



 
            THE PERFECT WOMEN-IN-PRISON FLICK 

                           by

                        Joe Doe




First, sorry to say, this isn't a review of the best WIP movie 
ever, with a link to download it for free.  Instead, this is my 
response to the essay by Pat Powers, "The Perfect Women in Prison 
Movie."

www.bondagerotica.com/articles/women_in_prison_movies/best_women_in_prison_movie.html

He makes a number of interesting points that I agree with:

1) The heroine is placed in both a sympathetic and a submissive 
   role.  You can feel sorry for her and root for her while 
   simultaneously enjoying the fantasy of watching a beautiful 
   woman in chains.

2) Part of the pleasure is in watching women "institutionalized" 
   -– from "reception" on, they are systematically degraded by 
   an indifferent bureaucracy designed to subdue and humiliate 
   them.  

3) Finally, and I'll quote Powers directly, on this one: "Finally 
   -- and this is extremely important -- prisoners have had a huge 
   fall from grace, sliding from the relatively protected environs 
   of society to the lowly status of prisoner."

I agree that this third element is most important, and it dovetails 
nicely with my examination of "The Perfect Strip Search Story –- 
Marcy"s First Time."  (If you"re reading this, Dudley, I'm still 
waiting for the follow-up posting about Marcy's other visit to 
County, where she wore a lot of clothes.)

Powers recognizes that the essence of these stories is the contrast 
between the heroine's former situation of status and power, and her 
lowly situation now.  

Mr. Powers, again: 

"So you start out with the strip searches and the body cavity 
search.  And you don't portray it as impersonal and institutional. 
You focus on the people. This is where the women's WIP movies that 
show up on the Lifetime Sentence Channel excel.  They show the 
woman who was dressed nicely and surrounded by friends on the 
outside, now a naked woman bending over, legs spread (a powerful 
posture of submission), listening uneasily as the guard pulls on 
a latex glove, and then there's a close up on her face while she"s 
grimacing as the guard probes her vagina and anus."

I think this is a good guide to writing stories for this board.  
Don't focus on the mechanics of the situation.  "I was going 
through airport security, when suddenly...."   Even if you were 
searched by R2D2, the basic mechanics are all the same.  Focus 
on the psychology of the situation.  Who was watching?  A friend?  
A co-worker?  A subordinate?  How did they feel about your 
predicament?  And how did that make YOU feel?

How did it make you feel when you performed a slow striptease to 
order?  What was the guard"s reaction?  How did you feel when they 
slipped on the glove and gave you the order to bend over?

Mr. Power also suggests frequent public bondage, which is an 
interesting idea, and it's one that I don't use as much in my 
stories as I might.  

"You show women in chains wherever possible, and as often as 
possible, especially in public, most especially before friends 
and relatives -- something many WIP films are strangely shy about 
doing.  Most female prisoners are cuffed in front and wear belly 
chains, but it"s better to have them chained with their wrists 
behind them to increase their vulnerability."

He nails the key idea, the humiliation of the situation, by 
suggesting the woman be bound in public, preferably in front of 
friends and relatives who knew her in her previous incarnation.  
It's much more mortifying to be in chains when you're the only 
one so bound, and people you know are there.  It's the psychology 
that I liked so much in my essay, "Tibool's Pictures."

www.asstr.org/files/Authors/C_Lakewood/Stories%20by%20Joe%20Doe/Tibool"s%20Pictures.txt

The picture itself is here:

http://www.chainganggirls.com/images/tib36.jpg

What makes this so erotic is the contrast between the casual 
editor, dressed in his suit-and-tie, and the tense, know-it-all 
reporter, cuffed, barefoot, with the sores from the chaingang cuffs 
clearly visible on her bare ankles, dressed in the humiliating 
uniform her undercover assignment requires.  She was once virtually 
his peer on the newspaper, but now the body language says it all.  
The editor, with his legs casually crossed, leans back comfortably 
on the bench as he literally talks down to the reporter.  She, 
humiliated, in contrast, nervously kneads her fingers together as 
she leans forward in a submissive, defensive crouch.    

