Doing (Queer) Time in Wentworth

This chapter interrogates what it means to ‘do time’ in Australian prison drama Wentworth, a series following a group of inmates and correctional officers in a fictional Victorian women’s prison. Within the prison system, time has a central disciplinary function. As Rosenberg (2017: 79) argues, time is ‘a particularly effective tool to punish, control, homogenize and normalize’. Exploring how these dynamics are made manifest through television, this chapter reveals the manipulations and control of time within the prison genre using queer theory to focus on the intersections between time, power and sexuality. As this chapter highlights, Wentworth’s inmates are all ‘doing time’ for some reason or other, as the correctional officers monitor, control and regulate it. While they are locked in the prison, Wentworth’s ensemble of inmate characters are locked out of what queer theorists call ‘straight time,’ a term used to describe linear and progressive life narratives associated with heteronormativity. Through close analysis of Wentworth, this chapter explores the implications of this, highlighting the intersections between time, power and sexuality in the series.