HOSPITALITY FOR SALE, OR DIRTY PRETTY THINGS

Abstract

A counterfeit passport and a commodiWed human kidney. A pirated version of an object that ties us to political life, and a commercialized, alienated version of a body part that ties us to biological life. These are the two illicit articles that circulate in Dirty Pretty Things (2002), directed by Stephen Frears and scripted by Stephen Knight. The relationship that the Wlm posits between the passport and the kidney is one of equivalence: one object is exchanged for another, thus placing them in an economic relationship. As with most forms of commodity exchange, the deal requires a contract between two interested parties: one, an ailing renal transplant patient who wants to purchase a kidney because she can no longer wait for one to become legally available, and the other, an undocumented immigrant who willingly agrees to give up her kidney in exchange for a (fake) passport. From this unsavory transaction, Frears and Knight develop a compelling narrative that is best placed in the generic category of the thriller, for the story of Dirty Pretty Things is primarily about how its two protagonists, an asylum seeker and an undocumented immigrant, respectively, escape the fate of having to surrender their own kidneys. My argument in this essay is twofold. First, I suggest that Dirty Pretty Things seeks to critique this economic transaction by exposing that it is based on the commodiWcation of that which should typically remain aneconomic: hospitality. However, the plot satisfaction provided by ensuring that the protagonists escape kidney extraction comes at a high ethical price. Hence the second point I seek to make: because the audience cannot but side with its protagonists and their refusal to capitulate to the organ trade, Dirty Pretty Things and its viewers risk becoming complicit in the immoralities of the very capitalism that the Wlm seeks to critique.