I’m so darn lazy that I’m pulling this out of an email I wrote rather than taking the time to write an original blog post. It’s about Orange is the New Black. The good news is that, hey, at least it’s short:
I read the book a while back, and for the most part really liked it. My read on it was that it was a white woman who came to clearly understand the position of privilege she held with her experience with our messed-up judicial / prison system, and was critiquing that system in a way and in a language other people with class and race privilege could hopefully also understand.
It was like she was saying, “Hey, other upper-middle-class white people — our justice system is seriously *insane* and we need to do something about it, because a lot of people are being treated completely unfairly just because they don’t have right skin color or quantity of money to protect themselves. Let me explain it to you through a narrative lens you’re likely to understand, and then maybe you’ll help me do something about it.”
But then I saw trailers for the show and realized it did NOT have the same message as the book. They’d taken her critique and turned it into a comedy, mainly an opportunity for class-privileged white people to safely visit a zoo called “prison” and laugh at the crazy antics of the animals there.So I’ve never watched a single episode. I did watch a compilation of Piper & Alex scenes on YouTube a few weeks back, but then I heard that the show killed off their African American butch lesbian, and that just irritated me to no end to hear, so I’m back to my total boycott.
I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. Anyone want to try talking me into watching it?
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