Comments

1
...almost all of the women Piper encountered at Litchfield seemed dangerous and threatening, most in "aggressively stereotypical" ways.


No. A few seemed threatening. Piper's original three cell mates (it wasn't really a cell, but whatever) were pretty supportive of her and helped her out a little before her commissary money went through.

And no shit male inmates are more likely to be intimidating and violent. Far more men are imprisoned for grievous violent crime than women are. Is it now considered offensive to point this out?

Is there or is there not more violent crime among male inmates than female inmates?
2
I'm pretty sure Season 2 was all Joe Caputo's fantasy after he was hit on the head.
3
This show must be horrible. I've never even heard of a man being sexually aggressive, and yet this sounds like that is all this show depicts.
4
Oz was the shit. Still crushing on Mayhem guy from his turn as Brian O'Reily. Funny how actors on that show seemed to be funneled directly into Law and Order and all its variations
5
Christ on a cracker, that guy is stupid. Iron Jawed Angels totally didn't have enough men either. And Milk didn't have enough straight people.
6
I'd watch a show that takes the OITNB approach to look at mens minimum security prison, I think but thats mostly because I want to see hot man on man sex scenes. Good luck getting that off the ground though. The one "gay" guy show we have, "Looking" barely has any gay sex in it!

As for Oz I think it was a much less human look into prison. I don't remember sympathizing with them and any sex was usually coercive. So I'd like to see it re-framed using OITNB as a model for character development.
7
"This may seem like a silly complaint. Men, after all, are amply represented in the media, in major and minor roles, whether on Game of Thrones or Mad Men or Breaking Bad or The Wire. For that matter, there are in fact a number of male characters on OITNB, such as counselor Sam Healey (Michael Harney) who gets a typical guy-plot about struggling against disillusionment and prejudice to be a good man."

That is where he should have stopped, because that was where I stopped agreeing with him.
8
I've long been upset that Looney Tunes featured so few non-animated characters.
9
And he's not even RIGHT about the dudes on the plane to Chicago. There's the threatening weird panties guy, but there's also the bro that one of Piper's seat mates recognizes from the old neighborhood and is almost jovially "what can ya do?" about their respective situations.

Seriously, that was like half a scene, but it was hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Those two characters' lives were so fucked that they reacted to encountering each other on a prisoner's flight the same way most people would to running into a high school acquaintance at the mall.
10
I dunno. Berlatsky's piece is perfectly consistent with the trend of deconstruction by pseudo-leftist check-boxing of art and entertainment in question.

You know: Unless what ever it- OITNB in this case - reflects perfectly your personal little version of utopian worldview it's "problematic." What ever the fuck that means. We demand the artist, writer, musician, actor or whatever express OUR insecure visions, not theirs.

This is something the rightwing and Christian extremists used to do back in the day when they were winning the culture war and the left were the counterculture artistic insurgency.

But now that the we've won the culture wars so now all that remains is to purge the traitors and find that art or entertainment that isn't perfect enough.

Berlatsky's comments are not that much different than those that, for instance, accused Stephen Colbert for being racist. The good being the enemy of the perfect, as it were.
11
@8
Then you must like Space Jam.
12
@11: Who Framed Roger Rabbit is his favorite.
13
@12
Isn't there a tap routine out there with Gene Kelly and Jerry?
14
yes, seatackled, in anchors aweigh, and it is wonderful.
15
@11, @12, look, while live-action Americans do have their media presence, I can see that you don't take the over representation of stop-motion Americans in animated works seriously.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a good stab at addressing the issue, as was that great work of socially conscious art, Song of the South, but it is not enough. It is a fact that live-action Americans are actually a majority, and their overwhelming exclusion from animated spaces is a travesty.

Check your privilege.
16
Well, my partner, the love of my life, spent nearly 2 decades in prison so now I know a fair amount. 1) women's prisons are more violent. Mostly cuz men establish the hierarchy and keep to it. The violence that brought them there is usually left behind. 2) The notion that all guys are having sex is bunk. It really depends on where, geographically, you are. Where he was (Massachusetts), sex between inmates was considered a sign of weakness, so you went without.

But honestly, complaining that a show which is about women doesn't give men enough attention: cut me some slack.
17
Oh, also he caught this show and laughed at the inaccuracies.
18
Not enough women in Shawshank Redemption, either.
19
@Ophian

The more I read you, the more I love you.
20
Right on the money. No one complained that there weren't enough female inmates in Oz or Shawshank.

The Bedchel test specifically makes an exception for stories that take place in all-male or nearly all-male settings (see The Name of the Rose). Why shouldn't OItNB get a pass too? (I haven't actually seen the show yet; does it pass? Are there ever two men who talk to each other but not about a woman?)
21
lord knows women are NEVER presented in "aggressively stereotypical" ways on tv and in movies...
22
DRF, no, the Bechdel/Wallace test does not make any such exception. If all films, television shows, radio plays, novels, comic strips and so on were all set in all-male environments then we would have a problem. That’s the point.
23
Did the author watch season 2?

There were two main plot lines devoted to non-stereotypical men who work at the prison. The disabled prison guard who got an inmate pregnant and the disillusioned manager who tries to get back to what he liked about the job originally.

Sure, they're not actual prisoners but they're imprisoned by the same institutional system as the women.

Both men are treated realistically. They're good but make poor decisions and often end up being influenced by the system to behave cruel or indifferent.

We even see some of their out-of-prison life, which is akin to the women's flashbacks in purpose.

I don't think the purpose of OITNB is to be a critique the US criminal justice system. The prison is simply a device which allows for focusing on stories and conflicts involving an interesting and diverse set of female characters.
24
Thank you, Dan! I read that guy's commentary and all I could think was "what the frack? men are all over the TV screen and movie screen; women are portrayed stereotypically all over the place; and you're complaining about ORANGE?"

He needs to get off his whiny hobbyhorse. Look around. Men are NOT underrepresented in media. We finally get a great show centered around women, and he's bitching because he wants more men. Frack him.

Please wait...

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