deerstalker
Sarah Jones courageously turns her angst into art by creating a part scripted film part documentary to transform her one-woman show Sell/Buy/Date into a moving nuanced deep dive into the complexity of sex work and the debate for and against decriminalizing sex work. This film is fantastic. The most compelling stories come when writers write their life experiences honestly. It’s not easy to let go of the ego and show yourself warts and all. The breathtaking part about Sell/Buy/Date is the unorthodox nature of how Sarah Jones chooses to make a film of her one-woman show. It’s very meta.
In case you don’t know her work, here’s a little background. Sarah Jones is a master storyteller. I saw her Tony award-winning one-woman show Bridge and Tunnel when it was first produced off-Broadway at the 45 Bleecker Street Theater (now called The Lynn Redgrave Theater) in NYC back in 2004. She wrote the show and played immigrants of all ethnicities from NYC’s boroughs with her superb acting, a few costume pieces, minimal set, and creative stage lighting. I believed I was watching all these different people tell me stories about their lives that moved me to tears.
Sarah Jones’ most recent one-woman show Sell/Buy/Date was another off-Broadway hit and got backing to be made into a feature film, and then all hell broke loose on the internet. Sex workers were up in arms on social media when they found out about a film being made about sex work by a “civilian” (someone who has not done sex work). Sex workers who hadn’t seen the play heard about the film project and immediately voiced their outrage about culturally appropriating sex work. They even showed up at events to promote the upcoming project to protest Sarah Jones in real life.
The film Sell/Buy/Date opens with Sarah Jones backstage, half-dressed on a cot in her dressing room the morning after what must have been a great closing night party. The characters she plays in the show are characters in the film who interact with Sarah Jones in real-time with, Sarah playing all of them.
The first character who wakes Sarah Jones out of her closing night haze is Lorainne, “the 84-year-old Jewish Bubbe.” Then Bella, “a college sophomore whose major is sex work studies, and is ashamed of her white privilege” takes her place in the dressing room to warn Sarah not to check social media.
Then (the ethical consciousness of the film and my favorite character) Nereida, a “half Dominican, Half Puerto Rican all proud girls/women’s rights advocate,” gets everyone organized to vacate the premises and get Sarah to her mother’s house in Queens away from any possible protesters. Driving the Uber is Rashid, “the entrepreneur” who drops gems of wisdom throughout the film. I still can’t get my mind around the editing of this masterpiece. One actor playing all the roles edited together flawlessly. Amazing.
The structure of Sell/Buy/Date is masterfully constructed to lead the audience on a journey through a tough subject allowing space for nuance, complexity, and intersectionality of perspectives without being preachy. Sarah places her own narrative dealing with the possibility of being canceled by sex workers on social media center stage.
She shows the real impact of what happens when a Black woman is on the verge of being canceled. Sarah Jones struggles with how or even if she should make the film is the journey of the film. The first wisdom bomb Jones’ character Nereida drops is: “The crisis is Sarah Jones. She’s so busy trying to be the “wokest” and please everybody that her play has now pissed off everybody.”
From there, Jones goes on a journey from NY to LA to Vegas, interviewing sex workers to get their point of view. The first person she connects with is a sex worker who responded to Sarah Jones on IG to meet up and talk IRL. Jones and Lain meet, and Lain shows how depictions of sex workers in dominant culture dehumanize women. It’s depressing to see American pop culture’s long history of ridiculing, devaluing, and disrespecting sex workers. Lotus Lain emplores Sarah Jones to let sex workers speak for themselves if she decides to make a film about sex work.
From there, Jones Tish Roberts, a human rights activist, shares her heartbreaking introduction to sex work through an older white male high-school teacher. He singled her out as a young Black girl who had little access to resources who wasn’t seen by her family or culture. He gave her attention and lured her into secret, sexual interactions in exchange for money when she was a 17-year-old child.
