Films for an Intro to Sexuality and Gender Studies Course

This file contains suggestions for films that would be effective for classroom
use in an Introduction to Sexuality and Gender Studies course.  The messages
appeared on WMST-L in June 2009.  For additional WMST-L files now available on
the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Hello everyone -- I am teaching an Introduction to Sexuality and
Gender Studies and would like recommendations for films that are
effective for classroom use on any of the vast array of topics
associated with this course. Thanks,

Jane 

jcaputi  AT  comcast.net

You may want to consider the Special Educational 2-Disc Set of
"Shooting Women", about camerawomen around the world and their issues
as women in the workforce, at www.wmm.com.

Margaret D. Stetz, Professor of Women's Studies, U. of Delaware
writes: "I intend to use this film in our Women's Studies capstone
course for majors, and it should be part of every Women's Studies
student's education."  For more information, please see
www.womenbehindthecamera.com.

Best, 
Alexis Krasilovsky, Director, "Shooting Women"/"Women Behind the Camera"
Professor
Dept. of Cinema and Television Arts
California State University, Northridge

Hi, Jane. I like "War Zone," Maggie Hadleigh-West, for this type of
course (and others). Introduces key concepts in really simple and
unavoidable ways.

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=213 

Looks like there is a nice educator's discount now... 

Moira 

Moira K. Amado-McGittigan, Ph.D. 
Executive Director 
BAI Community Action Alliance 
Mobile, AL 

Dear Jane,

You might want to take a look at the reviews in Films for the Feminist
Classroom, available at http://www.signs.rutgers.edu/ffc_home.html.

Best wishes,
Karen

Karen Alexander, PhD
Senior Editor
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Rutgers University
8 Voorhees Chapel
5 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901

Here are some favorites organized into documentaries and feature films
for a course on Sex and Gender from a global perspective.  Good Luck!

DOCUMENTARIES:
"Sex in a Cold Climate" (Ireland, Magdalene laundries)
"Against My Will" (Pakistan, honor killings)
"Señorita Extraviada/Missing Young Woman" (Mexico, violence against women)
"The Day I'll Never Forget" (Kenya, FGM)
"Kinsey" (documentary)
"Georgie Girl" (New Zealand, Georgina Beyer, first transsexual member of Parliament)
"The Brandon Teena Story"
"Tough Guise"
"The Celluloid Closet" 
"The Times of Harvey Milk" 
"And Still I Rise" 
"Black Is, Black Ain't" 
"The Heart of the Matter" (Women and HIV/AIDS") 
"Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo/Mothers of the May Plaza" (Argentina, human rights)
"The Global Assembly Line" (Mexico and the Philippines, maquiladoras)
"Zoned for Slavery" (Honduras, maquiladoras)
"A Question of Equality" (documentary series)
"Born into Brothels" (Calcutta,India, redlight district)
"Made in Thailand" (global assembly line)
"Mardi Gras: Made in China" (global assembly line)

FEATURE FILMS
"The Body Beautiful" (short feature by Nigerian filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah)
"Fire!" (feature film)
"Water" (feature film)
"The Wedding Banquet" (feature film)
"Brokeback Mountain" (feature film)  
"My Life in Pink" (feature film)
"Milk" (feature film)
"Kinsey" (feature film)
"Boys Don't Cry" (feature film)
"Go Fish" (feature film)
"Moolaade" (Senegalese director, Ousmane Sembene's feature film about
the conflicting cultural traditions of FGM and moolaade--the
obligation to offer protection to those who seek it set in Burkina
Faso)
"If These Walls Could Talk" (Parts I and II)


Dr. E. G. Polakoff
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Bloomfield College
467 Franklin Street
Bloomfield, NJ 07003
erica_polakoff  AT  bloomfield.edu
epolakoff  AT  earthlink.net

Hi Jane, 

One way to begin is with the university/college library where you are teaching. 

Go to their library homepage, look for the link to DVD/VHS or film or
media collections. Then plug in the words most relevant to your
course, like "sex" "sexuality" maybe "feminism" or "women's studies"
(it may take a few search tries to get familiar with your employer's
collection, but you get the idea.) Sometimes the stacks are open to
professors and you can actually physically visit the collection of
movies/films to peruse.

