Details from IMDb:
Stripped: Nashville
- 2024
- 1h 22m
This observational documentary follows the lives of Nashville’s most dynamic exotic dancers over several days, highlighting their skills as dancers, upbringings, personal relationships, and business acumen.
- Director
- Writer
- Stars
Initial Thoughts:
Last night, D&D was cancelled, so I was a little bummed and looking for something to cheer me up. After stumbling around Prime Video for a while, I settled on this. As anyone who follows my blog knows, I have been fascinated with sex for a long time and do quite enjoy documentaries. Plus, it was under 1.5 hours, which would be about enough time for me to get ready for bed afterwards.
Main Points:
I’m not sure why this gets such a bad rating. I mean, it’s not high art, and I think they could have gone a little deeper into each of these women’s lives/motivations and why Teneese (and Nashville in particular) has such insane laws about exotic dancers and strip clubs, but what’s here was interesting, and who doesn’t enjoy looking at beautiful women strip? And yes, I’ve been to strip clubs (though not in 10+ years), and I also could not get over how the dancers are not allowed to touch the customers; it seems like a nonsensical rule to me (though I do understand it is safer for the dancers).
I was surprised that the documentary does get pretty serious at times. Sadly, most of the women shown here have either been raped, drugged or had some other terrible thing happen to them by a man in their life. I think the film does a good job showing how smart, resourceful, talented and strong these women are; they all have multiple sources of income, and they don’t feel objectified when taking their clothes off in public, they say they feel empowered. I noticed how while they would show these beautiful women topless, they won’t show them fully nude, it makes no sense! You can’t even say it’s Amazon doing the censorship because here in Canada, they have “Dating Naked UK” with full frontal nudity on Prime Video. If that wasn’t strange enough, the bar allows full nudity, doesn’t serve alcohol, but you can bring your own booze! Nashville should be renamed Hypocrisyville! As one of the women says, it’s easier to get a gun than a license to be an exotic dancer, which is seriously messed up! My other issue, which is nothing to do with the quality of the movie, was how this movie clearly shows one of the things so wrong with the US: women don’t feel safe, so 99% of them feel they have to carry guns (one does carry a knife and mace instead) just to be out at night, a sad statement for a place that claims to be the part of the bible belt.
Final Thoughts:
I enjoyed this movie, though it could have done with better editing and an extra 10-15 minutes (a rare statement from me!). While it was important for these women to share the struggles/horrors they have gone through, it was very abrupt to watch. I think some kind of transition/segway would have been nice. I give this 7 out of 10 and would recommend it to anyone with an open mind who can handle the subject matter. Obviously, this is for adults only, ages 19+, with nudity, coarse language, simulated drug use, and mature subject matter. The world needs more strong/confident women, and I hope the ones shown here go far in life.