ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to expand the concept of ‘regulation’ for the study of violence in Hollywood cinema by examining the specific historical moment of the US release of, and subsequent controversy over, Bonnie and Clyde (1967). It will open with an historical overview of cultural regulation as an intervention between political economy and the field of cultural production and consumption. A range of possible critical meanings and interpretative strategies will then be identified, from statutory control and official censorship to the circumscription of normative cultural and psychic processes in audience engagement with cultural productions. The aim here is to explore the integration of cultural regulation into an interdisciplinary sociology of popular media that casts light on such concerns as the social control of deviance, the deployment of specific cinematic forms and practices, and the circumscription of the production of knowledge about film violence and popular cinema generally.
