A weird phenomenon I’ve noticed for years is that whenever you see a prison depicted on a TV show or in a film the prison guards are the bad guys. Why is this? Surely it should be the prisoners who are shows as the bad guys and the contrast of the prison guards showed alongside the prisoners should highlight even more that they are the heroes. But no it’s not like that.
The Shawshank Redemption, Escape From Alcatraz, Prison Break, Porridge, Escape Plan, Orange is the New Black, The Running Man, Face Off, Shutter Island…the list goes on and on. I can’t think of a single example of a movie or show that depicts a prison where the guards, and the warden aren’t the scum of the earth and the corrupt spawn of Satan.
The Green Mile! For those who have seen the Stephen King story starring Michael Clarke Duncan and Tom Hanks, you’ll know that Hanks plays a prison guard and he’s a good guy. This is true, but it’s also true that the villain of the movie isn’t the prisoners. Michael Clarke Duncan plays a wrongly accused man and is the hero of the film. Hanks and one or two others are shown to be kindly and considerate prison guards, but the main bad guy in the film is one of the prison guards who is shown to be cruel and purposely brutally executes one of the prisoners who was also shown to be a gentle and sympathetic character.
And yeah for those of you who have seen the British TV comedy Porridge that starred Ronnie Barker, the mild Mr Barrowclough was far from a villain. He instead was shown as well intentioned, nervous and easily manipulated, but still shown to maybe bend some rules in his favour. Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher was the hero even though he was a repeat offender and the cast of prison mates were generally shown as the heroes. The hard Mr Mackay was the foil to Fletcher and whilst still likeable and getting laughs (this was a sitcom after all) he was absolutely the bad guy of the piece.
Escape from Alcatraz is an interesting one as the warden is shown to be the worst of the worst who takes issue with a prisoner who did a portrait of him, so he took his paints away. The prisoner is so distraught he cuts off his own fingers. This is most interesting because Escape From Alcatraz is based on a true story. It tells the real-life story of the escape of three inmates with Clint Eastwood playing the lead prisoner. The thing is these guys were guilty of crimes like armed robbery, and yet in the film they were presented as the protagonists and the guards as the villains.
Shawshank is one of those films that is always said to be the best film ever and it stars Tim Robbins as a man wrongly accused of killing his wife. He is innocent and he ends up cooking the books for all the corrupt prison guards and especially the warden. By the end of the film, it’s the Warden and guards that the cops turn up to arrest. This even draws a fascinating aspect of this phenomenon to light. Why is it that for the most part the cops are still shown as heroes but as soon as the criminals are put away, we’re shown the inmates as heroes and the guards as criminals.
I think there are several reasons for this. Certainly, there are corrupt cops, and there are plenty of films that show this, but usually a corrupt cop will end up getting found out and their comeuppance being arrested by good cops at the end. I think the main reason prison guards are rarely shown as the heroes is because there would be no story if they were.
A cop has to investigate and hunt down the bad guys, but all a prison guard has to do is keep them behind bars. The prison guards didn’t solve the crime or capture the baddies. They just stop them getting out. Certainly, this is a noble endeavour, but the odds are clearly stacked in the favour of the prison guards in this scenario. The crooks have already been caught so their threat and power has been diminished. If, however, you play things so that the prisoners are shown to be the good guys they are clearly the underdogs in the scenario of being in a prison with a lot higher stakes.
A prisoner has restrictions on where they can go, who they can interact with and lack freedom. They are also surrounded by criminals which adds danger for which they are not allowed weapons to defend themselves. If you add that even the prison guards are corrupt and an extra threat then the character type of a prisoner has a mountain to climb to get their happily ever after. And what would that be? The goals of a prisoner are very simple. They want their freedom and they want to survive. It’s such an easy story to tell as everyone can instantly understand the situation they are in and what the stakes and risks are.
So, could a movie or TV show ever work where its straight down the middle and the inmates of a prison are the bad guys and the warden and guards are the heroes? Certainly. It must be possible. I’d suggest that an easy story to tell to achieve this (and I’ll be honest it may have been done) would be that a criminal holds a grudge against a prison guard and the inmates manage to get control of the prison. This scenario did happen to a degree in the show Prison Break and an episode or two showed the prison in lockdown with guards and medical staff in peril. The trouble here is that in Prison Break the main heroes were shown to be wrongly accused criminals and there were still corrupt guards in the story.
Even if this story was told you see how it would require the villainous criminals to somehow redress the balance of power and be in control for the story to work. Could there be a movie that just showed the prison guards working their day to day job and the criminals be locked up behind bars? It just doesn’t work. If a show followed the life of a prison guard it could happen, but I believe that the prison work would just become incidental to there being more focus on the personal relationships at home than anything to do with their work in the prison.
Can you think of any examples where the prison guards and warden are absolutely the good guys and the prisoners are the bad guys? Let us know in the comments!
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