Essay #1 Revised
Kensie Parmer
Chloe Allmand
ENC213544
02/06/2020
Orange Is the New Black is a twisted insight into the American female prison system. It is a visual form of communication catching the audience of fans with every rolling second. Fans, much like myself, have latched onto the show and have expressed multiple emotions through sources like Tumblr.
I was immediately drawn into Orange Is the New Black as soon as the first trailer aired. And yes, of course, the show right away had me placed on my couch with a family-sized bag of chips unapologetically binge-watching the entire first season. It wasn’t advertised very much but the amount of traction the show received somehow made its way to me. Because the show was free from conglomerate pressure it was able to create content by taking risks and being more carefree- actually making quality content. The show had an array of diverse characters from differing races to sexual diversity, something I thought many tv series lacked. I was intrigued by the ideas of privilege, religion, and all things controversial that were soon to be explored.
Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black, was a once-prominent white American who had everything at the tip of her fingers: an education, a home, a stable family and childhood, who took instead to the life of drugs. This one decision landed Piper in prison and gave her a completely new identity. She was now a convict. Kerman’s exigence for writing a memoir of her prison experience was to show how Americans have truly lost sight of why people are sent to prison in the first place. At the same time, she was also trying to place a light on the stereotypical idea of how violent prisons are.
For the publication of Kerman’s memoir, there should be no more credible person writing about a prison experience than an ex-con herself. Kerman, with a vast range of awards over time and a college degree, is perfectly credible in writing a novel about herself which was later, adapted into a hit Netflix series. Although the novel is not an exact replica of Kerman’s life, aspects of it are taken from her journey and, therefore, grant her the credibility of sharing this story and provide the perfect example of ethos.
Since this story is both told through Kerman’s written memoir as well as the visual mode of storytelling on Netflix, the message delivered is slightly different. When reading a novel, the storyline can sometimes play out in the readers head cinematically- diegetic sounds, slow motion, special effects, camera pans, the works- it’s the visual effects in the imagination that brings these stories to life. Here, the Netflix visual allows for those stories and ideas to play out in front of everyone’s eyes- a constraint the novel will always have. It has created a very precise type of storytelling: quicker paced, based on solid story structure, and, of course, emphasizing creative visuals from waking up in the prison bunks to alarms sounding a cell search.
Each episode of the show has a cunning way of targeting all audiences; an episode could be about a mother’s struggle to set the example for her children or a transgender woman trying to find her place in society. Unfortunately for Kerman, a televised series may need to dramatize certain aspects of prison life. Kerman dedicates her life to advocating for prisoners in the system and showing how violence is not something that is seen behind bars, yet for the television series to maintain the suspense and captivate the audience, it does indeed give birth to some of those stereotypical violent ideas. This constraint makes it just a little harder for Kerman to prove her points to the public. At least for the show, every second of it manages to rip up the entirety of your heart.
The ethos of the series plays a huge roll in Kerman’s storytelling. It makes the reader care about her and her friends in a way that a detached documentary on American prison systems never would. Here Kerman pushed pathos perfectly to keep the audience hooked. Kerman’s main character in the show, Piper, although experiences heartache when leaving her husband for prison, could never compare to the moment that ripped everyone’s heart out. Children’s Day was absolutely the saddest episode the series could create. Children’s Day was the only day of the year where the inmate’s children were allowed beyond the visitation rooms to see their mothers. While all the fun festivities and laughing children were a welcome change from everyday prison life, the idea of the days end coming and the mothers having to say goodbye to their babies was enough to make even childless Piper cry. Luckily there were plenty of other emotions felt in the show like the various bittersweet moments of Piper’s friends being released.
When it comes to the rhetoric employed by show writer Jenji Kohan and Piper Kerman, books were never far away. Kerman graduated from Smith in ’92 and had quite a strong literary background, especially considering she wrote her memoir. So, of course, the show based on her needed to be full of books. The writers were even quick to add a library to their makeshift prison. The new library addition certainly made for some amazing yet, crazy quotable moments, many by the hands of the character Taystee like: “Don’t be f’n with Harry Potter” and “’ Cause I tell you right now, you ain’t stepping on the Goblet of Fire” or even “This ain’t the f’n “Help”, Bitch” (OITNB, Season 1 Episode 6). Taystee was not a character who was seen with her head between the pages, but she sure did reference them all too much and she even worked in the library. Anyways, aside from the library itself, books are seen often in numerous scenes in the show.
Some fans are dedicated to commenting about the books hidden in the show through platforms like the Tumblr account the books of Orange Is the New Black. The account even hails Piper Chapman (the shows main character) as the new Rory Gilmore- which is crazy in itself. Through Tumblr, even though it’s a platform old as dirt, fans can post numerous gifs and comments on all things OITNB quotes. Here, I myself, can enjoy all the hilarious to sad scenes, revolving around each character.
If enough attention is paid while watching the first season, over 20 different books are visible ranging from: The City of Thieves by David Benioff, to The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, to Les Misérables by Victor Hugo which ironically deals with a reformed convict. Or even in the fifth episode of season one Piper is seen out for a walk in the grounds and sits to read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and later describes it as “almost good.”
Part of what makes the insertion of these literary golden eggs so remarkable is the variety of readers. There is no stereotypical “nerd” character with the taped oversized glasses glued to the inside of a book and stowed away somewhere in the background. Instead, many characters are shown reading different books, discussing parts of books, or referencing a book some point in the show. Each character is in a way wrapped up in the important rhetoric: Crazy Eyes quotes Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure when showing Piper how much she crushed on her, Piper recommends Nicholson Baker to Tricia as something sexy to read, Lorna is obsessed with all things magazines, and even Officer Foster, one of the security guards, is caught reading Night Shift by Stephen King. The literary references in the show just keep coming and I’ve only mentioned some from season one let alone the other six remaining seasons.
But what I have found most impressive about the series is that even in the show’s darkest moment- the prison riot- books are everywhere. In the fifth season, inmates build a library-cum-art-installation as a memorial to a fallen character. The beginning of the riot was the unveiling of a beautiful sentiment followed by the end of the riot where the hanging books were being torn down. The characters were then thrown against the prison bars to be handcuffed, stealing a final glance of the surrounding destruction. This is momentous in Kerman’s storytelling because what brought her joy in prison was the comfort of books and that was also seen in the beauty of the hanging memorial. Yet, when the joy is all gone and all hell breaks loose, what does Kerman leave behind? There amongst the angst was the remnants of the once beautiful but now torn books- a perfect ending with a perfect rhetorical dessert. These books were specifically shown because their versatility in the show mirrored the versatility of the characters. Each character had their own type of book preference and here the audience can see they too can latch onto a sappy romance novel or a murder mystery for pure entertainment.
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