TV Review: Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On

Hot Girls Wanted was a 2015 documentary that Netflix produced into a six episode documentary series. In advance I will warn the reader that the series deals with explicit sexual content so those who may be offended should likely avoid it. The series was the work of Rashida Jones, Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus.

If I had to describe the series I could say it displays the gritty intersection between modern sexuality and technology (especially the internet and smart phones). From my perspective the documentary is tasteful and explores topics like pornography and sex without showing excessive nudity.

I think the way human sexuality has been filtered through technology over the last 20 years is fascinating. Moreover, I think the reciprocal effects this has had on our culture is fairly disturbing. The documentarians go out of their way to highlight relevant statistics that illustrate the content they are sharing. For example, the prevalence and widespread use of porn, the accessibility to and interest minors have with pornography, and the cultural implications of pornography.

I figure at this stage it would probably be best to give you an idea of what each episode deals with. In the first episode they discuss feminist porn/porn produced by women and how the changing business model of pornography is making it more difficult. Episode two looks at casual dating apps like Tindr and its impact upon relationships. Episode three looks at the world of 'talent' recruitment in pornography and the way the industry chews up young women. The fourth takes a look at male talent in the pornography business, but also the disturbing depictions of race and women within mainstream porn. The fifth looks at camgirls and the relationships that form between models and their big donors. It does this by looking at one pair in particular who meet in person. Finally, the last episode examines the court case of a young woman who recorded a rape and streamed it on the internet.

I can easily see how some readers of my blog will be repulsed by these topics. It's not exactly the regular fare of this blog, certainly. One point that the documentarians return to again and again is the ubiquity of porn. If it isn't a part of your life than it is part of most of those close to you and it is shaping the society you live in. Episode two is probably the most accessible for those who wish to avoid graphic content.

The show is at times ugly and unpleasant, but also contains within it genuine emotion beyond pity and sadness and shame. Pornography and sex is still deeply rooted in shame. Despite the social acceptance of it, to a certain degree, those who participate in it, profit from it, produce and feature in it will be tarred. Given its widespread appeal I think the documentary challenges our inherent hypocrisy on that. 

I find monitoring and observing our changing attitudes about sex, sexuality, romance, and love to be perhaps one of the most compelling topics that one could explore at present. I would love to see Turned On do many more seasons. I highly recommend it to those interested in these topics and with a constitution to match the content. Give this provocative series a watch and hope that they can continue to dig into these ideas.

The Empathy Deficit

Empathy is an undervalued talent. Empathy is the ability to sympathize, understand and/or feel someone else’s emotional or mental state. It is fundamental to being able to interact with other people. In a way it is more important for interacting with complete strangers than people you are close with. In time you build an emotional bond with people you know, even casually, and are constrained by basic etiquette to be sensitive to their feelings.

I’m having a hard time expressing my key idea here, so I’m just going to go straight to the point. I am concerned that changes in culture and technology has eroded our sense of empathy and made us a colder, harsher society.

I work as a teacher at a private tutoring company. I often speak to my students about their lives at school. Lately my students have shared with me a stream of stories about violence in their schools that they have seen, or their friends have experienced. Despite the latest push against bullying it appears violence and intimidation is alive in well in the educational system. I was not particularly disturbed by my students’ accounts, but by their reaction to some of it. More than one admitted to acting as a by-stander. One in particular recounted the fight with glee and described how exciting it was.

I challenged each of my students on their position as bystanders, and their relationship to the violence around them. I don’t think my group of students are particularly sociopathic, but I do feel they are representative. I challenged their empathy; I asked them about the victims. None of them reported these assaults. One grade nine student said that he had a friend who called a teacher during a fight and the attackers beat him up the next week: “snitching” as it’s called. The culture of prisons is present in our school. This isn’t a new development of course. There were the same pressures while I was at high school, but my students are younger, in middle school or elementary school.

I may have led a sheltered life, perhaps more innocent and less violent than the average, but it seems to me that the culture is changing. Violence is more accepted and victims are dismissed, if they are thought about at all.

People are no longer fellow human beings to many; instead they are merely interactive objects, or static things. I have discussed this before but as we have become digitally connected we have cut the links for face-to-face interaction. We live inside our screens and behind our earphones; we consciously ignore those around us and would prefer if they did not exist. Riding on public transit very few ever talk to their neighbours, they are engrossed in their own little worlds.

It is not just a casual relationship with violence that made me concerned with our collective empathy. I have been considering our society’s relationships with gender and sexuality. I believe the lack of empathy has led to a greater push towards the objectification of both genders. My rationalization is that if we do not think about the person behind the body then they merely exist as an object. A friend and I were recently out to dinner at a large chain restaurant. I began a conversation with him about the shift in service staff in restaurants over the last few years. Around us were servers, all female, all under thirty, all wearing form-fitting clothing, all thin, and, at least in our opinion, all were pretty. This trend is more or less shamefully exploited by restaurants.

In our conversation we debated the merits and motivation of this move, and we tried to understand how the employees felt about it. We admitted we couldn’t be sure, but that to my mind it would feel degrading. A manager measuring my skirt to make sure it is short enough (not too short, short enough) would be offensive to me. I will not presume to speak for these young women. However, as a heterosexual man I found it degrading personally. The marketing mindset that says if sexually appealing women are presented to me I’m more likely to eat at the restaurant, buy more and tip higher disgusts me. They view me as an object that is motivated by base sexual desires. I, obviously, have only scratched the surface on gender issues in society, but this is something that has been on my mind for a long while.

Do we see people behind the strangers that we meet? They are are feeling and thinking people, not merely objects for our amusement or obstacles in our own lives.