Jane Godiner is a current sophomore at Bowdoin College in Maine. She is majoring in English and Psychology and concentrating in Creative Writing. She is also the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Bowdoin Orient, Bowdoin’s newspaper. She believes in the informative and inspirational power of journalism and writes with the purpose of encouraging her readers to be instigators of change in their daily lives. She hopes to make a difference in her surrounding communities, to live as ethically as possible and to encourage others to do the same.
The media—and, more specifically, the film industry—provides widespread, necessary exposure to the horrors of human trafficking. Films about human trafficking have the potential to inspire anti-trafficking activism; however, they also perpetuate long-held misconceptions about this crisis. Below are just four of the aspects of human trafficking that the movies get wrong:
- Human trafficking only happens to women and girls
In several films about human trafficking, such as Pierre Morel’s Taken and Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower, survivors are exclusively women. While, as of 2018, about 70 percent of human trafficking survivors were women, people of all genders are vulnerable. Human trafficking is not gendered, but the United Nations reports that women and girls are more likely to be victims of sex trafficking and men and boys are more likely to be trafficked for exploitative labor.
2. Human trafficking only applies to people in a certain socioeconomic bracket
Some films and television shows, such as Taken and CBS’ Criminal Minds, feature human trafficking victims who are world travelers and college students with socioeconomic privilege; others, such as Siddharth Kara’s Trafficked, portray human trafficking survivors from developing countries. In reality, human trafficking occurs across socioeconomic status. While many traffickers target vulnerable individuals, including those living in poverty, vulnerability comes in multiple forms—youth, disability, lack of citizenship, and low education are all attributes that could make an individual more vulnerable to traffickers.
3. Victims of human trafficking are always kidnapped with physical force
Most movies about human trafficking tell the story of a kidnapping or an abduction; however, kidnapping is far from a predominant method of trafficking. Many traffickers will use more emotionally manipulative means, such as false promises of romance, protection, education, and financial security. In both the United States and abroad, there are countless reports of family members selling their children to human traffickers for the exchange of money or illegal goods.
4. Victims of human trafficking are predominantly white
More due to the whitewashing of Hollywood, as well as the film industry’s propensity for only telling white stories, many of the popular films about human trafficking feature white survivors. These narratives are misleading—40 percent of human trafficking victims in the United States are African American, and, overall, people of color are more likely to be targets of human trafficking than white people. Systemic, institutionalized racism leaves people of color inherently more vulnerable to human traffickers, and the hypersexualization of young women and girls of color also plays a role in these devastating numbers.
Movies have an undeniable impact on cultural attitudes and perceptions of people, places, things, and causes. It is crucial that the human trafficking crisis be correctly represented in order to prevent the spread of misinformation to millions of moviegoers. The easiest way to craft accurate portrayals of the horrors of human trafficking is to speak with survivors and to base the premises of future Hollywood productions on these harrowing, firsthand accounts.
