Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Trafficking in Truth: Media, Sexuality, and Human Rights Evidence

2012; Feminist Studies; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/fem.2012.0025

2153-3873

Jamie L. Small,

Gender, Security, and Conflict

Trafficking in Truth:Media, Sexuality, and Human RightsEvidence Jamie L. Small In 2005, the Swedish government distributed five hundred copies of Ltlja 4-Ever (2002), a film on sexual trafficking, to NGOs in the former Soviet Union and southeastern Europe. In addition to estab lishing educational and cultural relationships with other nations, Swedish politicians and filmmakers intended the mass distribution of Lilja 4-Ever to educate vulnerable girls and women about the devi ous strategies of human traffickers. According to experts, the former Soviet Union and southeastern Europe emerged as hotbeds of poten tial prostitutes after the fall of Communism in 1989.1The film was an eye-opener for southeastern European teenagers because it addressed human rights issues, which NGOs had been articulating for years, using a compelling cinematic form. Mirroring critical and popular responses, sixteen-year-old Albanian Veronica responded to a Brit ish journalist about the film, "We all cried when we saw it.We talked about it, and wondered, 'What would we do?'" Her friend, Aksenia, added, "It is not enough just to have the information to be on the lookout. It is a matter of having the skills to act when and if you find that you are in trouble."2 The experiences of Lilja in Lilja 4-Ever, directed by Swede Lukas Moodysson, shaped the Albanian teens' understanding of and relationship to the issue of sexual trafficking. Their reactions to the film are significant because they are the real-world counterparts to Moodysson's imagined Lilja. After view ing the film, Veronica and Aksenia perceived themselves as at-risk feministStudies38, no. 2 (Summer 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 415 416 JamieL. Small individuals on the global stage of movement and labor. Yet Lilja 4-Ever, which was presented as an educational tool on human rights viola tions, is actually a fictional text. Moodysson, who wrote the screen play, conducted little, if any, research on sexual trafficking.3In a 2002 interview before a live audience at London's National Film Theatre, Moodysson stated that Lilja 4-Ever was inspired by a brief Swedish news article about sexual trafficking but that the characters, plot, and details emerged from his imagination. Despite its fictional origins, Lilja 4-Ever became factual evidence in human rights education campaigns. For instance, the Interna tional Organization for Migration (IOM) includes screenings of Lilja 4-Ever in its anti-trafficking campaigns for Russian youth. In Moldova, the IOM holds distribution rights to the film, and the Chief of Mission, Allan Freedman, reports that sixty thousand Moldovans, mostly young women, saw the film in public screenings during an anti-trafficking campaign in 2004. The Moldovan campaign culmi nated with a national television screening followed by a half-hour talk show and a toll-free telephone hotline.4 Swedish politicians, as we have seen, distributed copies of Lilja 4-Ever to NGOs for educa tional purposes and even cited the film as evidence of contemporary human slavery.5 Of course, the role of art in documenting humanitar ian issues dates back to the nineteenth century, but with advance ments in global communication technology, such as the Internet and the rapid circulation of film images, the line between fact and fiction blurs even as the political and cultural effects of film-as activism become sharper. Because of this slippage between fact and fiction, new questions arise about the nature of social advocacy in a technologically advanced era. What kinds of evidence sur-face—and which are silenced—as violence against women becomes recognized in the twenty-first century? How do the agendas and constraints of the entertainment industrial complex shape our understanding of human rights issues? Films about sexual trafficking struck a cultural chord at the turn of the millennium. After two decades of virtual silence, film makers crafted at least fifty-five films from 1996 to 2008 that addressed sexual trafficking. They range from big-budget Hollywood dramas to independent feminist documentaries; their locations include regions as diverse as Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Southern Jamie.L. Small 417 California; and they are marketed to mainstream Western audi ences, "at-risk" Third World subjects, and women's studies class rooms.6 In this article...