Director Cal McMau spent 10 years doing research, mainly via watching phone-captured footage smuggled out of prison and uploaded to YouTube, some of which is replicated in the film itself. He also worked with advisors from prison-leaver support charity Switchback, in particular ex-prisoner and now mentor Kam Johnsepar, who was on hand to provide technical information (such as what kind of kettles they had in prison) as well as acting as an authenticity guide. He also became a sort of spiritual advisor to McMau, who began asking deeper, more profound questions about whether Johnsepar thought there were any positives to prison. “I remember him telling me that the only thing the system does well is to lock people up. There is no other single benefit,” McMau recalls.
There’s a saying which has its roots in politics but has come to embody the idea that representation needs to extend beyond depiction: ‘Nothing about us without us.” While it’s likely that Wasteman would have benefitted from more prisoners and ex-prisoners being more involved in the writing and creative process, and it’s undeniably important that prisoners have a voice in an industry obsessed with capitalising on their stories, it’s clear that an effort was made to integrate lived experience into Wasteman. Per McMau, this appears to be landing well: “Every prisoner’s experience is different, but when we’ve done screenings with ex-prisoners present they tend to say we got it bang on.”
This is not to say the film isn’t lacking in other places. Wasteman somewhat skims over an important point about why Taylor and Dee (or any of the other prisoners we meet) have ended up in the penal system. For prison abolitionists who believe in building a world without prisons, understanding the ‘why’ of prison is crucial to understanding why not.
Prison is a lazy afterthought – like policing, it’s a system that waits until harm has happened and then acts punitively. Abolitionists are dedicated to preventing and mitigating harm at the front end, which requires understanding the root causes. Prisoners are disproportionately impacted by poverty, structural racism, childhood trauma and abuse, mental illness and addiction. Prison cannot ever be the solution to crime, because by its nature it is traumatising, dangerous, violent and unsafe. Within Wasterman, we see this through Taylor’s admission that his drug addiction developed only once he was incarcerated.
Though the reasons people commit crimes are often socio-economic and political in nature, the state’s response is punitive rather than restorative – it is perceived as easier, cheaper and more convenient to disappear people than to tackle the root causes of their behaviour. But if we want to live in a safer world, we need to look at these root causes and create interventions, systems of support and structures of care. More concretely: housing, education, equal pay, access to mental health support, childcare support, access to healthy food and, when harm does arise, transformative approaches to dealing with it that don’t continue the cycle.
In Wasteman, the only glimpse we receive into why Taylor was selling the drugs that led to his conviction is that he wanted to provide for his newborn son. We’re left to wonder why drug dealing was Taylor’s only option and what led him down that path, with no answers ever forthcoming. For viewers used to more reductive portrayals of prisoners and the prison system, in which we are normally asked to empathise only with the wrongly convicted or those with ‘just’ motivations, the omission may feel a little frustrating and unsatisfying. Copaganda in its most insidious form peddles the notion that empathy with prisoners is only extended when we know all the details of their lives. As David Jonsson says when asked whether he devised a backstory for Taylor, “I don’t really like talking about my process.” Instead, he prefers to leave the audience to come to their own conclusions. “I think asking the question is probably more important than the answer, especially in today’s world where we all know how hard life is.”
Though it never emerges overtly in the film, Tom Blyth explains that he put considerable thought into Dee’s backstory. It’s one of violence, neglect and an overwhelming vulnerability that led to him refusing to be taken advantage of again, hence his violence, his propensity to “strike first.”