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Looking to prostitutes for "Satisfaction"So I'm ringing in a new year in Australia. Next to moving in with my girlfriend and not being buried under five feet of snow in a Midwestern winter, the best thing so far has been catching up with the Australian drama Satisfaction. You might remember it as the show set in a brothel featuring a lesbian sex worker as part of the regular cast.
I have to admit to being skeptical about the show. First, there's Heather, the lesbian character. A self-professed gay girl who is able to sleep with men on a daily basis is not the most convincing evidence that we all aren't just waiting for the right man. But what I was really afraid of was another show about victimization, albeit very pretty victims.
TV and movie stories about prostitution (insert your favorite Law and Order franchise here) are littered with the corpses of dead hookers. Those who aren't horribly raped and murdered usually fall into two camps. 1. She's a Pretty Woman.
She's a street-smart hooker, who really just needs a good man to transform her into an elegant woman, who really just needs love to put her on the straight and narrow. She fell into the life because of her circumstances and people who put her down. Maybe it's just me, but I always found Vivian (and Eliza Doolitle, for that matter) more interesting before the Pygmalion play.
2. She's a Monster. She's the abused little girl who tries to find a way out of the life but never is quite able to manage it, possibly because she never finds the love of a good man to put her on the straight and narrow. She fell into the life because of her circumstances and people who abused her trust from a young age.
Yes, I know this one's based on a true story. But the way her story is filmed, beginning with the clips of an abused childhood, fits right into the cinematic framing of prostitution. The premises of the two movies actually sound a lot alike. Neither character ever has had any power to change her own life. Satisfaction flirts with this story line, it's true. (More about that is to come.) Thankfully, the only thing brutalized on the show is so-called respectable society, which is revealed to be hypocritical and mean in just about every episode. Instead of passing judgment on sex work and the women involved, Satisfaction tells stories about a handful of women who happen to be sex workers, and who through their work find financial freedom, independence — and occasionally, well, satisfaction. It's like Firefly's Inara got her own show.
So on a scale of cliché to creative, original writing, so far Satisfaction is winning. Mostly. Submitted by on January 3, 2008 - 1:45pm. |
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Satisfied?
The only reason I started watching Satisfaction was because I was curious to see how a lesbian prostitute would work. I had some hope that they might add a few women to the clientèle, but as yet I'm yet to be satisfied on that score.
I'm also less than satisfied that the writers had to trot out the well worn lesbians wanting to get pregnant, and the crazy dyke sterotypes, but they hit us with those first up and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they thought this was compulsory when writing about lesbians. Hopefully they thought they'd just get those out of the way and get on with some original story lines.
I'm actually quite enjoying the show. There isn't a character I don't like, even the slightly sleazy brothel owner. And I actually like the writing, its surprisingly funny in places. I'll keep watching, and I'm glad the show has been given another season. Oh and Heather isn't hard on the eyes either and that will always keep me interested.
......about the pregnant prostitute....
I love this show. didn't intend on watching but they kept putting short docos on before Dexter, so I got hooked.
I know we get sick of the same old let's get pregnant story line....but...... I think the story line with Heather and 'what-ever-her-name-is-I'm-glad-she's-gone' is slightly off center and not how these story lines typically go.
1) Lesbian couple want to get pregnant.....ok, seen it.
2) Lesbian couple run into trouble with potential donor ..... seen that too.
3) Potential donor's moronicly 1 dimensional homophobic girlfriend is trouble.....Check
BUT........
4) Planned 'non-biological' and sex worker lesbian secretly get's pregnant to a client, (a client who she dosen't normally actually have sex with, just takes him out for ice-cream, a trip to the park, nappy (diaper) change etc.).......That's very different.
5) Sex worker's apparantly loving girlfriend decides she is not happy.... primarilly because the non-biological mother is 'nothing' ...... a statement which made me want to smack her really really hard...
6) Pregnant sex worker continues to work, kicks the lactose intollerant, controlling bitch out, moves the tv into the bedroom and talks child raising with the man-baby. Hmmm...interesting
And another thing a lesbian sex worker seems a hard pill for some to swallow...but... she's not actually having intercourse with most of her clients ( see above mentioned man-baby), she does the dominatrix thing, her clients are looking for other avenues of release....atleast that's what i see...but maybe my rose coloured glasses made me miss something.
That said i actually really like this show, all the women are interesting characters in their own way. Usually the lesbian characters are my favourites, but I have found myself getting into the other story lines as well, I really want to see where Nat's story line is gonna go...although i do suspect she'll take over Heathers clients soon enough....or maybe become one of Heathers clients (or better yet - baby's not-mamma)....i really do hope. Madeline West has played gay before so we know she'd maybe do it if the writters asked nice enough.
Chloe is my fav...not sure why, the kids a pain in the ass.
Nat is sttill a mistery to me, but i think I have a crush.
Lauren annoys me for some reason...Maybe it's the name, Watching a show about a sex-worker who has the same name as my daughter might be a little weird...
Mel is kinda tragic, but I do love her to bits.
Tippy seems a little lost but not too much.
and I do like Mel's driver...he's funny.
It's just sometimes a little too much hetero-sex than I can bare...I'm not a prude..just a little bored, but thats to be expected, which is why i wasn't originally gonna watch.