What was the realest thing about this episode’s story lines to you?
Laura Mandanas
There’s this quick little conversation that takes place between Flaca and Piper as they’re flipping through the lingerie catalog in Whispers.
Flaca: Man. Somehow my khakis be feeling extra khaki right now.
Piper: Oh come on, Gonzales. Looks are superficial. Everybody knows it’s about talent, originality, a sense of humor.
[Flaca catches Piper’s eye and they both crack up.]
Piper: What do you think it’s like to be her in real life? [Holds up another blonde in lingerie]
Flaca: Mmm. She eats pills and ice cream and cries at night, and she cuts herself, but on her scalp so no one can see.
Piper: So it’s still better than our lives!
Flaca: I would be her in a second.
I mean, I get that they’re bonding over being in prison. But also, I’ve had similar exchanges with female friends? Especially when I was younger and didn’t know anything about feminism. I remember being in high school and feeling so much pressure to be this certain kind of sexy — this white, skinny, unattainable, super consumable thing. I would have given anything to be that! I’d have traded my health and my happiness in a heartbeat, if I thought it would make me beautiful. At different times and in different ways, I have done that. I think a lot of us have.
KaeLyn
When I saw the episode title flash on the screen, I immediately had two thoughts: 1) Finally, we are going to hear Chang say more than two words and 2) Is this going to be the worst? (Flashback to being bullied by kids in elementary school who would pull their eyes into slits and yell, “ching chang” at me.) Until this episode, Chang was a character that I couldn’t identify much with simply because she is barely ever written into the show. It’s annoying to me that in a show with so much diversity, the only season one Asian character is basically silent and written for comic relief.
On the other hand, being the only Asian girl in my mostly white neighborhood and life for most of my life, there was something annoyingly familiar about the dismissal of Chang’s existence. She doesn’t have a group of peers or even a friend in Litchfield. In the scene where she sits atop a picnic table to enjoy her Fritos/pea cake (good cook and thrifty, indeed), she looks across the yard at the different social groups thoughtfully. Some may have read this as loneliness, but I don’t get the sense that she wants to join them.
It is symbolically the moment Chang killed the male gaze in her life, decided not to give a fuck about her brother or being attractive to any man, and started investing in her own survival.
She has carved out this place on the margins that is comfortable, where she has learned to be alone and even cultivated some small perks (her cushy commissary job, her secret tablet to watch her shows). In fact, when Soso approaches her to attempt a connection, she pushes her away (by invalidating Soso’s ethnicity and saying she is Scottish, which was really hurtful, Chang!). I honestly relate more to Soso than to Chang, but I generally relate to the way that white people erase the identities of Asian women, either through outdated “mystical Chinese stereotypes” (Chang) or putting them in a white-washed model minority box (Soso, and also me).
How does this tie into beauty standards and Chang? It goes back to the matchmaking scene (ugh), where it is made quite clear to young Chang that she will not be able to rely on her looks because she is not conventionally beautiful. I related to the feeling that conventional beauty was a thing I’d never be able to reach, a way to access power that felt blocked off to me growing up. No matter how smart or hardworking I was, I could never be pretty enough.
In the end, it is Chang’s intellect and courage that saves her and continues to save her. Her one act of visibility, of standing front and center and looking the embodiment of that rejection in the eyes, could have been a moment of forgiveness. But young Chang chooses the knife. The pain of her invisibility is literally violent and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t cheering for her. In the rewriting of that moment, the script Chang wrote for acting class, she reclaims that moment, literally eating her victim’s gall bladder/heart/dick/liver (I guess we’ll never know). It is symbolically the moment Chang killed the male gaze in her life, decided not to give a fuck about her brother or being attractive to any man, and started investing in her own survival.
Fikri
Like KaeLyn, I was ready to hate this episode. (Spoiler alert: I kinda did.) You see the title “Ching Chong Chang” appear on your screen, after all, but then Chang says “Fuck you, cracker” to Pennsatucky and I feel like okay, maybe some balance has been restored in this world.
