498135

2013
CDY25210.1177/0921374013498135Cultural DynamicsCheng

Film Discussion

Cultural Dynamics

Making visible the invisible— 25(2) 245–251

© The Author(s) 2013

victimhood, violence, and voice Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

in Tales of the Night Fairies

DOI: 10.1177/0921374013498135
cdy.sagepub.com

Sealing Cheng
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

“The only ‘prostitutes’ we saw were on films. The ones we saw in real life,
we didn’t recognize because they didn’t look like the ones on films. Yet she haunted our
imagination and we talked about her in tentative whispers—endlessly.”
Shohini Ghosh (2009), Shadows in the Clear Light of Day:
Making Tales of the Night Fairies.

“Human trafficking” refers to the exploitation of coerced labor under the 2000 United
Nations Optional Protocol on trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.
Victims of human trafficking—men, women, and children—could be found in any sec-
tor of labor: farm work, factory work, domestic work, and sex work are just some of
the possible sites. Dominant understanding in the media and policy arenas, however,
frequently equates human trafficking with sex trafficking, and further conflates sex traf-
ficking with prostitution. The plethora of documentary and fictional films that claims to
provide insights into the subject of human trafficking is almost exclusively focused on
“sex trafficking.”1 Informed by these imagined connections, anti-trafficking policies
have effectively operated as anti-prostitution policies in various global sites (Bernstein,
2012; Cheng, 2011; Shah, 2006). In particular, like the Third World Woman that Chandra
Mohanty so powerfully highlights in Western feminist discourses, the figure of the Third
World Prostitute—newly framed as a “victim of sex trafficking”—embodies the inno-
cence, passivity, and sexual victimhood that unambiguously call for intervention and
protection, rendering the agency of women in sex work irrelevant. In this context,
Shohini Ghosh’s Tales of the Night Fairies plays a key role in interrupting this chain of
association in discussion about sex work and human trafficking, offering insights into a
more critical and grounded engagement with issues of violence and victimhood in sex
work.
Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman (1996) have highlighted the cultural appropria-
tions of suffering in our times, including how physical and sexual violence are commodi-
fied by a range of media industries to attract viewers. As a researcher and professor on

Corresponding author:
Sealing Cheng, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong,
P. R. China.
Email: sealing.cheng@gmail.com
246 Cultural Dynamics 25(2)

the subject of sex work, migration, and human rights for more than a decade, I have
observed some key problems with dominant discourse on human trafficking in the mass
media, global policy, and activist arenas. The main problems are:

1. The conflation of human trafficking with trafficking into forced prostitution,

popularly known as “sex trafficking”;
2. The presumption of women’s sexual victimhood in prostitution and thus the
negation of sex as work;
3. The rejection of women sex workers’ capacity for organizing.

These tendencies have reinforced the “victim subject” in sex work, particularly in the
colonialist imagination of the Third World. As feminist legal scholar Ratna Kapur (2002)
has warned, “the victim subject and the focus on violence invite remedies and responses
… that have little to do with promoting women’s rights” (p. 6). Highlighting the sexual
victimhood of women (in the new language of human trafficking, they are “victims of
sex trafficking”), anti-trafficking discourses promote the carceral politics of the state to
criminalize designated “villains” such as the “pimps,” “brothel-owners,” and “buyers”
(in the new language of human trafficking, they are collectively referred to as “traffick-
ers”). Žižek (2008) insists that we “disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this
directly visible ‘subjective’ violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent.
We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts” (p.
1). To attend to this background is to identify and overcome the systemic and symbolic
violence that are inherent to the “normal” relations of domination and exploitation that
colonialism and capitalism, as Frantz Fanon suggests, have implanted in the populations
and the minds of the colonized (Fanon, 2004). After all, as anthropologists Nancy
Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (2003) point out, violence is a continuum in
which “exceptional” violence like genocide is intrinsically linked to the invisible vio-
lence in everyday social practice. Against this background, Tales of the Night Fairies
provides a unique and indispensable platform to critically address current concerns about
human trafficking, questioning the one-dimensional representation of violence and
victimhood.
In order to teach about the politics of knowledge production in representation of vio-
lence and human rights in my classes in the United States and Hong Kong, I have con-
sistently shown Tales of the Night Fairies alongside the 2005 Academy Award-winning
documentary Born into Brothels (2004) by Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman. Both films
are about the same red-light district of Sonagachi, with the former focusing on sex work-
ers, and the latter focusing on the children in the area. In Born into Brothels, the New
York-based photographer Briski was a protagonist who offered photography classes to a
group of children and came to see the red-light district as a dangerous place for them: not
only did they have to perform manual labor, they also had to live under the menace of
their parents and neighbors in Sonagachi. Concluding that the area was not suitable for
children, Briski decided to send them to boarding schools, and auctioned their photo-
graphs in New York to raise funds for their education. Through skillful cinematography,
the film movingly narrates Briski’s quest to save the children from their families and
their fate in the red-light district. A student in Hong Kong made the observation that
Cheng 247

