{"title":"Toward a pulp criminology: The Vee Brown and Needle Mike series","authors":"Zi-Ling Yan","doi":"10.1111/jpcu.13259","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The detective/crime pulp series Vee Brown (Carroll John Daly) and Needle Mike (William E. Barrett) incorporate elements of contemporaneous criminological theory into their narratives as explanatory devices for social deviance. Initially, they align themselves along the dominant etiological divide of the 1920s and 1930s: intrinsic tendencies versus environmental factors, respectively. Over the course of individual stories and series arcs, internal contradictions arise in the representations of these positions, which are resolved, to some degree, in the contemporaneous anomie theory of Robert Merton. The protagonists' idiosyncratic engagement with the popular arts—Tin Pan Alley music and tattooing—becomes the metaphoric vehicle to reframe the individual/milieu conflict in terms of institutional inscriptions of individuals more constructivist than purely functionalist in nature.</p>","PeriodicalId":46552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Popular Culture","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpcu.13259","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The detective/crime pulp series Vee Brown (Carroll John Daly) and Needle Mike (William E. Barrett) incorporate elements of contemporaneous criminological theory into their narratives as explanatory devices for social deviance. Initially, they align themselves along the dominant etiological divide of the 1920s and 1930s: intrinsic tendencies versus environmental factors, respectively. Over the course of individual stories and series arcs, internal contradictions arise in the representations of these positions, which are resolved, to some degree, in the contemporaneous anomie theory of Robert Merton. The protagonists' idiosyncratic engagement with the popular arts—Tin Pan Alley music and tattooing—becomes the metaphoric vehicle to reframe the individual/milieu conflict in terms of institutional inscriptions of individuals more constructivist than purely functionalist in nature.
期刊介绍:
The popular culture movement was founded on the principle that the perspectives and experiences of common folk offer compelling insights into the social world. The fabric of human social life is not merely the art deemed worthy to hang in museums, the books that have won literary prizes or been named "classics," or the religious and social ceremonies carried out by societies" elite. The Journal of Popular Culture continues to break down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of popular culture has left in our understanding of the workings of society.