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.