The educational power of cinema fades when ethics and aesthetics fail to align; reality is altered, and the person is distorted or diluted in the narrative. This often happens in films about prostituted women. The film “Anora” triumphs at the Oscars with confusing rhetoric that whitewashes prostitution and fuels the female empowerment hoax, linked to sex work and sovereignty over one’s own body. Narratives like “Pretty Woman” and “Anora” do nothing to question a dramatic reality; instead, they naturalize a form of slavery that violates human rights, dignity, and the moral value of the body, while fostering gender inequality and the dehumanization of sexuality.

The film Anora, written and directed by Sean Baker, tells the story of Ani (Mikey Madison), a 23-year-old woman who is sexually exploited in a Manhattan strip tease club. However, she is unaware of her slavery or the suffering she participates in. From false empowerment, she believes that hers is a job like any other that provides her with money to survive and that she is free to dispose of her body as she pleases. One night, the owner of the club introduces her to Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), son of the Russian oligarch, Nicolai Zakharov (Aleksei Serebryakov), and asks her to be “affectionate” with him because he is the club’s best client. Blinded by her social and economic position, Ani sees in Vanya – capricious, immature, superficial, and addicted to drugs – the safe conduct to a better life. Impulsively, the boy offers her ten thousand dollars for a week of sex and she accepts. Later, Vania proposes to her, and she also accepts, excited by the size of the diamonds in her engagement ring.

The couple identifies happiness with a superficial life, parties, drugs, and compulsive sex. But conflicts soon arise. When Vania’s parents learn of their son’s marriage to a prostitute, they rush to annul the legal validity of the marriage.

In advance, Vania’s family asks Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Orthodox priest and the boy’s godfather, to offer Ani a large sum of money to invalidate the marriage. Two hitmen, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), collaborate in the plan to intimidate the young woman. The protagonist, surprised and hurt by her family’s rejection, defends her marriage as “authentic,” referring only to the legal ceremony in Las Vegas that attests to the marriage’s validity, not to their feelings for each other, which are nonexistent. For her part, Vania abides by her parents’ decision and quickly dissolves the marriage for fear of losing their financial support or being forced to return to Russia. The coldness of her young husband, who shows no regret at ending the relationship, reveals to Ani that it has been nothing more than a diversion and a whim in Vania’s life, and she agrees to annul the marriage in exchange for another ten thousand dollars.

A superficial exercise never achieves anything meaningful. Therefore, the final scene of the film seems hardly credible as a metaphor for love and redemption. In this context, the film Anora, despite its Oscar sweep, is still the “evil sister” to Pretty Woman. That is, another tale in which the prostituted woman is “saved,” this time not by a millionaire Prince Charming, but by Igor, one of the Russian hitmen.

Sexual Ethics and Love

While the first part of the film is full of explicit sex scenes that seem unjustified because the reality of the prostitution context is in the collective imagination, in the second part, Ani’s character is the comic focus of sequences filled with unfunny gags and foul language.

In his approach to the world of prostitution, American filmmaker Sean Baker misses the opportunity to question the structures that sustain a form of slavery and objectification, inextricably linked to trafficking and violence against women. The film is extremely contradictory because it embodies in the protagonist the stereotypes of prostitution as work and an exercise in self-determination over one’s own body, without confronting them or offering the viewer any reflection on them. Furthermore, by diluting the person in the drama, the director fails to delve into who Ani is, her fragility, the betrayal of those who abuse the power of money to satisfy their instincts, nor does he ask relevant questions about the deeper meaning of inequality in the realm of interpersonal relationships.

At this point, we must distinguish between two types of films about prostitution, depending on whether they participate in the maintenance or promote renewed perspectives on a cruel reality. For example, the films of the Italian neorealists Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini constitute phenomenological pieces that decipher pimping without altering or distorting the suffering reality that surrounds prostituted women. This approach favors change by updating the critical perspective on the reality of prostitution, its meaning, and the damage to human relationships. [1] In contrast, the film Anora participates in the maintenance of what exists, by trivializing sex and socioculturally representing women as bodies available to satisfy male desires.

For sexual ethics to acquire anthropological meaning and significance, it must be linked to a reflection on human love that goes beyond the prevailing utilitarian values, based on the idea that any action serves the goal of maximum pleasure, regardless of whether the person can be used as a means to achieve that goal. In contrast, the personalist norm conceives of the person as a higher good that can only be the subject of honest, equitable, and just relationships. “The person is a good toward which only love constitutes the appropriate and valid attitude.”[2] Thus, in contrast to utilitarianism regarding sexual relations as a means of achieving selfish pleasure, full spiritual and bodily donation finds its meaning in a mutual union between man and woman that is consistent with the irreplaceable and immeasurable value of the person and their dignity.[3]

The Sex Business

Not every activity through which profit is obtained is work, nor is it appropriate to propose measures to improve or humanize the conditions of exploitation of human beings. How can an activity that constitutes a flagrant attack on fundamental rights, that includes violent practices, or that normalizes women as objects of consumption be considered work?