I know Heather’s summed up this episode as being about “the effects of cis white beauty ideals on all women” but what was most valuable to me about Chang’s storyline was that it wasn’t about that. Chang was subject to Chinese beauty standards, not white ones; while reconizing that they intersect and interact with each other in some ways, it’s important to recognize the differences in the standards of “beauty” that we’re held up to. Just as you can’t understand the Korean beauty industry through a white USAmerican lens, you can’t make sense of the experiences of an Asian migrant woman through Piper Chapman’s eyes. (But also maybe just never look at things in life through a Piper-tinted lens, ever.) Black Cindy and Flaca get at this in their conversation about black vs white standards of beauty.
Just as you can’t understand the Korean beauty industry through a white USAmerican lens, you can’t make sense of the experiences of an Asian migrant woman through Piper Chapman’s eyes.
If there’s anything to be salvaged from the mail-order bride/arranged marriage situation (I feel like neither of these terms 100% accurately describe what happened here, but I’m unsure what else to call it), it’s the brute honesty about the transactional nature of beauty and marriage, echoed in Red’s speech to Healey about stripping away a woman’s power and leaving her with only her sexuality. There’s plenty to be explored here from a feminist perspective by those with more patience than me, but honestly, the way this episode was written, Chang’s storyline was set up to be more mocking the assumed cultural backwardness of a specific racial community than truly interrogating the gendered dynamics of “beauty.” If we can dismiss Chang’s treatment as part of her “culture,” then we don’t have to think about the commodification of women’s looks and bodies in our own lives.
Still, the “girl power” ending to the in-prison dramatic reenactment was great.
Were there any parts of the conversations/stories that didn’t ring true?
Laura Mandanas
That scene in the parking lot with Chang — was it really necessary to have the martial arts come out? Because doing that with like, the mail order bride, the organized Asian crime, the broken English: it was a bit much. I found the heavy reliance on stereotypes throughout this story to be lazy.
KaeLyn
There are just so many pieces of the Chang story that felt awfully stereotypical. The martial arts in the fight scene. The very stereotypical Chinese matchmaker scene. The Chinese gang who traffics illegal medicinal items from the Koreans. I mean, come on. It was one step away from going into “kung fu parody movie” mode. Chang has been a walking Chinese stereotype up to this point, for the audience and for other characters to ridicule. She barely speaks at all. Unlike Soso, who has at least had some story development, Chang just shuffles around in the background. She is the “sneaky Asian” and the “weird Chinese lady” and that is lazy writing. We are finally getting a chance to see where she comes from and why she is in Litchfield and I just wanted so much more for her. I wanted the nuance that other characters get that keep them from being only stereotypes, even if their storylines can also be stereotypical. I wanted something that felt real.
But I still loved parts of Chang’s story, especially seeing what she does at Litchfield every day. I want to see more of Chang and I’d really like to see more of Chang and So So talking to each other.
Fikri
Echoing everything that’s been said before: I hated the heavy use of stereotypes in this episode. I was hoping Chang would get a backstory similar to, say, Rosa’s past as a kickass bank robber, but nope, of course she was involved in smuggling turtle eggs. Of course! It’s also a bit of a stretch for smugglers to unhesitatingly turn into cold-blooded killers but why let that get in the way of convenient plot/character development, eh?
Yao
I was really glad that there was actually a back story for Chang (because I wouldn’t be surprised given past experience with American TV if the older Asian lady remained invisible). It was refreshing to see that Soso’s story isn’t the stereotypical drug smuggling/mail order bride/sex trafficking, but I see that they filled that in for Chang.
I love the part about Chang’s story where she talks back at the women who called her names; it felt very close to home when I was one of the few Asian faces in an American high school. People just talked and snickered through me. And as part of reality, it was my first year in the US so I indeed did not understand most of the English, and didn’t speak it very fluently either.
What’s tricky is to appreciate the episode on my own terms without endorsing the lazy use of stereotypes and deem it authentic.
