Media and the Commodification of Crime

• Feature of late modern society is the emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy. 
• Hayward and Young 2012: crime and its thrills have become commodified. Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products. 
• Hip hop combines images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success. 
• Fenwick and Hayward 2000: ‘crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol’ 
• Hayward and Young 2012: use car ads featuring street riots, joyriding, suicide bombing, graffiti and pyromania. Fashion industry uses images of the forbidden with brands such as Opium, Poison and Obsession. ‘Heroin chic’, sadomasochism and violence against women promoted through brands such as Fcuk. Designer clothing brand Section 60 named after the section of the Act giving police the power to stop and search. 
• Graffiti used in ‘guerilla marketing’ in a technique called ‘brandalism’. Companies use moral panic, controversy and scandal to market their products. 
• Identity now functions as symbols of deviance. 
• Bluewater Malls banned the hoodie and yet sell them.