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Tag Archives: society
Haldol
This is an advertisement for the psychotropic drug Haldol. It was featured in a psychiatric journal in the sixties, which will bring a couple of things to mind. The “belligerent” man depicted in the picture is clearly a black man, in an aggressive, assaultive stance.
This advertisement was run right around the civil rights era, which does something to explain the unexplained aggressive, assaultive, and belligerent behavior. What do you do when someone just wont stay in their place? You confine and medicate them against their will. This ad is a lot to swallow.
I don’t know whether such a thing actually did take place at the time, but the insinuation is enough for me. Everything about this advertisement screams social control. The words are made to instill fear within the reader, to cause a sort of panic about what could be, and will be possible, if certain measures and precautions are not taken.
The ad is also careful to add: Usually leaves patients relatively alert and responsive. Relative to what- a vegetable? What happens not usually? Who cares, this guy just wont stay in his place.
Seriously though, this is maybe the most racist ad I’ve ever seen, even for the time. The way it panders to a deep-seated psychological fear about the unrest of a disenfranchised race is pretty low ball. It’s hard to think of something more offensive. And again, the implications of locking someone up and medicating them because they threaten your political and economic stability is just terrible. Really, really terrible.
Social Control Tool? Absolutely.
Posted in Assignment 5
Tagged control, deviant behavior, medicalization of deviance, Moral Panic, racism, society
92 Comments
Dishonest police agendas.
I found this video online which is somewhat of a reiteration of the Village Voice articles we read. The most shocking statistic was that 51% of summonses which were handed out by the NYPD were dismissed. This statistic is plainly ridiculous. Regardless of whether or not Police officers are given quotas, this enormous issuance of tickets is a blatant waste of time. Not only does it waste both officers’ and citizens’ time, but it breeds distrust and resentment toward police in general.
The Voice article also highlights the fact that police from the 81st precinct were forced to basically clear the streets of people. Whether people were given summons, or simply brought to the station and later let go, these wrongfully treated citizens are, again, building resentment for the police force as a whole.
If citizens can’t look to police for stability, then who can they look to? While leaving class, I overheard students discussing their acceptance and trust in relation to Firefighters. I believe this is due to the fact that Firefighters are generally thought of as protectors of the community as opposed to enforcers.
I found this article about the usage of Firefighters to help patrol high crime areas. There are differing points of view concerning this arrangement. It can be said that Firefighters are untrained and ill-equipped to deal with crime prevention. On the other hand, the mere presence of Firefighters can help to prevent crime. Problems are often exacerbated by a Police presence, whereas a Firefighter presence may be advantageous in preventing problems.
Psychopaths Can Recover
Reading the article in the New Yorker, by Seabrook, about psychopathy, I was interested in finding out the way the people with this condition are being treated. While searching for information I came upon video on someone who was in prison with psychopathy. A man who committed manslaughter and robbery is now trying to convince people that he is okay and is now trying to get back into society.
This raises the question about the way in which we treat this condition. I feel that much of society looks at it as deviant behavior because it is out of the norm how we “ought to act” then classifies it as criminal. I agree with what this video states that we need to change the way in which we treat them. Most of our prisons try to suppress their anxiety; however they need to change the way they think and how to change their behavior, whether it’s by group therapy or by social interaction like we see in the video.
According to the article in the New Yorker psychopaths‘s main defect is a serve emotional detachment, defined as a lack of empathy and remorse. So doesn’t the prison system make you feel more emptiness and a greater remorse? So the point made in the article is how the justice system viewed them as criminals, but is not their fault, it is the way their minds work.
This video states that we can’t view psychopaths as criminals we must treat them differently and maybe we will see some progress in treating people with this condition, and maybe some can improve enough to function in society.
Real Life Superheroes
We often talk about deviance and deviants as people who do things outside of society in a negative way. This week I watched “Superheroes” a documentary on HBO about people who consider themselves real-life superheroes and do what superheroes do: fight crime. Clearly these people are deviating from the societal norm by dressing up in costumes and fighting crime themselves rather than relying on law enforcement officers to do so. While at first they seem a bit foolish, their intentions are actually quite sweet. Most of the superheroes had bad childhoods and were teased and abused. Since they had been impacted personally by crime, they decided that they would dedicate their time to fighting crime.
One of the crime-fighting organizations even managed to get a non-profit status, although most of them are considered a liability by police officers. I think this documentary was so interesting to me because it dealt with people who are considered “at risk” for becoming criminals, who in fact did the opposite. While it’s hard to know how legitimate the portrayal of the superheroes was, the presence of a camera may have influenced their actions one way or another, it seems that it was pretty accurate.
I really enjoyed watching this documentary and would highly recommend it. While it doesn’t seem like they are too efficient at combating actual crime, it does seem like they are making a difference in their daily encounters with people and through this documentary, by inspiring people to make a difference. Corny, but real.
Social outsiders may be perceived as less than human.
The authors of this study (Full Article), found that people may “dehumanize” social outsiders. The study used fMRI scans to research the brain’s reaction to pictures of different social groups including business professionals, Olympic athletes, and drug attics. The medial prefrontal cortex, which is used for social cognition, is not active when people are shown pictures of people labeled as “extreme out-groups.” This study is somewhat disturbing since it shows that social outsiders can be viewed as less human or possibly, not human at all.
If we look at social outsiders as non-human, there can be a certain amount of subconscious justification for their improper treatment. The previous article mentions how three Florida teens went on a homeless person beating rampage. It would be interesting to see if these teenagers justified their actions through the dehumanizing of the homeless individuals. This study also helps us understand why people can turn a blind eye to these social outsiders so easily.
“Extreme out-groups” were the focus of the study or, people who were extremely far from societal norms. In my opinion, the participants of the study, who happened to be college undergraduates, simply could not relate to the people in these social out-groups. By having so little in common, participants could more easily disassociate themselves.
At its core, this study focused on the brain’s reaction to images of social outsiders. Therefore, it is easy to see a relationship between people’s image, and their treatment by others. The findings of this study could be reason enough to set up programs which focus on bettering the physical appearance of social outsiders, at the very least, to give them equal treatment by others.
Socially Acceptable Tattoos
Some people would say that this phrase is an oxymoron, that any tattoo or bodily ink is an indication of some sort of deviant behavior, may it be criminal or something out of the norm. Lambroso believed that the more tattoos a person had, the less sensitive to pain that person was, which in turn made them less developed and more inclined to the criminal lifestyle and the more tattoos a person had the more correlation to crime they also had,
“tattooing is practiced by them to a far larger extent than by normal persons….whether thieves or murderers, show the highest percentage of tattooing…another fact worth mentioning is the extent to which criminals are tattooed” (Lambroso, pg 244).
This discussion of tattoos reminded me of this clip from one of my favorite shows MSNBC LOCKUP which is a documentary about Americas Prisons. Lockup Tattoo Clip.
This clip shows two prisoners with had their eyeballs filled with color ink. I believe that certain places on a body to get tattoos on are more socially acceptable then others. If you see somebody with a tattoo on their forearm for example you are going to assume that they were/are a sailor or had some sort of affiliation with the Navy. If you see a tattoo of someones name on a persons upper arm, its generally their parents, someone who was close to them that passed away, maybe even a significant others name. My point is that certain tattoos most people will see and will barely have a reaction to, because they are socially acceptable to an extent. Me personally if I see a person with a tattoo above their neckline I automatically have preconceived notions about that person, usually with negative connotations, mainly because a person with a big skull on his forehead is not going to be working a nice corporate job but will probably be selling drugs on the corner, now although that is not always the case, that is the impression that they project.
