Can ‘Orange is the New Black’ Jailbreak ‘Caged Heat’?

Three years ago, the pilot for the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” opened with a long, menacing, and vaguely hallucinogenic shower scene. It plunged Piper Chapman, the main character based on real-life ex-con Piper Kernan, into a steaming, wet torrent of images—and the audience with her. “You got them TV titties!” an inmate exclaims, snatching the towel from Piper. “They stand up on they own, all perky and everything.” It’s a scene that could have come out of any girls-behind-bars B movie, an opening that flirts brazenly with the trope of girls gone wrong.

Although it’s but one of many films that interpret jail through a heterosexual lens, Caged Heat set the gold standard for women-in-prison exploitation flicks with its ripe dream sequences, women in panties, and inexplicable cabaret. Just as you can’t make a road movie without invoking Easy Rider and all roads to horror lead you back to Psycho, no filmic representations of women in prison seem to escape the long arm of Jonathan Demme’s 1974 film. So you have to ask: How does “Orange is the New Black” jailbreak Caged Heat?

Showrunner Jenji Kohan took “OitNB” into its third season before she let it fall into the cultural dragnet cast by Caged Heat. In the seventh episode, Chapman, played by Taylor Schilling, throws down the gauntlet: “I think that women’s prison feeds into the whole ’70s exploitation fantasy for men,” she says. “It’s like we’re all in Caged Heat or Cellblock Sisters and all we do is have lesbian sex and strip searches.” While it took 2.5 seasons for the show to step into Caged Heat’s ring, it didn’t take the media much time at all; in August 2013, Entertainment Weekly used the film’s title as a headline for an article about the series, and this month Rolling Stone did the same. It’s as if “OitNB” was avoiding the subject.

[ed: Spoilers below! You’ve been warned.]

 

Juggling multiple storylines is de rigueur in today’s hour-long dramadies, but few spin those plates with the effortless grace of “OitNB.” This season was built loosely around the purchase of Litchfield Penitentiary by MCC, a private prison corporation. Privatization elicits multiple changes. The two most important are the arrival of Whispers—a stand-in for Victoria’s Secret, which actually uses prison labor—a lingerie company that contracts Litchfield’s prison population to sew panties, and the introduction of a slew of untried, untrained guards for its growing population. Together, the panty enterprise and the presence of new guards jimmy the lock on Caged Heat and its ’70s exploitation bailiwick.

“It’s like we’re all in Caged Heat or Cellblock Sisters and all we do is have lesbian sex and strip searches.” 

Season three of “OitNB” is arguably the most political to date, and privatization of the prison puts the show on a collision course that places unmentionables—both underwear and the long, sweaty hand of exploitation films—front and center. The show’s ability to depict the diverse past and current lives of its multiple characters is what makes “OitNB” special. No other television show offers such a wide range of narratives, and that these stories are almost exclusively female and often from people of color sets “OitNB” apart. 

But whether ironically or coincidentally, Kohan’s many-headed attempt to unpack exploitation films centers on white women. One strand is Piper’s jailhouse caper, selling dirty, penitentiary-worn panties to perverts, a business venture that’s problematically named “Felonious Spunk”; the other is Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett’s rape. These two storylines, which unspool over the last six episodes of the season, attempt to meet Caged Heat in its own house. But whether they’re successful is another question. 

“Bedbugs and Beyond,” the second episode of season three, featured a long, lingering scene of Litchfield’s inmates in their prison-issued underwear. Their granny panties and giant, thick-strapped bras aren’t the kind of lingerie that typically brings the ooh-la-la, but actors Jackie Cruz and Diane Guerrero make them look good. In light of the full season—where Flaca, Cruz’s character, later embraces Piper’s stinky panty scheme because the prison panties made her “butt sad”—the scene highlights the choices of free women to freely wear the foundation garments of their choice. Viewed in the moment, however, it’s a visual that rides the cusp between exploitation and commentary. It’s hard to cruise past views of inmates in their underwear without feeling a hot flicker of desire.

As the season unfurls, unmentionables take up more physical and psychic space. Not only does Piper’s business grow, necessitating a stiff learning curve in prison politics and illegal businesses, but the value of the panties also shifts. To Piper, who can’t see the past the pen, the panties are real, tangible, authentic objects. To Cal and Neri, Piper’s brother and sister-in-law and her business contacts in the outside world, the panties are merely fetishistic objects. Nail the right chemical mix, brush the panties with a “miso-tuna-honey” sauce and egg whites, and you can pass the sniff test. They make and sell knockoffs, because who’ll be the wiser?

