Warning: We will discuss the entire fourth season of OINTB in detail.
It’s been a week since season 4 of Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) dropped. By now, many of the reactions have trickled out. With 13 episodes of storylines weaving together incarceration, mental illness, sexuality, addiction, race — and a questionable storyline about the underground panty business — the show, as always, gives us a lot to deconstruct. This season, though, headlines have focused on how OITNB tackled Black Lives Matter — so we got together to discuss how the show dealt with race in this latest season.
Carimah Townes: Before we do anything, can we just have a moment of silence and pour one out for Poussey? And can we all agree she was the most beloved character on the show? I’ll fight everyone on this.
Laurel Raymond: No fighting here. I would have watched a show just about Poussey. Especially if she spoke German the whole time.
Aria Velasquez: I don’t even know if I want to watch the next season if she’s not on there. I lived for Taystee and Poussey moments, especially in the first two seasons.
CT: Now that that’s out of the way, we’ve got so much to discuss.
LR: Carimah, I’m genuinely curious — you’ve tracked Black Lives Matter (BLM) as it ripples through popular culture a lot more closely than I have. How did you feel about the way OITNB incorporated it?
CT: Well, I want to start out by saying that this show, in my opinion, has always been about BLM. When OITNB first started, we were supposed to view this prison world through Piper’s eyes. But the reality is, mass incarceration disproportionately impacts black people, so a story about the criminal justice system can’t be disassociated from black people. They’re at the core of this narrative, and always have been. That’s why headlines about season 4 being the “black lives matter” season drive me crazy.
LR: Piper has always been the show’s least compelling character, in my opinion — well, at least now that Larry’s gone — but anyways, that makes a lot of sense to me. In a way, it reduces the struggles with racially-biased policing and disproportionate incarceration to the movement that brought those concerns into the public eye — well, to white eyes — instead of seeing it as the latest development in a story that’s been going on for a long time. These were problems that the show explored way before it incorporated specific shout-outs like “say her name,” but now thanks to BLM, there are cultural touchstones that everyone recognizes.
AV: I agree that the show has always been about BLM. But I feel like the way they tried to incorporate the language was clumsy. Maybe if they had done it earlier in the season I’d feel differently. The writers crammed all of those cultural references into the last two episodes, and it felt rushed.
CT: It’s just that now we have a national vocabulary to talk about it. I think this season did a great job of continuing the conversation. Like you said, there was the “say her name” shout-out, as well as the deeper exploration of “black trans lives matter” with Sophia’s solitary confinement storyline, the homage to “I can’t breathe” when Poussey was killed — and left on the floor. BLM is seeping into pop culture, and there are a lot of shows that have capitalized on it without any hint of nuance. Empire and New Girl, I’m looking at you.
LR: Wait, there was a BLM reference in New Girl? I’m hopelessly behind.
CT: Girl, yes. Don’t waste your time. It was a random plotline about Winston becoming a cop (maybe he already was one at the time?) and he meets a BLM activist that he really likes. But she doesn’t like cops, and he tries to hide his identity. It was dumb. But anyway, it goes to show that OITNB is more thoughtful in its approach to BLM. Sure, Poussey’s death was tragic, but I didn’t see it as a random storyline that was thrown in for shock value alone. Since the beginning, this show has been about racial tension. This season ramped up that conversation, and Poussey’s murder was the end result. Choosing to kill her was intentional, in that she’s a beloved character who seems to have the brightest future. That’s not to say that anyone should be killed by law enforcement of any kind, but it definitely makes people empathize with BLM in a way that they wouldn’t if a random person is killed by cops on screen.
LR: I actually remember watching and having a swift one-two reaction: First, thank god she has powerful people on the outside who’ll make someone pay (her dad, who’s a general), and then, oh god, what if that had happened to anyone else and they could have completely swept it under the rug?
AV: That did kind of happen back in season one with Tricia. She overdosed in the broom closet and Pornstache made her death look like a suicide, because he knew no one would question it. As far as Poussey goes, full disclosure: I got spoiled by Twitter before I got to see Poussey’s death, so I already knew. But I wasn’t expecting it to be at the hands of a guard. The inclusion of the skinheads this season made me think she was going to die in a race riot started by someone in the white supremacist crew.
LR: On that note, what did you think about the counterpart “White Lives Matter” storyline?
AV: I’m not sure why the white supremacists were there. The tension between white and black (and Latina) inmates has been present since the first episode. Literally from the moment Morello dropped Piper off in “the suburbs.” I think the writers were aiming for humor or levity there, and it didn’t work. A bunch of loud and proud skinheads screaming “white lives matter” sounds like the worst episode of South Park, not something I’d expect from OITNB.
CT: Right, I’m not convinced it was necessary. The entire infrastructure is run by white people — corporate figures, prison administrators, and guards — with little regard for black lives. Caputo being the exception and even he’s full of it. Getting people to yell “white lives matter” seemed like the writers took the easiest route to advance the plot. What’d you think?
