Book review: The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect
| Author | Michael Fiddler |
| Published date | 01 November 2012 |
| Date | 01 November 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480612441095 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Theoretic Criminology
16(4) 515 –531
Book reviews
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480612441095
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Alison Young, The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010; 185 pp. 16
b&w images: ISBN: 0415490715
Reviewed by: Michael Fiddler, University of Greenwich, UK
Some months ago I attended a performance by the director and latterly music producer
Chris Cunningham at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Cunningham is perhaps best
known for his startlingly disturbing music videos for artists as varied as Aphex Twin
(‘Come to Daddy’) and Madonna (‘Frozen’). This particular show saw him perform his
own musical accompaniment to re-edited versions of his visual work. One particular
prolonged segment stood out. A version of his video installation ‘Flex’ (dir. C.
Cunningham, 2000) depicted a naked couple suspended in a stygian void before being
blasted with a beam of light. They awaken and proceed to attack one another. With each
kick and punch we see skin split and flesh deform. A pounding bassline accompanied
the hyper-rapid cutting and replaying of images. As a result, we saw and heard one par-
ticular punch strike the stomach of the female character hundreds of times. The applause
that met the end of sequence would seem to suggest that the audience found the piece
innervating. My response was a little different. An initial sense of unease swiftly became
a horrified disbelief. This did not ‘say anything’ about violence, nor the protagonists’
relationship to it. Rather, in its unpleasantness, it seemed engineered merely to shock
and provoke.
I mention this experience as it is perhaps fitting to start with this kind of recollection
of ‘emotion[al], corporeal and memorial investment’, the kind of which Young also
employs in The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect (p. 2). Young highlights the
multi-faceted responses that we, as spectators, have in response to film. Yet, as Young
also identifies, ‘film’ itself is composed of a compound of intersecting and interacting
features. It is not simply the visual. Rather, image is matched alongside ‘sound, affect,
memory, plot, episode, character, story and event’ (p. 5). This all takes on an especial
resonance when we consider the popularity of on-screen depictions of crime, criminality
and punishment. Through a range of cinematic examples, many of which are pleasingly
outside the canon of what one would expect to find in such a...
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