Which brings me back to the stereotypical story line. Stereotypes stick around because there’s reality stuck to it. Illegal trades and mail order brides are not entirely made up, while the martial arts seems entirely superficial and sort of random. If there’s any benefits of that, I’d say it gave Asian actors more camera time.
I don’t hate the episode so much because I identify with the kind of solidarity that Chang shows. Her character didn’t get as much involvement in the show, just like Chang didn’t participate so much in American society/prison politics, and it unfortunately more or less accurately reflects reality. What’s tricky is to appreciate the episode on my own terms without endorsing the lazy use of stereotypes and deem it authentic.
Final Thoughts & Feelings
Laura Mandanas
Soso’s thing about white people seeing her as Chinese and Asian people seeing her as Scottish was really real. I’m happy they included that.
KaeLyn
The bathroom scenes between Piper and Chang in this episode were some of my favorite. In the first scene, Piper and Alex are making fun of Chang, whispering like she can’t see or hear them even though she is right there, when she confronts them, “Hey, lesbians. My eyes squinty, but ears work fine.” Later, when Piper is caught by Chang looking at herself in the mirror, they have this moment in reverse:
Piper: [admiring her pink panties in the mirror, doesn’t see Chang come into the bathroom]
Chang: You like Bo Derrick, Tarzan, 1981.
Piper: [mortified] Please pretend that you didn’t just see this.
Chang: I don’t see nothing. [turns back to mirror]
Piper: I just wanted to feel pretty.
Chang: [glances at Piper, nods]
Piper: Chang…I’m sorry about the other day.
Chang: Thank you, lesbian.
Chang doesn’t laugh at Piper. She understands. When Piper says Chang’s name and pauses and for a moment they just look at each other, there is this sincere expression on Chang’s face. It is one of the few times—maybe the only time—we see Chang make direct eye contact with another person in Litchfield. Her guard is down for just a second because maybe, maybe Piper is actually going to see her.
At the end of the day, Chang is still not much more than a sidenote, and this episode did little to undo the othering of her — setting her up as an isolated walking stereotype — that has been consistent throughout the show.
Fikri
My friend/Autostraddle member/A-Camp veteran Carmen C would like to add:
I wish the chinese in OITNB wasn’t so obviously translated from English. You cannot follow English grammatical rules for Chinese (as was yelled at me loudly and often by my Chinese teachers). For example “你说你要我们把他怎么办？” makes very little sense.
One last thing that bugs me about this episode (I’m sorry! I told you I hated it!) was that Chang’s backstory is probably not going to be worked into the rest of the prison’s story in any meaningful way, just as how Chang is going to be relegated back to the sidelines after this. (Compare this to, for example, the focus on Norma in the next episode. While previously a minor character too, Norma gets her own episode and it’s one that is of consequence to the main plotline and her character development.) At the end of the day, Chang is still not much more than a sidenote, and this episode did little to undo the othering of her — setting her up as an isolated walking stereotype — that has been consistent throughout the show.
Yao
At the end of the day I’m glad Chang’s story is in there, but it feels a bit like doing the bare minimum. I enjoyed the plot and hearing Chinese on American TV and seeing two Asian characters making a conversation in English (Because guess what? It happens IRL!!) but I cringe a little when people with little or no knowledge to Asian American history or the social context say ‘Chang’s story is so powerful and amazing’ because I don’t think it’s THERE.
Next episode: The origin of Norma’s misandry and her ascension to deity.
Pages: 1 2 3 4See entire article on one page
It is as if the writers of Chang’s backstory did not know how to build in complexity and humanity into Chang’s lines. Besides the priceless bathroom scene where Chang is given visibility, and validity, in her interaction with Piper, where Chang shows Piper how to interact with another human being with dignity, confidentiality, and respect, and just for a moment, Chang is there, taking up space and time as though she existed beyond her limited and go nowhere excuse for pre prison life. I can’t imagine if the OITNB writers have given themselves enough credible leads in introducing Chang as a Human, to develop her as nuanced, idiosyncratic, paradoxical, with conviction enough to extend her character into future central storylines, say, in the way that Pennsatucky, Black Cindy, Gloria or Big Boo have grown. I was cheering for Chang, as her temperament of being so far, contained, self sufficient as to ?not want small talk, or risk her security, could be represented with more authenticity and investment. I was disappointed at the lack of investment of complexity and depth in her character.
