Orange is the New Black

Recently watching orange is the new black hammered home the relevance of this course for me, in particular lecture 5, which was focused on Hollywood and its others. The lecture established the complexity and contradictions of the racial politics of casting, sterotypes and positive images birthed out of the interacting theories of media deities Stuart Hall, Chris Barker and Shohat & Stam. Learning that whirlwind of information seemed really messy at the time but that’s really how media works, the more I think about what media I’ve read and am reading the intersection of the concepts we discuss in the course.

The show is boundary breaking in its casting which comprises of far more women than men, including many of the notoriously underrepresented, near-mythical demographic in American film and television: PoC women! Even PoC LGBT women! In this sense, the show really punches well above its weight. Stuart Hall talks about positive imagery of PoC people in the media, with some of those factors being related to the expansions of the range and complexity of racial and ethnic representations and the acknowledgement and celebration of diversity. Orange is the new black succeeds in provding a range of identities broader than your average mainstream television show, but is it for a genuine political statement? Does it appropriate difference into a spectacle in order to sell itself? Well… The main agenda of the show seems more primarily concerned with drama and intrigue as opposed to genuine political statement, but in a male dominated industry I guess any show centred around a predominantly female cast has got some political weight behind it. The first season (pretty average) definitely seems to appropriate difference as a selling point, with the story line revolving around a white main character and her interactions with the very “different” inmates around her. However the second season (markedly better viewing) explores a far wider variety of characters and their plotlines. While it does give a bigger share of screentime to characters belonging to marginalised groups however, it still draws upon some familiar sterotypes. The tragic mulatto comes to mind for instance. Or an East Asian woman with a weak grasp on english and absolutely zero persona, used only as a filler or for the ocassional punchline. Then again, Shohat and Stam allude to problems with sterotype analysis. Maybe I should focus on how this diverse female cast is bucking industry trends. Media 216 has got me thinking!