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Unlocking Social Theory with Popular CultureOrange is the New Other

Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture: Orange is the New Other [This essay draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational second-wave feminist work, The Second Sex and her conceptualisation of the woman as “Other”, to explore the social and cultural “imprisonment” of women through an analysis of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black (Season 1). Beauvoir’s argument that women are fundamentally “determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential” (1949, p. 26) shows the impossibility of women being able to achieve “transcendence” or self-definition, as they are defined only in relation to others. This is a counterpoint to Sartre’s ideal of “being for itself”, as women are conditioned to accept this oppression at the level of consciousness. The all-female prisoners of OITNB are unable to resist mistreatment from the male prison staff or escape their “facticity” (the lived reality of their situation) and so exemplify Beauvoir’s argument that it is not possible for women to control or define their experience freely and so are imprisoned not only physically but ideologically.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Unlocking Social Theory with Popular CultureOrange is the New Other

Part of the Critical Studies of Education Book Series (volume 15)
Editors: Barnes, Naomi; Bedford, Alison
Bedford, Alison; Chalmers, Emma
Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture — Aug 27, 2021
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-77010-5
Pages
71 –82
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This essay draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational second-wave feminist work, The Second Sex and her conceptualisation of the woman as “Other”, to explore the social and cultural “imprisonment” of women through an analysis of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black (Season 1). Beauvoir’s argument that women are fundamentally “determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential” (1949, p. 26) shows the impossibility of women being able to achieve “transcendence” or self-definition, as they are defined only in relation to others. This is a counterpoint to Sartre’s ideal of “being for itself”, as women are conditioned to accept this oppression at the level of consciousness. The all-female prisoners of OITNB are unable to resist mistreatment from the male prison staff or escape their “facticity” (the lived reality of their situation) and so exemplify Beauvoir’s argument that it is not possible for women to control or define their experience freely and so are imprisoned not only physically but ideologically.]

Published: Aug 27, 2021

Keywords: Simone de Beauvoir; Feminism; Orange Is the New Black; Phenomenology; Other; Gender; Freedom; Facticity

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