Worst Documentary Ever

I first endured this low‑budget indie documentary when it debuted in 2013, and it has annoyed me ever since.

The filmmaker, Kristin DiAngelo, was a known high‑end escort during some of the same years I was (2010–2020), and we even shared at least one client that I know of. Our timelines overlapped, but that’s where the similarities end: she and her friends were simply turning expensive tricks while I was engaged in complex, compensated intimate relationships.

I’m revisiting her documentary now as part of a broader exploration of sex work, escorting, and modern courtesanship that I’ll be unpacking over the coming months and years while I write and publish the third and final book in my memoir trilogy, Modern Courtesan: Selling Sexual Healing and Intimacy (subtitle still subject to my whims).

One of the many reasons I’m writing Modern Courtesan is to set the record straight about what my work actually involved—and, just as crucially, what it did not. In that regard, nothing depicted in this documentary bears any resemblance to the work I was doing.

Here is the review I wrote in 2013, after sitting through this profoundly disappointing “film.”

American Courtesans: Trauma Porn in Lip Gloss

Anyone unfamiliar with the escort industry who views the American Courtesans "documentary" would come away believing that courtesans: 

1. are the same as prostitutes because no distinction is made between the terms; they were used interchangeably.
2. for the most part have permanent emotional damage due to extreme childhood trauma.
3. define themselves first by their emotional damage and at a very distant second by their aspirations, accomplishments, & personal growth.

Also, according to producer and star Kristen DiAngelo, courtesans bond with each other on a "deeper level then civilians in the real world could ever do or imagine" (because apparently civilians are emotionless cardboard cutouts) and "have the power to make good men do bad things" (because apparently consensual sex work is "bad").

To recap, according to DiAngelo, courtesans are the same as prostitutes and basically shaped, defined, and  consumed by childhood trauma. The graphic stories of abuse drone on for half the film in a blatant attempt at emotional manipulation, which has the (perhaps not unintended) effect of portraying them as the victims they simultaneously swear they aren't (vehemently, albeit without any reason to justify their denial). 

We're subjected to endless stories of how they were molested, jailed, beaten, and drugged, but precious few about how they were able to heal and grow, personally or creatively. Especially lacking was insight into how their work as "courtesans" aided or supported that personal growth. Their traumas are simply given too much weight​ in DiAngelos's cringe-worthy scenes of sensationalized melodrama. Even if her crocodile tears were real, is it really that impressive to be so completely mired in those memories 30 years later?

As for DiAngelo's interview style, the constant cut-backs to her incessant nodding (bobble-head style) in the midst of her subjects' stories is just plain jarring. Wearing a wildly different ensemble in every scene with over the top accessories, hair, makeup, and colored contacts (because that's not distracting AT ALL) she seems to think she's in her own personal fashion show​ or escort ad (because she's not retired, regardless of what​ the final credits state). 

DiAngelo's agenda aside, even more egregious is her portrayal of a misunderstood, maligned​, and marginalized segment of society by cementing the stereotype of sex workers as emotionally unbalanced, damaged hookers selling sex to act out their "daddy issues." Not only did she set escorts back a hundred years, she had to drag the (now meaningless term) "courtesan" through the mud with them.​ And few of the women portrayed here qualify as such. Courtesans (by definition) are emotionally balanced, psychologically healthy, eloquent, sophisticated, self-aware, educated, courageous, and empowered​, not immature, emotionally broken, ​and self-pitying. I'll go out on a limb here and say that anyone who hasn't ​worked through their personal trauma​s doesn't get to call herself a courtesan. (For the record, no one involved in this documentary disaster should identify as "filmmaker" either.)

In her last scene, DiAngelo drops to her knees in front of a suited man, in voiceover gushing about the "travels, art, and parts of the world I've seen through these men's eyes," as if her own eyes weren't capable of the task (perhaps the colored contacts interfered) but if it's meant to be profound she misses the mark, because like every other line she delivers it's over-rehearsed, self-conscious, and meaningless. She displays zero awareness of the true nature of courtesan work, our clients, or herself. If she'd put half the effort into self-analysis that she put into makeup/hair/wardrobe, she might actually have something to say. Instead we're subjected to a 90 minute ​escort ad and another 100 years of stigma and stereotyping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivnWR282COU