‘This is your face on meth’: The punitive spectacle of ‘white trash’ in the rural war on drugs

Abstract

This article engages the dynamic role of the crime image and more specifically the mug shot, in a contemporary anti-methamphetamine media campaign known as ‘Faces of Meth’. Understood here as a pedagogical policing program, Faces of Meth attempts to deter methamphetamine use through graphic ‘before meth’ and ‘after meth’ images of the faces of white meth users. Our objective is not to evaluate the actual effectiveness of these fear appeals. Rather we discuss how the photographs are largely structured by and embedded within already existing cultural anxieties about the figure of ‘white trash’, reflecting both the dominance and precariousness of white social position.

The War on Drugs That Wasn’t: Wasted Whiteness, “Dirty Doctors,” and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuse

“…Their stories are depicted as particularly tragic because they are seen to have wasted their tremendous potential – more was hoped of them and for them. In their analyses of the methamphetamine epidemic, Murkawa (2011) and Linnemann and Wall (2013) argue that that white drug scares mark fears about white status decay, declining economic security, and the inability of poor and middle class whites to “keep up.” Linnemann and Wall note: “The notion meth ‘turns you into’ white trash—marked by facial sores and lesions—is important because it reveals an invisible, yet privileged category of whiteness, one that is pure and uncontaminated (2013: 325).” The idea that whites who use drugs are squandering their privilege and putting their status at risk has also been noted in analyses of both stoner films and of the reality TV show, Intervention . Sears and Johnson (2010) claim that stoner films are on one level about “the specter of seeing white domination go ‘up in smoke’—via wasting, as opposed to hoarding, white privilege.” In her analysis of Intervention , Daniels notes that “virtually every episode of Intervention follows this form of wasted whiteness and squandered white privilege (2012: p.117).” According to Daniels, producers of this show intentionally constructed the stories in each episode around white subjects as a way to challenge the stereotype of addiction.…”

“…Methamphetamine has been constructed as a white drug used in poor rural communities, one that denotes declining white status and cultural anxieties about white social position (Murkawa 2011; Linnemann and Wall 2013; Garriott 2011, 2013; Linnemann and Kurtz 2104). Meth users have been “constructed as the bottom of the White racial- economic spectrum: ‘White trash’ (Murakwa 2011: 223).” Interestingly, the meth user, though disparaged, is less linked to violence and is more contextualized and sympathetic than crack users (Murakawa 2011).…”

Breaking Bad, Making Good: Notes on a Televisual Tourist Industry

“…Thus, for example, the 1950s panic about 'reefer madness' drew heavily upon marijuana's associations with African-American jazz and 'Beatnik' cultures; the representation of 'crack' was closely linked to associations with urban crime, poverty and African-American culture -a ghetto landscape populated with 'crack dens' and 'crack whores' (Meyers 2004). In the case of 'crystal meth', the drug has been closely allied to constructions of rural 'white trash' in America (Linneman & Wall 2013). In contrast, however, one of Breaking Bad's innovations is to subvert this association through its protagonists who represent identifiable stereotypes of 'respectable' middle-class America -scientist and school teacher Walter; the dapper, punctilious and precisely-spoken entrepreneur Gustavo; even Jesse, his 'slacker' demeanour notwithstanding, hails from a suburban middle class family.…”

‘She’s White and She’s Hot, So She Can’t Be Guilty’: Female Criminality, Penal Spectatorship, and White Protectionism

“…The dynamics of penal spectatorship have only begun to be examined closely, and very few scholars have directly focused on the racialized or gendered dimensions of such questions (see Linnemann & Wall, 2013; for an exception focusing on whiteness and class in contemporary anti-meth campaigns, and Webster, 2008). Relatedly, it is unclear how and if those shaming rituals target individuals equally and if online discourse on offending is always engaged in negative shaming and humiliation in order to 'other' individuals.…”