This essay examines the depiction of labor in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, paying specific attention to gender and race. It argues that the program’s interest in the historical link between coerced prison labor and enslavement in the United States, as well as the more recent implication of prison privatization in the neoliberal assault on labor rights, is undermined by its privileging of affective and interpersonal dynamics over political solidarity.
BloomBarbaraOwenBarbaraCovingtonStephanieRaederMyrna. 2003. “Gender-Responsive Strategies Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders.” U.S. Department of Justice. https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.nicic.gov/Library/018017.pdf (accessed February 11, 2016).
DeCarvalhoLaurenCoxNicole B.2016. “Extended ‘Visiting Hours’: Deconstructing Identity in Netflix’s Promotional Campaigns for Orange Is the New Black.” Special issue, Television & New Media17 (6): 504-519.
LaferGordon. 1999. “Captive Labor: America’s Prisoners as Corporate Workforce.” American Prospect46 (September–October): 66–70.
18.
LeBaronGenevieve. 2012. “Rethinking Prison Labor: Social Discipline and the State in Historical Perspective.” Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society15:327–51.
19.
LeflouriaTalitha. 2011. “‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Cuts Cordwood’: Exploring Black Women’s Lives and Labor in Georgia’s Convict Camps, 1865–1917.” Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas8 (3): 47–63.
LordeAudre. 1984. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, edited by LordeAudre, 110–14. Berkeley: Crossing Press.
22.
LundahlErika. 2013. “Less than 2% of Carpenters Are Women.” Yes Magazine, September26. Yesmagazine.org (accessed November 14, 2015).
23.
McCorkelJill A.2013. Breaking Women: Gender, Race and the New Politics of Imprisonment. New York: New York University Press.
24.
McHughKathleen. 2015. “Giving Credit to Paratexts and Parafeminism in ‘Top of the Lake’ and ‘Orange Is the New Black.’”Film Quarterly68 (3): 17–25.
PollockJoycelyn M.2005. Prisons Today and Tomorrow. Burlington: Jones & Bartlett.
32.
PramaggioreMaria. 2015. “Privatization Is the New Black.” In Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture, edited by MillerToby, 187–96. New York: Routledge.
33.
RafterNicole Hahn. 1990. Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers.
34.
SchwanAnne. 2016. “Postfeminism Meets the Women in Prison Genre: Privilege and Spectatorship in ‘Orange Is the New Black.’” Special issue, Television & New Media.