Although textbooks, journal articles, and lectures are important, movies are one of the most effective teaching tools available to criminology and criminal justice instructors.
They can communicate ideas, emotions, institutional realities, and ethical dilemmas in ways that the written word often struggles with.
Throughout my teaching career, I have selectively incorporated narrative films into my classes. But every semester, I need to decide which movies to assign because not all films are equally useful. Some do a much better job of illustrating criminological concepts and stimulating discussion than others.
In general, I avoid documentaries. Although many are excellent, I find that students are more willing to engage with narrative films and more likely actually to watch them.
Depending on the course, I typically require students to watch three or four movies during the semester and devote at least some class time to discussing them.
Films also give a course something that readings rarely provide: a shared reference point. Many students don’t complete all of their assigned readings. A movie, however, is more likely to hold their attention and give everyone who shows up to class that day something concrete to discuss.
Before the rise of streaming services and online instruction, I owned a DVD collection of relevant movies and frequently screened them during class. Today, things are more complicated. Licensing restrictions, asynchronous instruction, and varying student access to streaming platforms can make screening films more challenging. Nevertheless, I continue to find that movies remain one of the most effective ways to increase student engagement with course material.
Not every film belongs in every course. The entries below reflect the classes where I have found each film most useful. Some appear on multiple syllabi; others fit a narrower set of topics. Instructors teaching different courses will naturally draw from this list differently.
Another caveat is in order. The following are not necessarily the “best crime movies” ever made. Rather, they are films I have found particularly effective in helping students understand important criminological and criminal justice issues.
The Films
1. Cop Land (1997)
Starring Sylvester Stallone, this movie remains an excellent introduction to police culture, corruption, loyalty, and accountability. The film explores the difficulties of challenging misconduct both from within and outside a law enforcement organization and raises important questions about the so-called “blue wall of silence.”
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, raises issues surrounding wrongful conviction, institutional corruption, prisonization, and the psychological effects of long-term incarceration. The movie enables discussions about hope, adaptation, and what it means to maintain identity under conditions of total institutionalization.
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Corrections, Punishment, and Society
3. American Me (1992)
Directed by and starring Edward James Olmos, American Me traces gang involvement from adolescence through adulthood and imprisonment. The film illustrates how prison gangs emerge, maintain power, and shape criminal behavior both inside and outside correctional institutions. It also raises questions about race, identity, and the relationship between street organizations and prison culture that go beyond what most textbooks cover.
Best suited for: Gangs, Corrections, Race, and Crime
4. Dead Man Walking (1995)
This movie, starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, explores the emotional impact of violent crime on victims’ families, questions of offender accountability, and the moral and legal controversies surrounding the death penalty, and the impact of people who want to assist those behind bars.
Best suited for: Corrections, Punishment and Society, Criminal Law, Introduction to Criminal Justice
5. Serpico (1973)
Based on the experiences of New York City police officer Frank Serpico, this film examines the challenges faced by whistleblowers within law enforcement. Starring Al Pacino, the movie remains one of the most powerful portrayals of how institutional loyalty can be weaponized against the people most committed to doing their jobs honestly.
Best suited for: Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption, Criminal Justice Ethics
6. American History X (1998)
This film examines radicalization, hate groups, violence, and the social factors that draw young people into extremist movements. Starring Edward Norton, it also provides one of the more nuanced portrayals of desistance available in popular film: the conditions under which people change, and the obstacles they face when they try to.
Best suited for: Criminological Theory, Gangs, Victimology, Introduction to Criminology
7. The Godfather (1972)
This film, which is overfifty years old, is about Italian-American organized crime and remains relevant. It does. The Godfather is still the most effective single film for introducing students to the structure, norms, internal discipline, and economic logic of criminal organizations. It illustrates concepts including hierarchy, loyalty, succession, and the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate enterprise, concepts that transfer directly to contemporary discussions of organized crime, whether the subject is the mafia, cartels, or other criminal networks.
Best suited for: Organized Crime, Introduction to Criminology, White-Collar and Corporate Crime
8. Brubaker (1980)
Starring Robert Redford as a reform-minded warden who goes undercover as a prisoner to investigate conditions at a rural Arkansas prison, Brubaker is one of the most instructive films available on the realities of correctional administration, institutional resistance to reform, and the gap between official policy and daily practice. It raises questions about power, accountability, and the limits of what individuals can accomplish inside bureaucratic institutions, questions that remain as relevant today as when the film was made.
Best suited for: Corrections, Correctional Administration, Punishment, and Society
9. The Killing Fields (1984) and Hotel Rwanda (2004)
In general, these two films can be used interchangeably. The Killing Fields documents the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Hotel Rwanda examines the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the international community’s failure to intervene. Both films push students to think beyond street crime and consider the most serious harms governments and political actors can commit. They also raise productive questions about bystander responsibility, international law, and the conditions under which ordinary people participate in extraordinary violence.
Best suited for: State Crime, Human Rights and Justice, Comparative Criminal Justice, Crimes of the Powerful
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, some of these films are now several decades old and lack the visual style of more contemporary cinema. Newer releases, however, rarely engage criminological and criminal justice themes with the same depth. With few exceptions, contemporary crime narratives are increasingly tropish in their portrayals of crime, criminality, and criminal justice organizations.
This means that instructors may need to prepare students for what they are about to watch. Why? Because they sometimes struggle with the pacing and visual style of older films. That’s understandable. A film from 1973, however, can depict police corruption in entirely current ways.
No film is perfect. They contain inaccuracies, stereotypes, or dramatic exaggerations. The goal of narrative films is not documentary accuracy. It’s to use film as a starting point for discussion, analysis, and critical thinking about crime and criminal justice.
What films do you use in your criminology or criminal justice classes? I’d be interested to hear what’s worked for you.
If you’re teaching or considering criminology or criminal justice and want to think more broadly about how the profession works, my Letters to a Young Criminologist was written for you.
Photo Credit
Title: Vintage Film Projector
Photographer: StockCake
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-06-19-at-9.48.41-AM.png7281306Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-06-21 09:42:432026-06-21 12:33:36Eleven Films I use in my Criminology and Criminal Justice Classes
Almost a half-century ago, one of the first purchases I made in preparation for leaving my parents’ house was a Hudson’s Bay Company wool point blanket.
I walked into the HBC department store at suburban Fairview Mall, found the item with its iconic wide green, red, yellow, and indigo horizontal stripes on a white background, and paid what felt like a lot of money at the time.
Most things I owned in that apartment are long gone, but I still have the blanket.
But lately, I’ve noticed an increase in items for sale, including pillows, footstools, outerwear, and luggage, that carry the HBC multistripe wool blanket pattern. Some, including pickleball sets, cornhole games, tote bags, aprons, umbrellas, beach towels, cedar strip canoes, Muskoka chairs, outdoor cushions, and decorative paddles, have migrated into kitsch territory as part of Canadian Tire’s Summer 2026 collection, the first assortment the company designed itself after purchasing the HBC brand assets for $30 million following bankruptcy.
This raises an important question: why do some visual identities outlast others?
The Hudson’s Bay blanket is a useful case. In the late eighteenth century, the HBC (formed in 1670 and granted a monopoly over the fur trade in what would later become Canada) commissioned the production of wool blankets from mills in Witney, England. The pattern was not originally conceived as branding, visual, or graphic identity. It emerged from production realities. Early dyes and manufacturing processes limited what could be reliably produced at scale, and durability mattered more than symbolism. The wool was dyed before spinning, embedding color directly into the fiber and helping the blanket resist fading and wear.
Over time, the pattern migrated beyond the blanket. It appeared on packaging, marketing materials, retail displays, clothing, and eventually a wide variety of products sold under the brand. It became a symbol of the HBC.
About the pattern. The colored bands are comparatively simple, provide a strong contrast with the white background, are legible from a distance, and are recognizable regardless of the item on which they are placed and the size of that item.
These attributes enable the HBC blanket design to survive changing technologies and tastes.
But I don’t believe that these factors alone explain why this pattern has lasted so long. Design strength may get something into the conversation, but something else keeps it there.
In the case of the HBC blanket, the institutional history of the HBC enabled this to happen. The HBC was not simply a retailer. For generations, it occupied a central role in Canada’s economic development and territorial expansion. Throughout the corporation’s 335-year-old history, the blanket remained one of its most visible and continuously sold products. That kind of staying power is not achieved from good design alone. It’s accomplished by being sold by an institution that became inseparable from a national story.
Along the way, the pattern accumulated meanings that extended far beyond its original function. It began as a trade good, evolved into a branded product, and eventually became a cultural symbol that could be detached from the blanket itself and remain recognizable.
Once a visual form reaches that stage, it acquires a degree of independence from its original intent. Thus, the pattern can migrate onto all sorts of items because observers and consumers already understand what it signifies.
There is also a feedback loop at work. The longer a design survives, the more opportunities it has to be reused and reinterpreted. Each new appearance reinforces familiarity. Each new audience encounters it in on different items. Over time, continued visibility begins to look natural, even though it is the product of repeated cultural, commercial, and institutional selection.
This dynamic extends beyond the Hudson’s Bay blanket. The sustained visibility of selected pieces created by street artists like Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Kenny Scharf, for example, depends not only on the work itself but on the museums, galleries, publishers, collectors, retailers, and media organizations that continue to circulate it. Systems of reproduction sustain recognition. Take those systems away, and most strong work fades into obscurity.
Most visual identities dissipate, not because they are poorly designed but because the institutions, markets, and cultures that sustain them disappear. What the Hudson’s Bay blanket demonstrates, and what I keep coming back to when I see the stripes on so many items, is that visual longevity is rarely a property of design alone. Strong design may make a symbol recognizable. But symbols endure only when successive generations continue to find reasons to reintroduce them into everyday life.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-06-02-at-10.53.11-AM.png7401088Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-06-07 04:22:392026-06-07 04:22:39Why do the Hudson’s Bay Blanket Stripes Travel So Well?
On my first visit, I brought my Japanese knives (the short deba and the long yanagiba), packed away in my knife case. Then, standing at the trunk of my car, parked across the street from the restaurant, I decided to leave them in the trunk.
But none of that stopped me from standing across the street, second-guessing my cutlery.
I was hoping he might agree to a stage (a short, unpaid stint in his kitchen), over the course of a few days, once a week, or even once a month. And if this worked out, maybe it might lead to a part-time paid position sometime in the future.
Two months earlier, my wife and I had eaten at the counter, and I’d struck up a conversation with the chef. He was rocking a Jiro Dreams of Sushivibe, already in his seventies. I knew him by the quality of the food he prepared and served. His establishment was known to be the most authentic Japanese restaurant in town, and he had decades in the game.
I told him about my background. He seemed genuinely interested. Before we left, he told me to come by on a Sunday afternoon, and he’d show me some techniques. I thanked him and said I’d be in touch after the trip to Japan.
At the end of May, I called the restaurant. He sounded as if he remembered me, confirmed the invitation, and told me to come the following Sunday in the early afternoon. I hung up feeling excited about the forthcoming meeting.
When I walked in, he looked up and said he had forgotten I was coming.
My first thought wasn’t anger. It was: did I get the day wrong? Did I misinterpret our communications? I replayed the phone conversation in my head. No, I had the right day and time. But for a moment, I doubted myself completely before I understood what had actually happened: I had obsessed about something he had probably not thought about once since we last spoke.
He was unhurried, precise, entirely in his element. He talked about his life the way a man talks when he has nothing left to prove, seven generations of rice farmers in his family, an apprenticeship that began at fifteen, nearly four decades cooking in another big American city before this one. He estimated the day’s rice by feel. His sister, he mentioned, washes rice seven times.
The conversation was interesting enough. But I was also sitting there, increasingly aware that none of it was moving in the direction he promised and I wanted.
At some point, almost as an aside, he told me he doesn’t give instructions. He doesn’t like to tell his workers what to do. They learn through observation. Knowledge and skill development are acquired in his kitchen indirectly, through watching, proximity, and what he called, with a slight smile, a lot of bullshitting.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked him directly: could I come in once a week, unpaid, for a few hours, just to observe and learn? He said there were no once-a-week arrangements like that. Maybe one day a week, paid positions, he said. I took that as a hopeful sign.
Before I left, he served me kalbi (flanken-cut beef short ribs), marinated in something I couldn’t quite identify. I asked about the marinade. He said the recipe was complicated. I pressed gently. He declined. I knew variations of the basic recipe were readily available online. I had made it myself a couple of times. Whatever he was protecting, it wasn’t a secret.
I had brought my knives, driven fifteen minutes, and listened to this bullshit for two hours, all for this?
As I was leaving, he said: Come back next Sunday for the staff meal.
Maybe I was misreading the whole thing. Perhaps this was how it worked. Acceptance was slow, indirect, a test of commitment. I decided to give it one more Sunday.
The following Sunday afternoon, I came back. Again, he had forgotten I was coming.
He was at the counter peeling a large, thick daikon, drawing a knife around the outside of it in one long, continuous motion, producing a single unbroken sheet (katsuramuki). It’s a technique that looks impressive to onlookers, but after some minimal practice, I can easily do it myself.
After about forty-five minutes, the staff meal was ready, curry ladled over ramen, served in ten bowls. He picked up a bowl, a glass of water, and a small bowl of miso, and sat alone in a corner near the door. I followed and sat nearby, leaving a space between us that I assumed a worker would fill. Nobody did.
Workers filtered in one by one, took bowls from the counter, ate in silence, and left when they finished. He neither introduced me to anyone nor did any of the workers come up to introduce themselves. Nobody spoke. I found myself wondering whether this was tradition or whether everyone hated his guts.
I showed him some photos from my Japan trip and mentioned the kaiseki meal we’d eaten in Kyoto. He looked at the photos and said that what I ate was not kaiseki. It was for tourists. He said it more than once.
After finishing his meal, he got up, muttered something about getting ready for dinner, and walked into the bathroom.
I sat at the counter for five minutes. What the fuck. No goodbye. I got up and left.
On the drive home, and a handful of times since, I tried to make sense of the interaction. To begin with, I don’t think the chef was intentionally being mean, but other things were happening.
He simultaneously expressed a considerable amount of bitterness towards his workers, other Japanese restaurants, the city he lives in, and venerated Japan with the intensity of someone who feels the place he actually lives has never given him his due. I suspect that he had spent decades feeling undervalued.
Perhaps he was operating according to a system of knowledge and skill transmission that has no mechanism for what I was asking, that in the tradition he came from, knowledge and skills move through years of proximity and hierarchy rather than formal arrangements, and that my certification and years of practice didn’t have any currency that he recognized.
Alternatively, maybe he was adopting the habit of many experts who are dismissive of the work and skills of others. The overall effect was an attempt to minimize my efforts in trying to master Washoku. It reminded me of the countless interactions I’ve had with contractors or tradespersons who throw a previous tradesperson’s work under the bus (a process called trade denigration), but when asked for specifics, provide nothing but mumbo jumbo.
In the end, it didn’t much matter which explanation was closest to the truth. What mattered was recognizing that whatever he knew, he had no interest in passing it on. That was enough.
Since then, I’ve eaten at the restaurant a couple of times. It’s still probably the best Japanese food in town, though I’ve had better in New York City and Los Angeles. On my last visit, I walked past the counter, and we exchanged glances. Nothing registered in his expression.
Three times, he had forgotten me. That said something about him. It also saved me from wasting my time.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_1034.png11702532Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-05-24 03:39:392026-05-25 12:53:43Two Sundays In a Row
Eleven Films I use in my Criminology and Criminal Justice Classes
/by Jeffrey Ian RossAlthough textbooks, journal articles, and lectures are important, movies are one of the most effective teaching tools available to criminology and criminal justice instructors.
They can communicate ideas, emotions, institutional realities, and ethical dilemmas in ways that the written word often struggles with.
Throughout my teaching career, I have selectively incorporated narrative films into my classes. But every semester, I need to decide which movies to assign because not all films are equally useful. Some do a much better job of illustrating criminological concepts and stimulating discussion than others.
In general, I avoid documentaries. Although many are excellent, I find that students are more willing to engage with narrative films and more likely actually to watch them.
Depending on the course, I typically require students to watch three or four movies during the semester and devote at least some class time to discussing them.
Films also give a course something that readings rarely provide: a shared reference point. Many students don’t complete all of their assigned readings. A movie, however, is more likely to hold their attention and give everyone who shows up to class that day something concrete to discuss.
Before the rise of streaming services and online instruction, I owned a DVD collection of relevant movies and frequently screened them during class. Today, things are more complicated. Licensing restrictions, asynchronous instruction, and varying student access to streaming platforms can make screening films more challenging. Nevertheless, I continue to find that movies remain one of the most effective ways to increase student engagement with course material.
Not every film belongs in every course. The entries below reflect the classes where I have found each film most useful. Some appear on multiple syllabi; others fit a narrower set of topics. Instructors teaching different courses will naturally draw from this list differently.
Another caveat is in order. The following are not necessarily the “best crime movies” ever made. Rather, they are films I have found particularly effective in helping students understand important criminological and criminal justice issues.
The Films
1. Cop Land (1997)
Starring Sylvester Stallone, this movie remains an excellent introduction to police culture, corruption, loyalty, and accountability. The film explores the difficulties of challenging misconduct both from within and outside a law enforcement organization and raises important questions about the so-called “blue wall of silence.”
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, raises issues surrounding wrongful conviction, institutional corruption, prisonization, and the psychological effects of long-term incarceration. The movie enables discussions about hope, adaptation, and what it means to maintain identity under conditions of total institutionalization.
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Corrections, Punishment, and Society
3. American Me (1992)
Directed by and starring Edward James Olmos, American Me traces gang involvement from adolescence through adulthood and imprisonment. The film illustrates how prison gangs emerge, maintain power, and shape criminal behavior both inside and outside correctional institutions. It also raises questions about race, identity, and the relationship between street organizations and prison culture that go beyond what most textbooks cover.
Best suited for: Gangs, Corrections, Race, and Crime
4. Dead Man Walking (1995)
This movie, starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, explores the emotional impact of violent crime on victims’ families, questions of offender accountability, and the moral and legal controversies surrounding the death penalty, and the impact of people who want to assist those behind bars.
Best suited for: Corrections, Punishment and Society, Criminal Law, Introduction to Criminal Justice
5. Serpico (1973)
Based on the experiences of New York City police officer Frank Serpico, this film examines the challenges faced by whistleblowers within law enforcement. Starring Al Pacino, the movie remains one of the most powerful portrayals of how institutional loyalty can be weaponized against the people most committed to doing their jobs honestly.
Best suited for: Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption, Criminal Justice Ethics
6. American History X (1998)
This film examines radicalization, hate groups, violence, and the social factors that draw young people into extremist movements. Starring Edward Norton, it also provides one of the more nuanced portrayals of desistance available in popular film: the conditions under which people change, and the obstacles they face when they try to.
Best suited for: Criminological Theory, Gangs, Victimology, Introduction to Criminology
7. The Godfather (1972)
This film, which is over fifty years old, is about Italian-American organized crime and remains relevant. It does. The Godfather is still the most effective single film for introducing students to the structure, norms, internal discipline, and economic logic of criminal organizations. It illustrates concepts including hierarchy, loyalty, succession, and the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate enterprise, concepts that transfer directly to contemporary discussions of organized crime, whether the subject is the mafia, cartels, or other criminal networks.
Best suited for: Organized Crime, Introduction to Criminology, White-Collar and Corporate Crime
8. Brubaker (1980)
Starring Robert Redford as a reform-minded warden who goes undercover as a prisoner to investigate conditions at a rural Arkansas prison, Brubaker is one of the most instructive films available on the realities of correctional administration, institutional resistance to reform, and the gap between official policy and daily practice. It raises questions about power, accountability, and the limits of what individuals can accomplish inside bureaucratic institutions, questions that remain as relevant today as when the film was made.
Best suited for: Corrections, Correctional Administration, Punishment, and Society
9. The Killing Fields (1984) and Hotel Rwanda (2004)
In general, these two films can be used interchangeably. The Killing Fields documents the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Hotel Rwanda examines the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the international community’s failure to intervene. Both films push students to think beyond street crime and consider the most serious harms governments and political actors can commit. They also raise productive questions about bystander responsibility, international law, and the conditions under which ordinary people participate in extraordinary violence.
Best suited for: State Crime, Human Rights and Justice, Comparative Criminal Justice, Crimes of the Powerful
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, some of these films are now several decades old and lack the visual style of more contemporary cinema. Newer releases, however, rarely engage criminological and criminal justice themes with the same depth. With few exceptions, contemporary crime narratives are increasingly tropish in their portrayals of crime, criminality, and criminal justice organizations.
This means that instructors may need to prepare students for what they are about to watch. Why? Because they sometimes struggle with the pacing and visual style of older films. That’s understandable. A film from 1973, however, can depict police corruption in entirely current ways.
No film is perfect. They contain inaccuracies, stereotypes, or dramatic exaggerations. The goal of narrative films is not documentary accuracy. It’s to use film as a starting point for discussion, analysis, and critical thinking about crime and criminal justice.
What films do you use in your criminology or criminal justice classes? I’d be interested to hear what’s worked for you.
If you’re teaching or considering criminology or criminal justice and want to think more broadly about how the profession works, my Letters to a Young Criminologist was written for you.
Photo Credit
Title: Vintage Film Projector
Photographer: StockCake
Why do the Hudson’s Bay Blanket Stripes Travel So Well?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossAlmost a half-century ago, one of the first purchases I made in preparation for leaving my parents’ house was a Hudson’s Bay Company wool point blanket.
I walked into the HBC department store at suburban Fairview Mall, found the item with its iconic wide green, red, yellow, and indigo horizontal stripes on a white background, and paid what felt like a lot of money at the time.
Most things I owned in that apartment are long gone, but I still have the blanket.
But lately, I’ve noticed an increase in items for sale, including pillows, footstools, outerwear, and luggage, that carry the HBC multistripe wool blanket pattern. Some, including pickleball sets, cornhole games, tote bags, aprons, umbrellas, beach towels, cedar strip canoes, Muskoka chairs, outdoor cushions, and decorative paddles, have migrated into kitsch territory as part of Canadian Tire’s Summer 2026 collection, the first assortment the company designed itself after purchasing the HBC brand assets for $30 million following bankruptcy.
This raises an important question: why do some visual identities outlast others?
The Hudson’s Bay blanket is a useful case. In the late eighteenth century, the HBC (formed in 1670 and granted a monopoly over the fur trade in what would later become Canada) commissioned the production of wool blankets from mills in Witney, England. The pattern was not originally conceived as branding, visual, or graphic identity. It emerged from production realities. Early dyes and manufacturing processes limited what could be reliably produced at scale, and durability mattered more than symbolism. The wool was dyed before spinning, embedding color directly into the fiber and helping the blanket resist fading and wear.
Over time, the pattern migrated beyond the blanket. It appeared on packaging, marketing materials, retail displays, clothing, and eventually a wide variety of products sold under the brand. It became a symbol of the HBC.
About the pattern. The colored bands are comparatively simple, provide a strong contrast with the white background, are legible from a distance, and are recognizable regardless of the item on which they are placed and the size of that item.
These attributes enable the HBC blanket design to survive changing technologies and tastes.
But I don’t believe that these factors alone explain why this pattern has lasted so long. Design strength may get something into the conversation, but something else keeps it there.
In the case of the HBC blanket, the institutional history of the HBC enabled this to happen. The HBC was not simply a retailer. For generations, it occupied a central role in Canada’s economic development and territorial expansion. Throughout the corporation’s 335-year-old history, the blanket remained one of its most visible and continuously sold products. That kind of staying power is not achieved from good design alone. It’s accomplished by being sold by an institution that became inseparable from a national story.
Along the way, the pattern accumulated meanings that extended far beyond its original function. It began as a trade good, evolved into a branded product, and eventually became a cultural symbol that could be detached from the blanket itself and remain recognizable.
Once a visual form reaches that stage, it acquires a degree of independence from its original intent. Thus, the pattern can migrate onto all sorts of items because observers and consumers already understand what it signifies.
There is also a feedback loop at work. The longer a design survives, the more opportunities it has to be reused and reinterpreted. Each new appearance reinforces familiarity. Each new audience encounters it in on different items. Over time, continued visibility begins to look natural, even though it is the product of repeated cultural, commercial, and institutional selection.
This dynamic extends beyond the Hudson’s Bay blanket. The sustained visibility of selected pieces created by street artists like Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Kenny Scharf, for example, depends not only on the work itself but on the museums, galleries, publishers, collectors, retailers, and media organizations that continue to circulate it. Systems of reproduction sustain recognition. Take those systems away, and most strong work fades into obscurity.
Most visual identities dissipate, not because they are poorly designed but because the institutions, markets, and cultures that sustain them disappear. What the Hudson’s Bay blanket demonstrates, and what I keep coming back to when I see the stripes on so many items, is that visual longevity is rarely a property of design alone. Strong design may make a symbol recognizable. But symbols endure only when successive generations continue to find reasons to reintroduce them into everyday life.
Two Sundays In a Row
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOn my first visit, I brought my Japanese knives (the short deba and the long yanagiba), packed away in my knife case. Then, standing at the trunk of my car, parked across the street from the restaurant, I decided to leave them in the trunk.
I had been studying and cooking Washoku (traditional Japanese food) for six years. I held a Bronze-level certification from the Japanese government. I had an Instagram site where I posted the Japanese dishes and meals I prepared. I cook Japanese meals at least three times a week, and almost all the others have one dish that is Japanese or Japanese-inspired. And I had just returned from Japan.
But none of that stopped me from standing across the street, second-guessing my cutlery.
I was hoping he might agree to a stage (a short, unpaid stint in his kitchen), over the course of a few days, once a week, or even once a month. And if this worked out, maybe it might lead to a part-time paid position sometime in the future.
Two months earlier, my wife and I had eaten at the counter, and I’d struck up a conversation with the chef. He was rocking a Jiro Dreams of Sushi vibe, already in his seventies. I knew him by the quality of the food he prepared and served. His establishment was known to be the most authentic Japanese restaurant in town, and he had decades in the game.
I told him about my background. He seemed genuinely interested. Before we left, he told me to come by on a Sunday afternoon, and he’d show me some techniques. I thanked him and said I’d be in touch after the trip to Japan.
At the end of May, I called the restaurant. He sounded as if he remembered me, confirmed the invitation, and told me to come the following Sunday in the early afternoon. I hung up feeling excited about the forthcoming meeting.
When I walked in, he looked up and said he had forgotten I was coming.
My first thought wasn’t anger. It was: did I get the day wrong? Did I misinterpret our communications? I replayed the phone conversation in my head. No, I had the right day and time. But for a moment, I doubted myself completely before I understood what had actually happened: I had obsessed about something he had probably not thought about once since we last spoke.
He was unhurried, precise, entirely in his element. He talked about his life the way a man talks when he has nothing left to prove, seven generations of rice farmers in his family, an apprenticeship that began at fifteen, nearly four decades cooking in another big American city before this one. He estimated the day’s rice by feel. His sister, he mentioned, washes rice seven times.
The conversation was interesting enough. But I was also sitting there, increasingly aware that none of it was moving in the direction he promised and I wanted.
At some point, almost as an aside, he told me he doesn’t give instructions. He doesn’t like to tell his workers what to do. They learn through observation. Knowledge and skill development are acquired in his kitchen indirectly, through watching, proximity, and what he called, with a slight smile, a lot of bullshitting.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked him directly: could I come in once a week, unpaid, for a few hours, just to observe and learn? He said there were no once-a-week arrangements like that. Maybe one day a week, paid positions, he said. I took that as a hopeful sign.
Before I left, he served me kalbi (flanken-cut beef short ribs), marinated in something I couldn’t quite identify. I asked about the marinade. He said the recipe was complicated. I pressed gently. He declined. I knew variations of the basic recipe were readily available online. I had made it myself a couple of times. Whatever he was protecting, it wasn’t a secret.
I had brought my knives, driven fifteen minutes, and listened to this bullshit for two hours, all for this?
As I was leaving, he said: Come back next Sunday for the staff meal.
Maybe I was misreading the whole thing. Perhaps this was how it worked. Acceptance was slow, indirect, a test of commitment. I decided to give it one more Sunday.
The following Sunday afternoon, I came back. Again, he had forgotten I was coming.
He was at the counter peeling a large, thick daikon, drawing a knife around the outside of it in one long, continuous motion, producing a single unbroken sheet (katsuramuki). It’s a technique that looks impressive to onlookers, but after some minimal practice, I can easily do it myself.
After about forty-five minutes, the staff meal was ready, curry ladled over ramen, served in ten bowls. He picked up a bowl, a glass of water, and a small bowl of miso, and sat alone in a corner near the door. I followed and sat nearby, leaving a space between us that I assumed a worker would fill. Nobody did.
Workers filtered in one by one, took bowls from the counter, ate in silence, and left when they finished. He neither introduced me to anyone nor did any of the workers come up to introduce themselves. Nobody spoke. I found myself wondering whether this was tradition or whether everyone hated his guts.
I showed him some photos from my Japan trip and mentioned the kaiseki meal we’d eaten in Kyoto. He looked at the photos and said that what I ate was not kaiseki. It was for tourists. He said it more than once.
After finishing his meal, he got up, muttered something about getting ready for dinner, and walked into the bathroom.
I sat at the counter for five minutes. What the fuck. No goodbye. I got up and left.
On the drive home, and a handful of times since, I tried to make sense of the interaction. To begin with, I don’t think the chef was intentionally being mean, but other things were happening.
He simultaneously expressed a considerable amount of bitterness towards his workers, other Japanese restaurants, the city he lives in, and venerated Japan with the intensity of someone who feels the place he actually lives has never given him his due. I suspect that he had spent decades feeling undervalued.
Perhaps he was operating according to a system of knowledge and skill transmission that has no mechanism for what I was asking, that in the tradition he came from, knowledge and skills move through years of proximity and hierarchy rather than formal arrangements, and that my certification and years of practice didn’t have any currency that he recognized.
Alternatively, maybe he was adopting the habit of many experts who are dismissive of the work and skills of others. The overall effect was an attempt to minimize my efforts in trying to master Washoku. It reminded me of the countless interactions I’ve had with contractors or tradespersons who throw a previous tradesperson’s work under the bus (a process called trade denigration), but when asked for specifics, provide nothing but mumbo jumbo.
In the end, it didn’t much matter which explanation was closest to the truth. What mattered was recognizing that whatever he knew, he had no interest in passing it on. That was enough.
Since then, I’ve eaten at the restaurant a couple of times. It’s still probably the best Japanese food in town, though I’ve had better in New York City and Los Angeles. On my last visit, I walked past the counter, and we exchanged glances. Nothing registered in his expression.
Three times, he had forgotten me. That said something about him. It also saved me from wasting my time.