NCJ Number
206656
Journal
Punishment & Society: The International Journal of Penology Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2004 Pages: 271-287
Date Published
July 2004
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article analyzes the Benetton “We, on death row” advertising campaign in order to explore representations of punishment, with a focus on “ways of seeing and strategies of knowing” the death penalty.
Abstract
Launched in January 2000, the Benetton “We, on death row” advertising campaign features the photographs of prisoners on death row in the United States. The campaign is analyzed within the context of how representations of punishment inform how punishment, and the death penalty in particular, is seen and known within American culture. Moreover, the author considers unpredictable consequences of how local ways of seeing and knowing impacts the global spectacle of punishment. Representations of the death penalty have been highly policed within the United States; the Benetton advertising campaign allowed for a unique cultural “witnessing” of the death penalty. Although Sarat (2001) has dismissed the campaign as a “traditional abolitionist strategy doomed to failure,” the author asserts that by allowing a “witnessing” of the death penalty, the campaign was able to fleetingly wrench control over the representation of the death penalty away from the State, thus allowing for another possible narrative of the death penalty. However, the cultural policing of images of the death penalty in America was effective in the instance of the Benetton campaign; statements of support for the campaign were few and far between from the United States and it proved difficult to mobilize Americans into even a discourse about the death penalty. In the end, the standard sentiment that sympathy for the victim precludes mercy for the offender proved an American standard so strong that no counter-aesthetic could budge it. Notes, references