Season 5 of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black drops in a little less than a month, and though the streaming service dropped a “first look” clip from the upcoming season last month, they haven’t released a full trailer until now. Check it out above!
What seem to be the themes of the fifth season flash across the screen: justice, rebellion, empowerment. When last we saw the women of Litchfield Prison, they were starting a prison riot, and Dayanara (played by Dascha Polanco) holding a gun to the head of a particularly sadistic prison guard. Season 5 looks like it’s going to be about the aftermath of that, and about the inmates coming together in order to fight for better conditions for themselves.
It looks like they manage to get some media attention, too (I wonder if the series will end with Piper getting a book deal?), with press coming to the prison and with recorded video messages getting out.
There are a couple of things I love about this trailer (and the “first look” clip). First, while the previous season of the show was almost oppressively serious, it looks like they’ve found their way back to at least some levity in the midst of all this turmoil, and the trailer has some genuine laugh-out-loud moments.
Second, this upcoming season (which will take place in real time and span three days in the lives of the inmates immediately following the S4 cliffhanger ending) looks like it’s exactly the kind of inspiration we need in our current political climate. Inspiration, and also a reminder that no matter how marginalized any of us might be, the fact that we’re walking around free and not locked in a cage “stacked four to a bunk like factory chickens” is a privilege we should never take for granted.
Because if the searing Ava DuVernay documentary 13th has taught us anything, it’s that it isn’t only “bad guys” and “criminals” that spend years locked away in prison as corporations get richer off their backs. Very often, it’s people too poor to be able to fight the system; people who then have their humanity stripped from them. As if people who have committed crimes deserved to be treated as subhuman simply because they made mistakes.
I hope the new season of Orange Is the New Black will remind and inspire people to think of and fight for those who are locked up and can’t fight for themselves. Because the corruption and abuses faced by incarcerated people isn’t as bad as you see on TV. It’s worse.
Orange Is the New Black S5 premieres June 9th on Netflix.
(via Flavorwire, image: screencap/Netflix)
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Published: May 10, 2017 01:47 pm