Orange is the New Black is a Netflix Original series containing seven seasons, with filming starting in 2013. The show depicts the life of Piper Chapman, based on a real person, Piper Kerman, and her experience serving time in a prison. The show explores compex themes of race, identity, sexuality, and the American prison system.
Each episode is structured in a way that tackles a different issue. Some episodes focus on the prison culture involving group identity with people of the same race, while others explore topics like mental health issues and power structures, all while following the characters’ journeys through their time institutionalized.
There is a strong presence of power structures and Othering within the show. Those at the top include the prison warden, then the correctional officers, then prisoners like Red (the prison chef) who have earned respect throughout their sentence. Below this is the general prison population, then new inmates, followed by those in “the shoe” (solitary confinement), and finally, those that are sent to “max,” or the maximum security section of the prison. There is a clear hierarchy with those in the levels above controlling the actions and decisions of the groups below them. Each layer down become less powerful until reaching those at the bottom two levels, solitary confinement and max, whose lack of power is reminiscent of Spivak’s “subaltern.” These people have no voice, no power, and are often removed from the narrative as soon as they are removed from the general population. They are often unjustly isolated for minor infractions or “for their own protection,” but these are usually a cover up for racism or transphobia.
Within the prisoners shown, you are able to see the high number of Black and Latina individuals. Their predominant numbers in the prison population represent the disproportionate incarceration of people of color. These people are targeted because since the beginning of America’s history, anybody who is not white is automatically seen as less-than. The issues of racism have persisted in all our systems: legislation, government, criminal justice, etc. Though the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it included a clause that protected imprisonment and slavery if it is serving as the punishment for a crime. This has led to over a century of wrongful incarceration, targeting by law enforcement, and implicit bias. Within the show, several of the guards show favoritism to white inmates, giving them more privileges and punishing them less.
The use of the prison dynamic allows for careful dissection of some of America’s most pressing issues of discrimination. Told through women’s’ eyes, the narrative is that much more significant, as themes of female pleasure and empowerment are only beginning to become acceptable in media. It demands viewers question the ethics of the American criminal justice system as well as question their own thoughts about what it means to be imprisoned. Orange is the New Black humanizes those that our society puts at the bottom.
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