Tales of a Happy Hooker
Some people are concerned that the new series, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, will glamorize prostitution. So what? TV glamorizes being a cop, an ER doctor, a drunken Irish Fireman and an astronaut with his very own genii. That is TV’s function, to act as a medium for glamor and fantasy. It’s not as if the lead actress, Billie Piper, will be turning tricks in Trafalgar Square. She’s acting like a Call Girl. The only relevant question is: will the stories be engaging and interesting?
Of course, this story isn’t about prostitution. It’s about sex and while the two are related, the pearl clutching is the result of the fact that the series will be offering a positive portrayal of a prostitute, namely Belle de Jour,* whose blog and book the series is based on. If this were a documentary, narrated by some finger wagging Puritan about the horrors of prostitution, or a cautionary tale about the same, no one would raise an eyebrow. Hell, they’d show it in high school classes. But instead, it’s about a woman who enjoys sex and makes money doing it. These two ideas, one verboten (women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex) and the other a virtue (the money) just frazzles simple minds.
Combine moral ambiguity with the age old notion that TV is a simple minded affair and no wonder some of our more uptight media marms are fretting; they’re being forced to hold multiple contradictory notions in their mind at the same time and sort them out, on TV!
What is the world coming too!
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