Trafficking in Popular CultureSexual and Gender Abuse in Morel’s Taken and Atkinson’s One Good Turn

Abstract

This paper looks at the way in which popular narrative forms deal with the contemporary issue of trafficking. The analysis of Kate Atkinson’s novel One Good Turn (2006) and Pierre Morel’s movie Taken (2008), which address both the concept and current practices of trafficking and prostitution, are both written within the genre of popular crime. A comparative analysis of these texts will illustrate how the issue of trafficking is seen and analysed in popular cultural forms, while highlighting remarkable divergences in purpose and ideology. The dangers Taken evokes are clearly aimed at creating a “myth” of trafficking which rewrites nineteenth-century fears of white slavery with a complete disregard for the complex structure of the sex industry and migratory flows. On the contrary, by exploring the failures of both border control and the forces of law and order to prevent sex trafficking, One Good Turn clearly states the necessity of establishing other means to prevent female abuse, turning instead to consider issues of women’s powerlessness and/or agency.