One Line Review: A pitiful attempt with an even more pitiful result.
Youtube Trailer Jailbirds
Starring: Gaylon Beason, Taylor Coatney
Director: Taylor Coatney
Release Date: 24 September 2021
Introduction
Jailbirds New Orleans is a recently released reality television series that takes place in New Orleans’ prison cells. The show is divided into three episodes, each of which is a little more than forty minutes in length. As a result, the total time spent watching has been reduced to slightly less than two hours.
Plot Summary and analysis
This gritty reality series follows the lives of women incarcerated at the Orleans Correctional Facility in New Orleans, where they engage in feuds, flirtations, and toilet conversations.
When it comes to dealing with prison life, Jailbirds New Orleans is, to put it mildly, trite in its presentation of the situation. It focuses on the much more minor issues associated with the way prison systems operate in the majority of countries. The absence of conveniences such as packaged food or makeup, as well as the activities that the women engage in during their spare time, become focal points.
Unsure of Intentions
Although it’s a series that could easily be finished in one sitting, the question is whether you’d want to. The mini web series is a part of a larger series of reality television episodes that will focus on the women who are imprisoned in Sacramento. According to Netflix, the show offers an ‘up-close and scandalous’ view of these women, which has sparked quite a stir on the internet. How ethical is it to film people in the course of their daily lives in a way that appears to be staged? Let’s see what we can find out:
Reality television has always been controversial, but filming incarcerated women in jail as a means of entertainment raises questions not only about the ethics of trashy television but also about the ethics of filming women in jail in the first place. Rather than capturing detained women as they interact with their friends and go about their daily lives in prison, Netflix instead attempts to create some sort of “scandalous” spectacle out of their situation.
What is the ‘grit’ that Netflix promised? That’s right, it’s completely absent.
Orange Is the New Black, for example, is a show that covers all of these topics. Despite the fact that they are not reality television, they appear to be more grounded in reality than the new Netflix show.
As much as possible, the show attempts to provide a wholesome approach to the lives of these women held in captivity by focusing on some of the more “fun” aspects of their lives such as their friendships, bathroom conversations, and bizarre prison hacks, while failing to recognize that these hacks should not have been necessary in the first place. Prison systems around the world (with the exception of a few) are designed to punish rather than to redeem, and while a show like this attempts to dilute that sentiment, it only serves to exaggerate it.
It gives the impression that prison is much less difficult than it actually is. What’s particularly ironic is that this type of reality television isn’t particularly realistic in the first place.
Conclusion
What was Netflix thinking when they created this?
Please do not misunderstand me. Making a reality television show about life in prison could be eye-opening and, as a result, extremely important to the public. However, Jailbirds New Orleans portrays prison life as if it were a never-ending dorm party, which, of course, it is not.
A pitiful attempt with an even more pitiful result. Even though it is only a few minutes long, I personally would not recommend it.
