Episode Air Date: April 23rd, 2015

Review Date: April 4th, 2016

Reviewer: Alexa

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"They’re full of sh*t”

 “A&E knows that humiliation brings in a bigger audience than hope.”

“This show, these people, it’s a disaster in my life...I kept on calling them, and nothing happened."

 

These were some of the criticisms 8 Minutes received during its shortened broadcast on the A&E network. Due to harsh but justified scrutiny, the series was cancelled after 5 episodes.  Criticisms ranged from the sex workers featured on the shows to Christian groups

to the audience members themselves.

 

8 Minutes depicts a prohibitionist stance on sex work by convincing sex workers to leave their current situation and the industry entirely through surveillance, shame, and humiliation. The show shadows former law enforcement officer turned Pastor Kevin Brown in "coercing sex workers and victims of sex trafficking to leave the trade for a better life" (Yahr, 2015).

 

 

Through a thorough analysis of the episode, “Couple Calls”, the episode clearly shames and victimizes the women that were featured. To lure the women to come meet him, Pastor Kevin poses as a ‘client’ in need of their services that night. The women come to meet him, only to find out that he isn’t really a client (or potential one), but rather an intervener looking to help them to change their lives. It is evident that Pastor Kevin and his team want to truly help the women, but the episode is infiltrated metaphors of victimhood, objectification, and as a result, is highly problematic.

 

In the opening titles, the sequence describes the show as “A veteran police officer, seeks out women in danger [posing] as a client and offers a way out…but [the women are in danger of their trafficker] and he only has 8 minutes”. Additionally, the official television slogan is entitled “To Get Her Off The Streets” with a woman (presumably a sex worker) whose face is pixelated but nonetheless clearly looking depressed and hopeless. In no shape or form will 8 minutes enable change (if one wants it) as it is an enduring and long-term process. The show does not highlight the lived realities of sex workers. The systematic application quanitifying one's potential journey to their personal happiness and/or simply appropriating sex work, sensationalizing it, targeting and humilitating one of the most marginalized social groups in Western culture & depicting as "victims" is irresponsible and exploitive, It is highly counter-intuitive to the illusions the show portrays of its motives.

 

Additionally, Pastor Brown and his team find sex workers through haphazard action. They simply search them on sexual service sites and eventually make arrangements to have a 'date'. The show worked with faith-based and community-based volunteers and ex-sex workers during their sessions. 

 

The show mainly targets female sex workers and objectifies and dehumanizes them. On speaking to one of the current sex workers, in a post-interview one of the ex-sex workers noted that one of the sex workers "won't have to sell herself" if she undertakes another career path. Sex trafficking is highly problematic, however, it reinforces public diasporas that constrain public policies from being enacted and legistlating decriminalizing politics that guarantee the rights and safety of sex workers.

 

Additionally, it adds to the perpetuation and misrepresentation of lies depicted by the media as that “common myths include the idea that everyone in the sex industry [is] trapped and in need of rescue” (Seltzer, 2015). Furthermore, “[it is] completely false that every single person in the sex trade is working for a pimp or third party, or they have to be saved form that person” (Seltzer, 2015).

 

Safety

• Post-​production issues in protecting their privacy (easily searchable afterwards)

• During the intervention scenes, some of the women felt unconfortable

• Were not available for additional services to aid the women

Word Choice

• Consistently referred the women as "victims"

• perpetrated that if "they're selling sex, their selling their bodies" not seen their work as a service

Inclusion

• ​No clear role

• However, the sex workers were subjected to a Foucauldian scrunity by the team 

Facts

• The realm of sex work and sexuality is misconstrued

• The lifestyles of sex workers are deemed immoral and deviant 

Type

• ​Played into a myriad of stereotypes

 

Overal SWIFT rating: 0/ 

Subjecting sex workers to humiliation for the purposes of cheap entertainment is dehumanizing and exploitive, The perpetuation of lies and misinformation is dangerous to the truly lived realities of all sex workers from any background.