REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES IN POPULAR CULTURE : A CASE STUDY OF CHILDREN OF MEN, AVATAR AND WARM BODIES

This paper aims at discussing the Representation of Refugees in Popular Culture and three movies (Children of Men, Avatar and Warm Bodies) have been chosen as case studies. This representation is compared with the representation of refugees in mainstream news media within the context of the current European migration crisis. The mainstream news media comprises mainly of a literature review of newspapers in Europe and what kind of discourse they have conducted on the topic. The two research questions are: How are refugees represented in popular culture? and How these popular culture representations compare with the representation of refugees in the mainstream news media in the context of the current European migration crisis? Using visual and critical discourse analysis as research methods the findings from the movies aim at revealing where and how the representation of refugees in the two fields differ and come together. The theoretical framework used is Critical Race Theory as well as some theoretical reflections on the concept of ‘the other’. The aim of this thesis is to find out whether there are any common points between the representations of refugees in popular culture and those in mainstream news media and whether representations in popular culture have been in any way influenced by representations in mainstream media.