http://www.metromagazine.com.au | © ATOM | Metro Magazine 195• 101who partner to run a brothel, and replaces the genre’s
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addled frontier lament.
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back, after she engaged in sex work with truckies on a
dangerous highway. In the sequel,&NKCRSNMD(2016), the
same detective is posted to a mining town where corpo
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Chinese sex workers.
$QG 3HWH *OHHVRQpV'NSDK "NNKF@QCHD(2016) shows a less
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documentary exposes how female backpackers forgo rights
and safety at work to be used as cheap labour at the local
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treat them as personal geishas.
Tough lives, real people
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professional relationships between Wotton and her cli
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One client’s simple dream is for a woman to sleep with
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girlfriend with whom he can share his feelings and thoughts.
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mentary has contributed to reframing the public conversa
tion about the important role that sex workers play in help
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But3GD /HMJ 'NTRDputs forward a different, if related,
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Australia. As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that
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supported urban sex worker presented in2B@QKDS [email protected]
learn that her entry into the industry wasn’t by choice: she
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involvement in the sex industry has been punctuated with
breakdowns as she deals with drug use, her childhood trau
mas and the loss of four children.
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she advertises in the local newspaper, takes bookings on
her mobile phone and visits men wherever they are, often
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less cause to worry about men ‘getting away with things’.
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with sex work.
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it’s tenuous and casual, lacking the stability of a known
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Moreover, a string of highly paid jobs is often what pushes
her back towards a celebratory drug binge. In capturing
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3GD /HMJ 'NTRDoffers a far less rosy view of sex work in
Australia than2B@QKDS 1N@Cand eschews the latter’s inter
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suggests that the line between exploitation and empower
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around sex work acknowledges, and is dependent on the
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themselves (in particular, the dangers of private escort work
versus the security of working in a brothel).
The documentary builds to an unexpected type of
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sharehouse with men – trading sex for rent and drugs in
an informal and dangerous variation of her profession- and becomes peripherally involved in a violent crime.
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working women.
There are no easy answers to the issues presented
in3GD /HMJ 'NTRD. The doco at once critiques the moral
hypocrisy that has consumed public discussions of the
sex industry and aims to replace that destructive discourse
by framing sex work as both a human enterprise and an
industrial framework of legalities, policies and competing
business interests. Though it complicates2B@QKDS 1N@C’s
narrative of empowered sex workers,3GD /HMJ 'NTRD
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judging: of providing an empathetic viewpoint – through
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is often hijacked for ideological gain.^2 Both documentaries
challenge mainstream perceptions that the sex industry
is morally shady, instead shining a light on the individual
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and the author ofNot at a Cinema Near You: Australia’s Film
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