The Whore Gaze (Preliminary)
In 1975 Laura Mulveyâs paper Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was published setting forth a psychoanalytical analysis of the âmale gazeâ in cinema. âThe male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification,â she argued, âaccording to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up.â Rather âthe male gaze projects its phantasy on the female figure... women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact.â And, where does this coding come from? Lurking throughout Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema is performance based sex work as the template, âthe leit-motiff of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip-tease.â Throughout her feminist analysis of Hollywood classic films, Mulvey references a kind of universal âwomanâ as the âraw material for the (active) gaze of man.â But scratch the surface here and consider who âwomanâ in cinema may be. Historically the actress was also the whore.Â
The process of curating a program of short films for MOMA/PS1 in March 2018--the labor of presenting a series of films made by sex workers and allies, about the experiences of sex workers, in the context of âsex worker spaceâ fantasized by a UK-based non-profit--sparked a series of observations about the âwhore gaze.â What happens when the âraw materialâ for the white feminist gaze, and the male gaze, picks up a camera?Â
This first observations are not about this shift but explain the structure of whorephobia in representation. The Prostitute (or Whore) is a polyseme onto which we project and use to reflect our cultural anxieties. Gail Pheterson in The Whore Stigma expertly describes how thoughts collapse into one another about who the Prostitute is until she (always she), âbecomes one who sells her honor by offering to hire her body for base gain or for an unworthy doing.â In many forms of artistic representation she, the Prostitute, stands in for a cultureâs decline, danger, disease, urban blight, immorality and fated doom. More âenlightenedâ media producers--in a tendency present in the moving image for more than 100 years since the release of films such as The Traffic in Souls (1913)--fetishize the capturing of innocent/good women for âsex trafficking.â Melodramatic portrayals of âwhite slaveryâ and human trafficking anchor the portrayals of sex workers in panics about race, migration, and the moral nature of the nation (see, Carole Vanceâs 2011 article States of Contradiction: Twelve Ways to Do Nothing about Trafficking While Pretending To). These films, notes Svati Shah in her 2013 article Brothels and Big Screen Rescues, refuse to consider sex work as livelihood option, maintain an exclusive focus on women and girls, ignoring men and transgendered people, contain a narrative arc ends with the brothel "rescue" of women and girls, equate sex work with violence, and overlook any organizing efforts among sex workers.
In theory, any filmmaker--including the ânonprostitutesâ as per Gail Pheterson--could cast aside the whore stigma, reject âmelomentaryâ and create better representations. And we hope that they do. However, only the act of whores taking up the camera can explode the myth that to be a whore is to solely be gazed upon. Furthermore, whores should take up the camera to burst the bubble of the anti-prostitution/anti-porn feminists. A thread in this so-called feminist theorizing is that âprostituted womenâ are (or should be) silent because they are so broken and brainwashed. It remains a revolutionary act to be a whore and to speak your mind. All the films made by all the allies to sex workers in the world, still do not wash away this supposed inability for sex workers to create their own valid representations.
In beginning to think any further about what is distinct about the whore gaze, the work of Bell Hooks--specifically her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators--provides a way out of thinking about the (white) male gaze and the (white) female gaze to centralizing the oppositional gaze of black women. This framing leads us to observe that the gaze of cisgendered white women sex workers that is now âincludedâ in the fringes of mainstream representation, is Olympiaâs gaze, dependent on oppressing blackness. The whore gaze is to be oppositional if it is to be relevant and, as a side effect, make irrelevant the sex trafficking/white slavery narratives. Race. Gender. Borders. Age.
Films from, containing and for the whore gaze, that is films made by sex workers about aspects of sex workersâ existence for other sex workers and at times for more broader audiences, are filled with details about place, history, and tradition. Because of budget constraints these films may be made in real brothels and sex work places, rather than imagined spaces. The tchotchke might be real tchotchke. The camera held by the whore will pick up the colors of the fabrics/decor and meaning will emerge. These images will not be of a red flickering light bulb because that was what a set director somewhere thought might signify whoredom. Placing sex work and sex workers as part of traditions and cultures subverts the idea of the Prostitute who exists across time culture and space, who can be molded to represent something other. The whore gaze will confront the colonizer including white women.
Films from, containing and for the whore gaze do not focus on a single isolated sex worker cut off from community and family, except if there is a very clear reason that that person would be alone. To be a sex worker means that a person must be interacting with others, it is part of the job, and the point of earning a livelihood is to be with others, to support children, to visit parents, and to go to the store.
Films from, containing and for the whore gaze are very often about organizing, whether it be meeting to share a meal, make sure folks get condoms, or a full take over the city rally of 1000s of whores.Â
Films from, containing and for the whore gaze can and do meditate on the nature of the sexual interaction. This might be pornography that nonprostitutes are used to finding but more likely it is a whore thinking through the complexities of their work, These films follow a life cycle with whores of different phases finding out different things. The whore gaze will skewer the man with the savior complex, the whore gaze will find solace in a customerâs odd act of kindness. There may be orgasms or eye-rolling, or both. Money will appear. These representations can only be fully understood by the whores, because it was not made for the nonprostitute gaze.
Until further notice, films from and and containing the whore gaze, will contain a red umbrella. Unfortunately. Or fortunately if there is rain or hot sun, because the red umbrellas are fully functional. One day this symbol will change and a new symbol will race across the whisper networks leaving red umbrellas only in the films made by nonprostitutes.Â
These thoughts are preliminary.Â
