Scarier than Any Halloween Movie: Nefarious

Scarier than Friday the 13th, The Exorcist, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, etc.

Scarier than ANY Halloween movie. Ever.

What is?

Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.

It is a documentary I saw recently and the reason it is SO scary is because it isn't Hollywood.

It. Is. Real. Life.

It is an incredibly well-made documentary detailing the selling of souls. Not objects but people.

People (mostly women) who are raped multiple times a day by lots of different men.
Often trapped in the same tiny room that is basically a prison.
Treated worse than a dog.
Dehumanized.
Violated.
Sold.
Broken - body, spirit, soul.
------------
And then it happens the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
With NO END in sight.

And again, this movie isn't a made up Hollywood Horror.

It is real life for millions of people.

27 million people, in fact, who are bought and sold in modern day slavery.

Like Ordering a Pizza or Buying a Beer

In the movie, one man compared the process of purchasing women to the process of ordering a pizza. Do you want mushroom or pepperoni? The blonde or the brunette?

Oh. My. Word.

I wanted to spit in his face. People around me were sniffling and crying but I had a simmering anger stirring inside of me.

Another man in Asia owned 2,400 girls. He sold them in clubs where a beer cost $4, grapes cost $5 and for ONE HOUR, a little girl cost $3. Little girls who grow up with the horrible false reality that they can be bought for a price and a price less than a beer!?! Little girls who grow up with no sense of self-worth and no hope and no dreams of a future. Little girls who are away from family. Little girls who are sold into the slave trade by their family!?!

Cable or Your Kid

The movie described a "culture of complicity" where families see their daughters as a blessing, not because they get to love them as they raise them into a cherished young woman. Instead, daughters are blessings because they are seen as a security asset to sell if they needed more money. Frighteningly, this process of parents prostituting their daughters in human trafficking has become so common that many of them sell their daughters not because they have to but because the money their daughters can make allows for families to have luxuries like television and alcohol. Yep, keep you kid or have access to cable tv.

Moving Mannequins

Another disgusting and heart-wrenching image was in Amsterdam where prostitution is legal. Women were standing in windows displaying themselves for purchase. They looked like the mannequins in a Victoria's Secret window, only they moved. And they had faces and hearts and souls. 

And in the rooms where they worked, there was a built-in "panic button" in case their customer tried to injure or kill them. 

The website lists this fact: Up to 96% of women in prostitution want to escape but feel that they can't.  

That is not Hollywood horror; it is real life.

Other Fast Facts from the Website

• A child is trafficked every 30 seconds. – UNICEF
• Human Trafficking occurs in 161 out of 192 countries. – The United Nations
• In some countries it is estimated that 70% of men purchase sex. – Victor Malarek; The Johns
• Over 27 million people are enslaved around the world. This is more than double the number of Africans enslaved during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. – Kevin Bales; Free the Slaves

Scary, is it not? 

I could go on for pages and pages detailing the frightening facts and insights this movie provides on the real life horror of human trafficking. Instead, I encourage you to simply watch the film yourself. 

It has won over 21 film festival honors. 

You can buy the film or host a screening. 

And then find out how you can take action because again, this film is not a made up Halloween Hollywood Horror but it is real life. 

War Zone - a Sad Reality (And what to do about it)

In the last week, our campus has had an alarming and unusally high reporting of community notifications on everything from robbery, indecent exposure, and sexual assualt. It is scary. In beautiful, charming Charleston, I wouldn't think that I should be afraid to walk around by myself.

However, after watching the film "War Zone" in my class this week, I realized, as a woman, I always walk around afraid - of dirty comments, sleazy stares, inappropriate touching or worse, some sort of attack. All women do.

This chilling documentary by Maggie Hadleigh-West articulates this fear and brings the issue to light. The concept of the film was summarized perfectly in a review by the EdChange Multicultural Pavilion: "The context for War Zone is powerful in its simplicity. Hadleigh-West, equipped with a video camera, walks through four major cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans) to record the day-to-day abuse—sexualized comments, objectifying stares, uninvited physical contact, and other forms of harassment and sexism—women experience that rob them of the basic right to walk safely and comfortably in their own neighborhoods (or anywhere else). She challenges the continued institutional denial of sexism and its implications by documenting what may be its most pervasive and effective element—that even in the most public spaces, women must operate and function in a war zone.

"But instead of interviewing street harassment scholars or centering her own reactions to and perspectives on her abuse, Hadleigh-West turns the camera, and the heat of the spotlight, on her abusers. The film documents her confrontations with those abusers, but focuses tightly on their reactions to the turning of the tables. Every time she experiences harassment (which runs the gamut from objectifying stares to being followed) she directly turns the camera on the perpetrator. As a result, her abusers as well as (or including) male War Zone viewers, are forced to think and reflect more critically about the ways men maintain dominance and control. More specifically, the film illustrates how men continuously cycle sexism through what many men have traditionally argued to be harmless or natural interactions."

I highly recommend the film. It is scary but impactful.

But here's a fun follow-up. You CAN TAKE ACTION against any of these street harassers. Check out HollaBack Charleston, inspired by Hollaback NYC whose motto is "If you can't slap 'em, Snap 'em." You can vent, take pictures/video, and warn other women to steer clear of certain creepers and locations where they could face the annoyance and/or danger of street harassment.

So, do it :)

Stand up for yourself and give those harrassers a taste of their own medicine!