Letters | TVB’s Night Beauties is the stuff of voyeuristic male fantasy
- Readers discuss a television drama’s portrayal of Hong Kong’s sex industry in the 1980s, and the easing of rules on women freezing their eggs in Singapore
A drama currently airing on TVB has made headlines with its racy content and controversial scenes. Night Beauties is set in the 1980s and revolves around the lives of nightclub hostesses.
The episodes so far have featured sexual violence and a scene in which a mother persuaded her daughter to become a hostess. In response to criticism of that scene, one of the actresses said it was representative of “reality”.
By portraying this sensationalised “reality” of the sex industry, is the production trying to explore social issues such as the exploitation of women? Is it seeking to examine the power imbalance in gender and class? Or is its main purpose to entertain? Or, to be precise, to entertain men?
The graphic and disturbing depiction of women being battered and violated, bought and sold for men’s sexual gratification, does not seem to have any purpose other than to serve a voyeuristic male fantasy. And the effect it produces is the reduction of women to mere objects of desire, relegating them to a subordinate position.
The sexualisation of women is by no means a rare occurrence. In a beauty pageant held by another television station last year, contestants were asked to present the body part they were most proud of from a “boyfriend perspective” – a textbook example of the male gaze. This misogynistic attitude is upsetting but unsurprising given that the industry has always been male-dominated.
