Pole-dancing documentary Strip Down, Rise Up is in conflict with itself, exploiting trauma and fixating on the male gaze

Salon.com

The Netflix documentary on women using pole dancing as therapy has already upset strippers who feel like the film appropriates their work while marginalizing them. Strip Down, Rise Up focuses on Sheila Kelley, the founder of S Factor, a chain of pole dance studios. "The intention of the film is in conflict with itself," says Pallavi Yetur. "On the one hand, it makes efforts to illuminate an often misunderstood industry by telling some of the stories of women in it besides Kelley. But on the other, the narrative revolving around sexual trauma and Kelley's group-commiseration about it veers from that arc in an almost opportunistic way. The women selected were not existing S Factor students — they were seemingly cherry-picked for their compelling stories for this odd therapy experiment. The underlying motivation seems to stem from deep feelings of resentment toward men that Kelley expresses. Early in the film, she says, 'I am in a war to help women reclaim themselves.' It sounds like a noble pursuit, but the notion of this being at 'war' brings hostility and animosity, pitting one side against another in a process she claims to be female-centric. There are many times her passion for female empowerment has more to do with dangling a female body in front of men . . . just to stick it to them. She and her husband (The West Wing and The Good Doctor actor Richard Schiff) in separate interviews cheekily argue about her bringing a pole into his gym/office to get his eyes off the Yankee game. In the film's most bizarre scene, Kelley brings three men into the studio and essentially tells the women to do what they want with them, as if they're male props to unload on. Any attempt to subvert the male gaze feels like lip service as the story keeps diverting back to men."