Not My Life
Written by: Victoria Alexander | July 10th, 2012
A horrifying global investigation of human trafficking and sex slavery.
New Age psychology is closely tied to the belief that we can hasten the progress of evolution by achieving a higher consciousness, which is the central goal of the New Age movement. Every time I read about our New Golden Age of Spirituality, I say “No. Not happening.” Like every species of animal, humans will self-organize into a caste system of the “haves and have nots.” And the “have nots” will be exploited any way they can.
Human history and the present clearly shows that “All men are created equal” is a beautiful ideological sentiment.
Cruelty is in our DNA.
How do you explain the amount of free pornographic sites on the Internet? Every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. Every second 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the U.S.
It’s big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues were $97.06 billion. That’s 2006 numbers. In 2006, China topped the list with more than $27 billion in pornography revenues. South Korea was next. http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
How can anyone say we are headed towards a higher consciousness of love when Best Gore, a Canadian website, posted Luka Rocco Magnotta’s horrifying video “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick” and got 300,000 hits in the first four hours it was posted? The popularity of the grisly, 10-minute video reveals a disturbing online subculture with an appetite for videos that show actual murders. ‘1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick’ was the most popular video that week alongside a bloody motorbike collision and a man slowly dying after being mutilated by a machete. These are called “gore GIFS” of people being hit by cars, trains. The moment of impact is looped over and over.
One commenter summed it up: “The thin veneer of civilization – under it lays some serious ugly.”
Can you imagine that human trafficking is a $34 billion industry? As reported in NOT MY LIFE, Cambodian children prostitutes say that American sex tourists are the most violent pedophiles of their international clients.
NOT MY LIFE was directed, written and produced by Robert Bilheimer and is narrated by Glenn Close. It took four years to make and covers five continents.
I’ve been to several of the countries profiled. I’ve seen children as young as 3 years old skillfully begging in the streets.
NOT MY LIFE begins with the fishing boys in Ghana on Lake Volta. Kidnapped or sold by their families, children as young as 5 or 6 are made to work 14 hours a day for one meal. Then the film goes to Senegal where children are forced to beg on the streets (which is common throughout Africa and India) and beaten if they do not bring back a few dollars. In India we see the children who spend their days going through a landfill in India (read Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo).
For the sex slavery market, traffickers prefer European children. A popular hunting ground is Roma children near Albania.
Journalist Paul Radu interviewed traffickers imprisoned in Budapest. They show absolutely no remorse and talk about making deals with families; they’re brutality, and the light sentences they receive.
After reporting on child labor in Nepal, Bilheimer goes on to tackle the horrendous state of children forced into the highly profitable sex trade in Cambodia and India. Where is the humanity in these men who go on sex tours? Why do young girls have their vaginas sown up many times so they can be “deflowered” by tourists?
Finally, NOT MY LIFE addresses the problem of underage girls being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery in the U.S. One teenage girl tells her story.
NOT MY LIFE is a very disturbing film. The story of a girl forced to kill another girl who tried to escape being a child soldier is horrifying. The punishments meted out by pimps will make a lasting impression on anyone seeing this film.
Victoria Alexander is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association: www.bfca.org/ and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria’s weekly column, “The Devil’s Hammer,” is posted every Monday. http://www.fromthebalcony.com/editorials.php.
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Victoria Alexander
Member of Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria Alexander lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, and answers every email at victoria.alexander.lv@gmail.com. For a complete list of Victoria Alexander's movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes go to: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/victoria-alexander/movies. Victoria Alexander contributes to Films in Review (http://www.filmsinreview.com), Film Festival Today (http://filmfestivaltoday.com) and Las Vegas Informer (LVInformer.com).