Some thoughts on Anora and sex work
I've seen a lot of ppl on twitter complaining about Anora being a romanticization of sex work. I'm not a sex worker and I don't mean to invalidate any perception this film might arise. But my interpretation has been so different I'd like to share it.
From the very beginning Ani is presented as a hard worker, if anything. The way she scans the club for clients with cold calculating eyes and how her demeanor changes whenever she aproches a man and starts talking all sweet and banal in order to sell herself. She seems to know the ropes and be good at what she does.
And this might be an impopular opinion and maybe motivated by the fact that I live in a poor country, but she seems to be doing ok? She's surely not rich and her job is shown as informal and precarious, but she's able to make a living out of it. This fact is not romanticization to me. Ani's marginalized from the system by the fact she couldn't get a better, less violent and more stable job. But my feel is that from a bunch of precarious, informal jobs, she chose one that could get her more money.
Of course, Ani is a young white girl living in (the outskirts of?) NY, and her somewhat privileged experience may be far from the average sexual worker. But to me, Anora's aim is to dig into one specific aspect of this kind of work, and it's its relation to love.
I'm aware sexual workers know how to set boundaries between personal and professional life. And I've read people complaining about how unbelievable it was Ani falling for Vanya's lies. But personally I didn't find it that unnatural. Maybe it's because as well as a sexual worker, Ani's a young girl. And no matter how feminist one tries to be, I think the fantasy of Prince Charming is ingrained in us from a very early age and in a very deep place. Ani wants to do her honeymoon at Disney with a princess theme. To that, you can add that Vanya seems to be a way out of a job that can give her enough to get by, but not much more, and who knows for how long.
I don't think it gets to be clear whether Ani got to feel something real for Vanya or not. It's clear he didn't. But while it's pretty obvious she married this boy she met one week ago for money, the fact that she's trying to learn Russian and wants to meet his family seems like an attempt to actually fit in. I was also moved by the fact that she added her to his group of friends. Ani, with her working hours, didn't seem to have much of a life outside the strip club.
But what I liked the most about the film is how the last scene with the wedding ring continues this ambiguity. Ani's affair with Vanya earned her a total amount of $25,000 dollars. While it's a lot of money, you can't call it a life changing sum. However, assuming she's telling Toros the truth about its quality, the ring is worth about $160,000. That number can have a bigger impact on her life.
The ring seemed to me a great symbol for this problem. It's both an expensive piece of jewelry and an emblem of love. It wasn't only her chance at an aristocratic life that got stolen away, it was a feeling of being loved and belonging.
Sexual market needs love and sex to be separated in order to sell the latter. Ani is an experienced worker and success in this. But what happens when this premise coexists with the desire for love patriarchy also needs us to feel? To me, this was the particular vulnerability of sex work the film helped me dig into.
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