|
|
Regardless if it is comedy, action, thriller, or biography: A review of urban crime in the 1980s cinema of Chicago |
Hamed Goharipour1(), Huston Gibson2(), Gholamreza Latifi3() |
1. Department of Urban Studies, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH 44691, USA 2. Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA 3. Department of Social, Urban, and Regional Planning, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran |
|
|
Abstract This study investigates the cinematic representation of city crime transactions in Chicago in the 1980s. The narrative nature of cinema provides an imaginative context for interpreting the physical and nonphysical dimensions of urban crimes. From a critical interpretive position, based on Peirce’s semiotics, this study uses “urban cinesemiotics” as the method to select image signs, identify their associated Chicagoan objects, and interpret their designoriented meaning. The theoretical roots of crime prevention through environmental design constitute the basis for the interpretation of movies. A total of 27 crime-related scenes from 9 Chicagoan movies made in the 1980s illustrate that most urban settings suffer from the lack of crime-preventive environmental design. In particular, natural surveillance (eyes on the street), encounter and enclosure, and border vacuums are major environmental factors that affect urban crimes in Chicago. Some crime scenes also depict why environmental design cannot influence individuals’ criminal intentions necessarily nor can they solve urban safety single-handedly.
|
Keywords
Crime
Urban theory
CPTED
Design
Cinema
Chicago
|
Corresponding Author(s):
Hamed Goharipour
|
Issue Date: 08 October 2021
|
|
|
Viewed |
|
|
|
Full text
|
|
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
|
Cited |
|
|
|
|
|
Shared |
|
|
|
|
|
Discussed |
|
|
|
|