Discussion: Petition against Channel5's new prostitution "comedy"

[Pigeon]

Channel 5 are planning to launch a new comedy show about a group of fun-loving sex workers. They love their job, these girls - can't get enough of it. Not for them the tawdry details of addiction, rape and trafficking. It's just one happy round of shopping and fucking for these lucky ladies!

If anyone else thinks this is deeply wrong, sign here.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Eaves/petition.html

 

[The Groke]

Its TV comedy and therefore not:

a) real
b) to be taken seriously.

You can't get all uppity about one TV show portraying something in a way that some people disagree with - there would be nothing on at all if it worked like that.

(yeah maybe not such a bad thing but...)

If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Someone can find something offensive/wrong in anything on the box - doesn't mean that it shouldn't be broadcast and people given the option to watch it.
If it is shit (and it sounds like it might be) then it will tank and be taken off the air anyway.

Who knows - it may actually be funny.

Frankly, I find Big Brother/Eastenders/Corrie/Survivor etc far more offensive to my tastebuds and infinitely more indictive of the sorry state of Televisual entertainment than something taking the piss out of hookers.

Starting online petitions is just a waste of time in any case - no-one pays them the slightest bit of attention.

 

[Fruitloop]

Better prossies than the endless fucking filth'n'medics crap that's on the rest of the time.

 

[Pigeon]

Its TV comedy and therefore not:

a) real
b) to be taken seriously.

You can't get all uppity about one TV show portraying something in a way that some people disagree with - there would be nothing on at all if it worked like that.


If you don't like it, don't watch it.


Who knows - it may actually be funny.

Frankly, I find Big Brother/Eastenders/Corrie/Survivor etc far more offensive to my tastebuds and infinitely more indictive of the sorry state of Televisual entertainment than something taking the piss out of hookers.

Starting online petitions is just a waste of time in any case - no-one pays them the slightest bit of attention.

Fair enough. While we're at it, why not bring back the Black and White Minstrel Show and Mind Yr Language? Only a bit of a larf innit?

Still- the petition exists. Sign it or don't. But please note that this is in the forum it is for a reason: I don't want to have a fucknuckle debate about whether or not it's OK to "take the piss out of hookers".

Too, too depressing...

 

[kakuma]

do you know the content of it pigeon?

it could be good if it makes people like you realise that prostitutes are just people and not some blanket group of pathetic victims who need your protection/condescension

 

[RaverDrew]

Plenty of working girls enjoy their job, and do have fun. Shock horror.

 

[The Groke]

Fair enough. While we're at it, why not bring back the Black and White Minstrel Show and Mind Yr Language? Only a bit of a larf innit?

Still- the petition exists. Sign it or don't. But please note that this is in the forum it is for a reason: I don't want to have a fucknuckle debate about whether or not it's OK to "take the piss out of hookers".

Too, too depressing...

So you are against it and yet don't want to debate it?

Also too, too depressing....



Can I ask a question anyway:

Have you seen an episode of it?

 

[Pigeon]

do you know the content of it pigeon?

it could be good if it makes people like you realise that prostitutes are just people and not some blanket group of pathetic victims who need your protection/condescension

Again, I don't remember inviting debate. But I'd draw your attention to the fact that I didn't actually initiate the petition: that was done by an organisation called Eaves Housing, a charity working with victims of trafficking who have been coerced into prostitution.

Maybe you'd like to advise them that "prostitutes are just people andnot some blanket group of pathetic victims who need your protection/condescension"

Suitably enlightened, they can then all sod off down the park for the rest of the day.

 

[bluestreak]

i dunno how i feel about this. i spent a night in a pub witha friend of mine recently, she was telling me about the work she does now cracking forced prostitution rings. i doubt i'll be able to consider this program without the storied of wholes house full of teenage girls raped 20 or 30 times a day for someone elses' gain popping into my head and spoiling the giggle somewhat.

 

[Pigeon]

Plenty of working girls enjoy their job, and do have fun. Shock horror.

Would that include the estimated 95% of "working girls" addicted to drink or drugs?

 

[Pigeon]

i i doubt i'll be able to consider this program without the storied of wholes house full of teenage girls raped 20 or 30 times a day for someone elses' gain popping into my head and spoiling the giggle somewhat.

Oh, c'mon! Lighten up!

 

[RaverDrew]

Infact I think it's quite patronising of you to stereotype sex workers as drug-addicted, people-trafficked, poor weak souls who have no free will.

