Week 9: Baker's Intersectional Analysis of Sex Trafficking Films

Baker's 2014 Intersectional Analysis of Sex Trafficking Films has proved to be an extremely beneficial source for my human trafficker perpetrator portrayals mid-semester research check in. This article, a textual analysis of 7 human trafficking films over the past 16 years states that media focuses on criminal-justice solutions to trafficking instead of "broader systemic causes of sex trafficking, like globalization, economic inequality, poverty, and ethic, race and gender oppressions" (208). 

In Hollywood films, such as Trade and Taken, the issue is presented as situated in a black and white world with the common narrative being an innocent young woman is captured by a "clear bad guy" (a trafficker that is most often depicted as a violent man of a foreign origin or of color) until a heroic white male comes to the rescue (213). This construct leads to an idea of "Western racial and national dominance", most clearly outlined in the film Holly and NBC Dateline Children for Sale, both portray traffickers are of Asian descent and anyone that tries to help the trafficked girls are white.

The article also analyzes Trading Women, Sacrifice and Very Young Girls, films that divulge deeper into the issue of trafficking than the typical Hollywood film, avoiding simplifying the issue and offering criminal-justice oriented solutions. In these films, victims are shown as vulnerable and "trafficked by circumstance" (220). The silence, the trafficker, is then that the perpetrators are anyone that are willing and able to deceive a "weaker" person for their own monetary gain. Further silences also hint at the less obvious perpetrators: a failed agents of the criminal justice system that do not investigate or respond to reports of abuse.

Using this article as the main reflection of my research check-in has inspired me to begin examining my own definition of a "perpetrator" of the crime, extending it from just a trafficker to those that knowingly exploit trafficked women ("johns") and law enforcement agents or citizens that simply look the other way. Going forward in my research, I would like to see if others feel that an expansion of the definition of human trafficking perpetrator is appropriate.