Queer Black Death in Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black

Of the many Netflix-original series TV shows, Orange Is the New Black (also commonly abbreviated as OITNB), has had immense success in viewership and award nominations. The first season of OITNB premiered in July of 2013 and currently has five completed seasons. While the show tells a story about the lived experiences of being incarcerated in a women’s prison, the popular show has received criticism from the public about racism, mass-incarceration, and the popularization of false narratives. Episode 12 from Season 4 titled “The Animals” received immense and diverse criticism from its audience.

For those who have not seen the show, the plot follows the lives of inmates of Litchfield Penitentiary, a minimum-security women’s prison which is bought out by a private prison company called Management & Correction Corporation in the state of New York. The main character, Piper Chapman, is a white middle to upper class woman in her thirties who is sentenced to fifteen months for transporting drugs. The illegal event occurs ten years before she is sent to Litchfield, of which she was allowed to serve her initial sentence outside of prison. Her privilege as a white woman within the justice system is clear headed into her experience as a locked-up prisoner. Within the walls of Litchfield, the narratives and stories of other prisoners of varying race, class, gender, sexuality are revealed as well as the lives of management workers and prison guards.

Most viewers noticed the change in tone throughout the entirety of the fourth season. OITNB is categorized as a comedy-drama and viewers would probably agree with that description for the first three seasons. In Season 4 the writers made a decision to focus on highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement within the plotline of the show. Notably, of the sixteen writers for the show, there is one Latino and one Asian, and the vast majority are women. For this reason, the first wave of criticism is directed towards them as they did not have a black writer who could help portray the humanity of the victim. Ashley Ray-Harris of A.V. Club states, “the result is a season that walks the line between offensive and misguided” (Orange Is the New Black Fails to Make a Black Life Matter). Criticism is also directed at the writers for killing off one of the most respected and loved characters, Poussey Washington, a lesbian black woman who was murdered by a white male prison guard named Bayley. The writers chose to kill Poussey by suffocation, similarly to Eric Garner’s death with the repeated saying “I can’t breathe”, after police guards dismantled a peaceful protest among the prisoners. Additionally, she was left on the floor of the cafeteria for over a day while management tried to figure out how to address the issue, comparably reflecting the mistreatment of Mike Brown’s body.

The second criticism toward the writers was in killing off a lesbian person of color. While the show predominantly stars women of color and has multiple characters that identify as lesbian, bisexual, and trans, the killing of Poussey reinforces “a reflection of harmful tropes that see LGBT characters die shortly after finding love or general happiness” (Butler). In a study by Vox, writer Caroline Framke discovered that of all TV deaths from 2015 – 2016, “TV has consistently and disproportionately killed female, LGBTQ, and minority characters” (Framke et al). Framke, upon her own investigation of this issue, found that 26% of TV deaths were of minority people and roughly 10% of all deaths were characters that identified as LGBTQ. The erasure of yet another character of the LGBT identity is perpetuating the idea that these storylines and characters are easily disposable. The erasure then leaves a gap of representation for many viewers.

The killing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans men and women, especially those of color, as a plot device in mainstream film and TV requires a representational intersectional analysis. The overrepresentation of death by these identities produces a standard that they are easily disposable and creates a repeating and inaccurate narrative. Film and TV should be writing these characters into their storylines as main characters who aren’t killed off, but who make change, who influence other people, who are not hypersexualized, and who are not aggressive. The inaccurate picture that film and TV are broadcasting has detrimental effects on society and communities. As seen with Orange Is the New Black, the death of Poussey affected viewers and fans in a way that not only caused sadness and fear, but also created disappointment in the underrepresentation of LGBT people of color.

Butler, Bethonie. “Let’s talk about that heartbreaking death on ‘Orange Is the New Black’”. The Washington Post. 23 June 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/06/23/lets-talk-about-that-heartbreaking-death-on-orange-is-the-new-black/?utm_term=.8eb8b5498f5d

Framke, Caroline et al. “All the TV character deaths of 2015-’16, in one chart”. Vox. 1 June 2016. https://www.vox.com/a/tv-deaths-lgbt-diversity

Ray-Harris, Ashley. “Orange Is the New Black fails to make a black life matter”. The A.V. Club. 14 July 2016. https://tv.avclub.com/orange-is-the-new-black-fails-to-make-a-black-life-matt-1798249494