Last week one of my volunteers at Bridge to Freedom Foundation (BTFF), Elyse Elder, and I took a different route to our morning as after telling me about a horror film short her boyfriend stumbled upon in is quest for finding yet another thriller to send himself into shock and awe over. Shock and awe was an understatement from what he found when he watched “The Candy Shop,” which he quickly found not to be the fictional horror he is used to, but one based on the reality of minor sex trafficking. Elyse and I settled down with a cup of coffee, fair trade, of course, to see what he was ranting about as these day’s we are rarely shocked at what unfolds in an awareness film. However, as Elyse wrote in her post “Fairy Tales are Battling Child Exploitation” on our blog, this eyeopening awareness short film was nothing like the ones we have seen.
Yesterday I followed-up to Elyse’s post on the BTFF blog with a post, “The Candy Shop and Broken Dolls,” where I gave my own view and highlights on the film. For me, the film was a creative portrayal of an all too real horrors of minor sex trafficking in the United States and abroad. As the film unfolded, it not only addressed the lost innocence of the young victims of minor sex trafficking and exploitation, but also the issue of demand that fuels the growing industry of the flesh trade. The film’s ending is bittersweet. Not only are some of the “lollipops” unable to be turned back into little girls because they are”‘too broken,” but putting an end to the “Candyman’s” business proves not to be enough as demand only finds it’s way into a new location. It reminded me of the endless fight to shut down Korean “massage parlors” — brothels — we have fought so tirelessly in D.C., which would often just re-emerge a few weeks later or move to Northern Virginia.
Following the film, I went rummaging through my old poetry and writings as I vaguely remembered using a similar creative analogy to sex trafficking years ago. After a bit of searching I found what I was looking for — only this time it wasn’t about a “candy shop” but a “doll shop,” although the symbolism and lost innocence are parallel.