ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by introducing the conceptual tools that are used to analyze representations of the pedophile in visual culture – popular criminology and the emerging visual turn in cultural criminology. It provides an overview of the representation of the pedophile in cinema over the past century identifying the interplay between popular and official discourses about the causes, consequences and potential remedies for pedophilia. The chapter focuses on the period from the late 1990s to the present; the period when the pedophile began to shift in important ways. It develops the concept of the mistaken pedophile as a uniquely late/postmodern comedic construct that reflects and projects contemporary fears about not only the danger of sexual predators in our midst but more significantly anxieties about the life-altering consequences and the apparent ease with which one can be implicated as a pedophile. The chapter concludes by speculating about the broader implications of this present shift in the visual representation of the pedophile.