Then Jones meets an ex-Mormon pole dancing instructor in Brooklyn who talks about embodiment and the freedom she found performing as a porn actress. Jones gets her mother’s take which is rooted in concern and judgment. Then, the unorthodoc goes on a deep journey when Sarah’s told by her manager that there are backers for the film who want her to present at The Upfronts, so they want to meet with her in LA.
So Sarah Jones and her character friends all go out west. Rashid, Bella, and Nereida all set Sarah up with people who have had all kinds of success doing sex work, sex work advocates who want to decriminalize sex work, survivors of sex work, and anti-human trafficking advocates.
The most poignant part of Sell/Buy/Date was after Sarah Jones visits a legal brothel in Nevada. Nereida gives us the difference between agency and power. As we saw in the film Zola, in sex work, white women and Black and Brown women have a different value. The opportunities just aren’t the same. Transgender Latina activist Esperanza Fonseca takes the film to a deeper level as she simply states the physical danger that transgender women of color face as sex workers that give a whole other perspective about the possible negative impact of decriminalization.
Then, Sarah Jones meets PhD Student Jennifer Marley Tewa, a queer indigenous feminist who talks about the connection of oil extraction projects that create “man camps” where sex trafficking flourishes on native land and how when these workers come to excavate sacred lands native women experience a higher level of violent assaults and go missing. There’s so much that I didn’t know about sex work before experiencing this film. Sell/Buy/Date is spectacular and it left me in tears.
Sell/Buy/Date screened at the 2022 SXSW film festival.
Sarah Jones courageously turns her angst into art by creating a part scripted film part documentary to transform her one-woman show Sell/Buy/Date into a moving nuanced deep dive into the complexity of sex work and the debate for and against decriminalizing sex work. This film is fantastic. The most compelling stories come when writers write their life experiences honestly. It’s not easy to let go of the ego and show yourself warts and all. The breathtaking part about Sell/Buy/Date is the unorthodox nature of how Sarah Jones chooses to make a film of her one-woman show. It’s very meta.
In case you don’t know her work, here’s a little background. Sarah Jones is a master storyteller. I saw her Tony award-winning one-woman show Bridge and Tunnel when it was first produced off-Broadway at the 45 Bleecker Street Theater (now called The Lynn Redgrave Theater) in NYC back in 2004. She wrote the show and played immigrants of all ethnicities from NYC’s boroughs with her superb acting, a few costume pieces, minimal set, and creative stage lighting. I believed I was watching all these different people tell me stories about their lives that moved me to tears.
Sarah Jones’ most recent one-woman show Sell/Buy/Date was another off-Broadway hit and got backing to be made into a feature film, and then all hell broke loose on the internet. Sex workers were up in arms on social media when they found out about a film being made about sex work by a “civilian” (someone who has not done sex work). Sex workers who hadn’t seen the play heard about the film project and immediately voiced their outrage about culturally appropriating sex work. They even showed up at events to promote the upcoming project to protest Sarah Jones in real life.
The film Sell/Buy/Date opens with Sarah Jones backstage, half-dressed on a cot in her dressing room the morning after what must have been a great closing night party. The characters she plays in the show are characters in the film who interact with Sarah Jones in real-time with, Sarah playing all of them.
The first character who wakes Sarah Jones out of her closing night haze is Lorainne, “the 84-year-old Jewish Bubbe.” Then Bella, “a college sophomore whose major is sex work studies, and is ashamed of her white privilege” takes her place in the dressing room to warn Sarah not to check social media.
Then (the ethical consciousness of the film and my favorite character) Nereida, a “half Dominican, Half Puerto Rican all proud girls/women’s rights advocate,” gets everyone organized to vacate the premises and get Sarah to her mother’s house in Queens away from any possible protesters. Driving the Uber is Rashid, “the entrepreneur” who drops gems of wisdom throughout the film. I still can’t get my mind around the editing of this masterpiece. One actor playing all the roles edited together flawlessly. Amazing.
The structure of Sell/Buy/Date is masterfully constructed to lead the audience on a journey through a tough subject allowing space for nuance, complexity, and intersectionality of perspectives without being preachy. Sarah places her own narrative dealing with the possibility of being canceled by sex workers on social media center stage.
