Over the past decade, Carrie Fisher has been outspoken about her struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction. Her admissions are profound for a Hollywood actress of her caliber, especially when you consider the ways that society stigmatizes mental illness.
At the ripe age of 19, Carrie Fisher landed the role of a lifetime playing the iconic Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope. Nearly forty years later, a resurgence of hype surrounding the Star Wars franchise, the heroine once again finds herself in the spotlight. The actress, who recently reprised her role as Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has been beloved for decades. But Fisher shines for reasons other than her acting as well.
Fisher recently made headlines when she rightfully criticized ageist and sexist comments on her appearance, as well as condemned the toxicity of beauty standards. But her candor shouldn’t come as a surprise. Over the past decade, Fisher has been outspoken about her struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction. Her admissions are profound for a Hollywood actress of her caliber, especially when you consider the ways that society stigmatizes mental illness.
Fisher was seemingly destined for fame, the daughter of Hollywood royalty Debbie Reynolds and vocalist Eddie Fisher. She began her career early, lighting up the big screen in films like Shampoo, The Blues Brothers, and When Harry Met Sally. Remarkably, just two years after her debut performance in Shampoo, she earnedher most notable role as Leia, reportedly beating out Jodie Foster and Amy Irving for the part.
Fisher’s road to stardom has been a rocky one. By the time Return of the Jedi was being filmed, Fisher had begun self-medicating with sleeping pills. After a four year drug binge post production, Fisher was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, Fisher notes:
“I used to think I was a drug addict, pure and simple — just someone who could not stop taking drugs willfully. And I was that. But it turns out that I am severely manic depressive. … I thought they told me I was manic depressive to make me feel better about being a drug addict. It’s what you think. If you could just control yourself … You had an indulged childhood … You were a child of privilege … I don’t know, that’s what I thought. You’re just a drug addict.”
While frank about her mental illness for over a decade, Fisher’s openness about her addiction took time. Hollywood and the media at large are both notorious for their lack of empathy and understanding of mental illness, often perpetuating dangerous myths about mental illness. Yet, Fisher gives honest testimonies of the trials and triumphs of battling addiction and bipolar disorder, fully disclosing the realities of her mental health conditions. In her 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking, Fisher tells her life story with ease and wit, owning her status as “the poster child” for bipolar disorder, stating:
“One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. … At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of.”
Celebrities of Fisher’s stature play an important role in destigmatizing mental health issues. Being outspoken about her struggles, as well as her successes, exemplifiesto many that being diagnosed with a mental illness doesn’t mean people should feel shame or silence themselves or that an individual can’t achieve success in any given field, although bad days may be present. While there is still a long way to go in removing the stigmas associated with mental illness, Fisher and others like her help pave the way for thoughtful discourse about mental health.
Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.
Drake Doremus’ dystopian science fiction movie, Equals, presents a pretty good metaphor for mental illness – just not a very challenging one.
Equals, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year before coming to TIFF, is set in a future society where people have been genetically engineered not to have emotions. It’s strongly implied that this is the basis for the false utopia the characters live in, where they all wear the same clothes, and live in modular apartments, solving puzzles in the evenings, like so many rational Vulcans. It’s an interesting idea – I, for one, would have liked to hear the characters explain what the purpose of human life was, and why they bothered showing up for jobs, if they didn’t feel any way about anything – but the movie isn’t interested in how this civilization works. Instead, it’s just set up as vaguely bad and communist, in a way that borrows from Nineteen Eighty-Four and other works that came before it, without exhibiting the same interest in social critique.
Instead, the focus of Equals is on personal, idiosyncratic experiences of not fitting in, or being labelled deviant, ill, and outcast because you don’t feel the right way.
