The Red Light Rules: Unidentified Objects

This was a fun and weird lil film watch. Unidentified Objects is a movie about a reclusive little person named Peter who is reluctantly pulled into a road trip from New York to rural Canada by an eccentric, alien-obsessed neighbor, Winona (who also happens to be a sex worker). It is an awkward journey that becomes a tender, surreal exploration of queerness, loneliness, and connection. The film scored really well under The Red Light Rules and here's why:

• When Peter confronts Winona about her being sex worker after googling her Winona very rightly says that it's just one thing she does. She tells him that she does a lot of other things and sex work is just one thing, and how it doesn't make sense for people to be flattened out into one thing they do or one thing they are. Then, when their car breaks down and some people stop to help them one of the women in the car, who are on their way to a convention, talks about how it's so demeaning that the popular women characters at the convention all have OnlyFans pages. Peter goes on to defend the right for people do whatever it is they need/want to do and that people shouldn't feel the need to bend and bow to other people's' sense of morality or superiority.
• Next, Winona is so obsessed with aliens because she believes she has been abducted before. Because of this she encounters a lot of people along the road who help her get to where she wants to go and ends up meeting other people who were also abducted before and decides to stay with them.
• Winona is a complex individual who we don't get a lot of backstory about. We do know that she is running from something/someone but we never actually find out who/what that is. All we know is that she is trying to get away from them because they're trying to stop her from going back to the abduction site. She has hobbies/interests outside of sex work and her being a sex worker is just one of the many things about her, just like she says to Peter in the diner.
• In the end, Winona stays with the fellow abductees in Canada and we can surmise that they did in fact get abducted by the aliens again which is what they all wanted. The film ends with what I believe is Peter seeing Winona again at his door but this time as a beam of white light.

The whole film is strange, but good! It was heartening to see one of the main characters be a sex worker but not having that be her entire identity. I also really liked how weird Winona was but with just the right amount of street smarts too. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and think you should give it a watch if you're in the mood for an indie, road trip, artsy film. 

– Mel

Unidentified Objects scored 4/4 on The Red Light Rules™ test that assesses portrayals of sex work in media. We created 4 questions to determine this:

1. Does the film show an understanding of choice, circumstance, and/or coercion? yes
2. Does the SWer interact with another person in a positive manner unrelated to SW? yes
3. Does the SWer have a storyline, hobby, or interest outside of SW? yes
4. Does the film have a happy and/or non-traumatic ending for the SWer? yes