Kill-n-Tell (and All That Jazz): The Seductions of Crime in Chicago

This article uses the lens of cultural criminology to explore representations of the seductions of crime (Katz, 1988) in Hollywood cinema. We use a specific film – Chicago (Miramax Films, 2002) – to investigate the cultural embeddedness of the emotional and sensual parameters that are said to constitute the foreground of criminal activity. We suggest that the stated aim of cultural criminology – to connect the phenomenal foreground of criminal acts to their material background – is laudable but that there is also a pressing need to connect that foreground to specific features of its cultural background. Our analysis of the film Chicago exposes the social circulation of important cultural motifs that help to make sense of why certain kinds of emotional and sensual features might be attended to in accounts of the commission of crimes.