Same. I just felt like they could have done so much more. But they haven’t really built anything around Chang as a three dimensional character up to this point, so maybe it was too much to ask for one episode? However, I feel like the writers did it with Rosa in Season 2 in a really meaningful way. I’m glad they decided to finally focus on Chang as they have with other secondary characters. I just wanted more for her and better Asian representation on the show, in general.
Right. Like, yes she’s not trying to assimilate to white American culture, but that doesn’t mean she’s not relatable on a human level? As a first-generation American I’ve seen people in my parents’ immigrant community be “othered” due to their heavy accents in ways that are not always so blatant, but still quite damaging, especially in health care contexts. Though I am white and blend in with American culture, I see the struggles that my family and friends have had just to be treated as human sometimes. By portraying Chang as an immigrant who doesn’t mind being left alone and treated as other in an otherwise progressive show, it loses a dimension of humanness that is almost completely universal: the need for connection.
Thanks for taking the time to do this – the roundtable has added *so much* to my understanding of what was (and wasn’t) happening in this episode.
Netflix should hire you guys as script consultants, so that someone can say “martial arts moves? Really?” before they shoot these scenes.
Hah! I support this.
I think one of the more disappointing points is that they HAVE hired script consultants in the past!! For Sophia’s transition backstory and for Gloria’s Santeria backstory.
It just adds salt into the wound that they didn’t give Chang’s backstory the same level for forethought and respect.
(I have similar feelings about the complaints of the Chinese in Chang’s story; the Spanish is sooo accurate on the show, even down to the specific Caribbean regional dialects that are more likely to be found at a prison on the East Coast. It dissapoints me that they didn’t provide the same level of care to the grammatical errors that I’ve been told exist in Chang’s episode.)
Yeah, if they did hire Chinese consultants, they did a TERRIBLE JOB. LOL.
I’m down to be anyone’s token Asian if there’s $$ involved for real
I think we all would be our own token culture once $$ comes into play. I’ve see many middle eastern comedians say they had a movie roll playing a terrorist, again, cause the pay was good.
As long as complaining about it is still allowed.
Wow, you put a lot of effort into this recap. Good job, it was a great read.
More effort than the writers have to the actual episode
>One of the show’s most underused and only of the show’s only Asian
What about Soso? Also that sentence doesn’t make any sense?
I think it’s a typo and is supposed to read “…one of the show’s only Asian…”
This was such a great way to do the recap, I really appreciate the extra time and effort taken to make this right.
and Dottie did NOT drop the ball on purpose.
Laura, KaeLyn, Yao, and Fikri: Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys hustled over the holiday weekend to create this wonderful, insightful commentary, without which this recap would just be even more erasure for Chang. I learned so much reading your thoughts and am so so so thankful that I get to work with you every day.
KaeLyn, that part about Chang symbolically killing the male gaze was so on point, and I’m so glad you called it out. I would haven’t seen it on my own.
I learned so much from reading other people’s words, too! Thanks for including us all, Heather. It was a great way to process the mixed feelings I’ve been having about this episode.
I’m sorry but I found the writing for Change incredibly racist and predictable. Is it so much to ask that we get Asian characters with stories that don’t involve arranged marriages, Karate, Asian ~mysticism~ or violence?
Red/Gloria tho amirite
DOOOO ITTTTTT
Gled? Roria?
THIS WAS AN AWESOME RECAP.
I personally found the parts of the episode about Chang’s day really heartbreaking at first. Totally projected myself onto those lonely meals. Then I just found it kind of badass that she had a hidden bag of oranges and a phone – WHO PUT THE ORANGES THERE?!
