Pictures at an Execution: An Inquiry into the Subject of Murder. - book reviews

In the now famous 1991 case of KQ v Daniel B Vasquez, a California public television station su the warden of San Quentin for the rights to broadcast the execution of convicted killer Robert Alton Harris. Taking this case as her starting point and central focus, Wendy smaller in Pictures at an Execution explores the confusions and connections that arise between entertainment and homicide Although Pictures is indeed "an inquiry into the bring under rule of murder," it is more specifically bear uponed with the experience of assassination through visual and verbal forms of representation.

Given our sociocultural obsession with the topic, it is significant to remember that media representation is, in fact, the solitary way that most of us have experienced (or failed to experience) manslaughter Our reactions to such representations, largely pendent upon their informing context, vary tremendously: what is the difference between the 12 o'clock movie and the 11 o'clock news? If, by dint of removing the contexts that wink us into a culturally appropriate interpretation and reply there fundamentally is no difference between them, what does that say about human character? Pictures at an Execution raises the question: is our curiosity inherently depraved? What are the events of gratifying such voyeurism: does it obey to discourage or encourage further violence, or does it simply inure us, robbing us of our capacity for empathy, our capacity to be shocked? like intriguing points, however, are presentlyed dropped, as Lesser diverges from her opening thesis and have the appearances to back track, wading [i]or[/i] part of to the other a long history of fictitious as well as "documentary" representations of assassination from books, to films, to dramas, to photographs. Perhaps the pivotal flaw may be ground in the beginning chapters in which less briefly makes it clear that she views execution as only another form of murder, effectively segueing between the specifics of the Alton Harris trial and anything other she wants to talk about. As less jumps from the allegories of Macbeth and Oedipus to Weegee's 1940 of recent origin York crime scene photographs to more contemporary works of the like kind as Errol Morris's film The Thin sky-colored Line (1988), Norman Mailer's volume The Executioner's Song (1979), and Jonathan Demme's film The Silence of the Lambs (1991) the reader's head begins to spin. inferior began with an intriguing premise concerning the implications of a particular court case, on the other hand seemed to become so enamored of her topic that she allow it spin entirely out of sway There may be some validity in equating execution with manslaughter but this point leads us away from the initial premise of the work.

Also problematic is Lesser's attempt to include too many detailed examples of representations of homicide in too wide a variety of media, rather than focusing upon a particular time period or medium, or resorting to a more superficial however useful, overview. On the other hand, individual particular example of the author's restraint loans a definite sharpness to the work - her adept handling of the "death penalty issue." smaller briefly presents her very decided opinion upon the issue, yet manages to discuss its relevance to other topics without letting its charged character overwhelm of the like kind discussions.

Given the wide drift of her subject matter and her way of presenting it, inferior must lose against the enormity of the task she stations for herself. She attempts the couple a general overview as well as a detailed analysis of not individual but many, very different [i]modus operandi[/i]s and motivations for representing manslaughter Despite such short-comings, the volume is significant in the way that it clarifies issues and questions raised by the agency of the controversial trial, providing us with an intriguing framework for time to come critical discussion about the representation of sigificant events

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