"Hot Girls Wanted": A Female Perspective on Porn Operation
THIS YEAR, NETFLIX WENT IN RUSSIA, along with dozens of TV shows and lots of movies. Among them, the documentary "Hot Girls Wanted", produced by Rashid Jones, is a hit of the last year’s Sundance Festival about young girls who start their career in porn. The documentary attracted a lot of attention and caused polar reviews, for example, accusations of bias on the part of the porn industry workers. "Hot Girls Wanted" nevertheless raises important ethical questions: who and at what price keeps this industry afloat, why young girls choose such a job and what it says about the state of modern society.
There are several eternal themes that inevitably lead to violent disputes - and pornography is one of them. Although porn has long become a huge industry and has become part of not just pop culture, but also the lives of almost everyone who has a computer, it is still not accepted to discuss it. Instead of an open dialogue about the impact of pornography and ethical production, people prefer to remain silent, partly because any discussion inevitably turns into a moral battle unfolding against the background of the fundamental ideas of good and evil. Nevertheless, the modern porn industry needs to be discussed: explore how it affects us and our ideas; raise sharp polls about exploitation and violence. It is difficult to disassemble it by the bones - and those who try to address a particular topic are inevitably criticized for their narrow-mindedness.
The documentary "Hot Girls Wanted", shot with the support of actress and screenwriter Rashida Jones, focuses on one particular niche - the genre of "unprofessional" porn, in which very young girls are shot: at the time of the shooting, the career of some heroines was only a couple of weeks. The camera follows each step of novice actresses, allowing you to look at the industry from the inside.
For novice porn actresses, such a job is an opportunity to break out of the province, earn money, touch fame and a luxurious lifestyle - at least, it seems to them. They hide their choice from loved ones, but without success: it is impossible to become famous on the Internet so that your friends do not know about it. Helps find the roles of the girls their manager. According to him, they do not linger longer than a couple of months: the public is constantly eager for new faces, and every day several candidates who have just stepped over the threshold of adulthood respond to his announcements on Craigslist.
"Hot Girls Wanted" was born from a lively Rashida Jones twitter discussion on pornography. She expressed regret that porn populated the pop culture and we began to consume it, even when we do not go to porn sites. Jones is concerned about how the sexualized images become generally accepted, but they are not completely filtered, and then, without any context, they are in the field of view of children and, in particular, girls and girls. Thinking about this, along with directors Jill Bower and Ronna Gradus, as well as screenwriter Brittany Huckabee, Jones took up a documentary about young girls who decided to become professional "unprofessional" porn actresses.
Porn industry, by its very existence, raises so many questions that it would be enough for topics for dissertations in economics, psychology, sociology, medicine and culture for decades to come. In this case, of course, for women, they are particularly acute: porn is still a male territory, aimed at men, and the involvement of women in it remains controversial.
We are still embarrassed to talk about pornography openly, and those who are ready for this, prefer to convince in their position, rather than conduct a real dialogue. Views on women in porn are polar: some consider this a liberating and feminist practice, because women take control of their bodies and get paid for it; Pornography also breaks the false stereotype that women do not like sex in principle. Others - that porn is inherently humiliating for women, and the roles they play in causes damage to healthy ideas about sex, exploits women and destroys respect for them.
At the root of "Hot Girls Wanted" is a very personal story, but not because some of the creators starred in porn (no, they were not filmed), but because this is a film made by women about women. Jones and her comrades are not trying to pull away, but on the contrary - with all their heart they worry about their heroines, seeing in them a whole generation of lost young women. It’s hard not to agree when, in an interview with Vice Rashid, Jones says that it’s worth starting a conversation about porn because it’s not going anywhere. However, you need to think about the conditions on which the industry will remain. For Jones, it is much more important to ask questions than to get ready-made solutions - and its documenting is successful.
The creators are trying to explain the difference between "sexuality" and "sexualization", but in words it turns out much better than in the movies. For the first, personal preferences of a person are important, and the focus remains on his intimate preferences. The second is an analogue of objectification, when sexuality is sold and used, that is, one who possesses it is made an object. And although the movie opens with a montage of nude pictures by Kim Kardashian, provocative Niki Minaj in Anaconda and American Apparel commercials with Sasha Gray, without explanation, this compilation looks pointless. The actress believes that pop culture simplifies the success of Miley Cyrus or Nicky Minaj, reducing him exclusively to their sexuality, forgetting about talent and the fact that they use it as an instrument of inspiration, not humiliation.
For Jones, it’s critical that young girls, just like the heroines of "Hot Girls Wanted," do not see this. It seems to them that the only way to earn and achieve independence is to exploit their sexuality. The eighteenth anniversary, which they achieved, made the heroines adults in the face of the law, but only that. In fact, they are still teenagers who make impulsive and not always thoughtful decisions. On Reddit, some users accuse them of everyday nonsense - “Yes, girls really argue naively - like all other teenagers of their age,” others fend off.
Documentary cinema, in part due to a tastemaker like Netflix, has in recent years become part of the same popular culture that Jones criticizes. It is filmed on sharp topics, in a big way and heat, often manipulating the viewer for the sake of dramatic effect. There is nothing new in this: documentaries should not be taken at all as an objective view of reality, but this moment often eludes the viewer’s attention because of the abundance of facts presented on the screen. "Hot Girls Wanted" is also repelled by real stories, but they lack a more detailed context. Nevertheless, the creators manage to show the main thing - how quickly the decision of the girls turns from inspiring to humiliating and how quickly they are forced to make traumatic compromises with themselves.
At the same time, "Hot Girls Wanted" gives a much wider comment to the state of modern society. The heroines of "Hot Girls Wanted" choose porn not so much because of the special love for him, but because of the current economic situation. They are the real children of capitalism: the heroines strive for financial independence, attributes of success, fame - while not stopping for a minute to wonder what they mean. At the same time, their decision says a lot about the state of education and work markets. Girls can't find a way to make money at home; education, the best social elevator invented by mankind, is becoming less and less accessible. The prices for colleges today are such that some, like the porn star Belle Knox, are being withdrawn to pay the tuition fees.
Many employees of the porn industry, actresses, actors, directors, reacted to the thought embedded in "Hot Girls Wanted" thought is critical. The cinema is subject to generalizations, and for someone a documentary can leave the impression that absolutely the whole industry is built on the humiliation, violence and exploitation of women. Although the porn business is usually condemned not because of the ethical practices of this industry, but because of Puritan considerations about sex in general, the former are much more important. Pornography includes those who do it because of the love of their profession. There are more and more (albeit very few) directors and studios who treat actors with respect, and many performers are proud of their work.
But the stigma associated with pornography is still doing its job: the porn industry remains a business in which ethical issues are rarely raised. The recent scandal with porn star James Dean, who was immediately accused of violence by several actresses, can serve as a graphic illustration. Unfortunately, a large number of porn is still removed so that the exploitation of women is considered the norm. "Hot Girls Wanted" gets to the point, because it clearly shows how social conditions feed all the bad things in this business. Conceptually, erotica and pornography are neutral, but it’s bad when girls today find themselves in a situation where they don’t know where to go - except in porn.
Photo: Netflix, Sundance Institute
