With all the talk last month about Sucker Punch, and negative and offensive portrayals of sex workers in general, I wanted to write an ode to a different action movie from 15 years ago.  I realize I've been doing less "weighty" blogging in the last couple of months, but this post isn't as shallow as it might sound.  How sex workers are represented in both the press and popular fiction is a subject that interests me, as these are the representations that influence the public - for better or worse.

Action and horror movies do tend to have a greater representation of sex workers as non-victim characters, but none of them have really resonated with me.  For example: I remember how excited I was when I read that George Romero's Land of the Dead would have a zombie-killing hooker as a main character.  But, of course, it is revealed that she was only a sex worker because the dictator of her post-apocalyptic society forced her to take that job, and she actually wanted to be in the militia protecting the city.  Thus, the character is redeemed to the audience for her whore-y sins, since they were not her choice.

I recently tweeted about how I'm not aware of a mainstream movie with a more positive and non-sensationalistic portral of a sex worker as the 1996 action hit Independence Day, and I wanted to expand on that.  Its director, Rolland Emmerich, is known for over-the-top absurdist visual spectacles of destruction with overbearing musical scores, such as in The Day After Tomorrow or 2012.  Yet, in Independence Day, he created the most normal sex worker character I've ever seen in a Hollywood film: Jasmine, played by Vivica A Fox.

Jasmine is a stripper who lives with her boyfriend Steve, a pilot in the US Marines who dreams of working for NASA.  She has a young son, and they live in a house in the suburbs of Los Angeles.  Her job as a stripper is treated as pretty much like any other job, and there's no dramatic scene where she's gang-raped and then made fun of, and her story is not one of being rescued from her work by a man.  She expresses zero desire to "escape" the sex industry, nor does her partner ever ask that of her.

Jasmine's job doesn't even really come into the plot, aside from a couple of of key moments: Steve's friend making a disparaging comment about the respectability of marrying a stripper, and Jasmine telling the First Lady (whose life she tries to save) that she's an exotic dancer, not a ballet dancer.  (These scenes can be found at 4:29 and 11:05, respectively, in my clip video posted below.)  The fact that this is not a "sex worker movie" makes it all the more cheer-worthy to me.  It's an action movie with a heroic character who just happens to also be a stripper.  It's very normalizing, despite being set in a movie about an alien invasion, filled to the brim with explosions and aerial fight sequences.  Independence Day was one of the highest-grossing films of all time when it came out, so it's not some art house flick with progressive themes that no one would ever see.

I went through and clipped all the Jasmine scenes from the movie, boiling it down to an 18-minute look at her and her relationship with Steve, the main hero of the film, played by Will Smith.  (I think it's fair to say that this is the primary romantic relationship of the movie.  The audience is meant to be rooting for them.)

Click the screenshot or click here to view or download my re-edit in Quicktime (.mov) format, which is 25 mb.  (I recommend watching the entirety of Independence Day on a regular basis anyhow.)

What this movie tells the audience about Jasmine and her life:

* Sex workers can be loving parents.
* Sex workers can live in normal houses in normal neighborhoods.
* Sex workers can have loving relationships with a partner who is not a pimp, sleazebag/loser, or a customer trying to rescue them.  (I think this one is especially awesome and important to note.)
* Sex workers' partners can catch flak about their jobs.  There is stigma to loving a sex worker, but if you're a good person, you won't let that stop you.
* Sex workers can care about each other.
* Sex workers can outrun explosions.
* Sex workers can be tough survivors.
* Sex workers can be capable leaders who take initiative.
* Sex workers can be discreet when dealing with famous people.
* Sex workers can be compassionate.
* Sex workers can be unashamed of their jobs and and tell people what they do for a living without making apologies.
* Sex workers can be on the hero team, rather than being caricatures, victims, and villains.