Tags: Capital, Prison System, Resources, Social Connections
Author: S. Weyand
Date: Apr. 26, 2015
Orange is the New Black, a critically-acclaimed television series which first began airing on Netflix in 2013, is a comedic drama which observes and critiques the different facets of the modern American prison system. This analyses looks to apply Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of power, as described in The Forms of Capital, to the series in order to observe how these ideas would present in a real situation. Through the different interactions between the plethora of characters (e.g. prisoner-prisoner or prisoner-guard), the show successfully demonstrates his three expressions of capital: cultural, social, and economic. Though varied in function and form, an accumulation of any of these types of capital ultimately allows a person to improve their own well-being by improving their access to resources. In addition, this power is self-propagating, as capital tends to induce the creation of more capital, which results in the rigid power hierarchies observed in society. This, in particular social capital, are commonly presented in OTNB. In this particular clip, Piper Chapman, the show’s main protagonist, having just finished her introductory tour of the prison facilities by fellow inmate Morello, is given a number of items (i.e. tissues and a toothbrush) by Morello. As she does so, Morello comments that they look out for their own. The white community in the prison works together for the betterment of them all. This exchange, supplemented by the previous one between Mendoza and Diaz and the character’s appearances, implies that this sort of segregation is a normal aspect of the prison social dynamics. As a Caucasian, Chapman will have access to different (presumably more) resources than if she were, for example, Hispanic. This is further shown later on in the episode by her interactions with Red and the prison guard who provided her with yogurt and shampoo, respectively.
