The Oscars Loved Anora. Did Sex Workers?
I am not typically one to pay any attention at all to the Oscars. But my attention was piqued by Anora, a Sean Baker film that centers on a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, being up for awards in six categories this year—awards that it largely won.
Anora took best picture (beating the likes of big deal pictures like Dune: Part Two and Wicked), while actress Mikey Madison took best actress for her portrayal of the film’s namesake character. Baker—who wrote and directed—took best director, best original screenplay, and best film editing. Anora‘s only loser last night was Yura Borisov, who was up for best supporting actor but lost to Kieran Culkin.
I think the film lives up to its hype, excelling on a purely narrative/cinematic level while also giving us a refreshingly nonstereotypical depiction of a sex worker. But among sex workers, the film has sparked some seriously diverging opinions. In today’s newsletter, I want to explore different takes on the film and on what those involved have been saying about sex work.
Subverting Stereotypes?
My first impression is that the film did a good job of challenging some sex worker stereotypes. Anora—or Ani, as she prefers to be called—starts the film as neither some tragic, exploited waif nor as some glamorous and perfectly empowered boss bitch. She works at a Manhattan strip club, where she hustles hard and has typical workplace troubles, like disputes with coworkers and lack of long-term stability. She lives with a roommate in Brooklyn. She seems confident and in control, but also somewhat malleable and adrift.
Not long into the film, she agrees to meet up privately with Ivan, a young man she met at her club who turns out to be the son of a Russian oligarch. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, so I’ll just say that things go good, and then they go bad.
But they don’t go bad in quite the ways you might expect from a Hollywood movie. And throughout the film, Ani often subverts sex worker stereotypes.
Ani is not a scheming gold digger or a ruthless seductress. She is perhaps a bit naive, or maybe you would call it idealistic. But she is not dumb, nor meek and helpless, even when things start spinning out of her control. And in the end, she gets neither a fairy-tale ending, nor punished for her profession.
Also, it’s a movie about a sex worker, and some of the indignities she suffers are specific to this. But the story at the heart of it—about a young person who falls for someone who turns out not to be who she thought he was and struggles with the practical and emotional fallout—is something that can resonate widely.
Some have taken issue with the way Ani falls for Ivan, quickly agrees to marry him, and stays true when things start to get bad, suggesting that it’s unrealistic and a seasoned sex worker would never do it, or that it plays into stereotypes about sex workers being desperate for some rich man to rescue them.
To me, this didn’t seem totally implausible, given Ani’s age (she’s 23) and the dizzyingly seductive, manic lifestyle Ivan is offering up. And while I can see why some might see it as unrealistic or perhaps playing into some sex worker tropes, it also subverts the trope of sex workers always being shrewd, calculating, and unemotional.
“I too was a naive idiot as a stripper in NYC in my 20s, and I felt like Anora captured this well, along with the magical feeling of endless possibility that can accompany it,” posted sex worker Gemma Paradise.
“This is a Baby Stripper story,” comedian, filmmaker, and former sex worker Jacqueline Frances, a.k.a. “Jacq the Stripper,” told The Hollywood Reporter. “She’s so young and is making all these mistakes,” Canadian stripper and author Cid V Brunet said.
“why do we not believe that the character we see at the beginning would genuinely think she was in mutual love?” asked Esther of The Lost Broadcasts podcast on X. “is it because we expect sex workers in movies to always be savvy
Article from Reason.com
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