Ethnic stereotypes in American Media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_and_ethnicity

Africans/Blacks
Main article: Stereotypes of Africans/Blacks
African Americans as a group have primarily been stereotyped as animalistic brutes in American culture: physically rather than intellectually oriented, hedonistic, criminal-minded, violent, and willing to rape. They are more likely to be portrayed as unrestrained, hot-tempered, and profane (inclined toward use of profanity) than Whites or others in movies and television shows.

African Americans are generally portrayed as intellectually, economically, and culturally inadequate, and soliciting or in constant need of assistance from Whites and others. The stereotype of the dedicated non-African American teacher, social worker, or mentor providing what African American family, culture, and buying power cannot is well established in films, tv shows, and televised charity appeals.

Prison Break often conforms to these stereotypes but does subverts them as well. Although there are black inmates in the Prison for committing crimes (thus conforming to their steotypes) the fact that there are white men in there who have done exactly the same, if not worse, shows that white men are taking over the black stereotype of being 'animalistic brutes' and 'criminal minded' in the American Media through Prison Break.

Blog Buddies

My blog buddy from my class is Rajan.

Rajan is studying Prison Break as well and is looking at the representation of the troublesome, from ethnicities to the traditional white male protagonist.

Therefore, our areas of overlap is obviously our main texts but we are also studying Propp's theory of character roles, blaxploitation and genre theory.

Propp's theory can be applied to Prison Break as each character is either a hero, helper, donor, princess, villain etc and this effects the way in which they are represented. Stereotypes of these roles is also an area of both of our studies.

Self-Directed Research

- Useful Books

http://kavitab.blogspot.com/2006/09/useful-books-i-found-introduction-to.html

- Review

http://www.reel.com/movie.aspMID=142169&buy=open&PID=10122433&Tab=reviews&CID=18#tabs

- Propp

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/theory.html

http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/propp.htm

- Propp's Theory of character functions

http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/propp.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

- Other Texts: 24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_(TV_series

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285331/

- Season 2 Trailer (before it was set as homeowork)

- Blaxploitation

http://www.answers.com/topic/blaxploitation

TASK 7- Keywords

Protagonist: The leading character or hero in a film with whom the audience can identify and from whose point of view the action is positioned, often set in binary opposition against the antagonist.

This is useful because Michael Scofield is the hero in Prison Break and the audience mainly identify with him, therefore this definition can e linked to the drama series as well.

Prime Time: 7:30pm - 10:30pm, the period of time with the largest number of television viewers and, on commercial channels, the perios of time whe nmost advertising revenue is earned.

Prison Break is shown at 'Prim Time' in both the USA and UK.

Production Company: Company responsible for making Television programmes.

Production Companies for Prison Break:

Rat Entertainment
20th Century Fox Television
Adelstein-Parouse Productions
Original Television

Social Realism: the representation of characters and issues in film and television drama in such a way as to raise serious underlying social and political issues.

This can be applied to my study because there are many issues that occur in Prison Break which reflect reality.

Stock character: a stereotypical, predictable minor character.

Prison Break Clip

Close Textual Analysis

Media Langauge: what techniques are being used to make meaning in the text?

- Cinematography/Camerawork- fast pace shots. Some hand held camera. Mainy medium shots of each of ther characters as they talk. Ends with Scofield saying "with a little help from my friends".

- Mise en scene: In Prison garden and Shed. Low angels shots of Scofield as he is shown as the hero.

- Lighting: Natural day light. Natural Lighting in the shed.

- Sound: non-diegetic sound(track) on top of the dialogue. Parallel to the dialogue.

- Editing: simple cuts

Institution: Who produces, distributes, regulates the text?

- Production: non-hollywood. 20th Century Fox Television

- Promotion: Trailers, advertised on UK TV as well as American channels including Fox.

- Distribution: Primarily, American TV channel- Fox Network but has been distributed by institutions around the world.

- Scheduling: the 'watershed' in the UK but prime time (8pm) in America.

- Broadcasting: commerical TV

Genre:What type of text is it?

- Broadcast fiction genres: serial drama

- broadcast fiction elements: theme tune, title sequence

Representation: Who or what is being represented in the text? How?

