Through a Blue Lens is a documentary about drug use in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. It shows police encounters with homeless, drug addicts in order to show children in high schools the danger of hard drug use. The documentary adopts the lens of a film camera to illustrate how the police conduct themselves within this area. They develop a more personal connection with some of the addicts in order to learn about their past lives and the unpredictability of an “addictive personality”, which may lead to drug addiction. One of the police officers featured explains how some officers are able to work for more than a decade in this area, whilst others are only able to work for a matter of months and he links this to the attitudes of the individual officers who enforce the law in the Downtown Eastside. He admits that he personally, has become “softer” as a result of working in this area as he learns about these people developing a more personal relationship. Interestingly he says that “Police treat drug possession as a social issue” and that in order “to be a part of the solution you have to go beyond enforcing the law”. I found this statement to be extremely thought provoking as it led me to contemplate how are drug issues tackled without going beyond enforcing the law and how do police relations affect the way in which these drug addicts are framed and dealt with.
In Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse by Yasmin Jwani and Mary Lynn Young, they use Entman’s definition of framing to unpack the dominant frame that the missing women were illustrated as in the Media: “aboriginal, drug addicted sex-trade workers” (Jwani and Young, 902). They investigate how the frames used are “noticeable, understandable memorable and emotionally charged” and consequently “promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (Entman 417). Jwani and Young then analyze 145 news stories in order to clarify the effects of these dominant frames. Police officers in this documentary tell viewers that before they got to know many of these addicts, their first thoughts pictured the addicts as “street derelict[s]”, “lunatic[s]”, “tragic, pathetic, wasted lives”, “garbage” and a “waste of societies money”. The police officers imply that by doing this and simply reinforcing the law they are not actually working towards solving the situation, nor actually protecting the area and the problems continue to exist. It is possible that these stereotypical labels help the officers to assume these people are criminals who causing ruckus within society. This is similar to the way in which Jwani and Young demonstrate that the media depiction of the women who went missing emphasized their aboriginal origins suggesting that they were “beyond the pale of civilized society” (Jwani and Young, 898).
From these two cases of media depiction and stereotypes shaping the way in which society and the police respond to such crises, it leads me to question how such preconceived, judgemental ideas in fact prevent Police and society dealing with the current issues. From the documentary it is evident that through the support and encouragement from the Police officers one of the addicts, Randy, build up his self esteem and found rehab. This allowed him to come off the streets, become clean and take a small step in improving the issue of the Downtown Eastside by taking one more drug addict of the streets.
Works cited
Entman, Robert. “Cascading activation: Contesting the White House’s frame after 9.11”. Political Communication, 20(4). 415-432. Web. Feb 9 2016
Jiwani, Yasmin and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse”. Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 31, 2006. 896-917. Web. Feb 9 2016.
Through a Blue Lens. Dir. Veronica Alice Mannix. National Film Board of Canada. 1999. Web. Feb 9 2016.
