The Shawshank Redemption

Sunday 28 September, 2008 at 16:55 (¤ Individual Assignment I, Daniel)

The Shawshank Redemption from 1994 is one of the best movies to this date according to me and many with me. In this analysis I have focused on the management and the guards and not so much on the plot of the movie. For you who have not yet seen the movie here is a short sum up:

Andy Dufresne is a successful banker who gets accused and sentences to double lifetime for the murder of his wife and is sent to Shawshank Prison. After a rough start he gains respect from his fellow inmates. Before long the warden finds out about his financial knowledge and uses his expertise for his personal gain…

Here is a fun hip hop sum up:

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/02/10/video-the-shawshank-redemption-hip-hop-remix/

 

In one of the first scenes after Andy arrives at the prison shows the captain of the guard brutally abuses one of the inmates to death while the other guards just stand there watching. How can this be? There are many reasons for this but the three most important ones is the manager, the organization and finally the walls.

In charge at Shawshank is Warden Norton who also is the only manager at the prison (at least that can be seen in the movie). Even if middle management surly exists somewhere I am not sure that they can be considered managers because of their lack of power. Therefore he can run the prison pretty much as he himself pleases. He identifies himself with the prison and his way of viewing things is that the convicted felons are sent “to him” not to the prison. Even if he says this with disgust he at the same time makes it clear that he owns the prisoners as of that they came inside the walls to that they leave the again. This has the consequence that everyone inside that prison is worth as much as they are worth to the warden. For example Andy’s financial knowledge is worth more than Tommy’s life so when Warden Norton needs to choose the answer is not too hard. To further emphasize this he even creating his own “slave workforce” out of the prisoners for the benefit of himself. For him a prison has one objective to society and that is to keep the dangerous criminals looked away to the lowest cost to society. This is a very resource based view of running things; he needs a high wall a couple of guards and since everything is working nothing needs to be changed. That this view leads to a lack of change is clear since the prison and the routines are identical during the 20 years that Andy is imprisoned. A comparison could be made to companies acting on a market without competition and without the threat of competitors entering anytime soon also might have a hard time to motivate development. From all this it is fair to wonder if he really is the right man for the position as warden of a prison when it’s clear that he put no value to the welfare or “rehabilitation” of the inmates. The filmmakers make their position clear: the warden is more of a criminal then any of the inmates. It is also interesting to see how the filmmakers use his disintegration towards a more and more corrupt man to show the dangers of too much power.

The structure of the prison is very army like with a strict discipline and hierarchy. This structure suits the warden perfect. Inside the walls he is king and no state observatory board can be seen. A parallel can be drawn to when a CEO makes a visit to a factory and everything is cleaned and set in perfect order instead of showing the reality. I guess that the politicians and the voters see the problem with criminals as solved when they are caught and sentenced to jail. If they don’t ask about what is going on inside they don’t have to care about any problems. This works something like “someone-else-problem-beam” from the Douglas Adams “hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”. Below the warden is the brutal captain Hadley who is the one responsible for the prisoners and below him is the rest of the guard. The way the structure and the “company” culture are set up there is no acceptance for questioning your superiors. Therefore we can see the guards standing by without interfering even when they show signs of disapproval. To judge the guards as cowards is not as easy as it first might seem since it’s hard to go against the custom and culture but still you must always be held responsible to some degree even if this foremost is a management problem. Structures where no criticism and no creativity exist will not be very good at developing or improving and thus will be stuck in the same routines. Whether this structure is something that is deeply rooted in people’s minds of how a prison should be run or if this is warden Norton’s own structure is hard to say.

 The third thing that I think have a big effect on the behavior of the guard is the walls. Walls don’t just make sure to keep the inmates inside the prison but more importantly make sure to keep the world around the prison away. This way the walls acts like a border between two worlds where your doings on one side won’t affect the other world. What’s not acceptable behavior in the outside world might be perfectly fine for you inside. Hence it’s quite easy for the management to form the ways things are done at this facility. This isolated world can be compared to the one created by William Golding in his book lord of the flies where the isolated people also creates a community on a isolated island based on values quite different from the world they come from. In the film ending it’s quite obvious that captain Hadley is chocked when the police comes and arrests him, which shows just how hard it is for him to understand that the laws applies inside their small world as well. Here the film have the outside world comes in as a knight in shining armor to set things right so that the audience get their regular moralizing lectures and a happy ending. But the outside world did keep their eyes closed as long as possible and not until the fact landed on their breakfast table did they act and no one knows if anything changed after warden Norton disappeared, maybe it’s business as usual the next day.