Piece Comment

Review of Strip Club USA Part One


Helen Borten takes us into the world of the strip joint, examining its customs and rituals—the buying of drinks, the attempts to date dancers—and she brings to her subject the same curiosity and care that an anthropologist studying tribal customs might. Borten’s technique is to bounce around between all the people that populate the world she is exploring—the bouncers, the strippers, the clients—in order to create a sort of multi-perspectived, almost cubist rendering of her subject. But Strip Club USA is at its strongest when it zeros in on one particular person’s story and stays with them long enough to draw a full portrait, and when this occurs, she manages to make us care about them. “I like getting compliments from men my father’s age,” says one young stripper in a moment that just freezes you. Certain parts are structured as a kind of she said/ he said testimonial that shifts between strippers and their clients and, at their best, the revelations that pour forth transcend the world of the strip joint and say something about human sexual, emotional relationships. Strip Club really digs out all kinds of possible perspectives, never stopping to rest on any one pat point-of-view… like, say, all men are jerks, which would be valid, but also easier than what Strip Club aspires to do. It keeps searching out new ground and Borten is never judgmental. She has chosen articulate subjects and she allows them to speak for themselves. In so doing, they succeed in sucking you into their world. Their stories, while sad, are also funny. One stripper tells of her days as a dominatrix and the one client she had who paid for a 100 lemon pies to be thrown in his face. Another guy paid her to pretend she was drowning in quicksand. Strip Club could run as a part of a series dealing with women in the work force, human sexuality and economics… or just a series about sex. People like sex.