a burst of color
OR A N G E I S T H E NEW B L AC K by Niki Afsar
What makes Orange is the New Black work, and why is its success important? This summer, it wasn’t easy to go online and not find some mention of Netflix’s latest original hit series, Orange is the New Black. The show has been largely popular with viewers and critics alike, and for good reason. The show stands out in today’s mainstream media as a nuanced, inclusive show, well written and political, but also comical and entertaining. Available for instant streaming online, the show is based on the 2010 memoirs of the same name by Piper Kerman, when a privileged, welloff bride-to-be who finds herself in a women’s federal prison after her drug dealing, post-college, sexuallyexperimental past catches up to her. While this high-stakes setting already sets the show up for great drama and wonderfully sharp comedy, head writer Jenji Kohan of Weeds also uses it in order to tackle issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class head on, with results equally hilarious and heartbreaking. This isn’t the first comedy starring a woman, written by a woman, featuring women of color, LGBTQ women, religious women, and elderly women. What makes OTNB stand out from other note-worthy, female centric comedic television shows today? First of all, most obviously perhaps, is the sheer amount of diversity that the show offers. In a media culture that doesn’t seem to know how to include diverse yet fully formed female characters, OTNB succeeds across the board with its exploration of racial, sexual, gendered, and religious issues both inside and outside the prison walls. While the main character, Piper, is a privileged white woman, the show also
features a diverse cast primarily made up of women and men of color. After a summer full of blockbusters featuring almost exclusively white male protagonists, this diversity alone comes as a breath of fresh air. Most mainstream television often fails to give us wellwritten, nuanced female leads, but OTNB provides a multi-dimensional female protagonist in addition to spotlighting a strong supporting cast who prove to be just as flawed and equally, if not more, intriguing as Piper. These women do not remain stuck in tropes or as comic relief, but each comes with a unique and worthy storyline. Perhaps even more importantly, in featuring diverse characters, the show does not ignore difference but tackles stereotypes and clichés, something that the prison setting facilitates. In confronting the stark racial, sexual, gendered, political lines that occur in the prison, OTNB presents stereotypes that we are familiar with, giving us their truths as well as their inaccu-
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racies. Problems arise not necessarily when characters fulfill their pronounced identities, but when others try to confine them there, so that there are many other self-made prisons both inside and outside of the actual prison. Another aspect of the show that makes it work so well is the plurality of viewpoints and stories that we see. We don’t see just visual diversity, but diversity in history and background as well. The show acknowledges that each character has a past, a story, and that each woman breaks from the confines of their stereotypes in unique and very human ways. One of the show’s best lines comes from Piper’s brother during a pep talk to her fiancé outside of the prison: “… One of the issues here is your need to say a person is exactly anything.” This bit of Zen is key to the show’s successful portrayal of human characters. Through well-integrated and often poignant flashbacks, we are often taken out of the prison to see not