I wrote a film review of Whore’s Glory, directed by Michael Glawogger, for DocGeeks. Read the fuller, more rambling and personal version here:
It seems whenever sex workers are talked about sympathetically it’s as victims – be it actual survivors of trafficking, or more moral/ideological victims of patriarchy, capitalism, poverty, life. Discussion of sex work often ties into discourse on the objectification and commodification of women, which in my opinion (often) takes away their status as subjects and actors at the very same moment they are supposedly being objectified.
Likewise, prostitution is almost always portrayed as a homogenous issue to be tackled by everyone other than sex workers themselves – where everyone other than prostitutes is an expert. Prostitution has many different strands. Some involve trafficking, exploitation and abuse, but prostitution also involves consensual sex, self ownership and pride. The latter is more likely when sex workers have greater rights and status in society, and are free to work together, under their own control and indoors for safety.
There isn’t much space in mainstream discourse for sex workers as workers, with rights, who should be listened to and not just talked about and criminalised. It’s like you either have to stop prostitution or let it go on, rather than work to improve the safety and lives of prostitutes as well as attitudes towards them.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying Whore’s Glory (by Helmer Michael Glawogger, screened at the BFI London film festival this year) is an antidote to all this. It’s an arty film, more poetic than political, and doesn’t pretend to speak for all sex workers, but it is a brilliant film and you should see it.
Whore’s Glory is a visually poetic inquiry into the working lives of prostitutes in Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico and their clients. Most notably, it is an inquiry that does not seek to universalize or pass judgment on prostitution as a falsely homogenous issue. This despite the fact that Glawogger’s previous films (1998’s Megacities and 2005’s Workingman’s Death) both deal with worker exploitation.
The film’s opening titles tell us it is a triptych – divided into three equal parts covering three vastly different geographical locations and cultural contexts. The religious connotations of the term ‘triptych’ are also important though. The relationships between faith and sexual relations binds the three parts together, however disparate in other ways. Discussion of religion as philosophy allows the film to portray the women as something above and beyond their profession (as we all are) but not divorced from the rest of society; a contrast to the frequent lazy portrayal of women working as prostitutes as a separate species of human until they stop being prostitutes. Additionally, it adds further to a sense of cultural and individual specificity. Interestingly, Glawogger stated in the Q&A after the film that he never intended religion to be a central part of his film, it was just something that gradually appeared.
Another aspect tying this documentary together is the prominent music – unconventional for a documentary. It is a combination of experimental electronica and female vocals from artists like PJ Harvey, Coco Rosie and other artists I didn’t recognise or catch. It’s seemingly an effort to defy expectations and not go down a background ethnographic film score route, instead picking music that matches the mood and the moment of the film as a whole. Despite the cultural specificity in the film’s three sections, the music, light and photography often combine to elevate the scenes from a specific time or place, sometimes creating an almost surreal landscape. For some reason this works.
The first part of Whore’s Glory is filmed in Bangkok in a brothel called the Fish Bowl. The venue’s name is an accurate description of how it operates, though the multi-angle filming (which also reveals that many aspects of this documentary are at least slightly staged) means we are never sure who is really on which side of the fish bowl’s symbolic glass barrier. At one point one of the clients says “we men are the commodity here, we provide the money and for a short time we have access to their bodies.” The girls reduce their clients to ‘johns’ or just ‘cocks’ as they talk candidly about sex, a welcome way to mentally deal with some of the sleazy, stingy and socially awkward clients we’re introduced to.
The second part of the film, set in a brothel called the City of Joy in Bangladesh, is a huge contrast. The make up, tight hyper-feminine clothes, drinking and clubbing present in the first part are entirely absent here. The brothel is a crowded network of tiny rooms and long narrow corridors full of noisy chatter and an endless stream of prostitutes, their families, madams and customers.
In Thailand, the women are filmed enjoying life outside work, spending money on clothes, drinking, and eating out together, sharing flats. In the City of Joy, there is a distinct separation between the brothel and the outside world, highlighted by the massive gate that locks it every evening. The women working there are never seen outside of it, never inhabiting the same spaces as the men that come to pay for their services as they do in Bangkok.
The mother of one of the prostitutes, who has a few girls working for her, explains that once you’re a prostitute this is your whole life – “because her mother is a prostitute no one will want to marry her…Outside they are disgusted by us but inside they love our bodies.” One young client expresses his love for the girl he always goes to, while another says that if the brothel wasn’t there the men would get so horny they’d have to start raping women on the streets. The bonds between the women seem strong and tempestuous.
Like the women in the Fish Bowl, the women here are frank and open about the sex. They freely discuss penises, drunk clients, the pain of having to “fuck twice in an hour” and thus spend more time with the client. “There’s one thing I want to add,” says one of the last interviewees in this section after a long, heavy and hesitant pause, “We women are unhappy creatures…why do we have to suffer so much? Isn’t there another path for us?” Mindless glorification this is not. Paradoxically, the cinematography and use of colour is most vibrant and striking during this more closed off, underground part of the film.
By far most sexually explicit is the part of the documentary filmed in La Zona, Mexico. It is self-aware in its potential seediness, and we become more aware of looking. Whereas the previous two parts are punctuated with closing doors, the camera seemingly has access to everything in La Zona. Sex, nakedness and blow jobs are no longer just talked about, they are present on film. The language is crude from both sides, though the clients display nauseating levels of machismo (“I’m horny as hell…bitches…sluts…they’re scared of my huge cock”). For the first time we’re also told about how the women came to be there – men go to villages, find girls, spend time with them and try to convince them to come and work in La Zona. We also get glimpses of drug use and mental illness for the first time in the film.
This is emphatically not a film about prostitution in general. Firstly, the women are all working indoors in brothels. Secondly, Glawogger would have only got access to brothels that allowed him to film so openly and extensively in the first place. By getting privileged access to these areas however, Whore’s Glory provides a glimpse into the working conditions, thoughts and practices of prostitutes in their own terms and language, giving the audience a platform from which to reflect and consider rather than jump to conclusions and judge.
This is a film that provokes questions rather than pretending to provide answers. It is useful to point out something that is not made clear in the film – Glawogger paid all the women who appear in his film and has shown it to them. Whore’s Glory is artistic documentary film rather than a journalistically rigorous reportage. Despite, and perhaps because of this, it allows its subjects to speak directly in a context free of preconception or editorial line. Recommended viewing.
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