As Cal and Neri discover, the real value of the panties isn’t in the fact real inmates wore these panties and imbued them with actual “vag sweat”—they’re worth something because of the idea that inmates wore the panties. The “panty perverts” are buying the sexed-up fantasy, a fiction that comes directly from films like Caged Heat. “OitNB” serves up a 13-episode arc to pin prison panties on a dissecting tray and show us where its beating heart isn’t. The only heat in the cage is the heat we’re packing.

The story of Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett, played by Taryn Manning, echoes the emptiness of fantasy. Of all the “OitNB” inmates, Doggett charts the most personal growth. In season one, she was a vituperative, narrow-minded, anti-abortion bigot who claims to be sent by God as a healer; by season two, she’s earned a new set of teeth to replace her meth-damaged chompers and, with them, a laid-back personality that wins her a slot driving the camp van. In her role as driver in this recent season, she becomes familiar with Charlie Coates, a new, callow prison guard, who seems unsure of his own authority.

The only heat in the cage is the heat we’re packing.

Doggett’s rape is the crescendo of the tenth episode, “A-Tittin’ and A-Hairin’,” which flashes back to show her history, from being a ten-year-old getting her first period to a teen falling in love for the first time. “You ain’t a little grubber no more,” Doggett’s mom tells her. “You’ve got value. You’re like a case of pop.” Doggett takes this advice literally, allowing local boys sex when they give her Mountain Dew. Doggett’s first love, Nathan, an excessively beautiful guy, shows Doggett her true value, seducing her with caring, compliments, and pleasure. But Nathan leaves as he arrives—mysteriously, suddenly, and with little explanation. All long hair and foreplay, Nathan is lovely enough to be a dream, and his brief, wondrous arc suggests that we should see him as Doggett herself does. 

At first glance, it appears as if Coates (played by James McMenamin) and Doggett are on a star-crossed collision course. Donuts, stolen moments at an idyllic duck pond, romantic banter: rom-com tropes abound in their sweet flirtation, gestures that presage love. Which is why the audience feels as betrayed as Doggett does when, in a game of “fetch,” Coates pointedly throws a donut chunk into a muddy patch. Doggett demurs; Coates’ face hardens as he yells, “I said fetch, inmate!”

The episode intersperses Doggett’s experience with dreamy Nathan and her experience with the green Coates, flipping back and forth in time as Doggett’s relationship with Coates develops. When Coates pushed Doggett against a tree to kiss her fight after the fetch episode, we realize he’s fuzzy on the notion of consent, mistaking her struggles for desire, a mistake she clears up at a later date. But when, at the end of the episode, he throws Doggett down on the bench seat of the van, pulls down her drawstring pants, and rapes her, we’re shocked anew. As if to underline his willful misconstruing of consent, Coates whispers as he rapes Doggett, “This is what you’re asking for? This is what you’re begging for, isn’t it?” Coates’ idea of Doggett’s consent is, like the panties, pure fantasy.

 

Together these two stories invoke Caged Heat to show women-in-prison films as what they are: exploitive. Prisons are the rare setting where women can be made to have sex and to be disciplined for having it, and women-in-prison films offer the theoretically guilt-free marriage of penal pleasure and punishment. Until this season, “OitNB” showed its inmates having sex almost like free women—which is to say, choosing to have sex, albeit within the confines of prison. In this way, the show seems to have bought into Caged Heat’s promise: prisoners “having lesbian sex and strip searches.” But between Felonious Spunk’s fallacious undies and Doggett’s rape, this tacit agreement goes tits up.

Or does it? “OitNB” has a remarkable share of extremely beautiful women—far more, I’d guess, than any given prison population. Season three added Ruby Rose to this roster of gorgeous inmates; she is, quite literally, a poster-girl. Since its pilot episode, the “OitNB” inmates visit the shower with the towel-wrapping modesty usually seen in Manhattan Bikram locker rooms, but the show serves up Rose naked in the shower, tattoos, butt, and breasts bare for all to see. “I like to air-dry,” Rose’s character Stella explains. It’s a nice view, but it feels about as authentic as Chapman’s dirty felon panties. 

