The Netflix drama depicts life in prison with some degree of accuracy. But with far too much skin, for one.
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Jenji Kohan, the creator of Netflix's new hit series Orange Is The New Black, had to grapple with a pretty serious conundrum: How do you make a compulsively watchable series about a milieu whose defining characteristic is boredom? And yet, the show's writers have pulled it off.
Of course, they have had to take some liberties; the series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir but is highly fictionalized. So what did they get right about prison life, and what did they miss?
Though my year in federal prison was quite unlike Piper Kerman's — largely on account of the differences between men's and women's prisons — here's my assessment of where Orange nailed it and where it missed the mark.
Small things can have outsize consequences — in positive and negative ways.
A tiny slight or infraction in prison can lead to serious problems. Piper’s offhand remark about the quality of prison cooking leads to Red starving her out for two weeks, and her vaguely dirty dancing with Alex leads to the SHU (Special Housing Unit — solitary confinement). I can verify this; I saw a guy get slocked — struck by a sock wrapped around a padlock — for cutting in line. Kissinger once said that in academia, “the battles are so bitter because the stakes are so small,” and that is doubly true in prison.
Conversely, given the general privation, the smallest kindness in prison can go a long way. Piper’s creation of medicated lotion for Red’s back gets her right with Red and affords her renewed access to food; a few donuts from Counselor Healy, who oversees the Women’s Advocacy Council (WAC) are seen by most WAC members as a major coup. One of my main strategies to stay safe (I came in at 117 pounds) was to quietly give stolen tomatoes and onions to certain powerful inmates, which effectively helped me build critical alliances. I never dreamed that a bruised tomato might help save my life.
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