Prison-related culture

There's something fascinating about prison life, a combination of intense

psychological desperation and lurid criminal brio making it a great inspiration for art, high and low. Prompted by all the carceral rumination I've been doing as a result of these posts, I started asking people about their favorite prison movies, figuring I could compile a top ten list. It turns out that someone's beaten me to the punch (www.prisonmovies.net) and ranked 230 US and international films by quality, complete with snarky one-line reviews. I will let their list stand, but I make the following comments:

1. The Shawshank Redemption is a little over-exposed, but it's still pretty awesome

2. The list missed Blood In, Blood Out, which though a little over-the-top, made quite an impression on me as an adolescent. The main take home message: Californian pr

ison gangs are really scary.

3. Papillon got enough love so that I would remark upon it.

Prison has also been a great subject for music, with Nick Cave's Mercy Seat a personal favorite of mine. But, despite a life best described as "completely punk," his convict growl is a bit of a pose - he never spent an (serious) time behind bars, though it's not inconceivable he overnighted at a city jail after a particularly nasty bender. Johnny Cash is perhaps the best known prison bard, due partly to such classics as Folsom Prison Blues and partly because of a willingness to identify with convicts, as in his two prison records, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Johnny Cash at San Quentin. Though never in jail for long, he successfully cultivate an image as an outlaw, a badass, an all-American desperado type, and he certainly had more than enough grit to back it up.

But Lead Belly, for all Nick Cave's punk-rock posturing and Johnny Cash's country

-western swagger, makes them both

look like backup dancers for hair metal bands. A pioneering bluesman credited by some for innovating the beginnings of modern American music, he had the hardest history of the three, born a penniless black man in 1888 and coming up in the Deep South when segregation and white supremacy were at their most intense. He did not merely sing about prison, he spent all together 11 years in lockup, 4 in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison for knifing a white man, and 7 in Texas for murder. His musical talent became known to his captors early on, and the governor of Texas would occasionally bring guests to the prison to hear Lead Belly preform. It was only late in life that Leadbelly reached broader audiences, mainly through the efforts of folklorists who wanted to promote traditional American musical culture, and save it for future generations. On some of the early recordings, made while he was still behind bars, his clapping is accompanied by the jingle of his manacles as the he moves. So, despite my love for Cash and Cave, in the prison authenticity olympics the gold goes to Lead Belly.