WEEDS

           

The satire dark comedy “Weeds”, directed by Brian Dannelly, premiered in 2005 when only nine states had passed the law legalizing medical marijuana use. At that time, according to A.V. CLUB, Americans who thought marijuana should remain illegal outnumbered those in support of legalization by a two-to-one margin. When “Weeds” ended its eight season in 2012, the number of states where medical marijuana use was legal was 18 and Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. This essay will summarize the first season of the television show "Weeds", will explore the portrait of criminals in media nowadays, will explain the director’s perspective on crime, justice and society in the television show “Weeds” and will give some examples of the corruption.

            First of all, “Weeds”, deals with recently widowed Nancy. Nancy’s husband dies and she begins dealing marijuana to her rich neighbors and friends to support her upper middle class lifestyle. In Weeds’ first season, Nancy dives into the world of marijuana business, which proves to be an especially seedy industry. She’s got some beginner’s luck. Her business is already thriving in the pilot, “You Can’t Miss The Bear”. Later on she decides she wants to expand her business and starts baking and selling marijuana brownies. As her business is taking off she hires Sanjay to sell the weed in the Valley State College. Everything gets messy when Alejandro goes after her because she is selling in his territory. Nancy solves the problem having sex with him on top of his car. To finish season one, Nancy forms a group and starts growing weed as well, while dating Peter, who happens to be a DEA agent.

            As Surette says, in most of the cases the resulting portrait of criminals found in today’s media has almost no correspondence with official statistics of persons arrested for crimes. The media tends to construct and present a crime-and-justice world that is the opposite of the real world. The typical criminal portrayed in the media is mature, white, and of high social status. “Weeds” is a great example of the portrayal of criminals in media since the protagonist of the television show is a mature white upper-class woman who is illegally selling marijuana and therefore committing a crime. Criminals are men most of the times and female offenders are primarily shown linked to male offenders and as white, violent and deserving of punishment and driven by greed, revenge and love. One thing that is new is that Nancy isn’t linked to male offenders and she isn’t driven by revenge or greed. She has her own marijuana business because she wants to keep up with her lifestyle and she isn’t linked to a male offender, she gets the marijuana from another woman, which happens to be an African-American woman.

            As said before, some crimes like property crimes are underrepresented and violent crimes are overrepresented. Murder, robbery, kidnapping and aggravated assault made up 90 percent of all prime time television crimes, with murder accounting for nearly one-fourth, according to Surette. Director Brian Dannelly stepped out of the comfort zone and came up with a television show that isn’t just another crime related show with murder and violence, but a subtle show representing a facet of society that is actually there and we don’t want to see most of the times.

            Director Brian Dannelly represents society as full of lies, fake people and as “only the strong survives” type of society. Nancy lies to her sons and friends about her business, both women and men act fake towards each other and everybody is waiting for somebody to mess up so they can get profit out of it. Dannelly also perceive women as human beings with persuasion powers. Some women use their intellect; others use their feminine wiles. Men say women can always get what they want either if it is by being smart or by using their “secret feminine techniques”. Dannelly represented that part of our society by showing how Nancy makes her way into the risky business and gets all her clients by using her feminine wiles.

            The show also does a good job representing the “hegemonic masculinity”. Nancy posses no threat to the male dealers and that is the reason her business keeps being strong. Hegemonic masculinity happens nowadays all the time, women are considered passive for the world of drug dealing. Since women are seen as vulnerable, other male drug dealers often take advantage of them.

            The director represents the legal system as a joke. When Nancy tries to expand her business she goes to a lawyer to ask her some questions about the sentences she could be facing for growing and distributing weed. Although the lawyer doesn’t specifically say she knows Nancy is a drug dealer she suggests she knows and even then doesn’t do anything about it, but offer her services.

            Towards the end of the season Nancy starts dating Peter who turns out to be a DEA agent. During season one, Peter apparently doesn’t know about Nancy being a drug dealer but in season 2, he finds out, and what Nancy does is marry him as a part of a deal to legally protect herself from Peter testifying. It shows how the director tries to portray a DEA agent as a corrupt agent as a part of the structure of this kind of TV shows where there is always a corrupt agent that goes against the law.

            The director chose to portray this kind of crime as funny. As something humorous and comical where there is no punishment for the crime. In fact there are barely any scenes where Nancy is actually in trouble with the police due to her business. He also chose to make the show as something more complicated than someone just selling weed. Dannelly, wanted to offer a more elaborated and complicated discussion about this kind of crime and he does it by making Nancy a widowed mother of two who is just trying to survive.

            “Weeds” aired for eight seasons, had surprisingly high ratings and was really acclaimed by American society. As The Artifice says, there are shows that have the ability to grasp the attention of its audience right from the start, to get them hooked or simply addicted. “Weeds” had a really varied audience because at the end, it’s still a comedy. From teenagers relating to Nancy’s sons to parents relating to the struggles Nancy goes through, everybody can be the target audience. Not necessarily relating to the whole selling weed part but to the struggles all the characters go through.

             Once again both television shows deal with issues that the American society is facing nowadays: rebellious teenagers, teen drama, widows trying to keep a float their family, weed, cheating husbands and I could go on and on. Nowadays stories have a rigidly adhered-to structure and all beats fall in the same place. All characters do the things they are expected to do even if it involves committing a crime.

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.