“OitNB” casts a diverse net in terms of age, weight, race, gender and conventional attractiveness, but it’s not a documentary. Because of that, Ruby Rose appears nude. Because of that, Big Boo’s strap-on riding flashback girlfriend is decidedly femme and thin. Because of that, we get copious shots of skinny, attractive Natalie Figueroa doing it doggy-style with Joe Caputo. And because of that, when Doggett and Big Boo attempt “rapey” payback on Coates, they can’t go through with it. 

“Face it,” Doggett says, “we ain’t Swedish enough to be splittin’ his starfish.” Unpunished, Coates lives to ride another day, though now with a new driver. And we viewers realize that even as it attempts to subvert Caged Heat’s legacy, “OitNB” can never really escape.

Chelsea G. Summers lives in Manhattan and writes almost exclusively about sex. Her writing has appeared in Vice, Adult Magazine, and The Guardian, and you can follow her on Twitter.

Share and Enjoy

Is Victoria’s Secret trying to be Triangl swimwear?

Cosmopolitan website Community Guidelines

Thank you for visiting ACP Magazine’s Cosmopolitan Community. This community is a place for discussion, queries and conversations pertaining to Cosmopolitan as well as new initiatives, services and news from ACP Magazines. The following Community Guidelines are designed to help provide a quality environment for all members. Please take a minute to read them and keep them in mind whenever you participate.

Please note access to the Cosmopolitan community is not restricted, so persons of all ages are able to see the content posted. Cosmopolitan recommends that this site is most suitable for persons aged 15+. Persons aged under 16 years must obtain permission from their parents/legal guardian prior to signing up to become a member.

Just like any many other online communities, the Cosmopolitan online community includes people from a wide variety of experiences, backgrounds, and mindsets. We take pride in the fact that our communities give this diversity of membership an interesting place to interact, share, learn, and grow. In keeping with this spirit of community, we have a core set of principles that must be followed by all members.

– Participation in all communities is subject to the Cosmopolitan Terms of Service and any rules of Membership.

- We ask community members to remember that there is a wide age range and to post their comments accordingly.

– Use must comply with all applicable local, state, and federal rules, regulations, and laws.

- Content protected by any intellectual property rights (including but not limited to copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights) must not be posted without permission from the owner.

Cosmopolitan does not always edit content posted in our communities. However Cosmopolitan may, in its sole discretion, take action against users who post material or engage in activity that violates the Community Guidelines and principles or the Terms of Service or is otherwise objectionable. Such action may include deletion of a post without notice or in more serious instances termination of your Cosmopolitan ID and/or membership and everything associated with it, including email accounts, groups, posts, pages, and profiles. Determination of what is regarded as a “serious instance” will be individually determined by Cosmopolitan in its complete discretion.

Cosmopolitan community members can delete commentary added by to their personal pages by other community members. Please report any violations to our Customer Care Team. (cosmowebsitefeedback@acpmagazines.com.au)

Respect

Please extend courtesy and respect to fellow community members at all times. This is a place to engage in meaningful discussion and where possible to support and encourage each other, not to hurt or attack one another. Please refrain from inflammatory and defamatory comments as well as flaming, taunting and general disrespect. If you disagree with another’s opinion and wish to share your opposing view, please do so respectfully. Do not simply “put down” the opinion or advice given by others. This is NOT a place to aggressively pursue attacks and accusations on one’s opinions or background. Even if you feel upset or angry, consider what you are saying, how you are saying it and how it might affect others before you hit “enter”.

When engaging in opinion-based discussion, refrain from making statements that appear to announce that your opinion is the only one to be had or the only one that matters. When someone has clearly stated their opinion, do merely disregard that opinion. Remember, we can respectfully agree to disagree without being hurtful or aggressive.

Absolutely No Solicitation

Under no circumstances should you post notices or contact another member asking for money, help, or offering products or services. This is not an advertising directory to promote the business ventures of any one person and/or business.

