Screening Sex Work: Culture, Film, and Commercial Sex

• In Event: 306 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Sex Work

Abstract

If a highly marginalized United States population, in this case sex workers, is also rarely publicly open about group membership, what lessons are taught about this group by popular media? I propose that in the absence of strong and pervasive sex worker-supplied narratives, popular film is a powerful vehicle for perpetuating stereotypes, even to the extent that forces for the amplification of sex worker narratives, such as Internet technology, have had comparatively little to no overall effect in combating ongoing stigma. I analyze the portrayal of sex workers and the sex industry in United States top grossing films annually from 1990 through 2013, from before pervasive household adoption of Internet technology through to the present. I find continuous persistence of negative and stigmatizing portrayals of sex workers and the sex industry compared with neutral or positive portrayals. Though sex work definitions may include as many as fourteen different kinds of exchange of sex or sexual provocation for money, only two of these, stripping and prostitution, are portrayed with any frequency in the top 50 films annually. I find no significant decrease in negative portrayals over time. The results illuminate the problem of scale in comparisons of Internet and interactive mediums relative to the reach of popular film, as well as the implications of media source concentration, and the magnitude of the struggle for marginalized groups to redefine their standing in U.S. popular culture.

Author

• Emily Jean Kennedy, University of Kansas