I’ve always found Pilex/Aper a bit annoying/boring – but I’m really starting to actively dislike them in this series- they’ve been hella racist and bitchy. WTF is up with that?
Also- no spoilers but- can we all hold hands and eat marshmallows during the Episode 10-11 recaps? I really struggled with those episodes.
My money’s on either Fu or her brother leaving the oranges outside the fence.
I agree Piper and Alex have gotten oddly worse in season three especially after (spoilers) what Piper did to Flaca. I wanted Gloria and Aledia to beat her ass after that.
Episodes 10 and 11 though! I feel you! & we should absolutely do that because I had a difficult time watching those as well.
Also ep 12. Let’s not forget that one. (Or do forget that one if you think your mental health would be improved that way.)
aahhhh, thank you so much for the roundtable! I was having trouble articulating why this episode didn’t really do it for me, and it was so helpful to see my reactions reflected in other people’s responses. Also, I want more Soso in our lives. Hapa girls unite!
That screen cap of Chang looking at Piper– oh, my heart. KaeLyn, your commentary on here was really fantastic to read. Roundtables like this expand my worldview, which I appreciate so much.
It was such a moment. CHANG. I want to know you.
I have wondered where Chang’s story might get explored.
It just strikes me as kind of unique that the audience hasn’t been shown yet, a few things about Chang that seem to be pretty forthcoming and common for the show’s other characters.
Themes such as How does Chang cope with remaining sane and balanced while being in prison? Who supports her? Why have her desires and the struggle to fulfil her desires and goals while she is in prison not been elaborated on? Is she as self sufficient as she seems? She is not depicted as struggling, but she is visible by the very fact that her support systems within and outside of prison have not been disclosed and explored. No one is an island, but if Chang is an island, I wish the writers would provide context for how and why Chang is. Who is bringing her her supply of oranges and her cell phone? How does she fly so unnoticed under the radar to remove food items from her food tray in the cafeteria without anyone reprimanding her for doing so?
How did she get her job in commissary? Why is she in prison, exactly? I am hoping that the writers of OITNB have as yet not finalised her story, since there is so much to explore. Any thoughts? There is no danger of a spoiler here in speculating as season 4 has not been released.
I don’t know if Fikri can respond to questions, but do you know what a better translation of “你说你要我们把他怎么办” would have been? I studied mandarin chinese in the past, hence my curiosity.
What about “你要我们把他做什么?”
I’m a native speaker and I feel like it’s not grammatically wrong, but it’s just a lot of words for that sort of moment…it’s unnatural.
你想怎么处置他or 咱们该怎么处理这个家伙or something like that would have been better.
It just showed that they didn’t have a script consultant who was fluent in Chinese while they wrote this. x_x
I’ve thought about it quite a bit, and I feel like 你说你要我们把他怎么办 in the context translates into “how do you want us to do to him?” rather than “what do you want us to do to him?”
It really should have been “你说，你要我们对他怎么样？” That would be the closest to what they did.
Or also what Yao Xiao said, those sentences flow waaay better.
“If Mary had Jesus and Jesus was the Lamb of God, Mary had a little lamb”
Mind blown
“One last thing that bugs me about this episode (I’m sorry! I told you I hated it!) was that Chang’s backstory is probably not going to be worked into the rest of the prison’s story in any meaningful way, just as how Chang is going to be relegated back to the sidelines after this.”
Yes this! Even just from a storytelling point of view, nothing about Chang or her backstory ended up going anywhere this season and I’d be surprised if that changed next year. It felt gratuitous, which made the stereotypes all the more egregious. If you’re gonna tell a story that riddled with stereotypes, make it matter.
Who else was super excited to see Lori Petty’s character again? And who else exclaimed, “TANK GIRL!!!” when she stepped off the van. Just me?
No, she’s so great! I really love her, and that voice.