Powers also favors prostitution scenarios, of which you find a lot 
in my stories.  Real prostitution (like prison) is nasty stuff, 
but, as a fantasy, it's a good way to enforce the heroine's sense 
of helplessness.  The only thing she has left to offer is her body, 
and, even then, the goods (and the profits) belong to someone else.

We do have a slightly different take on the REASON for the 
incarceration.  He seems to favor women falsely imprisoned 
on bogus charges, and reasons that it's more dramatic to see 
an ordinary housewife experience a "fall from grace" than a 
prostitute or female gang leader.  I agree, but I think the 
contrast is even MORE powerful if the woman is going into 
prison voluntarily, as part of some sort of undercover assignment.  

Since this is the main area where we differ, I'll concentrate on 
our difference here in more detail.

Being a police officer or an FBI agent is a woman's ultimate power 
trip.  And she may be in prison to expose the corruption behind 
bars.  But, paradoxically, to achieve that end she must surrender 
all of her authority and play the victim.  

Consider the episode of "Law & Order SVU" where Detective Olivia 
Benson goes undercover in a woman"s prison.  She is the prototype 
of an intelligent, powerful career woman, and the audience is used 
to seeing her in the superior position, busting bad guys and 
comforting the victims of abuse.  But, in this episode, she must 
play the victim, emotionally and mentally.  The writers clearly 
understand the powerful psychology of the situation.  Her captain 
warns her: "If you go inside you'll have no authority, no rights, 
no backup."  In other words, she will be stripped of everything 
and become just another victim, a point emphasized in the 
melodramatic voice-over read by the show's psychiatrist as we 
watch the once powerful detective being "processed": the trial, 
the prison bus, the cuffed march into prison, the strip search, 
the shower, the frisk by a male guard.

"Abusive father, abusive husband.  Just like all the other inmates. 
You"re a target for abuse.  Every man's punching bag.  At times, 
you will feel humiliated and...degraded.  You'll have no privacy.  
You'll shower, sleep, dress, and use the toilet in full view of 
other people.  You're going to see things you want to stop with 
every fiber of your being.  But you can't react.  Ever."

No, my friends, Joe Doe or Lakewood didn't write the narration.  
This really was on network TV.  See the clip here:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUSCUp0ql-E&feature=related

Although it's a different scenario, its psychology (and the 
breathless narration) is similar to the incident where Tyra 
Banks went into prison for her talk show to see what it was 
like.  In her blog she said she went because she was 
"fascinated" with prison, but it takes only a few minutes 
to transform her from a powerful talk show host and wealthy 
supermodel to just another black girl in prison.

The video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgIZQDY5zc

As with Tibool's picture, sometime a single image can perfectly 
crystallize the psychology of a situation:

http://www.aolcdn.com/channels/07/02/446b5b1f-0007a-033d1-400cb8e1

Tyra's dull, grim expression and thousand-yard-stare as she stands 
naked before the camera, clutching her prisoner ID and her orange 
scrubs, makes it clear that the former supermodel knows what it is 
to be "processed."  Powerful and in charge only a few minutes 
before, now she's just another con.

The "undercover" scenario is a popular one on television, with 
both reporters and fictional heroines shucking down and bending 
over so that justice can be done.  A few favorites:

Charlie's Angels:  Angels in Chains  
Charlie's Angels:  Caged Angels
The Fall Guy:  Prisoner (available on Youtube)
Mutant X:  The Taking of Crows
Silk Stalkings:  The Party
Third Watch:  Leap of Faith 

The Mutant X example is unusual in that you see the girl's reaction 
during the cavity search, which I'd never seen in a TV show before. 
The Third Watch and Fall Guy examples are unusual, since the 
detective and the bounty hunter characters are incarcerated on 
bogus charges and have to face prison without even the flimsy 
safety net of being undercover.  In this way, they are more similar 
in tone to "GOTHIKA," where the lovely psychiatrist, played by 
Hallie Berry, finds herself imprisoned in her own asylum.

