What's missing from Season One of Orange Is the New Black

[asakiyume]

So I've finally started to watch this show. Some stuff I nod at vigorously--I've seen things like it during my volunteering, or my students have told me stories that support it. Other stuff, not so sure.

But the thing that really struck me, the thing the show totally misses, is CHILDREN. I've worked with about a hundred people closely over the past four years, and I'd estimate that 90 to 95 percent of them had kids. It was *very* rare for someone not to have kids. And while some of my students have just one or two kids, many of them have four or more. Thinking about kids, worrying about how they're doing, the threat of termination of parental rights, guilt over how they've been as parents--these things are just huge for my students. Getting to talk with their kids is huge. And that's totally absent from season one of Orange Is the New Black. Preppy thirty-something Piper Chapman, the main character, doesn't have kids. Her former lover, the urbane drug trafficker, doesn't have kids. But neither do 99 percent of the secondary characters. The lipstick-wearing, wedding-planning woman (Internet tells me the character's name is Lorna) doesn't have kids. Streetkid Tricia, the heroin addict, doesn't have kids. Wild-haired Nicky doesn't have kids. Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" doesn't have kids. Taystee doesn't have kids. In a very unfair case of getting stereotyping both coming and going, Tiffany-the-meth-head Born-Again type not only doesn't have kids, she's had lots of abortions. Even the older women, like Captain Kate Janeway Red, the kitchen worker, or Yoga Jones, or Miss Claudette, are childless.

I think it's a big mistake. What incarceration does to families and children is huge, both on the inside and on the out. But that plotting decision seems in line with American entertainment preferences generally. For some reason the viewing public isn't interested in thinking about children unless that's the main focus of the story. So you can have child-focused shows ... or anything else.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

For some reason the viewing public isn't interested in thinking about children unless that's the main focus of the story. So you can have child-focused shows ... or anything else.

This is a huge problem in SF/F fiction, too. Parents don't get to be heroes. Everyone becomes an NPC at 30.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Families in general evaporate. It's all about your age cohort--no one else exists. (A generalization. I can think of stories where this isn't true.)

I'd be happy just for an acknowledgement that the MC's lives are more full and rich than what appears "on screen." A birthday card from Aunt Somebody, a calendar note to go to a nephew's school play (if the writer is committed to having the MC be an unattached young thing). Or even if they hated their family and fled it, a reminder of what they left behind! We don't just pop into the universe at 22! We have ties.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes! I agree with this so much! I realize that in fiction one has to focus, but at the same time, just a few reminders that the characters have lives beyond the cast of the story would go so far toward making them seem like real people with full lives.

One of the things I enjoy about Bollywood movies is that there's almost always some acknowledgement that the characters' families exist, and often whole story lines devoted to them. Of course it helps that Bollywood movies often have longer running times.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Bollywood movies have different parameters, for sure, and their audiences are enthusiastic about things that American filmmakers seem very dubious of (like song and dance sequences).