to the last paragraph of this paper. This may tell us why so many Black inmates are portrayed in D.C. prisons. When looking at the series Criminal Minds, which takes place in Washington D.C. In season 12, Dr. Spencer Reid goes to prison, and the viewers can see that Spencer is one of the only white men in this prison. What this means is that he is largely surrounded by Black men and other minoritized groups of people. To the viewer, this portrayal of prison inmates allows for a certain stereotype to move to the front of their heads about how Black men and other minoritized groups are inherently mischievous and criminal. This stereotype is perpetuated by dialogue between the characters and the other plot lines. So if this is the way that Hollywood is portraying prisons and the people in them, how are anti-feminists and consumers meant to look at people being released from prisons or entering prison? 

In both of these film examples, we can see the way that whiteness is used in contrast to minority groups, specifically Blackness. In Holes, the white characters are allowed to focus on their mental health and are often spoken to by the camp Green Lake counselor with compassion while minoritized children are often dismissed, The example in the video was of Zero and the intersections of his disenfranchisement which led him to Camp Green Lake in the first place. While in Criminal Minds, Dr. Spencer Reid is basically set up from the beginning as an innocent white man in a sea of “guilty minorities,” and he is inherently seen as nonviolent while being all consumed by the rules outside the prison instead of trying to assimilate and survive in the prison that he currently resides in. This very much falls into hooks thinking of the inherent white innocence and the idea that white people do not need to assimilate, but Black people and immigrants have to assimilate in order to survive in America. So it's almost as if the example of immigrant assimilation is flipped on his head when Spencer refuses to assimilate, leading to this idea that white people inherently think that their way is the best way.

Humanizing Prisoners

The humanization of inmates is very important when talking about prisoners' re-entry into society, but also, the humanization of inmates in portrayals on TV allows wider society to understand what it's actually like in persons instead of allowing misconceptions to fill the minds of viewers. Speaker Anthony Wyatt uses the example of jokes often told about prison, an example being ‘don't drop the soap’ this example makes light of the sexual assault of prison inmates. Wyatt tells the audience about how this joke allows the public to dehumanize prison inmates and the violence they face in prisons. Wyatt also poses two different kinds of mentors in prisons: the content and the ambitious. The way that he describes these inmates is how content prisoners don't particularly learn from their experiences, and they tend to just sit in their anger while people who are ambitious are active in encouraging new inmates to find spiritual release, read, deal with their emotions and accept what they've done and try to grow from it. This kind of mentorship can be seen in the portrayals of prison leave; however, it's usually only one individual who holds this ambitious mentor characteristic. Oftentimes there is inherent blame on other inmates who do not hold this characteristic of ambition.

 The dehumanization of prisoners really does lead to many of the debates that we see happening right now about mass incarceration and prison reform programs. Many people who do not agree with prison reform still view inmates as less than people and as objects or as their crimes. Instead of seeing these people as someone who has made a mistake or someone who is capable of rehabilitation. This again stems from the portrayal in media and what consumers are engaging with. If white people see something on the news that involves a Black man doing something violent or even the assumption of a Black man doing something violent they are inherently wary of all Black people. This reaction is due to the historical realities of white supremacy and the objectification of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic Slave Trade and its continued repercussions. Again because of these white realities, it makes it harder for felons to assimilate back into society after their prison sentence. That felony is on their permanent record, and people and employers have preconceived notions of people who have been to prison. 

OSU’s  “Tough on Crime” 

Dr. Shari Stone-Mediatore is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan who has an article titled Tough Questions for Tough-on-Crime Policies this article talks about how tough-on-crime politics didn't really help anyone. In fact, just made people feel more unsafe; the abuse of minorities and those in prison skyrocketed and made the right to a speedy trial much harder to obtain in our current legal system. This reminded me of universities implementing neighborhood safety emails, especially the neighborhood emails at The Ohio State University, which have been the talk of students for the last year now since they implemented them on the Columbus campus. Some of the questions that stem from these discussions are generally about if the school is using this to trigger white parents and push them to demand more police presence on campus, using it as a way to police students and the community surrounding campus, and are they using it as an excuse to gentrify places in Columbus? This definitely comes from the tough-on-crime generation, as administrators are constantly not listening to students at universities across the United States. The general consensus among students is that this is for parents or for the advantage of schools and not for the safety of students, as many students don't feel safe with police on campus. This does have to do with the portrayal of prison inmates because of the view of crime even before a perpetrator is arrested and the way that crime is portrayed on college campuses in cities all across the US. 

This paper did not directly engage with anti-feminist sources; we did talk about the outlooks and topics that anti-feminists use when talking about tough-on-crime politics and pro-mass incarceration policies. Hopefully, this essay was able to bring to light some of the ways that media consumption can subliminally imprint stereotypes and negative feelings towards minoritized groups of people. As well as how if mass media corporations made the active decision to portray people in humanizing light that the public opinion of formerly incarcerated people may change and allow for former inmates and current inmates to have the opportunity to be rehabilitated truly and get the help that they need in a place that largely disenfranchises those with felonies. 

References

Clarke, Matthew. 2018. “Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration.” Prison Legal News. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/. 

Heiner, Brady T, and Sarah K Tyson. 2017. “Feminism and the Carceral State: Gender-Responsive Justice, Community Accountability, and the Epistemology of Antiviolence”. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2016.3.3. 

hooks, bell. "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination". Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, edited by Ruth Frankenberg, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 165-179. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822382270-006 

National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice, etc. 2014. “Read "The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences" at NAP.edu.” The National Academies Press. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18613/chapter/14. 

