OITNB

          As Rafter says in the article, the prison film genre ranges from stories of jailbreaks and inmate reformation through melodramas about unjust convictions.

          Orange is the New Black affirms some of the existing stereotypes not only from prison but also from American society in general. Orange is the new black exposes stereotypes of all races for example by picturing a black woman fantasizing about fried chicken all the time, a Latina mother who is jailed with her daughter, who happens to sleep around with a white prison guard. An Asian woman who never talks, and a crazy Latina woman who hides a cellphone in the prison’s bathroom to take pictures of her lady parts and send them to her boyfriend.

         The TV shows tries to get rid of stereotypes but I don’t think they are very successful. By putting an upper-class white lesbian in jail, they try to break some of  American society stereotypes but at the end, the main character is still the white girl and although the director decided to put some white people playing the inmate roles, we all still know what groups of women fill America’s prisons, and it is definitely not upper class white women.

         Although I don’t think the show does a good job at breaking stereotypes, I do think that it shows some of the problems of American prisons and some of the injustices inmates have to deal with. Police corruption and police harassment, for instance, are exposed on the TV shows as well as unfair punishments to some of the inmates.

        As Rafter says, the major incident of a traditional prison film is usually a riot or escape, with much of the preceding footage devoted to the planning for the event. During the different seasons of Orange is the New Black we can see a couple of prisons escapes. One of them is a double escape that doesn’t end up so well. Rosa takes the jail van and drives away. Meanwhile, Vee finds a way out through the drain in the jail’s greenhouse and runs away too. Little she knew, Rosa runs her over with the van before she can make it far enough.

       To sum up, Orange is the New Black is a perfect example of prison films. Although they have changed and made some adjustments overtime, at the end, all of them fall into the same structure and same topics.