Orange Is The New Black Vs Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Throughout reading Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, I tried to make connections with things in my own life and things I know of. I pulled a connection between Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the popular Netflix series "Orange Is The New Black" (which happens to be one of my favorite shows). I know they met not seem related, but both works have an end result of showing, thus normalizing, LGBTQ and female empowerment (passing the Bechdel Test with flying colors). While novels may have been a great way to do this in the 1980's when Orange Are Not The Only Fruit was released, television such as Netflix has now taken popularity and will also play a huge part in molding the modern minds of our people.

1. Both Orange Is The New Black and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit pass the "The Bechdel Test." As mentioned in class, passing The Bechdel Test requires females in a movie to discuss something with each other other than men. Being that it is set in an all female prison, Orange Is The New Black does this beautifully, and allows us to see the depth or the characters for more than just their relations with men. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit does have women talking about men, but it is not the main point of the book. I'm really glad that I learned about the Bechdel Rule in this class. I'm a filmmaker, and a feminist. I'm astonished they did not teach us this idea at my old college, New York Film Academy. What we show people as media/content creators is so important because it molds the minds of others. Any projects that I have wrote have tended to pass the Bechdel Test anyway, but being aware of this idea gives me the power to pass it onto others. Hopefully female characters will be created with more depth- as we can show much more interesting things about a women than just her aspirations/relations with the opposite sex.

2. Both of these books broke LGBTQ barriers. Orange Is The New Black, for example, has broken into the laptops of Ameirca (most popular series on Netflix, according to Netflix) and shown us LGBTQ characters with such depth. One of the most interesting examples of this is the transgender character played by Lavern Cox, a real life transgender women, and her struggle of "coming out," going through with the gender change, and fighting to keep her hormone pills while in the all female jail. This show is a dark comedy that appeals to mostly everyone, with tons of feminist conversations and LGBTQ conversations sprinkled in. As I've said before, showing characters like this with depth makes a huge impression on public opinion. In this case it is a positive one. I have developed a certain dislike for filmmakers who use their power to do the opposite though (I don't watch shows/media that show or perpetuate rape culture, which is hard because many things do. I do this with media that perpetuates other things I disagree with as well such as anti semitism). While I was not around in the 1980's I would imagine Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit also broke down barriers with this novel. My parents were teenagers back then and they said being openly gay was harder for people than it is now (especially with the AIDS stigma about gay males). I like the way the book showed that she just felt how she felt as a child/teenager, not knowing that it would be seen as as "wrong." There are so many people who think sexual orientation is a choice. The only choice is whether one chooses to hide it or not, but it is still there. I know I am making modern people sound dumb, but many people have been raised in a bubble. They need to see someone's story of not "choosing" to be gay, just being gay, to understand it.

3. On a third and not as strong point, the relationship that Jeanette has with her mom is somewhat interesting compared to what Piper from Orange Is The New Black has with her mom. Don't get me wrong, Piper is a spoiled upper middle class women, where as Jeanette was poor. But both of their mother's are controlling and stubborn. Both of their mother's disapprove of their daughters sexual orientation, and either are in somewhat denial or are more concerned with how they look in the community. Below is a clip of Piper's mom visiting her in jail, and you can see that she is, as per usual, in a denial of her daughter's situation. There is a strange tension there that I imagine would have been there when Jeanette visited her mother after going away. I have a theory that the more controlling the parent is- the more rebelious the kid will be.

Anyway, I recommend Orange Is The New Black to anyone from class. It is based off of a nonfiction novel about a women named Piper, a successful, straight, and waspy suburban lady who was sent to a Women's Prison for a 10 year old drug charge that she committed as a young adult with her then lesbian lover. If anyone else watches it, did you think of it when you were reading the book? Listening to the way Jeanette describes men, I think she see's them all as the George "Pornstache" Mendez character from Orange Is The New Black.