In the 1972 TV movie "Women in Chains" (also called "Terror in 
Cellblock C") the undercover safety net vanishes.  Lois Nettleton 
plays a goody-goody parole officer who sets up a phony ID for 
herself with her co-worker so that she can investigate a series 
of mysterious "accidents" in a woman's prison.  Basking in 
self-righteousness, our intrepid reformer truly goes all the 
way: not only does she fake a prison record for herself and put 
needle marks in her arms, she actually dyes her hair blonde.  
Unfortunately, her co-worker (the only other person who knows 
about her field trip) is accidentally killed, and our little 
princess is in prison for real.

This scenario offers the best of both worlds: a voluntary 
incarceration where the cavalry is destroyed on the way. 
  
Some highlights:  

a) In reception, our undercover officer endures a most unpleasant 
delousing.  One particular shot shows a prisoner's point-of-view, 
with the hose spraying directly at the camera.  I liked that shot 
a lot, and it made me think about how much (even for guys) 
submission scenarios are fantasy fulfillments.  After all, when 
you write, or fantasize, you are all the characters, and think of 
things from their point of view.  My stories, for example, are much 
more from the woman's point of view than the guy's.  Interesting....

b) Surprised that no one comes to rescue her, she sneaks to a phone 
and calls her friend for help.  Horrified to learn that her friend 
has been killed, she asks for her boss, only to have the temp 
secretary put her on hold.  She pleads for her to listen, but the 
muzak starts.  (Ha!  I guess in the modern version her call would 
be transferred to India.)  The guards burst in and drag her away 
from the phone just as her boss comes on the line.

c) At the end of the film, when she reveals to the other inmates 
that she"s really a parole officer trapped on the inside and 
targeted for termination by the head matron, she gets little 
sympathy.  Rather than protecting her, they accuse her of slumming, 
and basically tell her, "Welcome to our world, bitch!"  I think 
this scene also hits on a key element of these stories.  The 
undercover officer is, on some level, being punished for her 
arrogance in thinking that she can "handle" prison.  After all, 
she"s a cop, and she"s thrown lots of girls in jaill.  How much 
different can it be to be on the receiving end?  Lots different, 
as she finds out to her dismay (and the audience's delight). 

You can see the teaser and the first couple of minutes of this 
movie (and a brief glimpse of the delousing scene) here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgQmMRTJt0g&feature=related

Silk Stalkings isn't seen on television much nowadays, and it's an 
interesting hybrid of genres, so it deserves a mention.  In this 
one, Detective Cassie St. John (played by the lovely Janet Gunn -– 
google her picture for a treat!) is stopped for speeding in a small 
southern town.  She identifies herself as a police officer, but, 
unfortunately, she left her badge and gun in her other purse.  (I 
hate it when that happens.)   

The Sheriff hauls her off to jail, and, from her cell, she asks him 
to call her superior, Captain Bristol.  The Sheriff tells her he 
already called, and the Palm Beach police department claims they 
never heard of her.  Cassie pleads that it's obviously a dreadful 
and totally inexplicable mix-up (the audience will agree with her 
on that point), but, locked in a cell, what's a girl (or a viewer) 
to do?

She ends up in court, where she argues with the judge over the 
amount of her fine (always a good idea) and gets sentenced to 
duty at the Charlie's Angels Prison Farm.  And so our intrepid 
lady detective is dutifully "processed" into prison, and given 
hoe duty (the kind where you actually farm).

At this point, she makes a call to her aunt and tells her that 
she's going to be late for her niece's birthday party (at this 
rate, by about 3-5 years).  When she hangs up the phone, it's 
revealed that she's actually been talking to her captain...and 
that she"s undercover.

