The Stranger Inside

http://www.kissingfingertips.com/strangerinside.html

When reading for this week, my mind kept going back to a film I saw on HBO like 8 years ago or so. It took me a minute on the WWW to find it (cause I couldn't get my finger on the title) but as soon as I found it I remembered the whole thing. The Stranger Inside is a film about a lifer in prison trying her mother she never knew. The film is gritty and very culturally driven. Here's where it gets contentious...exactly what culture is driving the film? The main characters of the show are predominantly Black (one boricua?), with some minor racial tensions/violence with a few White women. There are a few sex scenes that if I remember correctly were brief but made to do lots more for the story than demonstrate lesbian love.

So what culture drives this film? Perhaps it lies in what is most important to the individual viewer. I have seen this film described as a story of a lesbian woman looking for her mother in prison. I have seen it described as a Black film. I have seen it described as a prison film. I see it as a tragic story about a woman's quest to find her mother...rooted in the experiences that being in prison, being Black and being a lesbian (whatever all these things actually mean). What kind of film would it be for you?

Let me real quick tie this into our readings on sexuality in prisons. The sex scenes in this movie took place in a chapel confessional. The main character was made to appear as masculine, while receiving oral sex from a very feminine and diminutive younger woman. Two things strike me about these scenes. The first is the manner in which the film addresses the sex between women as consensual and neither significant or shocking to the story - just simply a part of the main character's life. The second thing that strikes me is the positioning of these scenes within the prison chapel. The quiet juxtaposition of homosexuality and the church/religion could be interpreted in many ways: the 'defilement' of the religious space of those that has persecuted homosexual peoples; the alignment of religion with homosexuality (they can exist in the same space); an analogy to the privacy of the confessional with the hidden nature of homosexuality in our society; etc. For me, it is all of these. What does this image conjure in your mind?