No Inappropriate Content

Please keep all content in the posts you make in the public forum focused on the stated topic of the thread. ACP Magazines Ltd (Publisher of Cosmopolitan magazine) reserves the right to remove content if it deems it to be off-topic or inappropriate. If you want to talk off-topic, please do so on your own blog or social media pages. Please note that the following guidelines regarding inappropriate content apply to both public and private spaces: Posting inappropriate content can and will be flagged and reported. Content that is not appropriate includes, but is not limited to, advertising, publishing of material for which you do not own the copyright*, any content that is vulgar, obscene or contains adult themes, language or imagery. Personal attacks, including name-calling, insulting, spamming, flaming, baiting or otherwise harassing forum members and Cosmopolitan employees will not be tolerated, publicly or privately. Engagement in, or encouragement of such attacks is prohibited, and we reserve the right to take appropriate measures, including the deletion of content, and banning from the site for any behavior we determine to be harmful to our community.

* When linking to outside content, you must ensure that the content of the link is appropriate for our community and adheres to the aforementioned guidelines and Terms of Service. Do not post copyrighted materials (articles, videos, audio, etc.) that you do not have permission to reproduce or distribute. For text articles, it is generally acceptable to quote a small portion of the article and must link to the source. You should not post entire articles on this community as this may constitute copyright infringement.

Guard Your Personal Information

You must use your real name when creating a profile, but can use an alternate alias username for communication on the Cosmopolitan community. We do, however, highly discourage members from posting personal information such as telephone number, home address, or other specific information which may make your location easily discovered by others. If you’d like to share such information with other members, we advise you to do so with great forethought and caution, and only through personal communication channels such as email. Please note that the use of email will be subject to the terms and conditions of the email service provider and that ACP Magazines Ltd (Publisher of Cosmopolitan) is not responsible nor liable for any of the communication that occurs between members through personal channels. This is the responsibility of the persons choosing to communicate.

Please Refrain from Advertising

It is not appropriate to advertise your business, products or services on the cosmopolitan community in public forums, public image gallery or in comments you leave on other member’s profile walls or blog posts. It is acceptable to mention your business on your own profile page or blog post – SO LONG AS YOU DO NOT DIRECTLY ADVERTISE YOUR SERVICES OR PRODUCTS. Our administrators will delete any content that they deem to be advertising (outside of the acceptable mention).

Health Information

Any and all health and medical advice and information communicated in this community is provided with the intent of generating a general discussion, as well as for educational and entertainment purposes only. They are in no way intended to serve as actual, individual medical advice. In no way does participating in this community constitute a formal or informal doctor/patient relationship. As all members are invited to participate there is no expectation of actual professional experience and, therefore, we assume no responsibility for any posts. Whist it is not encouraged, it is possible that due to the nature of the community and the vast range, diversity and experience of the community members some information may be inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise flawed. No information is endorsed or verified Cosmopolitan magazine or ACP Magazines Ltd (Publisher of Cosmopolitan magazine) other than what we post ourselves as editorial content from the brand. Your health is important, and you are responsible for your own health care and well-being. If you have any medical concerns, please consult with your physician or other health-care professional.

We also encourage you to refrain from posting any personal information relating to your health or identity if you wish for that information to remain private. Whilst Cosmopolitan will not publically release any information you provide in confidence or in a private capacity (and will be bound by our Privacy Policy in regards to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information), we can be responsible for any information you allow to be published publically (ie information you post, or include in any comments).

- Unless it clearly stipulated at the time of collection, Cosmopolitan does not collect any personal information about health and strongly advises community members to be careful about any health information that they may inadvertently post on the Cosmopolitan site. Persons under the age of 18 are asked NOT to post any personal information which relates to health. Cosmopolitan site is for entertainment purposes only and all members are advised to seek professional guidance in all issues related to health.

Cosmopolitan Website Administrators

Cosmopolitan administrators have the final say on anything posted on or associated to the Cosmopolitan website. If you have any problems or issues you would like to raise, we encourage you may make a complaint to us directly via email at cosmowebsitefeedback@acpmagazines.com.au. All questions or concerns should be directed to this email address.

If you ever need clarification on these guidelines, please contact us privately at the above mentioned email address and we will be happy to help you.

When you are participating in this community, please keep in mind that we strive to create a safe and friendly community for all members. We hope you are able to have fun and enjoy connecting with each other here.

These community guidelines detail the types of behaviour and activities that are allowed here. If a user violates our guidelines and shows a disregard for them, they run the risk of losing their account. We reserve the right to ban any user without warning. These guidelines are subject to change without notice. Please ensure that you are always aware of the most recent version of these guidelines as they are made available to you.

Share and Enjoy