The last frame of Pretty Woman has a character called Happy Man, saying, “Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin.’” Except decades later, Hollywood has woken up from selling Cinderella dreams and gotten as real as it could, accepting and honouring a film like Anora on a sex worker, more a “Cinder-f**ing-rella’s” quest for legitimacy and job equity in society.
From Vivian Ward to Ani, the Academy of Motion Pictures has traversed an arc in depicting the sex worker, from the pits of poverty, coercion and exploitation to being fatalistic survivors and now claimants of human rights and service providers. From the fallen woman condemned by patriarchy, waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming because she has a heart of gold, Vivian — the escort from Beverly Wilshire – now has an unidentical twin. Enough to shake up the Academy jurors, who are often accused of being White conservatives, and give five Oscars to Sean Baker’s indie film. So long confined to celebrating the underdog, biopics and the Holocaust, Anora upended the victimhood syndrome. It cannot be categorised as a struggler or a woman-oriented film either, it is about realism at its starkest and the magic power needed to live it than slip into victimhood.
Ani is battle-scarred, raspy, risque, unafraid to trawl through strip clubs and refuses to be rescued or pitied. If anything, she is her own rescue, finding every opportunity to grab a bigger slice of life, using her body as a tool. She is wilful, demanding that she be valued for her own skill sets, just like any other blue-collar worker. While Vivian has an education scholarship and a possible marriage as an endowment from businessman Edward Lewis, Ani believes she is the prize money herself, used to demanding a price for exclusive services.
True, she marries a Russian oligarch’s entitled but spineless son, but she does demand a three-carat ring, indicating her self-worth, and insists that marriage was a social sanction for her acceptance (“We are married, they’re gonna have to accept us”).
Even though society is yet to look at sex work as justifiable labour and continues to criminalise it as an underworld activity, Anora’s big Oscar win will hopefully drive changes beyond conversations. The shift in Hollywood began with the awards season last year when another Oscar winner, Poor Things, had the protagonist using sex work to earn money and discover herself and the world around her in the process. Anora took it ahead by completely doing away with the condescension of assuming what a sex worker’s life is. Baker may not have chosen his protagonist from the community but he did hire them during the scripting stage, production and even some scenes for an authentic representation of their lives, desire, rage and their spirit to own their life. And their wants are simple. They want to be treated like an employee in any other job, with work and ethics codea, legal protection and medical insurance. And although millions of sex workers are contributing to the global economy, there is no organised sex industry.
Sex workers need to be decriminalised at the earliest by de-hyphenating their passive colluder status from crime cartels. Just like anybody else, they are service providers to buyers paying them.
Most importantly, it is in the creative space that sex workers have been most commodified, perceived from a patronising lens masquerading as empathy. So every cinematic depiction of sex workers has glamourised their bodies and looks rather than being the regular women they are, going back home to feed their families and sending their children to school. Their lives have been imagined as damsels in distress only to feed the guilt syndrome of the privileged or feed their need to find another “woke” cause. But Anora shows how sex work, on a repeat mode, is boring, repetitive and draining as any other assembly line work. And yet they have to be Oscar-winning actors and performers every day, living up to customer fantasies.
Last year Belgium legalised sex began work. India’s Supreme Court, too has recognised sex work as a profession, guaranteeing them right to dignity of labour and protection under the law, protecting them from harassment, arrest and brutality, guaranteeing them right of refusal and advocating their right to healthcare. However, societal stigma means that implementation for minimum wage, paid leave, a pension plan, or maternity leave, is a far cry. That’s why Anora’s punchline — “When you give me health insurance, workers’ comp and a 401K, then you can tell me when I work” — shines through the glitter. One hopes it is not just a creative selling point.
