Buy It Now

DVD Review: Buy It Now (2005)

Sex, as seaside postcards insist, is a funny thing. Where else would female-dominated sketch-shows get their material? As each generation passes, we seem to be getting more and more promiscuous, until one day you’ll wake up and Dermot Murnaghan will be giving Kate Silverton her breakfast oats while handing over to the weather. At least, that’s what the tabloids say.

   

Kids are rampant these days, especially in Britain, where by all accounts they seem to run around the back of the bike sheds in the nude instead of learning how much it rains in Kenya every year. Obviously, that’s a load of tosh, but it doesn’t stop social commentators, usually of a conservative hue, wondering when our morals stopped being morals and ended up being a bye-line in a history textbook.

   

It’s an age where anybody can be a celebrity, and they usually achieve it by showing of various parts of their anatomy, or letting it get close to somebody else’s anatomy. For better or for worse, the human race is obsessed by the notion of sex; getting it, watching it, moaning about it, or wishing they could find a way to get it. Remarkable, really, for something that Johnny Rotten once called ‘thirty seconds of moaning and squelching.’

   

The neo-con backlash against promiscuity has gathered pace in recent years thanks to the state of the world. With George Bush embroiled in a holy crusade against anybody not from Crawford, Texas, Christian splinter groups have sprung up across the US and UK demanding chastity from our teenagers. It’s as if virginity is another component needed to crush the filthy terrorist threat.

   

Buy It Now seems to be another warning shot across those particular bows. Although not specifically aimed at young Christian groups, it seems to orbit the same moral planet whereby losing your virginity before you’re ready is A VERY BAD THING INDEED.

   

The film itself is split into two parts, each lasting about half an hour. Firstly, we get a digital video documentary by a girl named Chelsea (Chelsea Logan), who’s decided to sell her virginity on auction site eBay to the highest bidder. We follow her sporadic filming from her first bulletin, through the act itself, and lastly to the aftermath, where she slits her wrists. Then we get the narrative side of things, which fills in the gaps, telling us why Chelsea’s decided to give up her “precious gift” and who paid her two grand for it.

   

No matter what you’ve read about other teenagers doing it, the footage in Buy It Now is not real. Chelsea is an actress, and no matter what the claims before the film, it’s not re-edited by some kindly film student. It has a story, and was properly filmed in front of a crew.

   

With the disclaimer ingested, what’s it like? Well, I’m certain I’ve missed the point. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Chelsea because she did something incredibly, naïve, teenage and stupid and couldn’t back out of it. The experience looked painful, and upsetting, and is certain to put her off sex for the next twenty years, if not for life. She sold her virginity, but paid a far higher price, blah, blah, blah…

   

But that’s not what I took from this film. Personally, I felt Chelsea was a spoilt brat, who wanted cash for clothes and drugs and parties, lay on her front for a chap and got paid. No carping on about her ignorance and innocence would convince me that if she made an informed, adult decision to sell her body, then she should act like an adult to get out of it if she didn’t fancy doing it anymore. If she was using the money to pay for her grandma’s liver transplant, then yeah, lecture me on morality and teenage sex, but don’t bang on about it and choose someone so hateful to put your point across.

   

The reason I viewed it as a thinly-veiled conservative gift is that Chelsea is caricatured in such an obvious way. She scratches and cuts herself, and her parents aren’t together. The subtext is that any teenager prepared to sleep with someone for money is either a slut, or is so massively twisted in the head as to be mentally ill. I’ll hold my hands up and say I wouldn’t like a child of mine to do it, but again, the filmmakers allude to virginity as a precious gift not to be wasted. I can only speak for myself, but I would have flogged mine for a bag of Cola Cubes and a sip of Shandy Bass.

   

Similarly, the man who buys it (Christopher McCann as Peter) is portrayed as this philandering businessman whose only question is “You are eighteen, right?” (she’s not, she’s 16). The inference is that he’s only concerned about breaking paedophile laws, not the morals of the transaction. He then proceeds to have bestial sex while she lies on her front, cowering, and she can only move when he tells her. He finishes up by screaming like an animal when he climaxes.

   

There were just so many problems with Buy It Now that as a statement of consumerism it’s utterly useless. You may disagree, but to me a 16 year old who sells her body to buy a Prada handbag is a mercenary prostitute, not someone who’s producing a cry for help. In better hands, with better characters and not such a pretentious way of presenting your argument (two parts; split-screen like a bad episode of 24), this might have been a stinging attack on a potentially dangerous and morally-dubious action. But the most shocking thing about Buy It Now was that it didn’t shock me at all. That’s either because I’m too jaded by modern society, or I hate spoilt-rich girls who do cocaine one minute and cut their arms up the next like a bad Bret Easton Ellis novel.

   

Anyway, must dash – I’m off to auction all my dignity to a fat sweatshop owner who lives just outside of Saigon.

Chris Stanley