Part-time or adjunct professors know that this is an *essential* labor
saving know-how, because they often teach at multiple locations during
a single semester (and, presumably media materials are not to be
transferred from one college's classroom to another's...). So, if you
are tailoring a course, it really helps to know what resources are
available on site.

Plus, knowing what is in your college's collection can assist great
pedagogy and classroom experiences:

- Have the Women's Studies librarian (if your college has one) come
  and visit your class and provide information on research - films,
  databases, journals, etc. relevant to your class topics.

- Incorporate students' use of library into your class (have THEM
  investigate relevant videos/movies/documentaries) to familiarize
  their WGS research skills. (One thing that has worked well for me is
  having a small group be responsible for film check out and return,
  view the film in advance, and prepare discussion questions for the
  classmates. This way, it is a team-teaching/learning movie watching
  experience. But, some colleges restrict video materials to
  instructors.)

Anyway, just some thoughts - Sarah

Sarah L. Rasmusson
Fellow
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH)
University of Illinois
srasmus3  AT  illinois.edu

I have used Billy Elliot and it has been very successful

    The Bandit Queen - India
    Fire - India
    Ophelia
    4 Weddings and a Funeral
    Charlotte Gray
    Veronica Guerin
    9-5
    Killing us Softly
    Project X
    The Scarlett Letter

    NOW - Website


-- 
Dileas, Dochas, Agus Gra,
~ With Faith, Hope & Love ~

Erin

I'd second most of the films suggested, especially
War Zone and The Body Beautiful and Black Is....

I'd add the docs
Live Nude Girls Unite! (unionizing at the Lusty Lady peep show),
Jane: An Abortion Service
Queens of Heart (on why straight audiences like drag shows)
U People (women and transmen of color)
City of Borders (Jerusalem's only gay bar)
and the feature
The Watermelon Woman (1996, object of NEA furor)

But I would _not_ second the rec of Born Into Brothels, for reasons
described in the review at Films for the Feminist Classroom
http://www.signs.rutgers.edu/rev_ser2_film_1-1.html
and my "From 'Their Eyes' to 'New Eyes': Suffering
Victims and Cultivated Aesthetics in Born into Brothels" PostScript.
2007 Summer; 26 (3): 53-61.

Instead, I'd suggest getting Tales of the Night Fairies
http://www.bayswan.org/swfest/tales.html
It's hard to find, but if you're in a position to get your library to order
it, I encourage you to do so.

Frann Michel
fmichel  AT  willamette.edu

Dear Jane,

I would suggest using the film *Brokeback Mountain*, but utilizing some
recent scholarship that frames the film as a critical social commentary on
compulsory heterosexuality. Harry Benshoff has written a wonderful essay
that does just that titled, "A Straight Cowboy Movie: Heterosexuality
According to *Brokeback Mountain*." The essay is from a recent edited book
by Sean Griffin titled *Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness*.

*Brokeback Mountain* is a great film to use in an intro gender and sexuality
studies course because the film offers so much to think about regarding
these categories, both conceptually and politically. I, too, am teaching a
similar intro course this fall term and have decided to use this film.
However, because most of my students are "straight-identified," I don't want
them to view this film only as a gay (cowboy) film. Rather, I think a much
more transformative (and subversive) pedagogy is one that shows how this
film reveals the destructive force of compulosry hetesexuality in bed with
patriarchy. An interesting point Benshoff makes is that "precisely
because *Brokeback Mountain* makes homosexuality look exactly like traditional
heterosexual homosociality that the film must forcefully and repeatedly be
labeled as overtly gay by the heteronormative discourses in which it
circulates." And, I would add, is what also causes this film to be taught as a
gay cowboy film. Combining the film with Benshoff's essay will, I think, create
a critical opportunity for students to deeply question their abiding adherence
to, at best, a very flawed sexuality/gender system.

Would be happy to exchange syllabi, if you'd like. Best wishes with the
course!

