13th : THE BLACK AND WHITE OF THE AMERICAN PRISON SYSTEM

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to examine what facts the documentary 13th presents and how they are portrayed filmically. By conducting, both, a discourse analysis and a neoformalist film analysis those two factors can be fully examined. And by later adding the three theoretical perspectives of discourse analysis, hegemony, and neoformalist film theory, the results of the analyses can be discussed in a way that covers both the narrative part of the film and the aesthetic and stylistic ones.The result is that the discourse of the documentary concerns the American prison system and the resistance to it is the acknowledgement of the blatant racism within it. And this racism is what the leadership of the hegemonic dominance of that discourse is built upon.13th consists of interviews and voiceovers which present the facts. These are accompanied by video clips, graphics, and animations, and music, which are all in black and white, in order to strengthen the message of those facts. These elements of the film work together to convey a collective theme and emotion to the viewer.