Rewriting of women

Orange is the New Black and female incarceration on screen of life

Abstract

The webseries Orange is the new black, produced mostly by women, is the result of an adaptation of the autobiographical book by another woman: Piper Kerman, who spent time in prison in the USA. For this article, we seek to reflect on how, from the story of the self, that Kerman tells, other female stories, with the webseries, are told, imagined, in the prison environment, leading us to debate about the writing prescribed for female subjects and as these have rewritten it. In order to do so, we will focus on the aforementioned audiovisual production, with the help of cultural, feminist and (auto)biographical criticism, through the reading of authors such as: Leonor Arfuch (2010), Eneida de Souza (2011), Saffioti, H. (2011), Davis, A. (2003), Osmar Santos (2016) among others. We realize that the challenges faced by female characters on the show's screen are directly created and perpetuated by the patriarchal system that imposes shackles on minds and bodies. With that, the narrated/acted experiences of these women lead us to observe the restriction of their lives inside and outside the prison, in a process of physical and symbolic incarceration. Finally, we found that, considering the bars that surround them, in addition to the official prison spaces, a work of refictionalization of the self, such as this one, engendered by women, and their biographical intersections, in favor of other existential series.

[Received on: July 29, 2021 - Accepted on: October 30, 2021]