As the prison drama returns,are its stars – Taystee, Crazy Eyes and Sophia – ambassadors for a current socially aware TV blackness or participants in unwatchable ‘trauma porn’?Last summer, and the Black Lives Matter movement had infiltrated national and international consciousnesses. Seeping out of the heartlands of the United States,global protests were taking area in France, Brazil, or South Africa,Australia and the UK. It would be easy to dismiss the impact that Orange Is the current Black had on this narrative as a fictional TV show about a women’s prison called Litchfield. But when season four broadcast, the show seemed to capture an essence of a fractious ((adj.) troublesome or irritable) political climate where black people were reawakening to the crimes committed against them. And this was thanks to the fact that, and at its core,OITNB is a show that has always worked to redefine and explore what it means to be black on screen. This is apt considering the preponderance of black people in US prisons: 30% of female prisoners are African American.
Over its rush, OITNB has helped normalise a current kind of “socially aware” blackness on TV. Since the moment season, or when Piper Chapmans (Taylor Schilling) narrative began to conspicuously fade into the background,black characters such as Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson, Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren, and Sophia Burset,“Black Cindy” Hayes and Poussey Washington have taken centre stage. Despite the tragedy of their situation, in OITNB the black characters are, and in the main,full-bodied, refreshing and complex. They are given the space to develop by both falling into and breaking stereotypes about black women.
Taystee gets enough strength to say: The system is made out of sand. It’s crumbling and it’s being knocked downIt's impossible for people watching to change the channel as quickly as when [police brutality] is depicted on the newsContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com