There have been plenty of tv programs in the past to reflect that admitedly nastier side of the industry already.

Why not have a program that shows the more human and positive side ?

 

[RaverDrew]

Would that include the estimated 95% of "working girls" addicted to drink or drugs?

source ?

 

[bluestreak]

so let me add, while i am sure that, like RD said, there are plenty of normal hookers who are happy enough with their job and shock horror may well enjoy it, there are probably thousands of women in this country, locked up in rooms and forced with the threat of violence to fuck blokes for money, many of whom don't care or have the idea that the girls are willing participants.

while i believe art, even light art, can do what it likes, i feel that anything that glosses over the reality of what i am told is probably the majority of prostitution in favour of a glamourous, hey men, they love it really, shine...


well, it makes me sick actually. but there you go.

 

[The Groke]

i dunno how i feel about this. i spent a night in a pub witha friend of mine recently, she was telling me about the work she does now cracking forced prostitution rings. i doubt i'll be able to consider this program without the storied of wholes house full of teenage girls raped 20 or 30 times a day for someone elses' gain popping into my head and spoiling the giggle somewhat.

Oh I have no doubt that it won't be funny at all - mostly due to the fact that it is a channel 5 "comedy"

Not sure if that is a good enough reason for it not to be shown though, given the rest of the crap that is pumped out over the airwaves everyday.

Pigeon, would you be as up in arms if it were a "clever" or satirical comedy - in the same vein as Brass Eyes Paedophilia or Drugs episodes?

And if so, who gets to judge whether something has that perceived level of increased worth or acceptability?

 

[kakuma]

Again, I don't remember inviting debate. But I'd draw your attention to the fact that I didn't actually initiate the petition: that was done by an organisation called Eaves Housing, a charity working with victims of trafficking who have been coerced into prostitution.

Maybe you'd like to advise them that "prostitutes are just people andnot some blanket group of pathetic victims who need your protection/condescension"

Suitably enlightened, they can then all sod off down the park for the rest of the day.

ok fair play if you don't want to debate on this thread (it would be quite interesting somewhere on another thread tho......)

but as a rule i'm against censorship, some of chris morris's stuff about drug addicts, child molestors etc was fucking amazing and challenged a lot of stereotyping although obviously these are also very serious problems

if you don't know the content of the show, it seems a bit dodgy to go around screaming to ban it. what about if you started on programs which make overconsumption of alcohol seem funny and harmless (which it clearly isn't) there would be no channel 3

 

[RaverDrew]

But there are plenty of programmes that have portrayed the seedier side of prostitution.

 

[The Groke]

i dunno how i feel about this. i spent a night in a pub witha friend of mine recently, she was telling me about the work she does now cracking forced prostitution rings. i doubt i'll be able to consider this program without the storied of wholes house full of teenage girls raped 20 or 30 times a day for someone elses' gain popping into my head and spoiling the giggle somewhat.

Also:

I am sure the programe is not about saying:

"Prostitution is funny"

and more about finding some situational/observational humour in the working and personal lives of some prostitutes, working as such of their own free will.

Again - not to say that it will actually be a funny show, but I don't think it is the same thing as laughing at prostitution per se.

I have no evidence for this, having never seen the programme, but I guess that puts me in the same boat as Pigeon.

 

[Pigeon]

if you don't know the content of the show...

comedy drama set in suburban brothel called the Debonnaire run by chainsmoking grandmother Maureen. The girls include the sweet Hayley who dreams of becoming a reality TV star, postgrad student Kate and Yelena, a Serbian war criminal on te run. Unhappily married middle-class Michael falls in love with ayley but is too polite to ask for sex.

I mean, seriously: what fucking decade is this?

As for the stuff about it being "one programme" showing the light-hearted happy go licky (typo, but probably apposite enough) side of prostitution: bollocks.

There's a whole cultural tide, from 50 Cent to Loaded, suggesting that pimping's cool, prostitution's a giggle and that anyone who has a problem with that's a humourless puritan.

It's utter shite and the commodification of human misery as harmless fun isn't in anyway excused by lame liberal platitutes about freedom of speech.

