Graduation Year
2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
Communication
Major Professor
Aisha Durham, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Keith Berry, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Rachel Dubrofsky, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Jennifer Wolgemuth, Ph.D.
Keywords
Interpretive Methods, Race, Textual Experience, Violence
Abstract
This dissertation is an interpretive project deploying critical media analysis and interpretive qualitative methods to examine televisual and cinematic performances of policing. I use interpretive qualitative inquiry to explore blue rage, policing, and whiteness. By highlighting the racial surveillance which undergirds policing, I analyze blue rage as a critical race concept that addresses the affective policing of racial resentment and racial solidarity among law enforcement. My media analyses demonstrate the ways that whiteness is operationalized through law and order and criminal justice. Analyzing cinematic and televisual depictions of the police and racist surveillance, I address policing—as a profession, as a (governing) practice, and as a popular representation. This project attends to the ways that white supremacist violence undergirds practices and media artifacts in everyday life. In defining blue rage, I offer a lens through which scholars can better understand issues of police violence as embedded in representation and not simply existing in literal police encounters.
Scholar Commons Citation
Johnson, Wesley T., "Blue Rage: A Critical Cultural Analysis of Policing, Whiteness, and Racial Surveillance" (2021). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/8803
