How Shawshank Redemption Humanizes Prisoners

by Panzer
On a narrative level, 'The Shawshank Redemption' is a movie about the power of hope
in the face of extraordinary hardship.
"Turn to the right! Eyes front."
But underpinning Andy Dufresne's story,
we also find a blistering critique of the prison system and a criminal justice policy in the United States.
"You eat when we say you eat. You shit when we say you shit, and you piss when we say you piss."
[Punch and gasp]
"On your feet."
"Welcome to Shawshank."
Initially released to a rather disappointing reception 25 years ago,
the film now holds a special place in the hearts of many viewers,
and has, for the past decade, occupied the number one spot on IMDb's list of the top 250 movies of all time.
It's also earned a spot in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.
Given its status as a modern classic, I'd like to explore why, after a quarter century,
'The Shawshank Redemption' still resonates so strongly with viewers.
And while we're at it, we can perhaps identify a few aspects of the movie that don't hold up to scrutiny.
The Shawshank Redemption is based on Stephen King's 1982 novella
'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption'—
which was itself inspired by a Leo Tolstoy short story 'God Sees the Truth, But Waits',
published over a hundred years earlier.
Stephen King is of course most well known as a horror writer.
But like 'Stand By Me', 'The Shawshank Redemption' is drawn from one of his stories without supernatural themes.
"You'll like it, it's about a prison break."
"We ought to file that under 'Educational' too, oughtn't we?"
Although the film adaptation is now widely regarded as a masterpiece, it didn't start out that way.
The movie debuted to mixed reviews from critics
but the high-profile write-ups in both the Washington Post and LA times were particularly harsh.
Both knocked the story for its sentimentality and objected to the humanizing portrayal of prisoners.
Despite the star power of actors Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman,
'The Shawshank Redemption' bombed badly at the box office in the fall of 1994
and didn't even recover its initial production costs.
The movie only became popular later largely thanks to VHS rentals and heavy rotation on cable television.
"Tonight, make it a Blockbuster night."
In order to understand the initial negative reaction, we need to look to public sentiment at the time.
The national discourse in the early 1990s was dominated by tough-on-crime rhetoric,
fueled in part by mass media driven panic over out-of-control young men–
particularly young men of color from the inner city.
"It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society;
the end result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe,