The Bulger Case: A Spatial Story     

Les Roberts 《The Cartographic journal》2014,51(2):141-151

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates in the emerging field of cinematic cartography () by exploring the ways in which strategies of digital cinemapping can function as tools of critical spatial practice and urban wayfinding. More specifically, the paper considers the scope for digital video technologies to reshape, contest and ‘ground’ spaces of urban representation and the ‘spatial stories’ these bring into play. Basing my analysis on the mediation of the events surrounding the abduction and murder of the 2-year-old boy James Bulger in 1993, I examine the case as a constellation of spatial narratives within which I weave my own spatial story in the form of a video mapping of the abduction route (in Bootle near Liverpool) and the responses and issues this further mediation has provoked. Methodological reflections on the map-making process are discussed alongside narratives generated by the video on YouTube. The paper argues that, by adopting practices of wayfinding, and by being critically attentive to the ways in which film and video-making practices are also spatial practices, moving image cartographies can provide insights into lived and embedded spaces of memory, and the hidden or muted spatial stories to which they play host.  相似文献