- Gender: All except two characters are males. These are represented in different ways such as Scofield as the witty hero but T-Bag as a selfish, weak man.

- Ethnicity: Typical representation of African Americans as they are prisoners, having commited crimes. An exception is Sucre who is high lighted to deeply regret his crime and would do anything to be with his girlfriend.

- Positive/negative: Not fair/accurate in todays society but would be in the 1960s where black were seen as inferior to whites.

- Stereotypes: reinforces- black peole in prison and trying to escape and corruption of the prison as well as the American Governement.

Challenges- scofield is not racist towards the black inmates.

Audience: Who consumes the text?

- Primary audience: 18-25 year olds (male and female)

- Secondary audience: 14-18 year olds (male and female)

- Target audience: 18-34 of all ethnicites and male and females.

The show contains adult content including violence, coarse language, sexual and drug references. Concerns have been raised by the Parents Television Council in the United States about the timeslot in which Prison Break is broadcasted (8:00p.m.) since the show features scenes which contain graphic violence.

- Expectations: achieved- As the only new television series to be positioned in the top 20 television shows of 2005/2006 in Canada, Prison Break achieved an average of 876,000 in the key demographic of 18-49 and 1.4 million viewers nationally for its first season.

- Appeal: for women mainly Michael Scofield and for men- the action and wit of Scofield.

Ideology & Values: what are the belief systems/messages/values underpinning the text?

- Liberal Values: Scoifled promotes an anti-racism value by rejecting T-Bag and working with some black inmates. Also, avoiding to fight with them. Mix of black and white people in the prison could promote multi-culturalism but the fact that they oppose each other subverts this idea.

- Positive values: to entertain and inform viewers about the corruptness of the American Government. To encourage social change of anti-racism.

- Patricarchy: Males prison showing mainly male characters.

Narrative: how is the narrative in the text organized and structured?

- open narrative

- closure: cliffhanger at each episode

- non-linear narrative: sometimes showing thoughts of the inmates when they were at home

- Narrative structure: Propp, Todorov

- Narrative Roles: Propp

- enigma codes: multi-stranded narrative

Essential Word Dictionary

Blaxploitation film: Film of the 1960s and 1970s in which black actors featured in principle roles usually associated with whites.
· The films were original in being directed primarily at audiences and, although seen as exploitive, were in fact part of a changing attitude toward back characters and the representation of black culture.

This word is relevant to my study because part of it is to analyse how the African American characters in ‘Prison Break’ are treated compared to the whites and whether this is similar to films from the past.

Genre: A category of media products classed as being similar in form and type.

This is the main focus of my study.

Genre Theory: An explanation of the role played by genre in differentiating media texts and aligning audiences.
· Genre theorists consider the relationship between audiences, media texts and media producers and the ways in which genres, particularly in film, can be used by producers to target specific audience groups, with predictable expectations of audience members and responses.

Narrative theory: a type of thinking that seeks to explain narrative structures and their relationship to wider cultural and genre-related factors.
· Narrative theorists seek to deconstruct narratives in order to identify their common characteristics and component elements eg. Todorov, Levi-strauss, Barthes, Propp.

This is relevant to my study because I focus on the narrative theorists.

Propp, Vladamir (1895- 1970): Russian formalist writer and folklorist who analysed the structure of folk stories in his work ‘The Morphology of Folktale’ (1958). His research refers to the type of character in folk tales and the events that involve them. He found that folk tales begin with an individual station where the characters are introduced. This is followed up with 31 functions, not always present but always occurring in the same order.

This is relevant to my study because I thoroughly analyse Propp’s theory and whether it applies to ‘Prison Break’.

Racism: Practises and behaviour involving social and economic discrimination based on the false assumption that one particular ethnic group or race is culturally and biologically inferior to another.
· Racist behaviour is based on centuries of economic exploitation and has been deeply embedded in European culture. Concerns have been expressed about the role played by the media in sustaining and reinforcing race stereotypes.

Series: A television or radio narrative that presents self-contained weekly episodes, using a recurring set of characters.