 

[kakuma]

i think you are running ahead of yourself.

it sounds like an utterly fucking cack sitcom. but i wouldn't exactly equate it with 50cent etc

ill thought out crap sitcom vs contrived and very succesful living cariacature of macho gangsta rap stereotypes

i don't think anyone is saying that prostitution is fun, just that the stupid show is pretty harmless, it will be innocuous shite, and noone will bother to watch it unless you get your way and cause a massive fuss, then it will gain some notoriety

btw did you petition Dr Dre to have the track P.I.M.P removed from the 50cent album?

 

[The Groke]

i think you are running ahead of yourself.

it sounds like an utterly fucking cack sitcom. but i wouldn't exactly equate it with 50cent etc

ill thought out crap sitcom vs contrived and very succesful living cariacature of macho gangsta rap stereotypes

i don't think anyone is saying that prostitution is fun, just that the stupid show is pretty harmless, it will be innocuous shite, and noone will bother to watch it unless you get your way and cause a massive fuss, then it will gain some notoriety

btw did you petition Dr Dre to have the track P.I.M.P removed from the 50cent album?

Who are you and what the fuck have you done with Ninjaboy?

 

[RaverDrew]

pigeon have you got a source for that 95%

or did you just make it up ?

do you have ANY experience of the sex industry and how it works ?

because it doesn't seem like it

 

[Kameron]

Not for them the tawdry details of addiction, rape and trafficking. It's just one happy round of shopping and fucking for these lucky ladies!

Is your outrage on this subject purely media-morality based or do you know socially or work with any part of the sex industry?

I can't honestly see myself in hysterics over it but then I hated the Office so what do I know. I particularly don't see why you should try and get some kind or moral outrage going about it in advance, after all if they produce it and it flops it will cost them money and it will flop if it is bad.

If Pigeon didn't have such a high post count I would really suspect some Gorilla advertising was going on. Ratings count even if the people watching the show are doing it so they can be OUTRAGED by it.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

do you know the content of it pigeon?

Exactly. There is an element of 'knee jerk' about the criticism of this programme (NOTfrom any individual poster I might add). It may well be that there is a lot of humour about the issues of sex sexuality and social hypocrasy in this programme and it could be quite positive.

Sometimes there are dark things that you should laugh at. For example: If you were to postulate the following programme.

An democratic country occupied by a racist power mad dictatorship where the oppressed people are constantly under the gaze of uniformed members of the oppressors army even in thier homes and workplaces and the ever present fear that any resistance to oppression would be ruthlessly and violently suppressed etc. If you went to a programme maker or a bunch of activists on the net and elsewhere and said I want to make a comedy programme about the above then people would be horrified but what I have described is the basic background to Allo Allo which ran for years.

Life can be shit sometimes you have to laugh at the shit or you cry.

it could be good if it makes people like you realise that prostitutes are just people and not some blanket group of pathetic victims who need your protection/condescension

I've met loads of working girls from the non trafficked end of the market socially and proffessionally and in my capacity as a voluntary worker and the sad voiceless victim is NOT the whole story. Violence and trafficking goes on and it must be stopped but you should'nt paint all whores with the same brush.

 

[bluestreak]

Also:

I am sure the programe is not about saying:

"Prostitution is funny"

and more about finding some situational/observational humour in the working and personal lives of some prostitutes, working as such of their own free will.

Again - not to say that it will actually be a funny show, but I don't think it is the same thing as laughing at prostitution per se.

I have no evidence for this, having never seen the programme, but I guess that puts me in the same boat as Pigeon.

true enough TG, i haen't seen it either, so i was reserving my distaste for the concept. it may well be a challenging and entertaining look at the lives of workign girls that takes in a sound and unpatronising viewpoint on all the issues that effect them and treats them as human beings rather than one-size fits all 'hookers'.

 

[Pigeon]

pigeon have you got a source for that 95%

or did you just make it up ?

do you have ANY experience of the sex industry and how it works ?

because it doesn't seem like it

Jay-sus- mods I'm sorry: could you shift this elsewhere?


Tell you what Drew:you give me a source for your claim that "plenty" of "working girls" find their daily lives a dizzying, not to say pleasingly aerobic, whirl of glamour and funfunfun and I'll dig out the sourceof the stat I quoted: deal? Or did you just make it up?

