Sean West
3-4-14
WRT 205
Brubaker: An Exploration Into Indifference
In America prisons are a fact of life. They have existed since the countries’ inception and have grown to what we can see today; where the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. As in all things there exists a conflict between the reality of what is and the perception of that reality. The media contributes to the understanding that the public has of the prison system and the incarcerated. They contribute to it through fictional stories such as movies and television series, and through non-fictional pieces like documentaries, articles, and investigative specials. These efforts by the media, both fictional and non, create an indelible image of the incarcerated and the penitentiary. That image can be argued to one of a scary place filled with scary people, a fitting place for the criminal. This framing of the inmates and the prison system contributes to public perception that criminals have no place in our society, and their continued ostracization.
One such depiction of prisons was the film Brubaker by Stuart Rosenberg. It was released in 1980 and was a dramatization of the book Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tim Burton and Joe Hyams. The book, and later the movie, describe and depict the events that had taken place in two Arkansas state prison farms during the 1960’s. The prison in the movie was a hell on earth, not fit for man nor beast. The inmates were used as forced labor on the farm that was the prison and in the surrounding town. The incarcerated we also pressed into service to run the prison as trustees. Cruelty and violence of all kinds were habitual inside the prison and corruption was institutional. What this movie does to contribute to the perception of prisons is to confront the lack of interest we, as the public, have for the incarcerated as long as they are locked up and not posing a threat.
Brubaker begins the process of revelation of our disregard in its opening scenes. At 10 minutes and 30 seconds the movie shows the barracks where the prisoners are housed (Link to movie). The room is large and filled with single and bunk bends. The beds are rusted and dilapidated, with broken springs. There are no mattresses; the prisoners sleep on blankets when they can get them, except for the molding water soaked one on the floor. In the barracks the roof leaks and the floors are covered in standing water which some of the prisoners are forced to sleep on because there are not enough dilapidated beds for the inmates to sleep on. While this scene shows the hell that those men were living in the depiction of the living conditions is secondary to the events that take place.
The most significant event in this scene is the whipping of the colored man Bobby by the trustees. The ‘captain’, the man running the barracks, tells Bobby “he has to go see the boss”. The inmate is taken from the barrack’s chamber where he is tied to the bars with his pants down and whipped for all the inmates to see. While counting off his lashing; ending each count with the cry ‘cap’, an acknowledgement to the man beating him This display of casual violence is arguably for the new inmates who just arrived. To set the tone for their life in prison, so that they understand exactly how things are run in Wakefield state prion.
The message that this scene sends is one of powerlessness and disregard. The rank and file inmates are not human—they have no rights—no one cares about them inside our outside the walls of their confinement. They can be abused in whatever manner anyone above them sees fit, even unto death, and no one will help them. There will be no cry for justice just a tacit acceptance of the fate of criminals. This scene is displaying graphically the actual events that took place on the prison farms in Arkansas. While these grave injustices and crimes are no longer part of our prison system, to our knowledge, they represent sentiments that are still held. In 1998 Bahram Haghighi and Alma Lopez explored the public views of prions and prisoner. Through their research they found that “In a national opinion survey… that 61 percent of respondents choose keeping offenders out of society” (Haghighi & Lopez). Criminals are those who break from the sacred trust of society by violating its laws. When they do that they are no longer part of it and disregarded. While assault and the murder of real people, law-abiding citizens, is abhorrent and punished whatever happens to criminals is their just due. They are bad people and not deserving of our empathy, or a place in our society.