She shows the real impact of what happens when a Black woman is on the verge of being canceled. Sarah Jones struggles with how or even if she should make the film is the journey of the film. The first wisdom bomb Jones’ character Nereida drops is: “The crisis is Sarah Jones. She’s so busy trying to be the “wokest” and please everybody that her play has now pissed off everybody.”
From there, Jones goes on a journey from NY to LA to Vegas, interviewing sex workers to get their point of view. The first person she connects with is a sex worker who responded to Sarah Jones on IG to meet up and talk IRL. Jones and Lain meet, and Lain shows how depictions of sex workers in dominant culture dehumanize women. It’s depressing to see American pop culture’s long history of ridiculing, devaluing, and disrespecting sex workers. Lotus Lain emplores Sarah Jones to let sex workers speak for themselves if she decides to make a film about sex work.
From there, Jones Tish Roberts, a human rights activist, shares her heartbreaking introduction to sex work through an older white male high-school teacher. He singled her out as a young Black girl who had little access to resources who wasn’t seen by her family or culture. He gave her attention and lured her into secret, sexual interactions in exchange for money when she was a 17-year-old child.
Then Jones meets an ex-Mormon pole dancing instructor in Brooklyn who talks about embodiment and the freedom she found performing as a porn actress. Jones gets her mother’s take which is rooted in concern and judgment. Then, the unorthodoc goes on a deep journey when Sarah’s told by her manager that there are backers for the film who want her to present at The Upfronts, so they want to meet with her in LA.
So Sarah Jones and her character friends all go out west. Rashid, Bella, and Nereida all set Sarah up with people who have had all kinds of success doing sex work, sex work advocates who want to decriminalize sex work, survivors of sex work, and anti-human trafficking advocates.
The most poignant part of Sell/Buy/Date was after Sarah Jones visits a legal brothel in Nevada. Nereida gives us the difference between agency and power. As we saw in the film Zola, in sex work, white women and Black and Brown women have a different value. The opportunities just aren’t the same. Transgender Latina activist Esperanza Fonseca takes the film to a deeper level as she simply states the physical danger that transgender women of color face as sex workers that give a whole other perspective about the possible negative impact of decriminalization.
Then, Sarah Jones meets PhD Student Jennifer Marley Tewa, a queer indigenous feminist who talks about the connection of oil extraction projects that create “man camps” where sex trafficking flourishes on native land and how when these workers come to excavate sacred lands native women experience a higher level of violent assaults and go missing. There’s so much that I didn’t know about sex work before experiencing this film. Sell/Buy/Date is spectacular and it left me in tears.
Sell/Buy/Date screened at the 2022 SXSW film festival.
Written By: Wayne Broadway
There was no particular moment in which writer, podcaster, and former editor-in-chief Danyel Smith decided to write her upcoming book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, a book that is one-part research, one-part memoir.
To hear her tell it, the work has been years in the making. “I feel like I’ve been thinking about Black music since I was seven or eight years old,” she says via Zoom. “I feel like I’ve interviewed some of the most brilliant Black women artists in the history of music… like I’ve been shadow-working on this book for most of my career.”
Her feeling isn’t wrong.
Since her first piece was published in 1989, Smith has reached the heights of music journalism. She has gone from an Oakland girl writing for Bay Area alternative press to the editor-in-chief for Vibe magazine. Despite her years in the business, though, one can still hear the love in her voice — the absolute admiration — for Black music, especially as it concerns the contributions made by Black women.
This love has culminated in her latest book.
The product of years of experience and research, Smith found the time to really sit down and write Shine Bright two years back. At that time, she had ended her tenure with ESPN and devoted herself to pursuing whatever she could to aid in her research. When she mentions going as far as to go to a quaint thing called a “library,” or especially looking things up on something called microfiche, 28-year-old me feels I may have to do some research myself.
