‘Orange Is The New Black’: discursive disputes over racial identity

Abstract

The subject of this work is the TV series Orange is The New Black. We understand this media product as a social construction, permeated, therefore, by interactions and tensions present in society. We mobilize as a reference point Mediaculturas, which refuses to attribute to the media an essential, pre-established function of the kind of alienation. The questions that guided the investigation are as follows: What discursive disputes appear in the content of the series? What lines of discourse about race are appropriate for the show and what meanings do they have? The objectives to be achieved are: to analyze the content of the program looking for traits of reproduction and innovation of the lines of discourse regarding the racial issue in the USA; to observe the tensions, contradictions and negotiations in the appropriation of these contents; to identify the type of representation of Afro-descendants and of the racial question in the fifth season of the show; to verify the existence, or not, of proposals for normalization of behaviors and solution of social conflicts within the language and the television format; to observe if the propositions present in the show reflect the political and social scenario regarding the racial question in the USA.