The action kicks off when the main character, Silas (played by Nicholas Hoult), develops a rare condition known as SOS. His genetic programming fails and his emotions switch back on, leading him to have a panic attack in his apartment. Trusting the system, he turns himself over to the medical authorities and learns that the prognosis isn’t good. There is no cure for SOS and, while medication can slow the condition’s progression, sufferers eventually become so unstable that they have to be quarantined inside an ominous facility known as the DEN. Living conditions in the DEN are so deplorable that most patients kill themselves within days of arriving and, in fact, they’re encouraged to do so, because the horror of living with emotions is more terrible than death.
Silas, bummed out by this diagnosis but trying not to be, lest he get sent to the DEN, begins to suspect that one of his coworkers, Nia (Kristen Stewart, in one of her best performances yet) is also suffering from SOS, but trying to hide it. The two strike up a friendship that turns into a romance as they bask in the relief of having someone else to talk to about what they’re feeling.
Unfortunately, physical contact of any kind is strictly prohibited in this randomly (and somewhat senselessly) dystopian society – for reasons that, again, I would have been interested to hear about – and, as soon as their fingertips brush, Silas and Nia are on the path to being discovered, with predictably tragic results.
Equals has amazing sound design and a handful of beautiful shots, but it’s not winning any points for originality. The setting is sketched out in pretty vague terms, and the plot doesn’t offer many surprises. If you’re feeling churlish, you can spend all 101 minutes asking why questions that don’t have any answers. Equals isn’t really interested in its own setting except in so far as it establishes the concept “People living here are suspicious of feelings.” And the reason it wants to establish that concept is because the story is really a metaphor for mental illness, designed to tell us that we are too quick to medicate and suppress people whose feelings aren’t normal.
The story in Equals is structured to cover as many contemporary attitudes toward mental illness as possible, and to explore the way that different characters relate to SOS. Nia, distrustful of the system and scared of ending up in the DEN, never tells anyone what’s she’s experiencing and deals with it herself. It takes all her energy, every day, just to act normal; to not let anyone see that she’s different. On the other hand, Silas trust the system and ends up a with a medical record that follows him wherever he goes, counting down the time until he winds up in an institution. Arguably, things are easier for him because he can take medication to suppress his feelings, but he goes back and forth about whether it’s worth it to do that.
Part way through the movie, he joins a support group for other people who have SOS, where each person has a different opinion about how to see the condition and how to live with it. Over the course of the film he goes on a journey where he starts out waiting for a cure and later comes to believe that SOS is a natural part of who he is, and that the real problem is the way everyone else is reacting.
The questions that Silas struggles with are really important and really integral to the lives of people with long-term mental health conditions – especially ones that affect personality development and aren’t going to go away. Is this me or a disease? What does it mean that I’m different from everyone else – am I worse, am I better, am I equally good this way? If someone could cure me tomorrow, would I want to take the cure? Who would I be, if I did?
The metaphor works really, really well. What’s more disappointing is that the movie doesn’t seem to have an interesting perspective on the answers to those questions. Instead of challenging us, it takes the easy way out by setting up a situation where Silas and Nia are clearly correct in their beliefs while everyone else is just… well, crazy. It’s much more like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest than Benny & Joon – Doremus and scriptwriter Nathan Parker make it easy for us to sympathize with Silas and Nia to the point that a lot of the complexities are lost. Of course it’s better to live in a world where people feel something rather than nothing. Of course people should be able to talk about their feelings with each other. Of course it’s good to fall in love with someone. There are never any negative sides to SOS except that The Man is against you.
This Right Side, Wrong Side, Fight-The-Power-For-Your-Right-to-Be-In-Love stuff not only makes the story less challenging – it also makes it less interesting. The story never swerves away from predictable plot developments and, like a train conductor calling out the stops before you arrive, Equals mechanically foreshadows each and every one, suggests the most obvious possible outcome, and then delivers that outcome on schedule. I’d make a joke about Chekov’s cure for SOS and the convenient six-hour lag time before it goes active, but then I’d be telling you how the movie ends just as blatantly as the director does.
Look – there are things to like about Equals. Kristen Stewart’s good in it, the editing is very well thought-out and emotionally evocative, the sound is really good, and, hey – the metaphor is really good, too. But I wish that the metaphor were in service of a message I haven’t heard before.
Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.
This guest post by Diane Shipley appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.
When the 2011 film Young Adult opens, things aren’t looking good for 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron). She’s divorced, her long-running gig ghost-writing the cheesy YA series Waverley Prep is coming to an end, and she spends her days asleep in front of the TV and her nights drinking herself into oblivion. So, naturally, when her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) includes her on a mass birth announcement email, she heads back to small town Mercury from Minneapolis in a misguided attempt to win him back.
“Win me back! Ha.”
Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.
Now her marriage is over and her future employment looks uncertain, she isn’t facing up to her problems – she’s exacerbating them. She’s been using everything from alcohol to junk food to sex to try to feel better, but nothing’s worked. Her reasoning is that the time she felt best was in high school with Buddy, so trying to relive those days is the only logical solution.
When women in movies are unlikable, it’s usually in specific, gender-coded ways. The only acceptable imperfections for the female lead in a romantic comedy are clumsiness and occasionally, bossiness (as long as she gets her comeuppance). Women who are unabashedly lusty are either killed off (Fatal Attraction) or tolerated so long as they make fun of their looks and sexuality (Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). When they’re trying to steal someone else’s husband, usually they’re superficial and two-dimensional, like Sarah Jessica Parker in The First Wives’ Club. A male character, meanwhile, can be shlubby, make fun of his friends, ignore his family, and still be the hero of the story.
Young Adult gives us a woman as immature as any Judd Apatow avatar, who is unapologetic about being outspoken, and refuses to be coy about either the fact that she’s beautiful or that she’s intent on getting Buddy back. She’s refreshingly and entirely unconcerned with being nice. She says things like, “Babies are boring,” and “I like your décor… is it shabby chic?” When her former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) refers to the assault that left him with a bent penis, neurological damage, and difficulty walking, she enthuses, “Oh, you’re hate crime guy!” And after Buddy tells her they can’t be together because he’s married, her sincere response is, “I know, we can beat this thing together.”
“What do you mean, ‘grow up’?”
Roxane Gay mentioned Young Adult in an insightful essay on unlikable characters, saying, “Some reviews go so far as to suggest that Mavis is mentally ill because there’s nothing more reliable than armchair diagnosis by disapproving critics… The simplest explanation, of Mavis as human, will not suffice.” She’s right to imply that we shouldn’t pathologize women for being complicated or unkind. Yet it’s not that much of a leap to conclude that Mavis is mentally ill.
She not only telegraphs this, she tells us. We see her pulling out her hair when she’s alone, lining it up in strands. Later, at her parents’ house, when she moves a hand to the back of her head, her dad says, “You’re not still pulling it out, are you?” signaling that this is a chronic issue. During an impromptu drinking session with Matt, she blurts out, “I have depression.” But the moment that’s key to understanding Mavis’s state of mind is when Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) explains that she teaches the “special needs” children she works with about emotions using a chart to illustrate the facial expressions that accompany each one. Mavis stares at it blankly before asking, “What about neutral? What if you don’t feel anything?”
Roger Ebert’s otherwise excellent review of the film said that if Mavis weren’t an alcoholic, she “would simply be insane.” The Guardian called her “ever so slightly bonkers.” And while YA author Maureen Johnson recognised that Mavis has serious mental health problems, she also went on to say that she’s “insane.” She isn’t, because that isn’t a thing: “insanity” is a legal defence, not a diagnosis. When someone wants to belittle a woman, they often call her “crazy,” say she’s “nuts” or “insane.” Whether the person in question is mentally ill or not, this helps stigmatise mental illness, drawing an artificial line between “them” and “us,” as if mental health isn’t a spectrum. As if millions of people don’t experience mental health problems all the time. For many of us, it’s something that makes a character more relatable, not less.
Yes, Mavis is either in deep denial or experiencing delusions about how her ex feels about her, and she needs to take responsibility for her appalling behavior. Plus, as she acknowledges twice, she’s showing all the signs of alcoholism. But she’s also survived on her own for years without a real support system, living in a major city and succeeding in a competitive field, as shallow as her writing might be. She’s even retained a girlfriend from high school. Considering how hard depression makes it to just get out of bed, she’s a fucking champion.
Killing. It.
It’s plausible that depression is the reason for much of Mavis’ conduct, including her drinking. But it’s hard to tease out how much of her temperament is due to mental illness, and how much is her core personality. From what we hear about her time in high school (including that she called Matt “theatre fag”), she’s always been lacking in empathy, but maybe her mean girl act was a protective mechanism. We don’t know, and the fact that writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman don’t spell this out is a gift. Mavis being cruel and self-centred makes Young Adult more complex than many portrayals of mental illness. Too often, it’s either the basis for a “psycho” horror movie or an “inspiring” story where someone turns out to be sweet, charming, and boring as soon as they’re medicated.
A lot of the reviews I’ve seen suggest that Mavis has no character arc, that she isn’t changed by the events of the movie. But she is. When she has sex with Matt, she’s in a stick-on bra and tights, her hair limp, dress stained, and make-up smeared. It’s a stark contrast to the start of the film, where she gets dolled up to go to bed with a man she’s never met before. The next morning, she offers the coffee pot to Matt’s sister Sandra before pouring herself a cup. She even admits to Sandra that she’s not as successful as she’s making out, that she doesn’t know how to be happy. It seems like she might be about to make some major changes, but then Sandra blows smoke up her ass, enables her, and says she doesn’t need to change a thing.
Mavis accepts this, agreeing that she’s probably OK after all. But she still goes back to her hotel room, shows her dog some affection for the first time in the film, and throws Buddy’s old sweatshirt into the trash. More significantly, as she finally finishes the last Waverley Prep in a diner on the way home, she has her lead character waving goodbye to high school and never looking back.
Things aren’t wrapped up neatly, it’s true; we don’t know if Mavis will actually seek psychological help, if she’ll go to AA, or if she’ll just slump back onto her sofa and carry on falling asleep to the dulcet tones of early-2000s reality shows for the next 20 years. Here’s a movie that acknowledges that change is hard and often infinitesimal; that credits us with the intelligence to draw our own conclusions about the lead character’s fate. Personally, I hope that 57-year-old Mavis is sober, I hope she has a luscious head of hair, and I hope she’s found a job that fulfills her. She might not ever be a “people person,” and she’ll certainly never be perfect. But she’ll at least always be interesting.
Diane Shipley is a journalist, feminist, and fan of photos of miniature dachshunds. Find her on Twitter @dianeshipley, on Tumblr, or in the UK, where she lives, for some reason.
Black families can be rich and poor and everything in between on TV, but why can’t we show the mental health crises Black families face?
This guest post by Keisha Zollar appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.
When watching Black families in film and TV like Everybody Hates Chris, Soul Food, and Bebe’s Kids, mental illness was/is invisible. I think to myself, which Cosby kid battles with depression? Does Uncle Phil have an eating disorder? And would Dr. Doolittle ever see a therapist?
Are Black families so marginalized in film and TV that we are afraid to show the cracks of mental illness as they actually are?
As many as 25 percent of Americans suffer from mental illness, and some of those Americans are Black.
Growing up in the early-late 1980s and early 1990s, most of the Black TV families I saw were high functioning, white-collar families with an upstanding father figure who was always around, and there was plenty of food on the table. There were also TV shows like Roc, reruns of Good Times, and other tales of the economic divide where I saw a different Black experience. As a kid, my immediate family was more Cosby than Good Times but I did have relatives who were more Roc than The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in their day-to-day lives. Growing up, it felt like TV was holding a mirror up to my family but with one exception: why was no one as sad and anxious as I felt? Why did no one talk about overwhelming emotions? The process of dealing with addiction? The pain of divorce?
