Slippery scripts: “SOAP dropping” threats in the gendered prison setting

ABSTRACT

Media often serve as audiences’ primary source of information about the carceral system and inmates’ lived experiences. While prison media frequently employ violent tropes, these narratives are scripted within the gendered context of the prison setting. In an online experiment, 104 young adults watched short video clips from male and female prison dramas depicting verbal (sexual and non-sexual) threats and evaluated the severity and actuation of threats. The results demonstrated that participants vary in their evaluation of threats based on the gender of characters in prison dramas and that these evaluations are influenced by participants’ traditional gender role and prison rape myth acceptance. These findings have implications for how cultural apathy legitimizes and dismisses violence perpetuated by and within the prison industrial complex.

KEYWORDS:

• Penal spectator
• prison drama
• Orange is the New Black
• rape myths
• gender roles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Appendix A Experimental Condition 1: Orange (female), non-sexual threat

In this scene, Tiffany and two other white inmates confront Piper in the bathroom:

Piper: I’m not going to let you intimidate me, Tiffany. What do you want?

Tiffany: What do I want? Hmm. I want you to feel the same pain on your body … as you have made me feel … in my heart. [Tiffany reveals the toothbrush with a razor blade fashioned to one end]. I know, it’s not much. But it’s sharp, it’s sharp. Do you wanna see? (Michael Trim 2013)

Experimental Condition 2: Orange (female), sexual threat

At the start of the scene, Tiffany complains about Piper while working in the laundry room. Alex, Piper’s ex-girlfriend, then defends Piper, telling Tiffany to stop talking about her to which Tiffany responds:

Tiffany: Or what?

Alex: Or I will fuck you. [Alex pushes Tiffany]. Literally. I will sneak into your bunk in the middle of the night and I’ll lick your pussy. And I will do it so good and so soft that you’re gonna be on the edge of coming by the time you wake up … and then I’ll stop. And you’ll be half asleep and you’ll beg for it. Oh, you will beg for it. And maybe I’ll be nice and maybe I won’t … but if I am nice, the things you feel [Alex rubs Tiffany’s cross necklace] they will ruin you forever … So, you know [Alex brushes Tiffany’s hair] choose. (Matthew Penn 2013)

Experimental Condition 3: Prison Break (male), non-sexual threat

In this scene, an older white inmate (Theodore “T-Bag”) whispers from his cell to Michael:

Are you there pretty? … I know you’re there … Just want you to know that I’m coming for you. You got nowhere to run. You’re trapped in that little hole of yours. Trapped like a pig that I’m gonna slaughter. (Brad Turner 2005)

Throughout this encounter, Michael sits on the ground, scratching the floor of his cell with a screw before tipping his head back in exasperation.

Experimental Condition 4: Prison Break (male), sexual threat

In this clip, Theodore approaches Michael in a room full of other inmates, stating:

You know, I was thinking I was gonna gut you bow to stern as soon as I laid eyes on you. But, alackaday, you look so pretty when you’re scared don’t you? … Maybe we outta get the love outta the way before we move onto the hate. What do you say to that, pretty, hmm? [sucks lips] Yeah. (Michael W. Watkins 2005)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Undergraduate Research and Creativity Committee at the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse under Grant [58F19].

Notes on contributors

Kaylee Mulholland

Kaylee Mulholland is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. Her research primarily addresses representations of sex and violence in media, attending to the implications of violent narratives for individuals who have experienced violence themselves. E-mail: [email protected]

Uttara Manohar

Uttara Manohar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Theatre Arts at Eastern Michigan University. Her research examines the reciprocal relationship between socio-cultural scripts of sexual violence and their fictional as well as non-fictional media representations. E-mail: [email protected]