“both the sex workers and their children become objects of pity and contempt” (see
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2003: 22). Reproducing the Orientalist image of the poor
and wretched in India, their suffering is readily consumed by a Western audience. Born
into Brothels won an accolade of awards and praises. While space does not permit a
thorough comparison of the two films here, I would like to share some of the lessons that
my students and I have learnt from Tales of the Night Fairies through the juxtaposition
of the two films. The following discussion will focus on the three aspects of victimhood,
violence, and voice.

Victimhood
Tales of the Night Fairies shows us the multiple identities and possibilities of victims:

Victims, especially female ones, are not the princesses in the tower (waiting for the savior).
They can be agents who get together, organize and bargain with those on the counter side. They
can ensure their own safety and decide the path for [sic] future. That is the reason why we have
mixed feelings towards this film as it goes against our imagination of the victim. (Student
response)

As a student captures so precisely in the quote above, the “multiple identities and pos-
sibilities of victims” conveyed in Tales of the Night Fairies generate discomfort among
viewers who are predisposed to a more unitary victim subject. They are not just suffer-
ing prostitutes waiting to be saved but are active, confident, and outspoken women,
activists, mothers, and friends. They laugh, they fight, they help each other out, they
marry, get divorced, and have families and children. In other words, they are not that
different from us.
The capacity to decide their own “path for [sic] future” suggested by the student is a
very significant point. Sex workers in Tales of the Night Fairies have overcome the sym-
bolic violence that inscribes them as powerless, passive, and inadequate individuals who
could not possibly be equal partners or interlocutors with the police, the public, politi-
cians, or elite women leaders. As another student said, “Victims have to be cautious not
to internalize such beliefs and employ the same structure of violence upon themselves.”
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) boasts of the most successful HIV/
AIDS peer education project in the world, policing issues of abuse and trafficking in
Sonagachi, negotiating with police and clients, organizing the sex workers’ festival, and
engaging with the Indian public in discussions about sex workers’ rights. All these would
not have been possible without first successfully imagining themselves as strategic,
rights-bearing, and self-mobilizing beings. The sex workers of DMSC have undone the
powers of colonialism and heteronormativity to reimagine themselves, their histories,
and their present and future possibilities (see Fanon, 2004). They therefore embody a
fundamental challenge to the colonialist imaginary of the Third World Prostitute.
This cataclysmic change also means that viewers get no pleasure from following the
habitual dramatic momentum in films about sex work and trafficking: there were no
heroes marching in to rescue any damsels in distress and punish the villains, only sex
workers taking things in their own hands. Viewers are compelled to see the sex workers
248 Cultural Dynamics 25(2)

of DMSC as both heroes and victims in their own struggles for rights and justice. Those
who are used to conventional media representation may find the absence of a familiar set
of dramatic plot and roles discomforting. Pedagogically, it is a productive discomfort.
Anthropologists have always understood that such messiness of reality can only be
grasped through participant observation and captured by ethnography. Ethnographic
research has consistently shown that an emphasis on victimhood in anti-trafficking ini-
tiatives tends to focus on sexual injuries and promotes stronger state powers of border
control and law enforcement that makes sex workers—both migrant and non-migrant—
even more vulnerable (Agustín, 2007; Bernstein, 2007; Cheng, 2010; Shah, 2006). A
broader understanding of violence and victimhood is necessary for any effective and
ethical intervention.