Now, my experience of the sex industry:

(i) a mate with a smack problem who ended up getting pimped out by her (also junkie) boyfriend. He beat her up if she refused to go to work.
(ii) a somali asylum seeker, made homeless and destitute following the refusal of her claim, who ended up getting pimped by a guy who offered her a bed for the night. Being destitute and at the bottom of the economic pile, she didn't even have the clout to make her punters use condoms. She ended up pregnant and thrown out (again). Obviously, as the result of her history, she needed a sexual health check- I accompanied her to the clinic. Luckily, she wasn't HIV positive. Obviously, we laugh about all this now! Wonder if they'll depict GUM waiting room antics in a comic style on this new programme: can't wait!
(iii) A Mauritanian girl trafficked into the UK and repeatedly raped by her trafficker whilst still recovering from female genital mutilation. She ended up escaping, working illegally and then given 8 months in prison.

Your turn...

 

[kakuma]

Who are you and what the fuck have you done with Ninjaboy?

i told you i was the editor

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Jay-sus- mods I'm sorry: could you shift this elsewhere?


Tell you what Drew:you give me a source for your claim that "plenty" of "working girls" find their daily lives a dizzying, not to say pleasingly aerobic, whirl of glamour and funfunfun and I'll dig out the sourceof the stat I quoted: deal? Or did you just make it up?

Now, my experience of the sex industry:

(i) a mate with a smack problem who ended up getting pimped out by her (also junkie) boyfriend. He beat her up if she refused to go to work.
(ii) a somali asylum seeker, made homeless and destitute following the refusal of her claim, who ended up getting pimped by a guy who offered her a bed for the night. Being destitute and at the bottom of the economic pile, she didn't even have the clout to make her punters use condoms. She ended up pregnant and thrown out (again). Obviously, as the result of her history, she needed a sexual health check- I accompanied her to the clinic. Luckily, she wasn't HIV positive. Obviously, we laugh about all this now! Wonder if they'll depict GUM waiting room antics in a comic style on this new programme: can't wait!
(iii) A Mauritanian girl trafficked into the UK and repeatedly raped by her trafficker whilst still recovering from female genital mutilation. She ended up escaping, working illegally and then given 8 months in prison.

Your turn...

A late 20's woman who decided that as she liked sex and was bored with working in an office started to do some escort work liked it and now has a vibrant business and also helps other working girls.

A 30's woman who runs probably the best brothel in Essex and has won awards for her services and is a former working girl who retired to run her own house. Works very closely with the authorities and informal networks to stop people traffiking.

An Australian girl doing a stint in some of the better quality west end working flats to pay for the next leg of her round the world trip.

A 40 year old woman and her friend who set up a working flat catering for men who liked older women and established a very good business. One of the nicest people I've met and a very good judge of peoples motives and psychology.

A late twenties man who decided that while he was waiting for his next office based professional assingment he would go on the rent for a while. Did it made loads but got bored with it and went back to office work.

Horror stories exist but it's not the whole story.

 

[Pigeon]

Life can be shit sometimes you have to laugh at the shit or you cry.

No shit.

Problem as far as I can see is that there's no suggestion whatsoever that prostitution's "shit": it's just a career option to finance a shoe habit, apparently.

 

[The Groke]

Jay-sus- mods I'm sorry: could you shift this elsewhere?


Tell you what Drew:you give me a source for your claim that "plenty" of "working girls" find their daily lives a dizzying, not to say pleasingly aerobic, whirl of glamour and funfunfun and I'll dig out the sourceof the stat I quoted: deal? Or did you just make it up?

Now, my experience of the sex industry:

(i) a mate with a smack problem who ended up getting pimped out by her (also junkie) boyfriend. He beat her up if she refused to go to work.
(ii) a somali asylum seeker, made homeless and destitute following the refusal of her claim, who ended up getting pimped by a guy who offered her a bed for the night. Being destitute and at the bottom of the economic pile, she didn't even have the clout to make her punters use condoms. She ended up pregnant and thrown out (again). Obviously, as the result of her history, she needed a sexual health check- I accompanied her to the clinic. Luckily, she wasn't HIV positive. Obviously, we laugh about all this now! Wonder if they'll depict GUM waiting room antics in a comic style on this new programme: can't wait!
(iii) A Mauritanian girl trafficked into the UK and repeatedly raped by her trafficker whilst still recovering from female genital mutilation. She ended up escaping, working illegally and then given 8 months in prison.

Your turn...

All of this is obviously bad.

It ain't the same thing as a shit comedy show about a bunch of hookers that don't happen to have it so bad.

I don't see how it pokes fun or demeans the plight of any of the people you have mentioned above.