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.

AMERICAN GANGSTER

            Frank establishes himself as one of the top importers of heroin in Manhattan. He does it by buying heroin directly from the source in Asia and avoiding all the intermediaries, getting the drug in the United States. His product is much better than all the other drugs available on the street and it is much cheaper as well. He has a powerful position and a very successful business until detective Roberts catches him, then everything changes, and he is forced to give names and help the police.

            Some ideas about the causes of criminal activity is the amount of money that this particular kind of crime (drug dealing) involves. The main cause is money, and the power you have when you have money. Another cause of criminal activity involving the drug world is the murder to save the business.

            According to Rafter, although movies attribute criminality to an enormous range of factors, they favor four basic explanations. One set of films emphasizes environmental causes, illustrating how criminalistics subcultures or other situational factors can drive people to crime. A second set stresses mental illness, demonstrating that psychological abnormality is a source of criminal behavior. Aspirations for a better life dominate the motives of a third set of film criminals. A fourth explanation of crime, bad biology.

            For the most part, the movie deals with rational crimes. Rafter describes this kind of criminals as normal human beings driven by the mundane motives of need and greed, but they have other choice. Their characters survey their circumstances and decide to commit crimes, and their decisions are rational and logical. With drug dealing comes a lot of crime including murder. To save the huge drug dealing business the protagonists kills a set of people that are a threat for him or for the business. The protagonist obviously has other options rather than killing them but he decides to do it in a rational way that makes completely sense to him.

            On the other side, we can also see another type of crime. When the detective gets a call from his partner saying he killed a guy who opened fire against him, that crime would be considered an environmental crime. Rafter says environmental criminals are depicted as offenders whom circumstances have forced them into crime, and these criminals are essentially normal.

DECADES OF DECEIT

      As Surette says, infotainment can be defined as the marketing of edited, highly formatted information about the world entertainment media vehicles. Infotainment combines aspects of news, entertainment, and advertising under a single umbrella. “Decades of Deceit” is a good example of infotainment. 48 hours tells the story of how Facebook-savvy investigator solved the case of the murderer and rape of Amy Weidner, a teenage mom, twenty years after. Amy’s family and friends, recap what happened from the day they found out Amy was dead until now. In this analysis I will give a summary of “Decades of Deceit”, I will explain the framework used by the producer, I will talk about the line between news and entertainment, and I will explain the choices the producer made to get to the audience.

      Rodney Denk had kept the secret of the murderer and rape of Amy Weidner for over twenty years when a detective saw something suspicious in Amy’s Facebook page and decided to investigate. On July of 2012, detective Carter found Amy’s killer by matching a palm print left at the murder scene with Rodney Denk’s palm prints. Carter’s first step was talking to Amy’s mom, then follow up on the stereo equipment that was stolen when the crime happened. When following the lead, detective Carter started interviewing neighbors and friends who lived close to Amy’s house, and Denk’s name popped out. When Carter went to Denk’s house his mother told him he was not there. Denk has rented a car which police were able to trace. When police faced him, he used a knife to cut his wrist but he was taken to the hospital and he was stabilized. Denk was charged and he admitted to the crime. He kept changing his argument so it is uncertain if he acted alone or not.

       Although the story is about Amy’s murderer, the producer, Ruth Chenetz, decided to tell the story using the framework of the Facebook-savvy investigator solving the case of a teenage mom who was murdered two decades ago. The producer uses documentary-like formatting, which as Surette says, encourages the acceptance of their portrayals as accurate pictures of the world by the audiences. Clearly, the line between news and entertainment is almost gone nowadays. Infotainment is now mostly accepted as credible and realistic, and audiences don’t know how to judge news or entertainment easily anymore.

       As said in “Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice” today a clear demarcation between news and entertainment no longer exists, and media consumers are hared pressed to differentiate crime-and-justice news from crime-and-justice entertainment. This is because crime-and-justice entertainment has started to bring in real crimes, cops, family members, friends, doctors and reliable interviewers that give what sound like valid arguments and create a sense of credibility and security. “Decades of deceit” used reliable sources such as the investigators who were in charged of the case twenty years ago and the closest family members and friends.

      One of the reasons society has an erroneous view about law enforcement is because society is continually exposed to crime content infotainment, generally showing how cops, investigators and others, miss on clues or don’t catch the bad boys. “Decades of deceit” one more time pictures a cop who didn’t do his job the way he was supposed to, a cop that didn’t interview the people he was supposed to have interviewed, making him look like a second-rate cop.

       Victimization is the process of being victimized or becoming a victim. The show talked about how good of a girl she was, how she was a great student, very friendly, making the audience feel close to the victim and therefore be engaged during the whole show.  The producer also uses footage from before Amy was murdered to show how “normal” of a teenager she was.

        One of the ideas about crime “Decades of deceit” promotes is the idea of unresolved cases. There are thousand of cases with no answers, but this one is different because it doesn’t normally happen. If a case isn’t closed within a few years of the crime, police usually dismiss it and move on. Amy’s case was one of a kind, and luckily for the family, investigators reopened the case twenty years after, and caught the responsible for her murderer.

         The producer decided to tell the story chronologically.  After Amy’s mom talks about how much she thinks about her everyday and shares some of the best memories of her daughter, she starts talking about Amy’s pregnancy. Afterwards the producer decided to talk about the robbery, followed by the promising lead, the break in the case, and the closure of the case. Chronological order is one of the best ways to tell a murderer story because it follows the timing of events featured. It also uses extensive flashbacks within the story to reflect Amy’s life and to take us back to the time it happened.

      The language used is pretty formal. Everybody could be a suspect and the narrator follows the mysterious language and tone appropriate for the situation. The perspective used in the documentary is mostly from the point of view of Amy’s family and friends. Only at the very end, the documentary includes scenes with Rodney Denk explaining himself.

       As said before, the documentary uses plenty of flashbacks, pictures, videos, and interviews from before Amy died. Those flashbacks are a really useful tool because it helps the producer to provide the audience with visual information that couldn’t be incorporated into the documentary any other way. The pictures used help to reveal information about Amy and her story. The videos reveal thoughts, memories and emotional and physical information as well. The use of the pictures and videos give the audience an insight and understanding into Amy’s life.  Some of the pictures show Amy’s daughter first birthday party, they show the love Amy had for her family and especially her daughter. Other pictures show how Amy’s mom took care of the baby when she was dead, and how the parties weren’t as happy as they were before Amy was with them. 

      The individuals involved are visually represented in their interviews with the show’s producer, as well as in footage from two decades ago and footage from when Rodney Denk confessed his crime. Law enforcement is represented using interviews with the producer as well as with pictures from the scene of the crime, and illustrating the environment of the police department offices.

      There are images that constantly repeat, such as the images of the crime scene, which are really relevant to the story and give the audience an idea of how it happened and helps to recreate the scenario. The palm print picture appears several times, because it was an important factor on the arrest of Denk. 

      As Surette says, infotainment mixes reconstructions, actors, and interviews and employ camera antes, music lighting, and sets to enhance their dramatic and entertainment elements. Although law and order, social control, and the point of view of law enforcement officials are important within stereotyped portraits of crimes, criminals, and victims, their point of view isn't the only one used. In "Decades of Deceit" there is a large amount of thoughts from Amy's family and friends. Although infotainment shows don't construct an accurate reality, this 48 hours infotainment show does a good job at capturing what the audience wants to see by capturing law enforcement points of views as well as family's point of views that make Amy's story dramatic and somehow credible.