Violence
I tried to displace the narrative of Victimology while, at the same time, identifying as perpetrators
not the usual suspects like the client or `pimp’ but the guardians of peace—the police and
“respectable” society. (Ghosh, 2009: 7)

Ghosh’s “guardians of peace” who marginalize and delegitimize sex workers are part of
what Žižek calls “objective violence”—the systemic and symbolic violence inherent to
the “normal” state of things and therefore invisible (Zizek, 2008: 1–2). Systemic vio-
lence comes in the form of the political, social, and economic systems that normalize the
deprivation of their rights as citizens and workers. Symbolic violence is constituted in
communicative acts that constitute particular universe of meanings, leading people to
blame themselves for their own suffering while the role of society remains hidden
(Bourdieu et al., 2000; Zizek, 2008). Tales of the Night Fairies makes visible this web of
objective violence that sex workers try to tackle: the Indian state (represented by the
police), the Hindu nationalist politician, the abolitionist feminists, as well as the man
who confronted sex workers at the DMSC street performance saying “Indian culture
does not allow this.” Viewers also come to realize that the visible violence of assault,
rape, police abuse, and discrimination has been made possible against this backdrop of
“normality.”
One of the most powerful moments in the film in showing the violence in ordinary life
is when Shikha Das talked bluntly about how she left her abusive husband and returned
to sex work, where she could attain both bodily and financial autonomy to take care of
herself and her daughter. It exposes the hypocrisy in dominant discourse that the family
is the safe haven that women and their sexuality should belong. The patriarchal family as
a site of violence comes in full view. Not only does her impassioned account illuminate
how women could voluntarily choose sex work over marriage but also make a decision
to deploy their sexuality outside of the marital and reproductive contexts. The women’s
choice and agency become paramount in understanding these alternative realities.
Consideration of these broader issues of system and symbolic violence rarely make it
into discussion about sex work and human trafficking, predisposed to focus on subjective
violence, especially sexual violence. As Žižek (2008) warns, “[t]he lesson is that one
should resist the fascination of subjective violence, of violence enacted by social agents,
Cheng 249

evil individuals, disciplined repressive apparatuses, fanatical crowds: subjective vio-

lence is just the most visible of all three” (p. 10). This is particularly the case when neo-
liberal reforms continue to exacerbate global and local inequalities, generating an
increasing number of vulnerable populations, while buttressing stricter border control
and regulation of population movements.

Voice
We were welcomed into the space, as the camera followed the sex workers walking though the
alleys under ambient lighting. We were invited to walk with them, and listen to their melody.
(Student response)

A student in Hong Kong made the above observation about the relationship that Ghosh has
built with the sex workers, and therefore the viewers. Rather than being mere objects of the
filmmaker’s gaze, Tales of the Night Fairies stands out with sex workers playing host—
they lead the camera and therefore the viewers into their world with confidence and ease;
they invite us to “listen to their melody.” One consistent observation among students is
how women in the film speak for themselves, rather than being spoken for and about by the
filmmaker. Rather than imposing a predetermined framework and narrative on the subject,
the film’s flow allows the women’s everyday struggles and their personal history and per-
spectives to come through. In portraying the collective organizing of the DMSC, viewers
have the rare opportunity to see sex workers as agentive, empowered, and organized.
Many films and reports have claimed to “give voice” to the marginalized. The
ways in which such voices are elicited can be divergent and serve entirely different
goals. In the rare cases that victims of trafficking are invited to speak, they often
respond passively to questions posed by their interlocutor, usually to recount their
trauma and their innocence lost. Ghosh gives her subjects ample time and space to tell
their stories rather than just respond to questions and queries. Sex workers speak
directly and at length in many “talking heads” shot, articulating their personal stories
and the collective struggle of the DMSC in their own language. Ghosh positions her-
self as a facilitator of sex workers’ opinions rather than a spokesperson or even a
liberator for them. She made clear the relational context in which the sex workers
speak with her: finding not only similarities through her connection to Kolkatta and
her identity as a sexual outlaw but also differences in terms of class and caste, and the
fact that she was not a sex worker.
One student raised an important question that may be read as a critique of Ghosh’s
film: “Are we romanticizing sex workers’ organizing and solidarity?” It is true that there
is no explicit discussion of how effective the Sonagachi project is in uniting 60,000
members, and what internal divisions there are, or what conflicts and failures there are
and how they are handled. Ghosh points to the inherent divisive and competitive nature
of organizing in one of the last scenes. It is devoted to showing a game of musical chairs
at the sex worker festival. The initially comical fights became increasingly hostile, with
women pulling each other’s clothing and falling unceremoniously on top of each other or
on the dirt ground. It is a scene that for some could be perplexing for its length and its
lack of a clear message. But as another student observes of this scene,
250 Cultural Dynamics 25(2)

