Savn.tv, a media production company associated with the religious and conservative Salvation Army is asking for $100,000 to fund their new anti-porn and anti-prostitution documentary Hard Corps on Kickstarter. The documentary contains interviews with “current and former porn stars, directors, anti-porn specialists and addiction therapists,” as well as “undercover footage” taken in brothels. Aside from exhibiting all the aesthetics and tones of a fear-mongering propaganda film, it could also be violating Kickstarter policies.
Hard Corps’ trailer shows a sex worker in a brothel talking to a potential client. The image created a backlash among sex work activists, who worried about invasion of privacy. Did the women and men being filmed “undercover” consent to having their faces shown on camera? Did the sex workers interviewed know that they were being interviewed for an anti-sex work documentary?
The documentary’s producers denied accusations of filming people without their permission on Kickstarter and claimed that everyone they filmed signed releases, but journalist Melissa Gira Grant asked performer Nina Hartley about her inclusion in the documentary to which she said on Twitter, “I did not know that they would use my interview that way. I wonder if I have any rights here?”
Opponents claim that the project could possibly violate Kickstarter’s terms of service and might be removed. Kickstarter does not allow charities/charitable projects to use its platform.
In any case, the outrage that sex workers are having to this project, and the connection it has to the religious, reactionary Salvation Army might raise questions about Hard Corps being more of a moralistic project than about objectively “uncovering the connection between pornography and the human sex trafficking industry” as it claims to.
“I emailed Kickstarter, who told me they are looking into the project,” journalist Melissa Gira Grant tells ANIMAL.