This makes no sense whatsoever, of course.  If she's undercover, 
why have her go in claiming to be herself and identifying herself 
as a police officer?  Wouldn't that make her investigation of the 
prison a tad more difficult?  

Clearly the writers were having fun with the notion of the powerful 
and in-charge Detective Cassie having an incredibly ditzy blonde 
moment and losing her badge and gun, at the same moment her police 
department decides to execute the bureaucratic blunder of all time 
by forgetting who she was.  They wanted to enjoy the sensation of 
having her trapped in a situation of ACTUAL powerlessness, as 
opposed to the more limited powerlessness that a genuine undercover 
assignment implies.  Trapped in a real prison on real charges, 
Cassie has "no authority, no rights, no backup." 

Sorry.  Wrong show.  Anyway, once it's established she's there 
undercover, we get a nice shower scene, a white slavery ring, 
and a party where Cassie is encouraged to become a ho (the other 
kind)  So after a cheerfully preposterous setup, they lapse into 
standard stuff from the Charlie's Angels playbook.

The setup actually reminds me a playful silly-putty version of LUST 
FOR FREEDOM, where a big city police detective is accidentally 
chucked into the prison farm as part of the county's free 
"incarcerate-the-pretty-travelers" program.  Of course, in this 
case, it's SLIGHTLY more believable.  Detective Jillian Cates stops 
to help another woman along the road, only to find that she's an 
escapee from the prison.  The Sheriff shows up, and Jillian agrees 
to accompany him to make a statement.  She is drugged, and the 
careless deputy ignores the contents of her purse (her badge and 
gun) when he processes her.  So, by the time she wakes up, she's 
in prison, and identifying her true status will only make things 
worse.

It also contains one of my favorite scenes.  Detective Cates is 
accompanying the Sheriff though the yard on her way to make her 
statement.  On the steps she encounters the brutish head matron, 
Miss Tasker, who is dragging another hapless inmate along to some 
unspeakable fate.  

Detective Cates looks quite fetching in her red shirt and white 
shorts, and Miss Tasker ogles her like a horny fraternity boy.

MISS TASKER (looking Jillian up-and-down): Is she staying with us?

JILLIAN (shocked!):  No!

MISS TASKER (to the Sheriff, ignoring Jillian): Is she staying with 
us?

SHERIFF:  Go about your business, Miss Tasker.

I love Jillian's shocked reply, and the way the butch Miss Tasker 
ignores her, as if her answer is entirely irrelevant -- because it 
is.  The irony is that our comely detective doesn't know her fate 
is entirely in the Sheriff's tender hands, at least not yet.  She 
still sees herself as Detective Cates and doesn't realize that, 
when she crossed into the prison, she became just another inmate.

I'd love to discuss "HEAT IN THE HOLE" from Pacific Blue, but 
apparently no Spanish-speaking people read the board and are 
willing to translate the Spanish language scene I've been 
puzzling over for years.  (Sigh!)  They've released season one 
on DVD –- only 4 more seasons to go....

If WIP pictures are studies in power reversals, then the undercover 
or falsely imprisoned cop would seem to offer the ultimate version 
of this fantasy.  What"s my favorite scenario?  I'm torn.  Although 
I love the "undercover" scenario, the sweet revenge on the 
psychiatrist in her own asylum, or the total dizziness of a 
competent and self-assured police officer like Cassandra Saint John 
losing her badge and getting chucked into prison has a certain 
delicious appeal.  I'd be curious to know what the readers think?  
Do you prefer...

1) An undercover cop (Charlie's Angels scenario)
2) An authority figure wrongly imprisoned (Gothika, Third Watch)
3) A reporter or talk show host after a scoop (Tyra, Linsey Mastis)
4) A housewife or college student, wrongly accused (Lifetime)
5) A criminal rightly convicted of her crimes?

I feel a poll coming on....



Edited by C. Lakewood



 