[t]he documentary alerted us to the idealization of the unity among empowered sex workers
fighting for communal rights. We were reminded to be cautious of romanticism of their unison,
which exaggerated their uniformity, and reduced individual voices into one. (Student response,
author’s emphasis)

In this reading, Tales of the Night Fairies gives a poetic nod to Chandra Mohanty’s
(2003) reminder, citing Bernice Johnson Reagon (1983), that we should beware of the
illusion of the community, and the confusion of “coalition” with “home” (Mohanty,
2003: 117).
Documentary films constitute one of the key sites for the production of knowledge
about sex work and human trafficking, and the lives of people therein. The vivid imagery
attains a strong “truth claim” with their seductive visual appeal. Tales of the Night Fairies
stands out as a film on Third World sex workers that complicates the notion of victim-
hood and conveys with nuance their fight against multiple forms of violence and the
possibilities they see in their present and future. The research, editing, and cinematogra-
phy are planned and executed to give visibility to both female and male sex workers in
Kolkatta, provide ample space for their personal stories as well as their collective strug-
gles for autonomy, respect, and rights, and illuminate their competence in collective
organizing. The film plays the important role of halting the often unrelenting wave of
sympathies that silences critical thinking and reinforces an Orientalist transfixion on the
sexual victimhood of Third World women.

Funding
The author would like to thank Wellesley College for supporting the event “Documenting Lives in
Sex Work” in Fall 2005. The event screened both Tales of the Night Fairies and Born into Brothels,
and brought together Shohini Ghosh, Zana Briski, and Ross Kaufman for a very provocative panel
discussion.

Note
1. The list is long, but some of the documentary films are The Selling of Innocents (1996) by Ruchira
Gupta (but see Carole Vance (2013) on a critical analysis of the film as “melomentary”), The Day
My God Died (2003) by Andrew Levine, and Trading Women (2003) by David Feingold.

Reference
Agustín L (2007) Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.
London: Zed Books.
Bernstein E (2007) Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bernstein E (2012) Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal
circuits of crime, sex, and rights. Theory and Society 41(3): 233–259.
Bourdieu P, Accardo A, Balazs G, et al. (2000) Weight of the World: Social Suffering in
Contemporary Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Briski Z and Ross K (2004) Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids.
Cheng S (2010) On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cheng 251

Cheng S (2011) The paradox of vernacularization: women’s human rights and the gendering of
nationhood. Anthropological Quarterly 84(2): 475–506.
Fanon F (2004) The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press: New York.
Ghosh S (2009) Shadows in the Clear Light of Day: The Making of Tales of the Night Fairies. The
Book Review (Special Edition on Cinema), February 2009.
Kapur R (2002) The tragedy of victimization rhetoric: resurrecting the “native” subject in
international/post-colonial feminist legal politics. Harvard Human Rights Journal 15(1):
1–37.
Kleinman A, Kleinman J (1996) The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: cultural appro-
priations of suffering in our times. Daedalus 125(1): 1–23.
Mohanty C (2003) Feminism beyond Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Scheper-Hughes N, Bourgois P (2003) Violence in War and Peace. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Shah S (2006) Producing the spectacle of Kamathipura: the politics of red-light visibility in
Mumbai. Cultural Dynamics 18(3): 269–292.
Žižek S (2008) Violence. London: Profile Books.

Author biography
Sealing Cheng was Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College,
USA, before joining the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in
2012. In 2005, she hosted an event at Wellesley, Documenting Lives in Sex Work, and invited
Shohini Ghosh, Zana Briski, and Ross Kaufman to dialogue about the making of their very differ-
ent films on Sonagachi. The lessons learnt from these exchanges have informed and echoed with
her research, teaching, and writing on sex work, human rights, and anti-trafficking initiatives. Her
articles have appeared in Anthropological Quarterly, Feminist Review, Health and Human Rights,
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Sexualities. Her book On the Move for Love: Migrant
Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea (2010) was published by the University of
Pennsylvania Press.