History tells us we are violent beings. Brutal wars, genocides, torture and crime have become regular and ordinary content of news programmes carrying stories of vengeance and inexplicable crime. Minor conflicts explode into ferocious fights, as fewer people seem capable of controlling their anger. The success of films noted for their scenes of violence would seem to confirm this propensity even further. It is precisely people’s attraction to these films that led Alison Young to study the effect of violence displayed on screen in her book The Scene of Violence. Choosing to ignore all but crimes against the individual and terrorism, Young starts out from the contradiction between people’s fear and repulsion of violence and their apparent fascination with films containing extremely disturbing scenes, such as Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino), Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone), and No Country for Old Men (the Coen Brothers). Although recognised as especially violent, these films are also recommended as films of quality. In her study of this repulsion/fascination, the author suggests ways crime scenes are perceived. Using her knowledge as a criminologist to question the experience of movie-goers when they engage in watching cinematic crime images, Young brings her analysis back in the end to the representation of the law and justice foreshadowed by violence in these films.

Young’s approach here is holistic, examining both the cognitive as well as the affective result produced when we watch a film. Initially, she turns to cinema theory to discuss the influence of this visual material on both the spectator’s mind and body. The central question is what may occur in the spectator as he is confronted with crime images on the screen. The author analyses the spectator’s possible participation as he interacts with these filmic elements, what she refers to as the ‘spectatorial relationship’ engendered by film and deployed by image, thus an experience that is always more than just visual. Cinema is a medium that is ‘watched, heard, felt, lived and remembered’ (p. 7). What is perceived through sight ‘sets off a network of relations’ (p. 11). Movie-goers know that there is pleasure in watching a film on the big screen. Many are aware that the experience engages them totally. Something happens not only in their eyes and minds, but in their bodies as well, what Alison Young calls a ‘corporeal spectatorship’. But if young girls know this about watching a beautiful love story or boys find this obvious when totally engrossed in an adventure film in 3D, how can we all engage in the same way in such vivid depictions of violence?

Alison Young offers a new approach to the analysis of the cinematic experience of crime. Her focus is on looking, thus on image content. In this, she departs from the majority of film and law studies, which tend to analyse narrative and pay little or no attention to visual discourse. She examines the images in step-by-step fashion, making the analysis clear and allowing readers to understand, and for some to progress in developing, a methodology. The book also includes a very thorough bibliography and a much-appreciated index, thus offering a very useful tool for scholars in law and film.

The theoretical tools are put forth in the first two chapters and then applied to cinematic treatment of revenge and rape (chapter three: Sudden Impact – Clint Eastwood, 1983; The Accused – Jonathan Kaplan, 1988; Thelma and Louise – Ridley Scott, 1991; Blackrock – Steve Vidler, 1997; Kill Bill – Quentin Tarantino, 2003), serial killers (chapter four: Psycho – Alfred Hitchcock, 1960; The Silence of the Lambs – Jonathan Demme, 1991; Seven – David Fincher, 1995) and, departing for a moment from crime against the individual, Young examines how movie-goers are enabled to work through the horrors of terrorism and disaster (chapter five: 25th Hour – Spike Lee, 2003; The Hamburg Cell – Antonia Bird, 2004; United 93 – Paul Greengrass, 2006; 9/11 – Naudet Brothers, 2007). In chapter six, Young concludes the study with scenes of extreme gratuitous violence (Zodiac – David Fincher, 2007; No Country for Old Men – the Coen Brothers, 2007) and suggests that there may be no end to violent crime against which the criminal justice system (of any country) ‘fails in its response to violence. . .and is unable to make any effective intervention’ (p. 19). Such films express impatience with a system that cannot protect its citizens, giving messages of desolation at the lack of resolution, constituting ‘a damning indictment of the capabilities of criminal justice in the face of extreme violence’ (p. 152).

Young arrives at this conclusion after sharing with her readers possible experiences provoked by these visual messages. Rather than serving as mere visual signs, onscreen images engage all the physical experiences one has of the world: sound, smell, sight, touch, as well as memory and especially one’s ability to project. Young describes these images as being experienced ‘haptically’. In French, and since Alison Young draws on Deleuze and Guattari, the reference is justifiable: the past participle happé means to be grabbed by something. A person thus taken up by an occurrence is connected to an event he has lived through in the past or something he may have seen. Being happé by images means that the eye takes the spectator suddenly, through this newly discovered image, to his other experiences of the world. Perception is one of our most familiar ways of knowing; it is one of our first ways of discovering the world. However, being happé by something is not necessarily a pleasant experience. It does not always generate nostalgia, but is often something more of a jolt. The cinematic experience, which acts haptically, becomes one that sets into motion not only a certain number of the movie-goer’s senses, but also his past and speculative knowledge of life. Since images are global, as opposed to language, which is linear, they offer much information all at once. They are therefore a more dramatically grasping experience. The cinematic image is thus ‘felt rather than recognized or perceived through cognition’ (p. 9). The effect on the spectator comes not so much from what he is told, as from what he sees. Thus, even if the spectator has never lived through something personally, the idea of it becomes conceivable to him through a kind of virtual first-hand experience, liberating his imaginative stock. This the author calls the ‘affective experience’ of the cinematic image. The new visual information is literally incorporated into all a spectator knows and all he may dread, yet the distance film offers makes it possible for him to work through these fears.

Young’s interpretations are clear, even if, at times, she neglects the fact that her readings of the films might not be precisely what everyone will have seen in the same scenes. Indeed in the post-modern world, many an author has told us that the public as well as the creator constructs the text (see Eco, Reference Eco and Cangogni1989, or Lyotard, Reference Lyotard, Bennington and Massumi1979, among others). Young’s intelligent study attracts few criticisms but this tendency to speak for all readers is definitely one of them. Nevertheless, her arguments are solid, and anyone who may have a different view of the crime images she describes, while perhaps at first feeling a bit turned off by being told what he sees, will soon enter into a productive dialogue with the author. Scholars working on the cinematic representation of law and justice will find that this book presents an innovative and much-needed analysis, giving the visual content of films equal importance to the narrative. If Young may also be reproached for having chosen films that have been repeatedly analysed, she is forgiven because of her attention to detail. Indeed, many of the films studied in this volume have been the object of other law and film studies, but the focus on the visual here should arouse new interest, and the author’s ability to analyse image is unquestionably impressive.

Alison Young’s knowledge of both cinema and law give her the tools as well as the authority to discuss the effects of image on movie-goers. Her work is very well documented, her analysis pertinent and refined. Her contribution to the field of law and image cannot be contested. The Scene of Violence is above all a good read. The general public will appreciate her study of films they already know and will undoubtedly be interested in her particular analysis. Law and film scholars will find thought-provoking ideas to apply to other cinematic works. At the beginning of this book, the author sets out a series of questions she promises to deal with: How does the spectator enter into dialogue with crime images? How is his imagination set to work? What do these films suggest about the law and the legal system? Her promises are kept.