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After watching Tara Hurley’s rousing documentary, Happy Endings?, I feel like stomping on to the front lawn of Providence’s City Hall, and burning my bra. Sure, the sight of freshly-sprung, creamy white breasts might scare the gay man inside – but if Happy Endings is any indication, it’d serve him right.
The fruit of Hurley’s twenty-eight month odyssey is focused upon Rhode Island’s unusual prostitution law: outdoor prostitution, solicitation and the like are outlawed. Indoor prostitution remains unaddressed in RI legislation (stemming from an 80's court case).
Here’s where the first few sticks are thrown onto the pyre. The ACLU and defense lawyers maintain indoor prostitution is, quite simply, not against the law – while more conservative minds cry, “Loophole!” Semantics. Is it important, though? As with so much of what she lies on the table, Hurley leaves it to the viewer to decide. Paramount or ridiculous, this is what is going on.
Rather than walk the streets, ladies of the night found their way into Providence massage parlors. It is legal, afterall. Hurley’s cameras bring us the aftermath of this decision to take advantage of a safer, and by all accounts cleaner, means of servicing johns. The rise of salacious parlor advertisements among the back pages of The Providence Phoenix provided an easy route for politicians to flex their ethics and police to wallow in muscle. When Hurley’s interviews unveil a story of three regulars to one particular spa, who turned out to be undercover cops, she doesn’t ask us if it is a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. However, they were regulars for two months. When I pay the local 911 and Road Patrol millage, you can bet your sandalwood oil it isn’t to provide our badged finest with unlimited hand jobs. The only way to keep the peace in Providence is for local officers to run a city tab on oral sex?
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Behold: The face of immorality Reps are keeping out of their back yards. |
At first, giving the parlors a rough time wasn’t difficult. If a business advertises licensed massages, there had better be some frames with signatures on the wall. So, the police busted, and the ladies opted for “Body Rub” lingo – making future busts more problematic. Beyond licenses, there is any number of trumped up building violations to light upon. It’s difficult, indeed, to watch footage of tiny Asian women bemoaning arrests and fines for violating fire safety standards…… in RHODE ISLAND. Routinely, in these memories of crazed busts, where ten to fifteen police brute squad their way in, and order everyone out, there is mention of “a couple of customers” being present. It doesn’t take a Great White fan to vividly recall Rhode Island’s blatant lack of fire safety inspections at a club which frequently housed hundreds of people. I guess if that club owner had been a 5’4” busty Asian chick in a bikini, the local law enforcement might have been considerably more interested.
As a woman, I don’t feel prostitution needs to be defended. If I choose to sell my body for actual dollars, rather than dinner and diamonds, it is my business. Calling it the “oldest profession” diminishes the reality – women have forever sold their piece of tail. Far predating Lysistrata, women in caves, without a doubt, would experience a craving for venison over rabbit, and cunningly ensnare their man to get them what they wanted in exchange for pleasantries later on. Men, to their credit, were happy to make the trade. When, exactly, is the definition of prostitution muted? If he’s a husband, and it’s a sparkly tennis bracelet? If he’s a mechanic and I need a new transmission? I don’t think it was strategic planning on Hurley’s part that the women most outspoken against prostitution in the film were, incidentally, not the sort of women likely to be able to charge.
In among the wealth of facts and experiences presented, one can piece together the crux of the politicians’ problem: saying, “Prostitution is BAD” isn’t a convincing argument. However, saying, “human trafficking is bad”… well, that carries weight. Representative Joanne Giannini is quick to burnish the flag, along with many politicians and police who feed the media their sole concern that evil pimps are plucking unwitting Korean girls from their impoverished lives, and forcing them to work off their pass to America, with their very bodies.
Lady after lady sits down before Hurley’s camera and shrugs off the allegation. “No. No slaves.” “I have two sons.” “I have a nice car, a nice house.” One woman is putting her son through law school. Hurley asks if drugs are involved, and a woman shakes her head incredulously, “What? No.” Then she inquires if there’s any gambling – given the close proximity of casinos. It’s met with a self-aware laugh, “Oooh… yeah… there is gambling.” Hurley doesn’t say it, but we get it: enslaved women don’t have five grand to lose at the casino.
“So, you might speak to one or two girls who aren’t enslaved. That’s good. Good for them,” says the Mayor. What are the odds? At a NCJW convention, we’re provided with more facts, “seventy-five to a hundred prostitutes working in the parlors right now.” The speaker goes on to assert these women don’t go home, don’t have lives… but… we just spent an hour hearing from umpteen girls, who vouched for all the women they’d met while working within the RI adult spa industry, we heard from two different owners of spas – they all went home, they all had lives. None were enslaved.
In 2006, 109 women were sentenced to an average of ninety days, while only two men were incarcerated, stemming from the busts of parlors. If what the Gianninis of Rhode Island say is true, then why aren’t more johns apprehended? Why are so many women incarcerated, if they represent the victims the politicians are purporting to protect?
 Some women think they're entitled to renting themselves out. Joanna Giannini disagrees. Wonder why... |
Why did the police bust a spa, press the women to the walls, squeeze the cuffs down to a throbbing pinch – answer questions such as, “What is going on?” with “SHUT UP!” -- and march the women, wearing only bikinis, out… in the dead of winter? Liberation? Really? I hope all viewers will hit the rewind button when Joanne Giannini details an enlightening visit to a beauty parlor: a beautician was talking about some Korean girls who were working at a spa, and how much money the Korean girls were spending. Giannini then goes on to recall how the beautician (“who didn’t even know what was going on”) told of how the girls were working off their passage to the US, were forced to work in the parlors, etc. Hurley is so, refreshingly, confident in her message that she doesn’t pause the film with a blackboard of, “Well, which is it, Joanne? Are they dropping dough, or are they slaves? Pick a side, lady.” Yet, she inspires us to fill in the blanks. |
Tara Hurley takes a gamble with Happy Endings – she’s careful not to force feed, merely presenting facts from both sides of the line. Sure, it’s a stacked deck, but that’s not Hurley’s fault. These women aren’t hurting anyone, nor are they even soliciting anyone – unlike some of the legislators presented, who wave their oppressive bills in the face of anyone looking in their direction. Not all of the spa inhabitants shown are easy on the eyes, either. The male co-owner of one is an oddly shaped, chain-smoking, chipped tooth, likable fellow, though thoroughly seedy in appearance – but his allegations of snowjobs in the media are fully corroborated by the smart looking female ad manager of The Providence Phoenix. A brilliant play by Hurley, and even though she never shouts what she is saying, we get it.
The editing, in parts, might smack of function discovery in a computer editing suite, but the material was painstakingly collected. Crushing honesty more than compensates for the portions of faces we don’t see. In the end, I truly hope Hurley is already tinkering away on her next expose. She has a brain, and a heart – two elements this nation sorely needs behind its cameras. For more on Happy Endings? please visit: http://www.happyendingsdocumentary.com
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