Prostitution makes legible a powerful social structure that commodifies human relationships, in which men hold a position of power and women are subordinated to male desires as commodities and objects of consumption. Sexist stereotypes and the business of the sex industry induce social acceptance of this practice, from naturalizing it as the oldest profession in the world to linking it to sexual freedom that enshrines human slavery and inequality between men and women, as well as a large corporation of global capitalism with huge profits. [4]

Currently, virtual prostitution constitutes one of the biggest sex businesses. The OnlyFans platform camouflages the sexual exploitation of women by referring to them as “content creators” and prostitutes as “fans.” It is online pornography that leaves an indelible mark of pain and dehumanization through the sale of images and videos with sexual content, which are the gateway to subsequent digital or in-person relationships in which sex is exchanged for money. This social network constitutes the empire of the new pornography and prostitution with more than 240 million users and a business worth billions of euros. [5]

The discourse of female empowerment confuses young people who create profiles and sell images with sexual content on this platform, attracted by the financial benefits, unaware of their objectification and the dark world they are entering. Furthermore, a recent report published by the prestigious news agency Reuters documents that this platform, which promises strict measures to control content and prevent child sexual abuse, is ineffective in preventing it.

Bioethical Assessment

Personalist bioethics is a valuable framework for reflecting on the ethical dilemmas of prostitution and constitutes a benchmark anthropology, promoting the moral value of the body, conjugal love, the relationship between freedom and responsibility, as well as the person’s debt to the society to which they belong. Indeed, freedom cannot be celebrated without responsibility. We are spiritual and corporeal beings, and the harm we inflict on the body damages the soul, and vice versa. From our perspective on corporeality, in which life is embedded, follow actions of respect or lack thereof toward oneself and others. “The body, as endowed with intrinsic value, does not have a price nor should it be used as an object of negotiation (…) The attribution of an ontological and qualitative meaning to corporeality excludes the possibility of applying economic and monetary criteria (…) A fundamental principle then emerges: respect for the dignity of the body, from which its non-commercialization follows.”[6]

Social relations are linked to solidarity with others, to helping those who lack the means to help themselves. Pope Francis calls us to “open our eyes and ears, to recognize the dignity of every person and to act against all forms of human exploitation with concrete actions.”[7] The mere existence of prostitution implies an objective objectification of the person that contradicts their intrinsic dignity, causes devastating effects on the victims, and entails grave social harm because it undermines human relationships and equality between men and women. In short, it is a mistaken way of conceiving personal reality and society as areas in which people should be able to develop their potential and not be exploited as a commodity.

Anora’s five Oscars reveal that film festivals can award films that are barely memorable, as is the case here.

Amparo Aygües – Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the Catholic University of Valencia – Member of the Bioethics Observatory – Catholic University of Valencia

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[1] Oliver, E. & Ibáñez, M. (2023). Betrayed Relationality: Prostituted Women in Neorealist Cinema. Presentation at the 5th Congress of Philosophy and Cinema at the Catholic University of Valencia, San Vicente Mártir. Manuscript provided by the authors, pending publication by Dykinson.

[2] Wojtyla, K. (2013). Love and Responsibility. Palabra, p. 28.

[3] Ibid., pp. 27-29.

[4] Cobo, R. (2017). Prostitution at the Heart of Capitalism. Los libros de la Catarata. p. 213.

[5] Verde, N. (2024). Onlyfans, the empire of new pornography and prostitution with 240 million users. News from Spanish National Radio and Television (RTVE), published on May 7. Retrieved from https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20240507/feminista-onlyfans-imperio-pornografia-prostitucion-igualdad/16092375.shtml. Also in El País, March 10, 2025, https://elpais.com/noticias/onlyfans/ and in La Vanguardia, July 7, 2024, https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20240707/9787851/millones-muros-pago-impiden-revisar-explotacion-infantil-onlyfans.html

[6] Sgreccia, E. (2007). Bioethics Handbook. Foundations and Biomedical Ethics. BAC, p. 162.

[7] https://www.vaticannews.va/es/papa/news/2025-02/papa-messaje-xi-jornada-oracion-reflexion-trata-personas.html