Raising Awareness or Warping Reality?
By Vicki Elson
Do you have a friend in jail? If you answered no, you are statistically likely to be white and affluent.
There’s a popular TV show that’s so engaging it might give you the emotional experience of having a friend in jail, and you might learn something important about our country. If you’re black, brown, or poor, the show might make you laugh, cry, or cringe.
Orange Is The New Black is part of a new media phenomenon, a 13-part TV series released all at once by Netflix, giving rise to the new term “binge-watching.”
Set in a women’s prison, it’s also a social phenomenon that may affect public perception of the “War on Drugs” and the mass incarceration of Americans. Hopefully, audiences will become more interested in the fact that the U.S. incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on the planet. (We’re #1, Iran is #39, Syria is #191, Nigeria is #214…) Hopefully, audiences will feel like they can personally relate to the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population: the number of incarcerated women has increased more than 800% in the past decade.
I’ve been following the series and all the hoo-hah around it. I actually think it might be part of the turning tide that includes the Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent “smart on crime” call for reducing mass incarceration. And the federal court’s finding that stop-and-frisk in NYC is racist and illegal. And, if I may say so, our own Prison Birth Project‘s small efforts to humanize life for incarcerated women and their families.
But it’s a shame that the show includes some cartoonish stereotypes of both incarcerated women and corrections officers. And it’s a shame that in order for white audiences to appreciate the realities faced disproportionately by black and brown people, we still “need” to see the world through the eyes of a white character. According to the show’s virtuoso creator, Jenji Kohan (who also created Weeds), the studio never would have funded the show without its fish-out-of-water white main character.
That character is Piper Chapman, based loosely on Piper Kerman’s memoir. She’s an atypical prisoner: white, yes, and also college educated, affluent, healthy, and serving a relatively short sentence. Kohan uses her as a “Trojan horse” to hook the studio’s target audience into an exploration of the lives of women of many ethnicities, body types, health issues, and sexual orientations.
That’s refreshing, and it’s actually an improvement on Chapman’s original book. The show gives many of its deeply engaging characters a backstory: who are they? how did they get into trouble? I like to imagine that the average viewer might be liberated from the usual good-cop bad-criminal mindset into a worldview that is more compassionate and nuanced.
The real Piper has been in the media a lot since the show’s release, acknowledging the differences between her story and the made-for-TV version, and touching on the greater issues that plague the American criminal justice system. She is active with the Women’s Prison Association, which focuses on family and re-entry issues. She may not be the right demographic to relate personally to culturally institutionalized oppression, but she’s an ally in the pursuit of more appropriate systems of justice.
Orange is a very well-made show: a great soap opera, with some wonderful comedy. And it’s brilliantly cast, with many members of the large ensemble really given an opportunity to shine. It’s worth watching for “Crazy Eyes” (Uzo Aduba) alone. A former Star Fleet captain (Kate Mulgrew) plays the captain of the kitchen. Singer and comedienne Lea DeLaria is captivating as Big Boo. And for once, a transgender woman (Laverne Cox) plays a transgender character. Tidbit: Cox’s twin brother appears in the flashback to her previous life as a male fireman.
Is the show accurate? Parts of it are, most poignantly the re-incarceration of a recently released woman who has found that the world outside offers no housing, jobs, or voting rights for “ex-cons.” And a lot of it is pure Hollywood. Drugs are smuggled in boxes of vegetables — I’m not sure about the drug part, but our local jail hasn’t seen fresh produce in forever. Plus, there are plenty of good hiding places for illicit sex — hello, ratings. The show features an unlikely percentage of spectacularly talented singers and dancers, a ratings-booster that makes jail look like more fun than it really is.
Orange plays with the good/bad dichotomy of cops and baddies by making the incarcerated women complex and redeemable, while the corrections officers are simplistically portrayed as stupid, conniving, cruel, and/or unprofessional.
In the real world, CO’s are a mixed bag, just like everybody else. Some are malevolent, sure. Some behave oppressively because the system has created overcrowded and potentially violent environments. There are many CO’s who are just there for the steady work. And there are a number of heroes who are working hard to help the people in their care. The show’s failure to acknowledge those heroes will discredit the show among those who might really benefit from seeing it.
Orange has only one CO who perceives herself as innately equal to her charges, and what happens to her character is discouraging. And (spoiler alert!) we are made to feel warmly toward a dreamboat officer who tenderly impregnates an inmate. That’s. Just. Not. Okay. Puppy eyes aside, they hardly know each other, and the power disparity makes it both illegal and inexcusable. He’s cute, and he’s a criminal too.
The most egregious Hollywoodization is the cliffhanger at the ending of Season 1. (Spoiler alert!) An officer fails at his most basic duty, and Piper goes off the deep end in a way that the real Piper would not recognize in her wildest nightmares. Let’s hope it’s a dream sequence.
I’m hoping that Season 2 does even more to humanize its characters, and that it does a better job of de-stereotyping. And I’m hoping it more deeply explores motherhood behind bars, to reflect the reality that 85% of incarcerated women are moms, and that 2/3 of them were their children’s primary caregivers before they were jailed.
As a childbirth educator and doula at the local women’s jail, and as a filmmaker concerned with mass media portrayal of childbirth, I was very interested to see what happens when a TV woman gives birth while incarcerated. In a minor Orange subplot, a character goes into labor, and, as in real life, she is comforted by other moms until a CO decides she should go to the hospital.
We don’t see the strip search, the shackling, the presence of an armed officer throughout labor, the way she is treated at the hospital. But we do see the hardest part: her return to jail, minus her baby. We see a roomful of women fall into sad and respectful silence as she passes among them. That’s not unrealistic. While some of us are fretting about diapers, incarcerated mothers are agonizing about separation and custody. Some people say that TV shows about criminals and prison (including this one) contribute to the normalization of mass incarceration as a fact of American life, kind of like slavery seemed normal in 1850.
That may be so,but I hope that this show, at least, helps Americans explore the facts that “tough on crime” rhetoric is simplistic, that better mental health and drug treatment programs are sorely needed, and that the relationships between security, rehabilitation, and incarceration must be continually re-evaluated. Have you seen the show? If you’ve never been incarcerated, did it increase or decrease your compassion? If you have been incarcerated, did you think it was realistic or bogus? If you work in criminal justice, was there some truth to it, or did you just feel dissed? Let’s keep talking.