Authored by Audrey Ellen 

Piper: Protagonist of “OITNB”

Naz: Protagonist of “The Night Of”

As compared to “Orange is the New Black,” “The Night Of” provides a far more shocking but realistic window into the American Criminal Justice System. In an interview about the show, Jenji Kohan, the greater of the show said:

“In a lot of ways, Piper was my Trojan Horse. You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women, and Latina women, and old women and criminals [emphasis added]. But if you take this white girl, this sort of fish out of water, and you follow her in, you can then expand your world and tell all of those other stories.” (O’Sullivan, 1)

In other words, Piper, a white middle class woman, is solely a main character in order to draw in a white middle class audience, not because she is a figure who is typically targeted by the US criminal justice system. Poor women of color are disproportionately represented in the United States criminal justice system: black women are three times more likely to end up in prison than white women. (O.Sullivan, 402) Naz, the protagonist of “The Night Of,” a young man of Pakistani descent who comes from a poor family, belongs precisely to the demographic group who is overrepresented in the criminal justice system today.

In her article, “Who is Always Already Criminalized? An Intersectional Analysis of Criminality on Orange is the New Black,” Shannon O’Sullivan offers two major critiques of the popular Netflix Series Orange is the New Black (“OITNB”). First, she criticizes the choice of casting a cisgender white middle-class female (Piper) as a protagonist, arguing that centering on a white woman not only perpetuates a hegemonic spotlight on the white experience, but also offers a misleading portrait of American prisons, which are disproportionately filled with poor people and people of color. Her second major criticism is that the show perpetuates the neoliberal ideology of the prison system—emphasizing the individual “bad choices” that the characters made to land in jail—while failing to challenge the structural inequality of a criminal justice system that targets certain demographic groups over others.(O’Sullivan, 402)

Both of these critiques relate to the contrast between Piper and Naz as respective main characters. One stark difference, which supports O’Sullivan’s critique of “OITNB” misrepresenting the prison system, is how Piper and Naz’s time in prison affects their respective families. Upon arrival to the prison, Piper mentions to Larry that her “mother told her friends I’m doing volunteer work in Africa.” Because of Pipers race and class, nobody would except Piper to end up in prison, and thus her parents are able to keep their daughter’s time in prison a secret, leaving their social standing relatively unchanged. Further, as there is no mention of a lawyer or trail costs, the viewer can safely assume that Piper’s judicial process was not a financial burden for the family. Because her time in Prison causes no financial stress, it seems her family is easily able to keep her prison time under wraps.

By contrast, Naz’s family is deeply affected. They struggle to repay the costs of their lawyer, even one whom is known to be relatively low-cost in the judicial system. In one powerful scene, Chandra (the assistant to Naz’s main lawyer) opens her door to retrieve her take-out dinner and notices that the delivery man is Naz’s dad. When she comes back to the door with her money, his dad has left, clearly ashamed that she has seen him in the role of a delivery man. Naz’s mother is deeply affected by her son’s time in prison as well. In another scene, Naz’s mother tries to supplement the family income by applying for some sort of service job. The interviewer begins to ask standard questions until, she pauses, saying “wait aren’t you are the mother of that…?” Her tone and quotation imply not only that the woman (and presumably the larger community) know about Naz in prison, but that he is now rethinking Naz’s mother as viable employee. Thus, not only does Naz’s mother have to search for additional income to support the family in the first place, but she also experiences employer discrimination due to her ties to her “criminal” son.

In one scene, Piper’s mother complains, “You never would have ended up here if you’d gone to trial. You’re nothing like any of these other women.” In this quote, her mother reveals Piper’s privileged status in the criminal justice system. Although Piper settled with a lawyer, her mother is right that the criminal justice system privileges white middle-class women and rewards them with fairer trials and more lenient sentence race. The jury too would have likely believed she was not “like any of these other women.”

Relating to O’Sullivan’s second critique, Piper’s privilege is able to excuse her time in prison as one bad decision that does not leave a lasting mark on her person. Contrastingly, poor men and women (and their families) of color are often given harsher sentences and, even after prison, continue to bear the burden of a criminal label, barred from jobs, housing and healthcare long after they have been released from prison. In the final scene (below) of the series, we see Naz, clearly deeply psychologically impacted from his experiences, light his pipe to smoke heroin.

Naz in the Final Scene of “the Night Of” 

In conclusion, while middle class white Piper is certainly a flawed protagonist, the show generally is still able to shed light on the issue of mass incarceration and unjust prison sentences. Further, the structure of the show (each episode focuses on a different characters) sheds light on stories of criminals who are poor women, transgender women and women of color demographic groups who are classically silenced and absent from our cultural narrative. While some scholars find it problematic that the other character’s stories are only told through Piper as a Trojan Horse figure, I would argue that it is better that their stories get told than not at all. (Caputi, 1132) Schwam, although acknowledges the problematic aspects the show, asserts that “the series has the potential to mobilize social awareness and activist sensibilities among its target audience in a political and media environment where the individual and social cost of mass incarceration is increasingly recognized as untenable.” (Schwan, 474).

Sources

Jane Caputi, “The Color Orange? Social Justice Issues in the First Season of Orange Is the New Black,” The Journal of Popular Culture 48:6 (2015), 1130-1150;

“The Call of the Wild” The Night Of. HBO. 28 August 2016. Television.

“I wasn’t Ready.” Orange is the New Black. Netflix. 11 July 2013. Television.

Katerina Symes, “Orange Is the New Black: The Popularization of Lesbian Sexuality and Heterosexual Modes of Viewing,” Feminist Media Studies 17:1 (2017), 29-41;

Shannon O’Sullivan, “Who Is Always Already Criminalized? An Intersectional Analysis of Criminality in Orange is the New Black,” The Journal of American Culture 39:4 (2016), 401-412.

“Samson and Delilah.” The Night Of. HBO. 14 August 2016. Television.