Queerness, Blackness, and Mythologies of Criminality, by Nick Aranda

The Netflix original Orange is The New Black has—ostensibly—revolutionized the television world for women of color, queer women, and both’s representation in criminal systems across the United States.  I find it, however, curious that the representation needed in Hollywood for women of color and queer women could be found only in a show about prison.  It seems as though the representation of queer women of color could only survive in a prison setting on television.  It is as if the master or meta-narrative has become that strong.

            Master narratives (or metanarratives) are the overarching cultural scripts that emerge from social history and social context.  Some meta-narratives are common and known: “women are weak,” “people of color are violent,” “disabled people should not have sex,” “Strong means never sharing emotions.”  Others are less evident in everyday life.  These metanarratives can be aptly called ideology.  Each cultural script is the representation and indication of some ideology that not only explains but also can be found in all events.   The ideology of Lesbian Women and lesbian women of color is an interesting case.  The representation of this group is necessary.  It seems curious that Netflix brought this representation in the context of a prison complex.  The meta-narrative here is less evident but still dangerous: “Lesbian Women of Color are Criminals.”

            Orange is The New Black, is an ideological representation of a similar trite motif that we have seen socially codified into a social moré before.  It is an ideology of the mythology of the dangerous black criminal, mixed with an ideology of the dangerous queer.  The addition of which is paramountcy dangerous: the Queer Black Criminal.  Organized like a bad game of social mad libs.

            How, then, does such an ideology come to be?  Why is it the case that hope for representation of queerness and blackness found root only in a show about criminal contexts? 

            I find it useful, then, to examine each’s relation to criminality independently first.  Take the mythology of the dangerous black criminal.  This narrative is one that is told often.  It first took root in early rhetorical pictures of freed black men.  The film, Birth of a Nation, highlights the social attitude towards the ‘black problem’ that white America claimed to face.  Notions of the black criminal kept prison’s stocked, fields filled, and society’s mind at ease.  Years later, the War on Drugs would tie a direct link between specific crimes and people of Color.  Drugs became a black & brown man’s crime  Rape and Domestic Abuse became associated almost inexplicably with blackness.  Violence, in turn, perpetuates many aspects of early to modern black existence.  Audre Lorde articulates, “Black women and children know that the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and hatred. . . “ (Age, Race, Class, & Sex, 119).  Blackness becomes the crime in Modern America.

            Queerness, too becomes a crime in Historical and Modern America.  Tied along with the same bases of colonialism, fluidity in cultural customs found itself locked away, bound by the fetters of Christianity’s ascetic and austere measures.  Mogul and his colleagues express in their critical text Queer (In)Justice, “Law enforcement officials have fairly consistently and explicitly policed the borders of the gender binary.  Historically and up until the 1980’s such policing methods took the form of enforcement of sumptuary laws . . . “ (64).   Queerness, in order to justify these measures, was tied closely to the perverse, the pedophilic, the hypersexual, the diseased, the dammed.  Queerness was policed.  Queerness was exterminated.  Queerness was suppressed.  Many of these measures occurred throughout the world & throughout history.

            Both Queerness and Blackness, then, find themselves tied to codes of criminality, almost by ontology.

            Blackness and Queerness also have a relationship to mythologies concerning hypersexuality.  In fact, the image of the racialized Jezebel represents queerness, feminineness, and blackness all in one socially constituted figure.  The Jezebel is more inclined to sex forms of the perverse nature, and therefore inclined to lesbianism. We are told that such an inclination makes her particularly dangerous to young woman (who she may corrupt) and older men (who she may displease).  The queer woman of Color is automatically placed in a context of the vilified.  Lorde will speak of this as a suppression of the Erotic, as well as an attempt to label the Erotic (Queer Blackness) as something that it is not—perverse and dangerous.  Lorde argues, “We Have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued in our Western society” (Erotic, 53).

            It seems, then, that the idea of the Queer Black Woman was ideologically (and tragically) destined to find representation in a context of the criminal.   Such a masternarrative is powerful and self-sustaining.