Best,
Nelson

-- 
Nelson Rodriguez, PhD
http://www.tcnj.edu/~wgst/faculty/rodriguez.html
Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Critical Theory in
Education
The College of New Jersey
www.tcnj.edu
School of Culture & Society
http://www.tcnj.edu/~culture/
Bliss Hall, Room 116
P.O. Box 7718
2000 Pennington Road (for UPS and FedEx)
Ewing, NJ 08628-0718
E) wgst  AT  tcnj.edu

I noticed that <<Boys Don't Cry>> was suggested for class use, but I
don't think that <<Transamerica>> was.  I did not have a successful
experience with <<Boys Don't Cry>> in class, and I think it is because
the film sends mixed messages.  The final scene between the two young
lovers, in which the young woman tells Brandon, "I want to love you as
a woman," essentially becomes a lesbian love scene.  For my students
who were resistant to the idea of gender dysphoria and believed that
Teena was a lesbian who affected male behavior in order to be with
girls, this scene helped confirm their notions.

I felt that <<Transamerica>> was  a much stronger representation of
Trans life.  Do others agree?  I'd love to hear from Trans people
about the relative merits of the two films.

Linda Payne
Univeresity of South Alabama
lpayne  AT  jaguar1.usouthal.edu

I prefer The Brandon Teena Story, which is the documentary, to Boys Don't Cry.

Molly Dragiewicz
Assistant Professor
Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
molly.dragiewicz  AT  uoit.ca

Hello everyone,

There are so many good documentaries out there on trans stuff that I prefer
to stay away from major motion pictures.  Boy's Don't Cry is problematic in
many ways.  Not only does it make Brandon seem "confused" about his gender,
which is rhetoric often used by people trying to dismiss or invalidate trans
individuals, it also reproduces the trans person as victim narrative also
seen in The Crying Game, for example.  Also, Boy's Don't Cry can be
incredibly triggering for those in the class who have experienced sexual
and/or gender violence and is not appropriate to show without warning
students.
Transamerica does create a more "coherent" trans narrative, but one that
extremely and uncritically reproduces the "trapped in the wrong body"
narrative that has been oppressive and limiting for those in the trans
community as it is often held as the standard for what it means to be trans
and used for gatekeeping purposes by medical professionals.  It also
attempts to hypernormalize the trans character by painting the rest of the
characters in the film as highly dysfunctional.  She comes off as "boring,"
which I think has the reverse effect in which the character is not seen as
normal, but that her transsexuality becomes that which defines her.  Another
stereotypical and counterproductive representation of trans people is
through all of the shots in which they are "doing gender," which is apparent
in the opening scene of the movie where you see Felicity Huffman mimicking a
voice feminization film, putting on stockings, breast forms, make-up, pink
nail polish and a pink skirt suit and then stating that having a vagina will
make her a woman.

I would recommend the documentaries: Boy I Am, Cruel and Unusual, Against a
Trans Narrative, or Play in the Gray.

Best,
Reese C. Kelly
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology
University at Albany, SUNY
Visiting Instructor, Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies
Middlebury College

> But I would _not_ second the rec of Born Into Brothels, for reasons 
> described in the review at Films for the Feminist Classroom 
> http://www.signs.rutgers.edu/rev_ser2_film_1-1.html

For the very reasons described in "Films for the Feminist Classroom,"
I would use "Born Into Brothels."  It is precisely the agency of the
children themselves, the problems through their eyes and their
creativity and solutions which I think is so powerful.


Dr. E. G. Polakoff
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Bloomfield College
467 Franklin Street
Bloomfield, NJ 07003
erica_polakoff  AT  bloomfield.edu
epolakoff  AT  earthlink.net

> I would suggest using the film *Brokeback Mountain*, but utilizing some
> recent scholarship that frames the film as a critical social commentary on
> compulsory heterosexuality.

I would also suggest using excerpts from Eric Patterson's wonderful
book "On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and
Love in the Story and the Film" (Paperback)


Dr. E. G. Polakoff
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Bloomfield College
467 Franklin Street
Bloomfield, NJ 07003
erica_polakoff  AT  bloomfield.edu
epolakoff  AT  earthlink.net