Born Into Brothels

Sex is big industry.

But in countries other than America it is a lot messier. 

Tonight I watched Born Into Brothels, a documentary about a group of adorable children in India who through the power of a simple camera are able to show us the lives they live in the Red Light District of Calcutta. It's a unique film as photographer Zana Briski gives the children cameras and teaches them about photography. The children's photography is quite impressive, but what is more impressive is their deep thoughts and incredible resiliency captured by Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman.  

In these children's lives there is no hope, no future. The girls will grow up to become prostitutes, following in their mother's footsteps as this is the only way to survive in the district. This is sex industry at its messiest. The girls and boys all know what their mothers do, and yet they still have the remains of innocence about them. This is in stark contrast to the weathered faces of their parents, carved deep by years of pain and shame. 

Briski tries to help the children, but most of them end up staying in the Red Light District. Some of them are able to go to boarding schools and carve a new life for themselves, but unfortunately this is the exception to the deadly spiral of the prostitution. 

I couldn't tear my eyes away from these children. One minute they are smiling and laughing, the next they are revealing these deepest fears and secrets to the camera with surprising honesty. I know things like this happen in the world, but seeing it firsthand--through the eyes of a child-- is a different matter altogether. 

As I sat there mesmerized a thousand thoughts flew through my head. Sex in America is so clean cut and easy. If you want to see a women naked just go online or head to your local video store and within minutes you will be satisfied. None of the physical scars, but the emotional scars are the same. 

Seeing these women in the documentary quietly resign themselves to this fate, made me question a lot of women in America today. Why are there so many women that will just throw away their sexual dignity for money, without being forced, doing essentially the same thing as these women? It's so easy to show some skin, sex up the movies for a little extra money, but why do women in America and other parts of the world embrace this as a legitimate job?

Is this why women in America are free? So they can do the same thing as women who need to prostitute their bodies just to make it by? That doesn't make sense to me and I'm not sure it ever should.

The men are not free of this either. I'm not better than any of those men who solicit the girls. The American man thinks when he looks at porn or when he lusts that he isn't doing anything on the same level as raping a prostitute. But he is. Jesus labels lusting in the heart as adultery. "We are all guilty of the same things, with sinning hearts that make us equal," says popular rock band Emery.

Yet amidst these trials the kids are still loving life, almost inexplicably to us as Americans. It brought me almost to tears on a couple occasions. Where is their hope? How can they have hope? At one point one of the boys, Ajivit, speaks of having no hope. My heart breaks for these kids, but what can I do? 

This is my heart breaking just one more time at the injustice in this world and then in a few days returning to its callousness. In America, even if we want to help, we never do. I want to help. I prayed for those kids and all of the other like them tonight in Warriors. I sang for them, hoping they would find their hope in Jesus. Maybe that is what I can do to help, and I hope I don't forget.

Born Into Brothels is not an easy documentary to watch, but watch it we must. The glimmers of hope are dim, but they still manage to shine through. I watch these terrible, horrible things not because I revel in them or enjoy them but because my heart needs to know the human condition. But I can't put it as well as Ajivit who uttering the last line of dialogue says this of a picture he is presenting to other children, "Although there is a sense of sadness, we must look at it because it is truth."