I also remember the Black movies of my childhood.
My grandparents took my family to watch Do The Right Thing because my Grandma said, “It’s important to support Black artists like Spike Lee.” I remember the story, the realness, the colors–also what we might call nowadays: “grit.” My parents would show me Roots, Bebe’sKids, and Nutty Professor with pride and joy.
The movies and television I watched as a child inspired me to pursue my own journey in entertainment. Entertainment was/is a noble pursuit of truth, exploration, fantasy, and more.
Then the economic bubbles of the 1980s-1990s burst and burst and burst…
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”
-Ernst Fischer
Then in the early 2000s I became an adult; my parents divorced, I struggled with depression and anxiety, I got in therapy, and realized that the TV and films I loved as a child were missing something. Where was the “Real Talk” about mental illness in entertainment? Where was the entertainment that went beyond just telling Black people to pray, to be strong, to avoid sugar and crack cocaine? Why was everyone being so mean about Uncle Phil’s weight in the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
Uncle Phil’s weight in the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air always seemed to be the punchline. Episode to episode Uncle Phil is fat shamed–by main characters, auxiliary characters, and even by himself. Every character on the show knew Uncle Phil had a problem with food. The adult in me kept thinking, “Why did no one acknowledge Uncle Phil’s cries for help, his risk factors for diabetes, his possible food addiction?”
Then I thought about Hillary’s shopping addiction!
And of course The Cosby Show…
Denise Huxtable was the “wild child,” or a character on TV who was crying out for help. Denise was a beloved character that couldn’t hold onto a job, then disappeared on the show to go to college, dropped out of college, ran off to Africa, married a man unknown to her parents, then showed up on the Huxtable doorstep with her own family, then tried school again and didn’t finish (the order of events in Denise’s life isn’t fully accurate but I’m painting an impressionistic portrait of Black media from my POV, there you go Super Cosby Fans).
It was a liberating moment on TV to see a main character struggle with education, not because he was “dumb” as a character trait, but because he was flawed. In the episode where Theo found out he had dyslexia he was overjoyed because he had a diagnosis; it was TV saying it was OK to have a learning disorder. It felt like The Cosby Show said it was OK to see if you had learning challenges.
I remember thinking while watching the show when it aired, “This is important, and it’s OK if I have dyslexia too.”
As an adult I know I don’t have dyslexia, but I’m still waiting for my TV moment on an important Black show to describe what I do have: depression and anxiety.
Getting diagnosed has changed my perspective on watching film and TV. I see the PTSD that poverty can cause in cartoon movies. I see eating disorders where I used to see “harmless” fat jokes. I see the stress of being Black in America but no mention of eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.
Now I watch these shows and I think, maybe I’m making up all this mental illness in the Black community, but then I look at Surgeon General’s reports and check out pages like this.
House of Payne shows the ravages of addiction with a recurring crack-addicted mother, and a few other shows seem to tackle addiction but it seems the vast majority make mental illness invisible. It feels like Black TV and film wants us to ignore or pray away the fact mental illness exists.
Black families can be rich and poor and everything in between on TV, but why can’t we show the mental health crises Black families face?
My desire to see Black families explore mental illness in media is not about victimizing the oppressed in media. I just want to see my own Theo moment on TV; maybe some little Black teenager who is smart and capable, but is sad and cries too much goes to see a nice doctor with her parents. This little Black girl gets tested and gets diagnosed as being depressed and she runs home to tell her parents about her depression. Her parents hear the word “depression” and are relieved at a diagnosis and the audience empathizes and learns, and everyone is OK.
Keisha Zollar is an actor-writer-comedienne. Keisha has been seen on Orange Is The New Black, Celebrity Apprentice Season 14, The Today Show, College Humor, Comedy Central, MTV, UCBComedy, and numerous web-series. Currently, Keisha in post production for An Uncomfortable Conversation About Race and she has recently directed her first interactive sketch called Neggers. She is proud of her latest series In Game, a diverse web-series about LARPing (nerd stuff). Learn more at www.KeishaZollar.com.