LR: I loved it — not because of the racial tension, but because of how it ripped apart coded language and class. Most of the overt racial tension among the inmates came from women with very specific markers of class — prominent tattoos, bad teeth — but then Piper swoops in as a well-spoken, markedly upper-class white woman and validates their racism, it boils over. She uses coded language — what does she say, ‘people of a certain proud heritage’? — because she doesn’t want to think of herself as a racist, but it’s still racist and has a similar result. Just like, as a totally and completely random example, when well-educated, wealthy white people in power talk about “thugs” or call all Mexican immigrants rapists. In the context of the show, it’s satisfying to see that backfire on Piper. It doesn’t let her retain her deniability.
AV: Maybe it’s just me, but the stakes surrounding the white supremacist inmates never seemed that high. Or, I should say, based on what OITNB has given audiences in the past, the stakes didn’t seem that high. And I definitely agree on the coded language: Piper doesn’t want to see herself as racist because she’s not doing the Hitler salute and dropping the n-bomb like the rest of them, but she’s just as complicit as they are.
CT: Thinking about it in class terms is definitely much more interesting than thinking about it as an advancement of the race war. If anything, the blatant white supremacy was timely….
LR: Precisely. It’s all very timely — but at the same time, it’s an undercurrent that’s always been there, both in the show and in America.
CT: *snaps* Let’s talk about the idea of OINTB being “white trauma porn” that’s been making the rounds. Some critics argue that this is a messy, exploitative interpretation of BLM that’s geared toward the white gaze. But I think that argument is reductionist — saying that nothing about the show has merit.
AV: Right! And that’s a terrible message. The show — like every other bit of pop culture ever produced — has its issues. But it’s not completely devoid of anything valuable.
CT: Sure, there’s an element of wanting to be culturally relevant, but that’s the nature of popular culture. Shows, movies, musicians, and artists do what they can to be part of whatever cultural moment is happening at a given time, and many have engaged in BLM talk. For me, OITNB has always been about BLM and racial injustice, so why wouldn’t the show go deeper? Don’t get me wrong — I’m not trying to invalidate the authors’ thoughts and opinions. I’m glad critical articles have been written. I just don’t agree with their theses.
LR: Caveat, this is very hard for me to engage with because I am a white person. But it seems to me this argument leads to the logical conclusion that you can’t represent or engage with fraught political issues involving historically oppressed groups at all. I get the argument about white writers and white gaze and capitalism, but I also feel like that erases the actresses of color who have been involved.
AV: And I think there’s a way to say “this writers’ room is too white” and critique how that affects the final product without implying “and thus everything that comes out of it has no value.”
CT: OITNB’s showrunners and writers and actresses spent an entire season engaging with BLM. Samira Wiley (Poussey) says she was honored to be part of this story, and trusted her white girlfriend, Lauren Morelli, to write it. “I was talking to someone who said their stomach hurt so much that they wanted to throw up,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “I want people to remember that and remember that there are people out here dying everyday and this happens every day: they are nameless, faceless people sometimes, but if you have this one moment you can remember, even if it’s only form TV, that’s what we want. We want you to remember that.” And Danielle Brooks (Taystee) feels similarly.
AV: That “nameless, faceless” part really stuck with me. After Poussey died, she wasn’t “Washington” or “Inmate Washington” to the prison administration anymore; she was just “the body.” “The body needs to be moved.” “We need to cover the body.” “Don’t let them see the body.” None of the people who were legally responsible for her actually saw her as a human being. Not in life, and definitely not in death. But her friends and the other inmates kept saying her name over and over again and they really drove home the fact that she is a person deserving of respect.
LR: To me, entertainment is best when it forces conversations and allows people who haven’t had these experiences to empathize. That’s often the point of literature, and it’s the point of literary TV. Regardless of their race or real-world experience, viewers of the show know Poussey. It matters to them that she died. Of course it should always matter, but humans are humans, and we’re myopic and self-centered. Anything that broadens your horizons to a side of the world you don’t often get to see is a good thing in my book.
CT: As a white person, what was your experience watching the show?
LR: It made me angry. It made me think about the real-world context that this comes from, and it made me want to learn more — specifically about prisons and fucked up drug laws, but also about, I don’t know, AR-15s. Dog-whistle politics. My own privilege. I was really struck by the scene, in that crazy, terrible, great 12th episode, where Baxter Bayley is tooling around with his friends, trespassing, throwing eggs, stealing — and yet he is let go at the jail with a warning, and eventually becomes a prison guard. I didn’t empathize with him or think it mitigated the fact that he killed Poussey. But it made a stark point about who gets punished and who doesn’t that people in privileged positions need to be reminded of, constantly. Otherwise you become Linda, hands down my submission for simultaneously the worst and most realistic villain on TV.
