I’ll never forget the thrill I felt reading Werner Herzog’s advice on how to become a film director, which boils down to skipping film school, taking up boxing, walking everywhere and working in a sex club. So where’s my Oscar, damn it?
Yet when Juno was delivered to theaters around the country I remember feeling nothing but outrage over the stripper-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody hype. I found the film incredibly tedious (though in retrospect I was probably a bit hard on Cody’s writing in my review – after reading excerpts from the script I think I had a much bigger problem with Reitman’s directing), but I had an even bigger problem with the condescension surrounding Cody herself: Look, a stripper who can put together more than three sentences!
I often find myself in general sticking up for those who society deems “bimbos,” from muscle boys (most of whom are walking encyclopedias of anatomy and nutritional chemistry, if not exactly classic film connoisseurs) to sex workers (the majority savvy businesspeople), who are the exact opposite of their stereotypes, and often just a lethal combination of being incredibly intelligent and equally messed up. The condescension comes in the form of pity as well – “how sad for Courtney Love to have been a stripper” – as if the vast majority of the trade is made up of zombie sex slaves, not consenting adults who willingly chose their profession. As if it were always the industry of last resort.
In other words, Cody’s not the brainy, together exception even if she’s not the Academy Award-winning rule. You just don’t hear about “smart sex workers” because of the stigma attached to the oldest profession in the world. Cody was already publicly “out” as a stripper by the time she penned Juno thanks to her book, but most sex workers only make news in Eliot Spitzer-type scandal not art. Thus the myths remain firmly in place.
So today I’d like to follow up last week’s tribute to the valiant Eddie Izzard (who downplays the prurient aspect of cross-dressing by simply acknowledging it, thus demystifying it, thus transcending the taboo) by celebrating four more talented folks who have made the transition from sex industry to mainstream screen.
