I Am Jane Doe ** ½ / *****
Directed by: Mary Mazzio.
Written by: Jonathan Alter and Bob
Fitzgerald and Jay Manson and Mary Mazzio and Alec Sokolow.
The
documentary I Am Jane Doe tells an urgent and important story about the website
Backpage.com – a kind of online classified site where you can sell pretty much
anything – including, it seems, children for the purposes of sex. There is an
“adult” section, where anyone can post ads for their services, which amounts to
prostitution, but Backpages says they are not responsible for that – and they
have been backed up by the courts. They simply provide the platform, and if
others choose to break the law, it’s them who are responsible for that, not
Backpages. If this was a case of adults finding other adults for the purposes
of sex – even if money was exchanging hands – it wouldn’t be the scandal it is
now – no matter what you think of prostitution, it is the oldest professional
in the world, and it’s silly to think it wouldn’t go online. But Backpages has
a bigger problem – it’s not just adults who are there, but children, being held
by pimps, drugged into submission, and sold over and over and over again to
adults for sex. This film tries to tell the story of Backpages in general, and
also a few of the personal stories of the girls being sold – 13 and 15 year
olds, whose real names are not identified in the, but who do – along with their
families – tell their story, and the years of legal battles with Backpages that
follows.
In
all honesty, I think the film documentary tries to accomplish too much.
Director Mary Mazzio knows that personal stories of the girls will hit the
audience the hardest emotionally – and doesn’t shy away from allowing them and
their families tell their story. There are also a number of sequences, where
maudlin music plays over scenes of other children playing, dancing, etc.
designed specifically to milk more and more tears from the audience – and
inspire them to action. It is an undeniable laudable goal – but certainly does
push the film into the area of the “hyperlink” documentary, called so because
the end credits always include a screen that reads GET INVOLVED: and than a
website address for more information.
It’s
a little frustrating, because the case of Backpages itself, and the legal
battle, is a fascinating one – one that pits the idea of child prostitution
against Freedom of Speech, Net Neutrality, and a law passed in 1996, that
specifically says ISP’s are not responsible for what third parties put on their
site. In most cases, I agree that those things should be allowed – but there
are limits to everything, and many of those lines are drawn around protecting
children. A compelling case is made that Backpages allows people to promote
child prostitution because they give advertisers a list of words and phrases to
avoid, allow them to use codes words, and while they do employ screeners – they
also instruct them not to be overly vigilant, to not reject anything that is
borderline, and by allowing the ads to go live while the review process is up.
At what point does all this become collusion in child prostitution?
I
can see a great documentary being made about this subject – but I do think it
would need to be more focused than I Am Jane Doe is. This doesn’t mean that,
like the courts, it should basically ignore the stories of the victims – they
should be given a voice – or that I don’t agree with the point of view of the
documentary – because I do. But this is a complicated legal issue, and a
better, more confident film may have been able to do more than simply lecture
the audience for 90 minutes – which is basically what this film does.
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