Why the Caged Bird Sings

Shilling and Aduba rock beige in Orange Is the New Black.

«««1/2  Orange Is the New Black.  Series created by Jenji Kohan, based on the book by Piper Kerman. On Netflix.

There's long been talk of the "two Americas". Discussion has gotten more urgent recently as the issue has gone beyond income disparities—the two Americas increasingly seem to be living in a different mental universes. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, affluent Americans wondered why the city's poor didn't simply take their SUVs to Baton Rouge for juleps and crawdad étouffée. As images of stranded residents of the impoverished 9^th Ward appeared on CNN, many gentlefolk were shocked to discover that, yes, there are poor people in America.

          The reasons for this empathy deficit are complex, but the media deserve part of the blame. After all, previous generations were brought up on TV series like All in the Family, Good Times, Chico and the Man, The Waltons, Welcome Back Kotter et al. These were shows set among America's less affluent that, using drama or comedy, put a sympathetic face on the have-nots. But it seems that, at some point, network programmers decided that viewers didn't want to be depressed by tales from the far side of the tracks. Instead, they opted to flatter our aspirational ideals—to promote the fantasy that, as Mario Rubio recently enthused, "We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves." The urban poor have become all but invisible in prime-time entertainment. If people of humble means do appear, it is more likely as objects of contempt—your Al Bundies, Honey Boo-Boos and "Duck Dynasties" etc. In short, characters who, through their grotesqueness, seem to deserve their fate among the under-class.

          Bad as this situation has become, let no one blame Jenji Kohan (Weeds). Her series Orange Is the New Black (now in its second season on Netflix) can be read in many different ways, but it is one of the few hit shows that actually acknowledges the existence of "those people". It takes them as more than types, putting contexts to their particular problems. In sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, usually perceptive fashion, it humanizes the not-soon-to-haves.

          For those who may just have come out of prison, Orange is set in a medium-security womens' penitentiary. Newcomer Piper Chapman (Taylor Shilling) is a rare bird in this cage: a young, attractive white woman sentenced to hard time on a drug charge. The series' first season stuck more or less close to Piper's "fish out of water" story, tracing her adaptation to a place without access to NPR, decent bagels, or (indeed) to Netflix. An offhand remark about the food gets her put on an involuntary hunger strike by the inmate in charge of the kitchen, Russian matron "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew). Being seen as one of the "good ones" by the assistant warden (Michael Harney) only earns her more mistrust from her majority-minority sisters. Along the way, in a series of mordant flashbacks, Kohan reveals the seriocomic backstory of Piper's conviction—the "there but for the grace of God" circumstances of a love affair with the wrong person (Laura Prepon). If that isn't enough, she's trying to hang on to a mostly loyal, largely baffled boyfriend (Jason Biggs) on the outside.

          The tone of Orange is indeed seriocomic—a M*A*S*H-like mélange of gallows humor, pathos, and toilet jokes. (A particular detail of female urinary anatomy—unknown to almost all the women—figures prominently in a second season episode.) It's absurd because Piper, like Hawkeye Pierce, obviously doesn't belong there. But as the first season develops and increasingly in the second, as Kohan reveals the back-stories of the black, Latina, and low-caste whites around her, it seems nobody else belongs there either. The scary, aptly-named "Crazy Eyes" (Uzo Aduba) turns out to be the adopted black daughter of a well-meaning but clueless white couple; "Pousey" (Samira Wiley) a military brat whose sexual identity brought trouble to her father's career; the scabrous Gloria (Selenis Leyva) a store-keep who undertakes welfare fraud to earn enough to escape her physically abusive husband. In short, the faces that "naturally" seem to populate our prisons are, like Piper, victims of circumstance as much as their own bad choices.

          In a society where we prefer to pretend that institutional barriers don't exist—that individuals get exactly what they deserve—this isn't a popular message. It works here because Kohan and her writers' stick to their guns, and because this is one of the strongest ensemble casts in television.

          Of course, the hook of Piper Kerman's book is just the opposite, a remarkable story because "person like me" is rarely incarcerated. I haven't read it, but on some level the show does seem chagrined to need the character of Piper Chapman to connect with a mostly white audience. Be that as it may, Orange is a refreshing return to a more nuanced, compassionate—and possibly more constructive—portrayal of the people Mario Rubio forgot.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro