of women and drugs: The Performance of Gender and Funded by SSHRC

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1 Visualizing i a Century of fictional film representations of women and drugs: The Performance of Gender and Addiction Susan Boyd PhD University of Victoria Susan Boyd, PhD, University of Victoria. Funded by SSHRC

2 Introduction Drug film: Full length fictional films where illegal drug use or trafficking is the focus Films from films prod ced in Britain Canada 120 films produced in Britain, Canada, & the United States

3 Cultural and Feminist Criminology A mode of analysis that embodies sensitivities to gender, race, class, image, meaning, and representation in the study of crime and control. Questions the expansion of criminal justice and militarism, especially in the US Illegal Drug films: Involve the production of meaning and truth claims.

4 The Power of Pictures News photos have ideological significance because they can enhance, locate, or specify the ideological theme (Hall, 1981) Applying Hall s exploration of news photos to film, we can see how representations of women illegal drug users, drugs, addiction, and drug paraphernalia are fetishized in film refracting the ideological theme at another level, one that we come to recognize and understand. Pharmacological determinism.

5 Women and illegal drug films Most illegal l drug films depict male buddies or groups of traffickers. Women are mostly marginal to the film story. Women s drug use is sexualized, ed racialized, and class-biased. Pharmacological determinism. Women s addiction and downfall are used to measure moral decline and the breakdown of the family and society.

6 The Mystery y of the Leaping Fish (1916 USA)

7 Mystery y of the Leaping Fish (1916 USA) First full-length l drug film in English Sherlock Holmes character users cocaine and laudanum: Coke Ennyday. His drug use is depicted as positive and helping with his detective work. The moral heroine is Bessie. In contrast: Opium trafficking by Asian men is depicted as evil. Fishy Joe a trafficker tells Bessie: Girl you are in my power!

8 The Dividend ( USA)

9 Broken Blossoms (1919 USA)

10 Human Wreckage ( USA)

11 The Pace that Kill (1928 USA)

12 The Cocaine Fiends (1935 USA)

13 Narcotic (1934 USA)

14 Assassin of Youth (1935 USA)

15 Marihuana, The Weed with Roots in Hell (1936 USA)

16 Reefer Madness ( USA)

17 Reefer Madness party

18 The Trip p( ( USA)

19 Valley of the Dolls (1967 USA)

20 The Panic in Needle Park ( USA)

21 The Panic in Needle Park (1971 USA)

22 Drugstore Cowboy (1989 USA)

23 Postcards from the Edge (1990 USA)

24 Losing Isaiah (1995 USA)

25 Trainspotting (1996 Britain)

26 Trainspotting

27 Traffic (2000 USA)

28 Traffic (2000 USA) Add photo

35 Blow (2001 USA)

36 Clean (2004 Canada, France, Britain)

37 Trailer Park Boys (2006 Canada)

38 Gendered dichotomy between drug users Sexualized Ci Criminalized, i female violent users male users

39 Women are punished for transgressing gender roles and law - suicide - overdose - sexual assault - sex trade work - violence/murder - overdose -child apprehension - death of children - infants who exhibit NAS symptoms - infertility - death

40 Exceptions: Women: Saving Grace (2000 -UK) Drugstore Cowboy (1989) The Barbarian Invasions (2003 Canada) Trailer Park Boys (2006 -Canada) Clean (2004 UK/Canada/France) /F Harm Reduction Services: Where are you?

41 Harm Reduction and Women? Images of women who use illegal l drugs provide a bounded set of meanings about drug use and offer by implication, a narrow set of appropriate social responses to drug use. The sense of crisis serves to legitimate punitive social and legal interventions rather than harm reduction initiatives. Few positive representations of women and/or harm reduction..

42 Visualizing a Century of fictional film representations of women and drugs: The Performance of Gender and Addiction Susan Boyd, PhD, University of Victoria. Funded by SSHRC

INTER-AMERICAN DRUG ABUSE CONTROL COMMISSION C I C A D

INTER-AMERICAN DRUG ABUSE CONTROL COMMISSION C I C A D Secretariat for Multidimensional Security FIFTY-FIFTH REGULAR SESSION April 29 - May 1, 2014 Washington, D.C. OEA/Ser.L/XIV.2.55 CICAD/doc.2094/14