CRime & punishment
~social commentary
SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS
So we know art can serve as a tool to address social issues, but can a social issue use art as a tool to try to address itself?
"The mission of Shakespeare Behind Bars is to offer theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to incarcerated and post-incarcerated adults and juveniles, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society."
Click HERE to further explore how art, specifically Shakespearean theater, is being used as a tool to address the social issue of convict reintegration into society. Shakespeare Behind Bars believes: "that all human being are born inherently good. Although some convicted criminals have committed heinous crimes, SBB calls forth the inherent goodness that still lives deeply inside."
So we know art can serve as a tool to address social issues, but can a social issue use art as a tool to try to address itself?
"The mission of Shakespeare Behind Bars is to offer theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to incarcerated and post-incarcerated adults and juveniles, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society."
Click HERE to further explore how art, specifically Shakespearean theater, is being used as a tool to address the social issue of convict reintegration into society. Shakespeare Behind Bars believes: "that all human being are born inherently good. Although some convicted criminals have committed heinous crimes, SBB calls forth the inherent goodness that still lives deeply inside."
CRIME & PUNISHMENT - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky is renowned as one of the world’s greatest novelists and literary psychologists. His works deal with political, social, and religious issues. His characters are often psychologically tortured by some aspect of these issues. He is known for his profound insights into human nature that are just as relevant today as they were in the 1860s.
In some of his writings, it seems as if Dostoyevsky could look into the future. Dostoevsky’s novels and other writings were major influences on twentieth-century literature and philosophy. Some people saw the political themes of his novels as futuristic depictions of life under the Soviet regime. The existentialist movement that took shape in the middle of the twentieth century looked to him for his descriptions of human beings confronting mortality, despair, and the anxiety of choice. Writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre valued Dostoevsky’s writing for his profound insights into human dilemmas, which, along with his style, themes, and unforgettable characters, continue to influence writers more than a century after his death.
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Go to CLASSROOM to read
excerpts from the novel. |
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - Death Penalty
(Capital punishment) is . . . the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated . . can be compared . . . For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
~Albert Camus |
Click HERE for a website that presents both sides of the issue.
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If . . . he has committed a murder, he must die. In this case, there is no substitute that will satisfy the requirements of legal justice. There is no sameness of kind between death and remaining alive even under the most miserable conditions, and consequently there is no equality between the crime and the retribution unless the criminal is judicially condemned and put to death.
~Immanuel Kant |
NO SECONDS - Henry Hargraves
Click HERE to read more about Henry Hargreaves's artistic reaction to final meal requests from prisoners prior to their execution.
THE LAST SUPPER - Julie Green
Click HERE to look at the full collection of Julie Green's Last Supper plates, representing final meal requests from all 50 states.
The Last Supper from Dark Rye on Vimeo.
25 MINUTES TO GO - Johnny Cash