Thread by @VABVOX

Thread 🧵
So The Wife and I watched #GirlInRoom13 Saturday night because I wanted to see Anne Heche's last film and I am a fan of the director, Elisabeth Röhm. The Wife and I just had a convo about it and it's worth sharing. (Some spoilers.)
1/🧵

I told her I do not want to watch any more "true story" films that are really just voyeuristic displays of women and teens being brutalized, humiliated and mistreated for two excruciating hours. As a victim/survivor of a brutal serial rapist, I already lived this.
2/🧵

Larissa Dias as the central character, Grace, a recovering opioid addict, was terrific. Her performance was nuanced and strong and she led total credibility to the role. Heche was believable, but the writing limited her character, Janie, Grace's mom, to hysteria throughout.
3/🧵

The main flaws of the film were its overwhelming whiteness and its use of trafficking as a plot device. The film should have been structured to explain how vulnerable young women, particularly addicts, are at high risk for trafficking and being groomed, broken and sold.
4/🧵

#GirlInRoom13 is about a young woman in recovery from opioid addiction who gets abducted with intent to be trafficked. So she gets brutalized a lot on camera, often with little clothing and with extreme violence. The plot focuses on Janie's search for Grace, not trafficking.
5/🧵

There is literally one 10min scene in the entire film devoted to discussion of the facts of trafficking with a woman who advocates for trafficked women and girls. She is one of the handful of WOC who appear briefly. The details she gives Janie are shocking, but rushed thru.
6/🧵

The other data points are tacked on at the end in a couple of paragraphs flashed on the screen. Among the things the advocate tells Janie: FBI estimates there are 50k women & girls trafficked each year in the US. 80% are US citizens.
7/🧵

These people are trafficked via motels off the interstate and broken over 10 days, then sold. That info should have come way earlier than 2/3 through the film and in a less rushed context and we should have seen other trafficking victims.
8/🧵

WIJ (women in jeopardy) TV episodes and films are a hugely popular trope, but when do we ask ourselves what the point of this "entertainment" is? I won't give away the ending, but the last half hour of the film needed to be both more and different. And dedicated to victims.
9/🧵

I'm writing a column on this, which I will share when it pubs, but I really wanted to write about this now, too. What is the obligation of the director and of the audience? How many times do we need to see a woman punched and starved, drugged and raped on camera?
10/🧵

The fact is, we are inured to real life violence by seeing pretend violence so often. The real Graces aren't as captivating as the actresses portraying them. We need to think about that and about the danger women and girls are in daily that still is not being addressed.
11/🧵