OITNB

          As Rafter says in the article, the prison film genre ranges from stories of jailbreaks and inmate reformation through melodramas about unjust convictions.

          Orange is the New Black affirms some of the existing stereotypes not only from prison but also from American society in general. Orange is the new black exposes stereotypes of all races for example by picturing a black woman fantasizing about fried chicken all the time, a Latina mother who is jailed with her daughter, who happens to sleep around with a white prison guard. An Asian woman who never talks, and a crazy Latina woman who hides a cellphone in the prison’s bathroom to take pictures of her lady parts and send them to her boyfriend.

         The TV shows tries to get rid of stereotypes but I don’t think they are very successful. By putting an upper-class white lesbian in jail, they try to break some of  American society stereotypes but at the end, the main character is still the white girl and although the director decided to put some white people playing the inmate roles, we all still know what groups of women fill America’s prisons, and it is definitely not upper class white women.

         Although I don’t think the show does a good job at breaking stereotypes, I do think that it shows some of the problems of American prisons and some of the injustices inmates have to deal with. Police corruption and police harassment, for instance, are exposed on the TV shows as well as unfair punishments to some of the inmates.

        As Rafter says, the major incident of a traditional prison film is usually a riot or escape, with much of the preceding footage devoted to the planning for the event. During the different seasons of Orange is the New Black we can see a couple of prisons escapes. One of them is a double escape that doesn’t end up so well. Rosa takes the jail van and drives away. Meanwhile, Vee finds a way out through the drain in the jail’s greenhouse and runs away too. Little she knew, Rosa runs her over with the van before she can make it far enough.

       To sum up, Orange is the New Black is a perfect example of prison films. Although they have changed and made some adjustments overtime, at the end, all of them fall into the same structure and same topics. 

CSI

          

            According to International Business Times, the "CSI Las Vegas" team investigated a case involving a murder in an alley. Along with the victim they also found another body and although it had real blood and hair in it, it wasn’t human. It turns out the stab wounds on the victim’s body matches the marks on the plastic body. The team concluded that the victim was wearing the plastic body with the human blood in it. It turned out to be that the victim was wearing the woman’s body made of rubber. Remnants of gold nail polish and a nail file that the forensic team finds in both the victim and the rubber woman lead to a suspect who confesses to the murder.

            We could say the “hero” of the episode is once again the forensic team. They find remnants of gold nail polish and a nail file and that is the piece that was missing leading to the murderer. As Cavender and Deutsch’s analysis say, During the program, the CSI team is depicted examining crime scenes, securing evidence, conducting lab experiments, interviewing witnesses and suspects, and, ultimately, using forensic science to solve crimes. According to Cavender and Deutsch, CSI focus on forensics makes the TV show unique, but the success of the show and its spin-offs also reflects the long-term popularity of the specific genre, which is crime genre. Forensic science blends with policing to promote the legitimacy of both spheres, according to Cavender and Deutsch. During the whole episode, the forensic unit is portrayed as a smooth-running organization, where all the characters work together as a team in eventually resolve the case. According to Cavender and Deutsch, it is really important the producers make sure they are constructing a sense of science that appears to be accurate and decisive to convince the audience of the show’s forensic realism.
            According to Cavender and Deutsch, two important institutions – policing and science – stand somewhat discredited today. As a result of continuing revelations about wrongful convictions or the FBI’s failure to process evidence that might have prevented the attacks on September 11, 2001 the police have lost some of the moral authority that is necessary for their legitimacy in a democratic society. And the certainty that science traditionally has been promised as a solution to problems caused by ignorance or disease is lacking today. Cavender and Deutsch suggest that in this situation where the moral authority of policing and science seems to be lacking, CSI offers surety and certainty, and that this, in part, is why the program is so successful.

END OF WATCH

         

            End of Watch is an American crime drama film written and directed by David Ayer. Brian Taylor and Miguel Zavala are partners in the Newton Division of the LA Police Department. The film is shot documentary-style and it follows the daily grind of the two young cops. Both, patrol the streets as Latino gangs are in a power struggle with the Black community. Everything goes fine until the police officers mess with the wrong people, and the leader of the cartel orders their deaths. At the end of the movie, Miguel dies shot by the people from the cartel, leaving his pregnant wife with no dad for her kid.

            As Rafter says, cop films serve as a medium for the definition of masculinity, participating in the construction and reconstruction of gender on the national and even international level, influencing how we react to men and how we ourselves “do” gender when we dress, walk, talk and act in general. There’s one scene where both police officers talk about their girls, and they do it in a really sexual way. Rafter says that cop action nowadays is saturated with sexuality, that involves displays of half-naked male bodies, spurting blood, constant “fuck you”s, anal rape jokes, all kind of jokes about women and their sexuality… On the other side, the movie gives a somewhat different perspective of the cops because the movie is shot by one of them with it’s own camera for a project. That gives us a sense of proximity, because we are with them all the time. We see how they act in the car when there is no crimes to attend to, we see how they act when one of the guy gets shot and dies, we see everything that is going on in their world, and that is something new and other films do not have it.

            On the other side, Rafter talks about “buddy love”. During the past years the “buddy love” is a phenomenon that has been in almost every single cop film. We can see it in scenes such as when they have deep conversations I in the cop car, or even when Miguel gets shot and we see Brian cry for the loss of his best buddy. Sometimes that buddy love goes so far that it makes us even wonder their sexuality. Rafter says these films overflow with intense buddy love- and it is love between two men who, although they don’t make a big deal of it, cannot help but notice that the other is impossibly attractive. Producers though, refuse to label any of them as straight, gay, or bisexual and as Rafter says, irrespective of what their sexuality preferences may be when they are with their wives and girlfriends, cop action heroes when they are with each other enjoy sex through beatings, rippings, and sexualized banter.

            In films as in real life, police tends to see black arrestees as more dangerous then white arrestees. That to me is a sign that racism isn’t over in the United States. Producers often try so hard not to make distinctions between black and white but somehow the bad boys end up being the black community almost every time. At the same time it is hard for producers to make the right choices because as Rafter says, if there are no African American characters at all in a movie, people of color may be more aware than whites of watching “segregated” film, but in movies with some African American actors and characters people of color may be more conscious than whites of the racial hierarchy in which members of their group seldom qualify as the hero.