| One problem with poverty in North America is the way the issue is culturally understood. This current understanding or dominant ideology of poverty is influenced by ideological forces that emphasize poverty as an individual problem and neglect poverty as a result of larger structures of society. One of these ideological forces comes from media representation. Media representation of poverty has been studied extensively in relation to news but little is currently known about the portrayal of poverty in relation to television entertainment. The stories on television entertain us and simultaneously offer ideological lessons about social issues. Research shows that, as a culture, we respond powerfully to the stories we attend to. This study investigates the stories of poverty and the working poor embedded in four of the most popular prime-time television crime dramas of the 2003--2004 season. Narrative analysis is used for the five narratives of the working poor. These narratives are: You cannot trust the working poor, the working poor you do not know will kill you, the working poor are absurd, childlike and losers, single parents signal trouble and single mothers are tough and on drugs, and immigrants import trouble. Genre analysis is used for the representation of poverty since it does not constitute narrative. The findings from genre analysis are that poverty is dark and cluttered, characters are involved in crime and have a give and take relationship with law enforcement. The background layer of the television field portrays the working poor as helpful informants. Television crime drama contains different stories about the working poor than are available in television news but overall are negative and support the dominant ideology concerning poverty. |
