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Best Documentaries for Teaching about Gender and SexualityFeb 28 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line These five films are essential tools for anyone teaching high school or college students about gender and sexuality. One of the things that frustrates me about epinions is that it does not include a broad enough range of books and films; more "alternative" selections are often not available for review, so people only have the opportunity to learn about the same old stuff. I'm writing this review as a way of improving this situation just a bit, by letting others know of some very useful documentaries on gender and sexuality that I have found to be productive classroom tools. Films Focusing on Gender Baby Beauty Pageants (aired on A&E, the Arts and Entertainment network) is an hour-long program on the extensive beauty pageant circuit for little girls across the US. It follows the stories of several contestants and their mothers as they prepare for and compete in a pageant. Along the way, parents, kids, and pageant organizers justify their activities, claiming that these activities keep girls feminine and that they are just doing what the kids want. My students (first and second-year college students) responded vocally to this documentary and we used it profitably to discuss gender-role socialization, particularly as we watched 4-year-old girls putting on elaborate makeup and doing strip-teases for the pageant judges. Jean Kilbourne's Still Killing Us Softly is a classic film often used to demonstrate to students distorted media images of women's bodies and how these images produce eating disorders and, ultimately, a major part of women's lack of social power. There are several editions of the film, which is helpful since without seeing recent images, students tend to discount the argument as "the way things used to be." Students enjoy seeing celebrities they are familiar with and are generally very animated about discussing the topic of eating disorders. The general argument of the film, that these images are centrally tied to keeping women subordinate in society, is a provocative one that will keep them thinking. One Film Dealing with Both Gender and Sexuality Another classic film used with college students to provoke discussions about gender and sexuality is Sut Jhally's Dreamworlds. This film makes the case that music videos (and other media, but mainly music videos) teach us to connect sex and violence and are a central force in leading to rape. The most powerful and upsetting section of the film takes the gang rape scene in the Oscar-winning film The Accused and intersperses portions of the rape with clips from popular MTV videos. This montage shows clearly that the same sorts of movements and ways of touching women that are used in real-life rapes are the behaviors glorified in MTV videos. Again, the film was made in the 1980s, so the videos used as examples will not necessarily be familiar to today's students, but Jhally's argument is provocative and evokes strong emotional responses from students. Films for Teaching Gay and Lesbian Issues It's Elementary (1 hour, aired on PBS and available at many university libraries) is a documentary aimed to show how gay and lesbian issues can be taught to young children in an "age appropriate" way. Crucially, it also aims to show how necessary such education is, because the children already hold many stereotypes and misconceptions about gay and lesbian people, ideas they have learned from TV, movies, and adults around them. The film documents lessons on gay and lesbian issues taking place in about 5 elementary and middle school classrooms. We get to observe what students think, how they react to the lessons, and what information the teachers actually present. The film can be a bit repetitive toward the end, but watching the interactions in one or two of the classrooms shown is quite instructive. My students were eager to discuss this film as well, and we used it to discuss the formation of stereotypes and how they can be challenged. Finally, Out at Work (1 hour, HBO production) is a documentary about discrimination against gay and lesbian people in the workplace. It follows the stories of three workers (2 gay men and 1 lesbian) fired and/or harassed at their workplaces. The work sites are diverse: a restaurant chain in Georgia, a top national securities firm with this particular office located in California, and an auto plant in Michigan. The experiences the three workers face are also quite diverse. The film is useful as a consciousness-raising exercise: many of my students did not realize that most gay and lesbian people are not protected in the workplace. It also allows the students to witness such things as a Queer Nation protest and video footage of some of the vilest harassment covered in the video. Interviews with the fired and harassed workers puts a human face on gay and lesbian people for those students who have not had much contact with members of this community. Further, interviews with "people on the street" help to show the still prominent homophobia in the US. My students were quite eager to discuss this film, and we used it to flesh out our study of the formation and nature of attitudes and attitude change. Conclusion I would strongly recommend any of these films, not just for teaching purposes, but also for one's own viewing. I have seen all of them numerous times and find them enlightening and provocative. They are not all professional documentaries, and they therefore do not have the great cinematic power that some more experienced film-makers might have given them. What they lose there, however, they make up for with their compelling content, content we cannot get in many other places.  |
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by jeff_wilder78 by Stephen_Murray
by dangbro