Still, Smith doesn’t often have to go very far to get her research done. “My husband and I have archives,” she says of her Brooklyn home. Her love of documentation itself shines through in her new book as it traces the genealogy of Black women’s contributions to pop music as far back as Phyllis Wheatley. “There’s so much we don’t know about her,” Smith says of the poet and former enslaved person who often sang her works. Smith has a lot of love for Wheatley. “We all have a bit of her in us,” she says of Black women. As a forerunner in Black American Folk tradition, Smith finds it important to showcase Wheatley’s historic participation.
Her love for Wheatley goes beyond the intellectual, however, and into the empathetic.
When asked about a fact of Wheatley’s life that particularly stuck out to her, Smith responds with an episode early in Wheatley’s life wherein the seven-year-old slave is alone on a pier. She’s wearing nothing more than a piece of carpet.
“It haunts me,” Smith says of the scene, “It haunts me.”
Beyond Wheatley, Shine Bright goes into modern-day music’s unsung heroes. When I tell her I’ve never heard of women like Marilyn McCoo or Jody Watley, she cites this as the reason for their inclusion in the book. “We need to know about their contributions to flow and rhythm,” she says. She wants readers to know the special ingredients they added to Pop music.
Smith clearly has a love for Black women and their voices.
In an interview with the Bay Area’s KQED, she said, pointed, “No one ever asks Black women questions,” referring to an instance wherein MC Lyte remarked that Smith had asked her something about her onstage persona no else ever had.
I ask her what she would want to ask Black women, especially Black women artists. She responds with a historian’s litany: “What were you wearing? What did you lay your hands on? What perfume did you wear?” She says she wants to ask this and moreover an hours-long chat accompanied by some drinks. “I know all this about the Beatles,” she remarks, concerning the avalanche of print devoted to the history behind hits like “Hey Jude” or “Help!” She thinks it’s time we knew that about the Black women greats too.
As far as documenting Black women’s music history music goes, Smith does so, in part, with her podcast Black Girl Songbook.
There, she discusses topics as wide-ranging as seeing Jay Z and Beyoncé perform while on a date with now-husband Elliott Wilson, to the internal struggle she feels being a fan of “Blue-Eyed Soul” artists like Teena Marie and Adele, despite her very real concerns about appropriation and representation.
One podcast episode that sticks out to me, in particular, is the one about diss tracks.
In it, she has the red-hot take that Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones” is, in fact, hip-hop’s greatest diss track. “It’s respectfully disrespectful,” she says on her podcast and reiterates to me. “I stand by my statement,” she says with playful, yet clear defiance. “I said what I said.”
We laugh, and she explains that Ms. Hill’s work is a Black woman taking apart an unnamed foe “from word one to word five thousand” without ever losing her cool. So many artists, she says, especially males, get “caught up in their anger,” clouded by toxic emotions. We’re looking at you, “Supa Ugly.”
Smith repeats Hill’s opening lines, so their iceberg nature is apparent to me. “‘It’s funny how money change a situation,’” she recites, “It’s funny how money change a situation.’” For the second refrain, she emphasizes keywords and syllables. I’m a diehard “Takeover” fan, but she might yet convince me.
We end our chat, despite technical difficulties on my end, with a laugh. “If this were elementary school,” she jokes. She and I might have to have some words out back to really hash our debate out.
I offer, instead, that sits down with us sometime down the road; elementary school me can’t handle that kind of smoke.
Danyel Smith is a wealth of music insight and history. The more we talk, the more excited I become about the release of Shine Bright.
In all, between her countless articles and her two previous fiction novels, Smith emerges as a proponent for Black women and a chronicler of their role in the often parasitic music industry. Besides her writing, her podcast, too, provides many hours of her candid observations and those of her industry-insider guests.
When I ask her when we can expect season three, she laughs. “You know, I’ve never said this before,” and I lean close to my computer, “but ‘no comment.’”
With a woman this full of prose and near-poetry about everything music-related, I happily take this as my first journalistic scoop and call it a day.
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop will be available via hardcover, ebook, and audiobook on April 19, 2022. It is available for pre-order via Amazon.com
Danyel Smith can be found on Twitter and through Black Girl Songbook on Spotify.