SKIRMISHER

Ask Yau Ching, curator of Hong Kong-based prostitute support group Zi Teng, and she’ll tell you nothing’s more annoying than seeing mainstream cinema portray prostitutes in films as simply either whore or Madonna.

Because, Yau Ching says, prostitutes are more than that: they also eat, care about their brothers, get all shit-faced. That’s why they kicked off with the three-day Hong Kong Sex Workers’ Film Festival yesterday, Aug. 11. It’s an underfunded but comprehensive look at the lives of prostitutes across Asia — told by the sex workers themselves.

Well, in my humble opinion, we all know hookers are human beings, too, like sidewalk vendors and sales ladies. But you don’t go to a sidewalk vendor to have sex; you go to a hooker. If mainstream cinema begins portraying prostitutes like people who work to give their mothers their salaries, they won’t be prostitutes at all, but office workers. Where’s the fun in that?

On second thought, maybe office workers should also launch a film festival. About the daily, hard, unbearably sad realities of photocopying, faxing reports, writing memos, buying lunch, and sucking up to the boss. Just spice it up with some tearjerker scenes involving paper cuts and running out of bond paper, and I’m sure it will be a frigging hit.

via AP

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