Keira-anne.com

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been burning through all six seasons of HBO’s ‘Oz.’ In a nutshell, the program follows a large group of inmates in a fictional maximum security correctional facility in an unnamed U.S. state. Within the Oswald State Correctional Facility – or “Oz” as it’s known on the street – exists a place called “Emerald City” (aka “Em City”).

Em City is an experimental unit within the prison where inmates are allowed to wear their own clothes, interact with each other and work at jobs within the prison on the conditions that they attend classes and rehabilitation counselling, to name a few particulars. What’s most interesting about the cell block is that Aryans, Spanish, Irish, Muslims and a number of other ethnic groups attempt to co-exist together. Beyond that, I’ll not say anything because there are several people I know who have recently been turned on to the show and I would hate to ruin anything for any of them.

Photo: Ughman on Flickr

Yes, I do realize that this show is a work of fiction. At the end of each day, I’m sure the characters each washed off their “tattoos” before going home to their wives and children to prepare for another day’s work. However, it is the raw reality of humanity that this program touched on through actors (who are incredibly symbolic of you, me and the people before and behind you) that moved me in my core. And while none of it is true, the show is based on truth – human truth. The dialogue and the events quite literally force one to re-examine what we hold tight to through watching others experience similar circumstances.

“There are some confessions you can’t even make to yourself. Yearnings, desires, that you admitted to having you’d had to stop being who you are. And the facade you build so carefully will crumble, exposing to those around you, what really makes you tick.”

Last night I watched the very final episodes, and what I came to realize in those last few hours was, simply put, devastating. In one of the final episodes, tensions arose over the fate of a prisoner who was being held on death row and whether or not it was “ethical” to execute him as had been ordered by the State.

As the clock ticked down and straps were fastened, I found myself suddenly in a pool of my own tears as I sat there on my living room floor. I cried. I cried harder than I have in months, my body heaving in sobs.

Photo: Prof. Jas. Mundie on Flickr

That humanity I spoke of – the raw reality of it – it’s something that is too quickly defined without any true consideration. As I sat watching that particular scene, what struck me opened up a floodgate that brought out the heavy grief. Different values are placed on different lives, and each time, the basis for that evaluation is unique.

Let’s say one man takes another man’s life and so it’s considered by some as justifiable to strap him to a chair and thrust electric currents through his body or pump his arm full of venomous toxins. It’s a sense of redemption to the family of the man who was killed. But what about the executed man’s family? Are they not left with the same void?

And while I know the death penalty isn’t a method of punishment used in Canada, it’s wide-spread in many areas of the United States and many, many countries around the world. However, my point here is not about whether or not it’s okay to sentence someone to die. My point is that what matters most is to look behind the moral wrongdoing and look at the person. This very idea is what watching ‘Oz’ has prompted me to do.

Photo: Hotel Lyric [35] on Flickr

While it’s true that prisons are packed full of murderers, arsonists, rapists and the like, at the heart of the matter, they are all still people whether men or women. Behind the moral wrongdoings are sons and daughters, people with heart and true emotions. Somewhere along the way, their moral compasses became scrambled – even if only for a moment – and has changed their lives completely.

“So, what have we learned? What’s the lesson for today? For all the never-ending days and restless nights in Oz? That morality is transient? That virtue cannot exist without violence? That to be honest is to be flawed? That the giving and taking of love both debases and elevates us? That God or Allah or Yahweh has answers to questions we dare not even ask? The story is simple: a man lives in prison and dies. How he dies? That’s easy. The who and the why is the complex part. The human part. The only part worth knowing…”

It is so easy and quick to judge and label these “criminals and scumbags,” but are those of us on the outside really that much better than these people? Who of us has not lied to our loved ones, stolen, cheated, raged or delighted in our own dances with malice?

If there were laws against such trespasses of the heart, we would all be guilty.