Home Literary Studies “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars
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“Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars

  • Raluca Andreescu

    Raluca Andreescu is assistant professor (lecturer) in the Modern Languages Department at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She holds an MA in American Studies and a PhD in Philology from the Doctoral School of Literary and Cultural Studies, both with the University of Bucharest. Her main research interests are in the area of American Cultural Studies, American law and literature, Gothic literature, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of a volume about Representations of Law in American Culture, of a monograph on Female Gothic in the American Century, with a focus on works by Edith Wharton, Shirley Jackson, and Joyce Carol Oates, and the co-editor of a volume dedicated to contemporary storytelling across new media and disciplines, as well as of chapters and articles in the abovementioned fields of research.
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Narratives of Confinement in American Popular Culture
This chapter is in the book Narratives of Confinement in American Popular Culture

Abstract

The chapter discusses Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s recent dystopian narrative Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023), with a focus on its indictment of the American ‘hyper-capitalist carceral state’ (Evans 2023) and the associated spectacle of punishment and discipline. Only a few notches removed from the reality of present-day United States, carceral life (and death) in Adjei-Brenyah’s novel becomes a popular television show, an extreme version of Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ and Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle,’ where the incarcerated engage in gladiatorial-style death matches in front of captivated and adoring hordes of fans. I argue that the narrative represents a satirical reversal of the notorious invisibility of carceral life (and death) in American correctional institutions. It denounces America’s culture of violence and addiction to hard action-sports, the dehumanization and commodification of the incarcerated for corporate profit, and the echoes of Jim Crow and lynchings as popular forms of mass entertainment.

Abstract

The chapter discusses Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s recent dystopian narrative Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023), with a focus on its indictment of the American ‘hyper-capitalist carceral state’ (Evans 2023) and the associated spectacle of punishment and discipline. Only a few notches removed from the reality of present-day United States, carceral life (and death) in Adjei-Brenyah’s novel becomes a popular television show, an extreme version of Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ and Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle,’ where the incarcerated engage in gladiatorial-style death matches in front of captivated and adoring hordes of fans. I argue that the narrative represents a satirical reversal of the notorious invisibility of carceral life (and death) in American correctional institutions. It denounces America’s culture of violence and addiction to hard action-sports, the dehumanization and commodification of the incarcerated for corporate profit, and the echoes of Jim Crow and lynchings as popular forms of mass entertainment.

Chapters in this book

  1. Acknowledgments 5
  2. Table of Contents 7
  3. Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
  4. Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
  5. Cinema and TV Series
  6. The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
  7. Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
  8. (Dis)‌ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
  9. Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
  10. “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)‌urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
  11. Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
  12. Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
  13. Documentaries
  14. Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
  15. Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
  16. Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
  17. Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
  18. Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
  19. Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
  20. Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
  21. “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
  22. Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
  23. Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
  24. In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
  25. Index
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111474137-016

Chapters in this book

  1. Acknowledgments 5
  2. Table of Contents 7
  3. Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
  4. Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
  5. Cinema and TV Series
  6. The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
  7. Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
  8. (Dis)‌ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
  9. Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
  10. “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)‌urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
  11. Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
  12. Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
  13. Documentaries
  14. Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
  15. Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
  16. Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
  17. Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
  18. Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
  19. Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
  20. Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
  21. “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
  22. Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
  23. Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
  24. In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
  25. Index
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