CT: She’s terrible. Up there with Fitz (Scandal) and Ramsay (Game of Thrones). Aria, can you say more about the writers’ room photo?
AV: It was a whole lot of orange and no black. In all seriousness, I do think the OITNB writers’ room could stand to diversify — as could almost every other show on TV. But with how badly they fumbled some of the storylines this season, that whiteness feels particularly glaring. They’ve done a pretty good job in the past, but this season made me cringe too many times. We already know Soso is like Piper on uppers, and we didn’t need her saying the n-word to remind us of that. The on-camera representation is amazing, but in order to really get nuanced stories with depth to them, that representation needs to exist behind the scenes as well.
CT: Right. Can we get a token? That’s how I feel about representation and Piper Kerman becoming the celebrity face of criminal justice. Her book, the show, and her activism is powerful. It’s opened up a dialogue. But I really hope she’s not the only “executive consultant” behind the scenes of the show, and that the writers turn to women of color who’ve been in the system as well. Those women should always stand next to Kerman, every time something related to criminal justice comes out of her mouth. They should be on the writing staff.
AV: Amen to that.
LR: Her activism is powerful — but one of the reasons it grabs attention is there’s an undercurrent of surprise, as in, “she’s not the sort that’s supposed to go to prison.” Remember Larry? The real-life Larry did write about Piper Kerman for the New York Times, and he called her “the last girl you’d expect to end up behind bars.” That presentation allows her to become a voice, before Congress and in public, without having people subconsciously assume she deserved what she got — but there are so many more people we should hear from more that don’t have that luxury because they’re black or brown. The dialogue she’s opened up is important — but I’d like to see it turned into a real multi-voiced discussion.
CT: Speaking of tokenism, it seems this was the first season to have that problem. They introduced a black Muslim woman and a Hawaiian woman but barely explored those characters. Their “otherness” was always on display.
AV: I don’t even think they said the Hawaiian woman’s name more than twice. I only know the character’s name (Hapakuka) because I hit pause on a scene that had her name tag displayed. And Allison, the Muslim woman, would’ve been a great addition to Taystee’s crew. I was hoping there would be more scenes with her and Janae talking about their experiences as black Muslims. But it never happened. The only other thing we know about her is that she has a daughter at home.
CT: Hapakuka had no agency at all. She was a pawn in the showdown between Piper and the Latina crew, even when she had her moment and tricked Piper. She barely spoke, always had a baffled look on her face, and always seemed three steps behind everyone else. And she literally walked behind Piper in their shared scenes. They should’ve done better by her.
AV: One last thing I want to talk about is prisoner resistance. It’s always been a theme of the show, but this season ended with inmates invoking Attica as they’re running down the halls.
LR: “Invoking” might be a little strong considering they thought they were talking about Atticus Finch’s appearance in the “Hungry Games” (I’ll admit I found that hilarious).
AV: “To Kill A Mockingjay” was the funniest part of the finale, and I expected nothing less from Angie and Leann.
CT: I think “invoking” is an apt word, considering the black women who said it in the first place.
LR: I think I missed that on the first round. But you’re right — just rewatched. Angie and Leann are parroting. Do you think the resistance will play out in a similar way? Are we about to see a “Litchfield Liberation Faction Manifesto Of Demands”? In a way they already have a negotiating committee set up — the group of women who met to discuss peaceful resistance, which, going back to tokenism, in an ironically apt way had Hapakuka representing “other.”
AV: If there is some kind of negotiating committee, I hope that Sophia will be included in that. She’s been talking about health care and human rights violations in the prison since the very beginning.
CT:I love that the show explores the tension between peaceful and violent resistance. Peaceful resistance ended with murder. In the next episode, that mode of protest is no longer enough. This is the black women’s “we have nothing to lose but our chains” moment. And the storyline is so timely. There are prison protests — labor and hunger strikes — happening all over the country with people saying “enough is enough” with slave labor, solitary confinement, and inhumane living conditions.
AV: I don’t want Daya to shoot the guard. But if any one guard who isn’t Piscatella has to die, it should be Humphrey. I think it’s fantastic that all of the rage and frustration in the prison boiled over right after the media showed up for Poussey. Could season five open with national news coverage of a prison riot?
LR: If it does, I hope the women get the chance to tell the other side of Poussey’s death. The power MCC had over her story made me so mad. But it’s yet another incidence of the show mirroring life — including with Sophia’s storyline, and how opaque the system was. With private prisons, there’s no way to look inside. That should be terrifying to all of us.
AV: Unless you’re Mother Jones and you send someone undercover. And then it gets really terrifying.
CT: Alright, y’all. I think this is a good place to wrap it up.
LR: At least until next season! Netflix, your move.
AV: Please don’t mess it up next season.