Another scene that presents the idea that the publics only want for criminals is to be absent occurs at one hour and 28 minutes into the movie. The scene shows a meeting between the officials and the warden, Henry Brubaker (Robert Redford). In the discussion of the future of the prison and Brubaker as its warden, the conditions of the prison and its inmates are discussed. Brubaker argues against the corruption, the violence, and the inhuman conditions the inmates live in. The senator present says:
“The people in this state have themselves a whole lot of problem: getting jobs, paying rent, insurance premiums; come election time they might vote for your prison reform thing, but that’s just a reflex. They don’t really want to hear that their taxes are being raised to take care of murders, rapist. That farm wasn’t costing anyone anything before you got your hands on it…”
This idea that while people like to say they support ‘the right and decent thing’ the reality is when it comes to criminals it is just lip service is what this scene is about. The people just want to live safe lives where they do not have to worry about crime, as long as it does not inconvenience them. When we remove people, criminals from society it makes us feel safe. This thought is echoed in the work done by Damn Cecil and Jennifer Leitner in Unlocking the Gates. They say that when “These ‘characters’ are securely locked up in prisons… viewers can feel somewhat secure in knowing that these inmates do not pose an immediate threat” (195). We stop caring about them, the inmates. They are gone; they are now other, and we do not have to worry about them. Brubaker makes that apparent in this scene through the way the warden is rebuffed for seeking humanitarian conditions for the inmates. He is put down for seeking more funding to make things ‘right and decent’ for the men in the prison. He is told no, because it would inconvenience people who don’t want to be bothered to care about rapists and murders.
In one of the final scenes of the movie the ultimate dehumanization and carelessness occurs. At one hour and 58 minutes the prison board meets to discuss and decide on a coarse of action in dealing with the discovery of murdered prisoners buried on the farm. In the scene the evidence of murder is disregarded and obvious fatal wounding’s are relegated to post burial trauma. The murder of men held as wards of the state, whose responsibility is to see to their wellbeing, is dismissed. The expressed priorities of the board “Is to see to the decent Christian re-internment of the remains, and to reestablish control”. The loudest priority expressed was to prevent gun fighting in the streets. Not the murder of dozens on inmates. Not the pursuit of justice that those men deserve and are entitled to.
At the end of this scene Brubaker captures the ultimate expression of the peoples disregard for the incarcerated. He says “If you want to avoid trouble… the next time a man is sentenced to Wakefield Prison, take him about back behind the court house and shoot him”. The ideas expressed in this movie are that the people want nothing to do with those who violate the law, that they do not want them as a part of society. Though Brubaker is being satirical, the shooting of inmates represents, metaphorically, what is done to those men and women who face time in the penitentiary. They are forever faced with the stigma of being a criminal. Today they are stigmatized through law. Michele Alexander in The New Jim Crow “ex-offenders are banned or severely restricted from employment in a large number of professions, job categories and fields by professional licensing statutes, rules and practices that discriminate against potential employees with felony records” (89). The conditions of today’s prisons are greatly improved from those depicted in the movie, but the mentality that allowed them is still present. The people do not want criminals around. They don’t want to deal with them, or have anything to do with them. Today instead of just keeping them away while they are incarcerated we keep them from a full place in society by denying them economic opportunity.
The right of every person is life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness. Today ex-offenders are disabled from those things; those things that are every persons inalienable right. They are pushed from the public view and oppressed, and we accept it because they are, as we are shown, the “worst of the worst” (O’Sullivan 318). Criminals are not worth of redemption or a second chance. We dehumanize them and make them other, not people, because if they were people how could we justify treating them that way? Brubaker shows us this reality. While it may be dated and those conditions no longer exist. The reality is that while we no longer accept or subject others to such cruel punishment, we still take our pound of flesh from them. These individuals who were once one of us, then became criminal; are not allowed to become of us again. They are kept away because we are to be scared of them, and in our fear we treat them as monsters.
Bibliography:
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Brubaker. Dir. Stuart Rosenberg. Perf. Robert Redord. Yify.tv. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Cecil, Dawn K., and Jennifer L. Leitner. “Unlocking the Gates: An Examination of.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 48.2 (2009): 184-99. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Haghighi, Bahram, and Alma Lopez. “Gender and Perception of Prisons and Prisoners.”Journal of Criminal Justice 26.6 (1998): 453-64. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
O’Sullivan, Sean. “Representations of Prison in Nineties Hollywood Cinema: From Con Air to The Shawshank Redemption.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice40.4 (2001): 317-34. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
West - Brubaker 