“I’m bad! And I want to rule the world”: Crime and Criminality in Children’s Media

• In Event: Kids, Cops and Culture

Abstract

While the number of criminological analyses of pop culture continues to grow, thus far there has been minimal engagement with representations of crime and crime control in children’s media. I begin to take up this task in this project. I analyze more than 150 hours of children’s television shows, 10 films, and over 200 books to examine depictions of crime and criminality. I find that crime is overwhelmingly portrayed as thefts and robberies committed by ‘evil’ criminal masterminds and their dimwitted henchmen. The masterminds seek extreme wealth, shiny things, and, oftentimes, world domination. I explore how these representations reify harmful ideas about crime and criminality. Specifically, I contend that they adopt state definitions of crime that focus on criminalizing threats to private property and profitability, ideas essential for the maintenance of the capitalist system. Moreover, for the most part, these representations offer biological and psychological explanations of offending and suggest that masterminds are hedonistic and lacking in self-control, while henchmen are animalistic thugs.

Author

• Liam Kennedy, King's University College at Western University