So where are the meaty roles? What do you do when the women you’re asked to play aren’t really women at all, but stereotypes borne out of a writer or producer’s dream of what a woman is supposed to be (or what he thinks she represents to him)? The answer is: make your own work. Change doesn’t come from trying to twist pre-existing notions. It’s borne from within and then you act on it.
The short Multiverse is about the pressures anyone can feel entering social situations.
This is a guest post by Rebecca De Ornelas and Michael DiBiasio.
Rebecca On The Challenges of Equal Representation
Acting, from the point of view of trying to get work, is difficult in and of itself. Every role has a fit, and it often comes down to a numbers game to begin booking roles at all – never mind parts that reflect a healthy and multicultural representation of women as we are in the real world.
Many characters I’ve auditioned for over the past several years may or may not have had a name, but in the breakdown they’re often qualified as “The Best Friend,” “The Loyal Wife,” “A Hooker.” Far too many are written in service to a male lead or are female leads solely looking for a man. When you add the fact that I’m part Hispanic, there’s a whole other slew of stereotypes to contend with. You don’t know how many times I have been asked to “Do it again, like Rosie Perez.”
So where are the meaty roles? What do you do when the women you’re asked to play aren’t really women at all, but stereotypes borne out of a writer or producer’s dream of what a woman is supposed to be (or what he thinks she represents to him)?
The answer is: make your own work. Change doesn’t come from trying to twist pre-existing notions. It’s borne from within and then you act on it.
Michael On His Journey to Writing Better Female Characters
To be completely honest, when I first started writing, and for a while after, it was from a decently misogynistic point of view. I don’t completely blame myself for this, but I think it’s important to discuss the point because I’m an example of how things can change for the better. In the years leading up to meeting Rebecca, I had already shifted my perspective substantially. A few friends, male and female, had been calling me out on various forms of sexism that had carried over from growing up in a more traditional environment. But it wasn’t until I met Rebecca that I really began the journey towards becoming a better man.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my work also improved, not only in terms of perspective but also of quality.
The dirty secret of ignorance is that, when you’re someone espousing an unjust point of view, you always know that you’re hiding from the truth. Too often, many men make the wrong choice when this knowledge is forced to the surface. We get afraid, and when we’re afraid, we get defensive.
This, more than anything, is what’s holding our society back from more equal gender representation in film and TV. Yes, the first thing we need is more statistically equal representation among writers, directors, producers, actors, and so on, not only in terms of gender but also race. But the second thing we need, is more men (especially those with the power to enact true change) to admit and address the fact that the America we most often see on our screens does not represent what the country actually looks like.
The cast for The Videoblogs is comprised of nearly all women.
Speaking to Rebecca’s point, we’re making The Videoblogsfor a lot of reasons. I spent most of the past two years on my website sourcing these reasons out. Essentially we’re seeking to participate in change. With this project, that means doing what we can to contribute to a greater dialogue on mental health with a film that features a non-stereotypical cast.
Most of the characters in the film (particularly the three central characters) are women, and characters vary by race such that they hopefully represent actual Brooklyn. The relationships between men and women in the film are based on everyday interaction rather than only on flirtation and sex.
As Rebecca notes, more than anything else we’re looking to “be the change.” Advocacy like what gets discussed here on Bitch Flicks does a world of good. As artists and filmmakers, though, it’s also up to us to challenge the status quo and force the rest of the world to follow suit by supporting that change.
Rebecca De Ornelas (Actor/Producer) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to The Videoblogs, she is also currently working on OnTheRoad Rep’s production of George Kelly’s The Show-Off. For more on Rebecca, please visit her site: www.rebeccadeornelas.com.
