HBOs Oz is a dramatic television series that falsely
depicts and exaggerates prison and jail life. Oz consists of immense amounts of violence having on average “13.6
violent scenes per episode” (Yousman), being three times greater than the
average amount of violence in prime time television. The violence depicted in Oz is depicted as ordinary incarceration behavior. However, Yousman argues that Oz “amplifies and decontextualized this
violence, while ignoring the fact that non-violent inmates vastly outnumber
those who are convicted of violent crimes” (Yousman). Coincidentally, according to the film The War on Drugs, 60% of the prison
population are actually non-violent drug offenders. In one of the episodes I analyzed of Oz,
there was extreme ‘happy’ violence that “disguises real consequences beneath a
veneer of humor and spectacular visual effects” (Yousman).
At 5:30 one of the inmates used his purposely razor-edged
like nails to murder a cop. At around
7:25, the same inmate is seen calm as ever clipping his bloody nails. In the episode the inmate does not get caught
and gets away with murder. What is even
more interesting is he does not show any sign of remorse, and “Monsters who are
incapable of remorse must be feared” (Yousman).
This is the perfect example of how prisoners are portrayed to the
world. Audiences who have no real
experience with prison fear inmates and jail life because of how the media
conveys it. As Daniel Schorr explains in
Glassner’s book, “The Culture of Fear”, television creates “a reality of it’s
own that may crowd out our real reality”. The effects of this false portrayal
are beyond question. There are so many
consequences to watching television.
In this episode, Yousman’s argument that in Oz, “…The image of black masculinity on Oz is consistent with a long history of
representations of black males as violent savages” is confirmed. The African Americans are depicted as animals
that cannot be controlled, and the prison is portrayed as the opposite of a
place of social order. The characters symbolize
enormous threat in the prison, ultimately leading to more racism and
stereotypes. This "mean world syndrome" that Gerbner describes leads us to distinguish television reality as our own. Furthermore, because of availability heuristic in regards to television violence, we all tend to falsely believe we live in a very cruel world. As Gerbner points out the true casual relationship is not between TV violence and real life violence, but "between exposure to violence and one's feeling of where one belongs in the power structure--one's feeling of vulnerability, one's feeling of insecurity, one's demand for protection".