Thanks so much for this. This is why Autostraddle rocks so much. .. no matter what minority within our minority is representedby something, more often than not you find someone who identifies with it to share it with us.
I’m reading the AE OITNB recaps too, mostly out of boredom and I’ve realised what difference it makes.(and not just OITNB – exactly the same thing with Transparent and The Rich Man’s Daughter…) it’s always better here when you put the effort into matching the best writer/s to the task! :)
I feel like in general they give the ‘Piper lens’ on the world and you guys share the lens around for the betterment of us all.
I love this about AS, too! I don’t know any of “lesbian site” that does this with as much integrity as AS does.
This article was so great and insightful. I was so excited and pleased that Chang was getting an actual backstory. She had been used pretty much exclusively for comic relief in past seasons, and I was afraid that her character wasn’t going to be explored at all. But I was kind of disappointed in all the stereotypes. Maybe if there were more Asian characters on the show with lots of varied backstories, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But when the Asian representation is so low, every single stereotype that you put into one character becomes that much more prominent. I was really enjoying young Chang being so strong and badass, but I literally could not believe that they threw a martial arts fighting scene into the mix. Talk about excessive.
I don’t know. Like Heather, I’m a white woman, so my views are limited. I just was so happy that you guys did this roundtable thing. It was really helpful to me and opened my eyes to a lot of issues I was blind to because of my white privilege. Thank you!
I’m so glad the roundtable was part of this recap. People have been saying OITNB has a problem with how they underuse their two Asian characters, and it looks like this ep didn’t really redeem the writers on that front — too many stereotypes.
I just watched this episode today and was unsure how I felt about it afterward. The roundtable format was super helpful in clarifying the many things going on and helping me see things in ways that I, as a white woman, did not before. Thank you for this!
Even as an Asian woman, I’m a Korean adoptee, not Chinese. I learned a lot from other people’s words, too! Especially the note from Carmen C and Yao Xiao’s contributions.
I don’t know why, but I am finding this season INCREDIBLY hard to binge.
Even with the extra Alex.
I really liked that they showed Chang making her own food that seemed way more appetizing than any of the other food available. I would agree that I don’t think she was envying the prison families, she seems very set in her independence and self made comforts.
Wow! This really hit the nail on the head!
I always enjoy reading the OITNB recaps, but am especially grateful for this one because when I watched the episode, the source I was watching it from didn’t provide subtitles. So the recap helped me to catch up on the parts I missed! I did roll my eyes pretty hard at the martial arts scene though – thanks for calling out the stereotyping. Really appreciated the round-table discussion.
i really appreciated the roundtable at the end of the recap! i also had some weird feelings about this episode–glad they included a backstory, but why choose THIS backstory, stereotypes, etc–so reading about how y’all felt about it was helpful with organizing my feelings about it.
Regarding Chang’s backstory, it felt too much like an 80s American action-movie style storyline to me, and I felt a bit ripped-off compared to the back-stories of some of the other characters.
But then I wasn’t sure whether I was so disappointed because I’m Asian and so to me it’s the Asian storyline that’s dripping in stereotype, or whether folks from other minority backgrounds feel like the back-stories of other minority characters were similarly as overtly stereotypical?
But to echo what everyone else has said, it’s really disappointing that Chang is still on the periphery. I’d be really really pleased if they somehow utilised Chang’s invisibility (the scene where the brother points out that they’d use Chang because she’s invisible really rang true for me), and have some sort of ‘it was Chang all along’ reveal of a major plot-point or season arc.
Echoing others above – great recap, and I’m so glad the roundtable was part of it. Y’all are so insightful, I love it!
Also I just watched A League of Their Own for the first time about a week ago (even though I was a Rockford Peach at A-Camp 4.0, whoops) and I thought that Kit and Lolly(?) looked very similar but I didn’t realize they were the same actress until right now!! Also p. sure the ball was dropped on purpose.
Chang is the QUEEN of awesome. the QUEEN.
*Cue hard rock rebel girl soundtrack* I’M BACK