Michael DiBiasio (Writer/Director) is currently in preproduction on his first feature film, The Videoblogs. To learn more about his work, or to watch his new short Multiverse (produced with Rebecca), please visit www.mdibiasio.com.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Sophia leads the inmates in an episode-long exploration of “which hole” pee comes out of and the importance of knowing your body. This season really attempts to get at life in America’s underfunded and overcrowded minimum security prison system. While there’s still a ways to go in achieving a realistic portrayal of the dire reality many incarcerated women face, it’s the only piece of pop culture striving to do so.
Whereas last year’s inaugural season of Netflix’ women’s prison effort, Orange is the New Black, introduced us to the myriad characters in Litchfield Penitentiary through the incarceration of the WASPy Piper Chapman, this year is all about the more diverse women that wear orange (well, mostly beige).
Specifically, we see the challenges of staying physically and mentally healthy in America’s prison industrial complex.
Last season we did see some of these issues come to light; transgender inmate Sophia Burset, played by the incomparable Laverne Cox, had her hormone medication limited due to concerns about the drug’s side effects, while Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren’s mental illness was a comedic calling card for the show.
The incomparable Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset
This year Suzanne’s backstory gets more airtime, as well as an explosive trajectory for Lorna Morello, which reveals that though both women probably need psychological counseling, they’re not going to get it at the indebted Litchfield. Instead, their issues fall through the cracks so much so that only Nicky is privy to exactly what Morello did to land her in prison.
Season two has been applauded for giving more airtime to the minor characters who also happen to be from racial minorities: Gloria, the Hispanic cook who took over the kitchen from Red and is serving time for welfare fraud, and her Latina cohorts; Vee, Taystee and Poussey’s familial-love triangle cum drug ring; and Rosa, the bank robber with terminal ovarian cancer.
Lorna Morello falls through the Litchfield cracks
There’s also been an influx of older women this season, whom feminist writer Sady Doyle describes as a “knitting circle” with “an alarming tendency to shiv people.” This includes dementia-ridden Jimmy, who wanders the grounds (and even inadvertently escapes!) looking for her presumably long-dead husband, Jack. Due to her deteriorating mental state, Jimmy is given “compassionate leave” which is revealed to be not-so-compassionate when you take into account that she has no family to look after her and is without the mental faculties to secure herself a home or care. Inmate Frieda predicts she’ll be out on the streets and “dead within a week.”
Jimmy is released on “compassionate leave”
Jimmy’s release is apparently due to the above mentioned “budget cuts,” which seem to be happening all too regularly at Litchfield. Reporter Andrew Nance contacts Piper’s ex-fiance, writer Larry, and later Piper herself, to see if he can get the inside scoop on the missing millions from Litchfield.
There was talk of the building of a new gym, but that money—along with the gym—is nowhere to be found. The inmates’ bathrooms are leaking raw sewage and they have no heating in the Eastern winter. The prison’s dire financial state comes to a festering head in the penultimate episode of the season as a storm rips through Litchfield, leaving the prison flooded and without power, a backup generator, or whatever functioning plumbing they had left.
These appalling conditions contribute to newcomer Brooke Soso, Yoga Jones, Sister Jane and some girls from Pensatucky’s former laundry crew going on a hunger strike. Sister Jane’s past as an activist comes to light, and let’s just say she’s not as selfless as she makes herself out to be. Having said that, though, she berates prison administrator Caputo for releasing Jimmy with no accountability:
“The elderly are the fastest growing population in prison and they have special needs. So-called ‘compassionate release’ in lieu of care is completely unacceptable. You can’t dump sick old ladies on the street. It’s unconscionable, inhumane and illegal.”
Surely Rosa would be a better candidate for compassionate release as she has weeks to live?
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Sophia leads the inmates in an episode-long exploration of “which hole” pee comes out of and the importance of knowing your body. This season really attempts to get at life in America’s underfunded and overcrowded minimum security prison system. While there’s still a ways to go in achieving a realistic portrayal of the dire reality many incarcerated women face, it’s the only piece of pop culture striving to do so. If it keeps heading in that direction, who knows the depths season three will plumb, so to speak.
Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.
