Elliot Spitzer Makes a Porno, Part I 5 comments

By Laura Bramon Good

As fate would have it, the day I decided to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno was also the day I caught the newsfeed that Elliot Spitzer, New York’s disgraced former Governor, would not be prosecuted for prostitution offenses.

The headline came to me in my cube, where I work on human trafficking issues, via a Newsweek opinion piece penned by two well-known anti-trafficking experts. The op-ed reminds readers of a fact that casual newswatchers may forget: as Governor of New York, Spitzer was famous for his anti-prostitution zeal. The authors argue that letting Spitzer off the hook seals the Department of Justice’s poor precedent of turning “a blind eye to men like [him], whose demand for paid sex drives the sex businesses that exploit mostly young, mostly poor, most often women of color, in prostitution.”

The op-ed hit home for me, much because I’m in the process of crunching data from a pilot project investigating trends in domestic trafficking of U.S. citizens. For the past year, I’ve devoted a significant portion of each week to screening client cases drawn from the pale fairytales of poverty, incest, and sexual abuse—stories of trafficking that culminate not in sexual slavery at a Bangkok brothel, but with a Craigslist ad and, later, a dirty suburban motel. Invariably, most of the women and girls exploited in prostitution have been exploited in pornography, as well.

Reading the Spitzer op-ed, I couldn’t help but remember that the former Governor’s anti-prostitution zeal had focused, very conveniently, on crusading for sex trafficking victims in foreign countries—and that, very coincidentally, a groundbreaking law aiding New York’s own teenage prostitutes had languished during his tenure.

I also couldn’t help but remember Ashley Alexandra Dupré, or “Kristen,” as Spitzer knew her at the Emperor’s Club V.I.P.. The New York Times reported that before her turn as a call girl, and just about the time she left a broken home, Dupré had been filmed as one of Girls Gone Wild’s underage vamps. Drugs, homelessness, and loneliness followed. Years after that first foray into pornography, Dupré‘s vulnerability still shines through in the Times piece:

“[She] was worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living with ‘walked out on me’ after she discovered he had fathered two children. She said she was considering working at a friend’s restaurant or, once her apartment lease expires, moving back with her family in New Jersey ‘to relax.’”

Save the media blitz and the celebrity john, Dupré‘s story easily could have been stacked among the cases on my desk. It was odd; it was eerie. It was heartbreaking.

Back, finally, to Zack and Miri. You’re probably wondering, as my husband was, why a woman who spends her days working to end sexual exploitation—and who, by the way, has yet to see American Pie, There’s Something About Mary, or any of the other semi-foul blockbusters that define my generation—wanted to see a fluff/snuff film.

“I’m curious,” I told Ben. “I want to see what it says about pornography, about everything.” Plus, A.O. Scott’s New York Times review intrigued me; I wanted to see how the movie pulled off a Miri “just uninhibited enough to play along with Zack’s schemes but not so daring as to tarnish his idealized image of her”—a twist on the flat, coldly sexual character to which I have seen so many exploited women aspire.

“You’re not going to like it,” Ben warned. “Plus, I’m going to laugh, and you’re going to hate me.”