Journal of Criminal Law Research

Engineering the Carnival of Violence in the Movie, The First Purge

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Hamidreza Daneshnari 1
Seyed Hossein Hosseini 2
Mohammad kKarimi bandar abadi 3

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

3 PhD student in Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22054/jclr.2024.77834.2642
Abstract
Cinematic representation of the concepts of crime and criminal justice and investigation the social control function of power institutions in the context of artistic activities are among the most important issues that are studied in cultural criminology, and one of them is the cinematic representation the carnival engineering. It refers to a situation where the upper class, in order to gain economic benefits, and spread post-modern culture, controls the lower class by forcing to participate in carnival or transforming armed violence with laughter will eliminate them. The current research aims to analyze the carnival engineering of violence in the movie "The First Purge" using the qualitative content analysis method.
One of the most important terms in cultural criminology is the concept of carnival. Carnival is a critical subculture that challenges dominant social values and norms in a short period of time (Danesh Nari et al, 2023: 271). Carnival is a spontaneous, centrifugal movement and a constant battle between formal and informal culture. Carnival is a temporary and popular release from the reality and dominant form of the institutionalized system. Therefore, the carnival is the suspension of all bases, privileges, norms and taboos (Bakhtin, 1984: 10). Carnival celebrations have been different over time and in different countries, but they have features such as shooting, music, commotion and noise, stomping, dancing, jumping, fake theft, moving objects from their usual place and overturning things. vehicles, tools and instruments, harassing women, the poor, abnormal people, mentally disabled and other marginalized people, scaring children and abusing animals (Lozica, 2007: 72). The common denominator of carnival behavior is excess, mockery, aggression, violence, brutality, aggression, hedonism and spontaneity. Carnivals such as the Greek festival of Dionysus, the festival of Remi Kalends, and the god of Saturn have no limits in offering violent behavior. However, the emergence of divine religions such as Christianity brought the threatening factors of carnivals under control. Therefore, doing unusual and perhaps irrational things in the carnival was accepted as a necessity of daily life and a natural thing, with some modifications (Persadi, 2016: 41). The church was trying to replace the past aggressive behavior with religious and natural affairs and create a transformation in carnivals. Therefore, Christianity in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance period and early modernity brought about a transformation in the traditional concept of carnival. Although, the main elements of the carnival and ceremonies such as firework ceremonies, local gatherings are formed by the social strata in the modern era (Persadi, 2016: 42), but the upper class is also looking for the engineering or transformation of the carnival.
Gerard McMurray, the director of "The First Purge", as a critic of the capitalist system, has shown his mental stereotypes in the form of obvious and hidden meanings in the film. The protest movement against the clean-up against the five thousand dollars reward for the participants, the low intervention of the island citizens in the clean-up against the direct intervention of the party-affiliated militia groups and.... Consonant and vowel images are used to show the contrast between the lower and upper layers.
However, the party is a symbol of a protest movement. A movement that, according to Sabian, is the heir of a great collapse. A great collapse, on one side of which is a bankrupt government that is unable to take care of its citizens, and on the other side, an underclass that is struggling with increasing birth rates, increasing crime rates, and unemployment. Therefore, the party's solution is to set up a carnival of violence against the lower class. The symbol of this carnival, which is provided to the participants along with advanced tracking and image recording equipment, is the "Babitizia plant" or wild indigo; A plant that, in the light of purification, has become a symbol of the improvement of conditions and the destruction of old diseases and wounds or of the lower class.
Holding a carnival requires justification. This issue was achieved with the help of experts in behavioral sciences and in the form of expressions such as "people are angry, they don't have money and food, they need to vent their violence". Then the minds of the American society should be prepared for the establishment of the carnival. Therefore, all media attention is directed to Staten Island and one of the locations of the laboratories, i.e. Park Hill Towers, and no laboratory is located in the noble neighborhoods where Dimitri and his group are based. , is not established. This problem shows that the lower floor is located at the tip of the arrow. The media construction approach of the carnival is explained to the audience with the two concepts of "experiment and laboratory" and "psychosocial evacuation". The term "experiment and laboratory" refers to scientific research and the optional participation of applicants in the experiment and payment of wages to them, and the term "psychosocial discharge" refers to an discharge of psychological violence against each other.

Keywords

Cultural Criminology
Cinematic Representation of Crime
First Purge
Violence Carnival
Crime Engineering Carnival
Subjects
 
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Journal of Criminal Law Research
Volume 12, Issue 46
Summer 2024
Pages 259-296

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