The Implications of the Criminality Spectacle on Marginalized Groups

In a time where racism is rightfully decried, criminality serves as a convenient veneer for continued racism, systemic injustice, and violence. My research explores how our discourses about criminality can trivialize Black mourning and death, bolster racist stereotypes, and weaponize innocence as a prerequisite for dignity. I examine the murder of George Floyd and Henry Glover. While both murders have different circumstances, my research finds consistent tropes that negatively affect Black and Brown communities. Despite Michel Foucault's argument in Discipline and Punish that public executions and its spectacles disappeared, police killings and hate crimes demonstrate how the spectacle has merely taken a new form within social media. The public execution spectacle, which historically demonstrated the government's power, offers a way to understand the pernicious history of state violence against Black and Brown communities. My research  then turns to tropes that arise out of the spectacle. Through my analysis of Michaelis Lianos and Mary Douglas' “dangerization,” I examine how one might justify violence against Black and Brown people under the arbitrary notion that they are more “dangerous.” Lastly, I expand on Diana Myer's victimhood paradigms to explain how people weaponize innocence as a prerequisite for dignity and compassion.