Stone, Shari. n.d. “Tough Questions for Tough-on-Crime Policies.” Ohio Wesleyan University. Accessed April 28, 2022. https://www.owu.edu/news-media/from-our-perspective/tough-questions-for-tough-on-crime-policies/. 

Vangsness, Kirsten, et al. Criminal Minds, Season 12, episode Spencer- Green Light, CBS Television Studios, 2017. https://www.netflix.com/title/70153390 

Vera. n.d. “Ending Mass Incarceration | Vera Institute.” Vera Institute of Justice. Accessed April 28, 2022. https://www.vera.org/initiatives/ending-mass-incarceration. 

World Population Review. Washington, District of Columbia Population 2022 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs). Retrieved Apr 28, 2022, from https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/washington-dc-population  

Wyatt, Anthony. 2014. “Re-humanizing inmates | Anthony Wyatt | TEDxGraterfordStatePrison.” YouTube. https://youtu.be/2cRc7nxRD0o. 

"The Witch" is a movie that prompts the audience to think about how male idealization can cause harm to those not following patriarchal norms. Within the narrative of this movie, the audience sees how masculinity is portrayed through family members and how people seen as explicitly feminine are punished for their femininity. The historical politics of this movie also implement patriarchal idealization through Puritan social norms, and the family unit becomes unstable without the ability to follow those traditions. Leading to the central conflict of this movie being: patriarchal social norms vs. young womanhood or Masculinity vs. Femininity.

In this movie, the audience is first introduced to the monstrous masculine through William. In the scene, William and his family are exiled from their Puritan community due to Williams's inability to follow community guidelines. This scene introduces the downfall of social norms, which is the inherent problem with this family now that they're living in isolation. On the outside, William seems to follow traditional masculine objectives and ideals; however, William does not embody masculinity. This is seen by Williams's inability to harvest the land, hunt successfully and his ineptitude at child-rearing. These examples allude to a silent but more robust patriarchal figure Kate.

Kate is the embodiment of someone who upholds patriarchal ideas and values and ensures that those things are happening. Kate is the one who disciplines the children and tells them what to do, and she has very definite rules for their homestead. Whenever William disobeys those rules, he's called out on it. But that does not mean William owns up to his misdoings, leading to misunderstandings and aggression towards vulnerable parties like Thomasin. The central conflict in this movie is sexuality, specifically female sexuality and its proximity to men. This is seen in the way that Kate treats Thomasin due to her beginning puberty; there are two main points that are connected to how Kate is treating Thomasin. The first point is again how traditional patriarchal solutions of dealing with developing womanhood are not attainable to this family due to William and his pride. This is mentioned explicitly in the film when Kate and William are arguing in their bedroom, and Kate reminds William of the Puritan norm that when a woman reaches her adolescence, she's usually sent to a family that is not her own to work. This again shows how the patriarchal social norms are constantly in Kates's head, and she's determined to follow these norms. In contrast, William is more focused on his pride, the power he holds in society, and his alluded position within the household. The second point comes from this quote from Victoria Madden's essay, "...Thomasin, whose burgeoning womanhood singles her out as being especially vulnerable to the influences of evil. Perched on the cusp of embracing her own female sexuality, Thomasin's changing body and growing sense of autonomy becomes a source of tension within the family, especially straining the relationship between Thomasin and her mother, Kate". Kates holds the position of a sexless being within their patriarchal society; mothers are no longer seen as sexual, leading Kate to harbor internalized misogyny, allowing her to embody the monstrous masculine within the way that she feels threatened by her daughter's burgeoning sexuality as a young woman's sexuality is both a threat to mothers with sons as well as the patriarchal image of the ideal woman and her virtues.  

Thomasin, in this movie, is the peak embodiment of femininity; while the rest of her family is wearing lots of earth tones and neutral tones, Thomasin is wearing pink and white. Pink in the modern scene is considered an inherently feminine color, and Thomasin is the only one to wear this color. The audience sees Thomasin wearing only white when she is being objectified by Caleb or Black Philip in human his form. This objectification is not her fault but is the fault of the on-lookers and their desires being pushed onto her, unlike how her mother views Thomasin's sexuality -- as it is Thomasin pushing her own desires onto others. Again Thomasin is constantly being punished for this newfound sexuality; that is unclear to the audience if she knows that that is the problem. 

Caleb, on the other hand, is an embodiment of young masculinity. The scene where William takes Caleb hunting holds much historical significance and meaning. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, it was a common ideal that young men learned how to hunt and showed their masculinity through the domination of other/Other beings, so hunting throughout the years has been seen as a powerful masculine archetype. This hunting scene sets up the eventual introduction to Caleb's sexuality and how he is also burgeoning into adolescent hood. However, his family does not punish Caleb; the witch punishes him in the woods. Because of this, Caleb's family sees him as a victim of his sexuality, not a perpetrator, which is how the scene unfolds. 

To sum up, this movie demonstrates the monstrous masculine through patriarchal family ideals. Each character demonstrates the monstrous masculine through their role in a family or the societal expectations of their role in the family. William reveals this through his pridefulness in thinking that he knows best, even if his family may suffer. Kate demonstrates this through her fervent desire to uphold patriarchal family ideals and her position of sexlessness versus burgeoning sexuality. Caleb illustrates this through his embodiment of newfound masculinity and the trope of being seen as a victim of one's desires instead of a perpetrator. Finally, Thomasin embodies the opposite of the masculine but is the inherent threat of the monstrous masculine, a woman comfortable in her sexuality, a true victim of her sexuality in a patriarchal society.