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And Jill2000Plus, I totally agree about Ken in the last Toy Story, even though I think Barbie was even more so.
-------------------- Heather Corinna, Executive Director & Founder, Scarleteen About Me • Get our book! Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead Posts: 63416 | From: An island near Seattle | Registered: May 2000
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Barbie was very fabulous, unfortunately they didn't give her a extensive wardrobe, so she didn't get to show that aspect of it off as much, I liked how she had legwarmers though, I thought that was a nice 80s style touch. Personally I think it would have been awesome if she was a racial minority Barbie.
-------------------- Always knock before entering my room when I am in there alone, as I may be doing all sorts of wonderfully thrilling things that I'd rather you didn't see. Posts: 839 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2008
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Has anyone seen Tomboy? Its a french one this year, exploring gender identity. I thought it was sweet but predictable. The child actors were very good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHebAaxnxKM
I also liked Miss Representation. About portrayal of women in media.
-------------------- "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare."
quote:Originally posted by Jill2000Plus: The History Boys
Liked it a lot -- well, I'm an Alan Bennett fan, I would. It does come across as a bit of a filmed play, which after all is what it is, but having been in Posner's and Irwin's shoes, I found the psychological truth piercing and painful when I saw it on screen, in a way it hadn't been when I was just reading the play.
I'm in two minds about My Beautiful Laundrette. On the one hand, I have seen much better films, and the acting of the Asian lead is pretty awful -- but it's important for the number of serious problems it addresses, and for a relatively rare example of a gay happy ending, and an interracial gay happy ending at that. So on balance I would recommend it.
But I'm a Cheerleader is always good for a laugh.
Of the films I've mentioned, Une histoire sans importance, Les roseaux sauvages, Nous étions un seul homme, F***ing Åmål, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Personal Best and Two of Us all deal with bisexuality to some degree. Two of Us is notable for having a sixteen-year-old male protagonist who actually calls himself bisexual.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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This isn't a film, it's a TV show, but there's an anime series called Wandering Son about two transgendered teenagers (one a boy, one a girl), and it's excellent and it's streaming legally for free in Japanese with English subtitles on a website called Crunchyroll (they used to have illegal streams, but a few years ago they started only having ones officially authorised by the japanese companies and money goes to the artists from the ads during the videos or if you have a subscription they get money from that), though there is no English subtitled (or dubbed) DVD release.
-------------------- Always knock before entering my room when I am in there alone, as I may be doing all sorts of wonderfully thrilling things that I'd rather you didn't see. Posts: 839 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2008
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wow, I'm totally gonna have to look up some of these movies! I have lots of non-straight friends and have recently come to realize that I myself am bisexual, though I have an exclusive relationship with a boyfriend. However, I know me and plenty of my friends would love some of these movies. I hope at least some of them are on netflix!
Posts: 94 | From: Pennsylvania, USA | Registered: Aug 2010
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quote:Originally posted by eryn_smiles: Has anyone seen Tomboy? Its a french one this year, exploring gender identity. I thought it was sweet but predictable. The child actors were very good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHebAaxnxKM
Recently seen it. Being on the FtM side myself and also a fan of Sciamma's previous film Naissance des pieuvres, I loved it. Yes, I suppose you could say it was predictable, but what I liked was what it does on the way to the place it ends up, if you follow me. Sciamma's filmmaking, even at its most emotional, has a detached and analytical quality to it that I really like. In this film she deftly says a lot of things about gender stereotypes, etc. Apparently the film is going to be shown in schools in France! I'm pleased to find that out.
Part of my personal reaction to the film was to be stunned at just how social these kids' existence is. At their age I was always alone. Your average person lives such a social life, gets such a lot of social practice that I never got. I also enjoyed watching the relationship between the sisters and between the father and his daughter/son, never having had such relationships myself. And Laure/Mickaël, the scorer of goals at football and winner of fights, is someone I wish I had been at ten, someone I still wish I were, in fact, but can never be. Had I watched the film at that age, ze would have been my hero. Ze kind of is anyway.
The only thing that made me a bit uncomfortable was not in the film itself, but in the way Sciamma talks about it. Sciamma is openly lesbian, and though she was something of a tomboy as a child she is not butch and has never identified as anything but female. She says that Laure/Mickaël can be interpreted as transgendered or not, it's up to you, but she talks about Laure/Mickaël 'pretending' to be a boy, about a lie, a game... She casually says that this is the last period when Laure/Mickaël's body will permit hir to pass as a boy, and hearing that I shuddered internally, remembering my own traumatic puberty, flinching in ancipation of what puberty will do to Laure/Mickaël. Puberty is bad news for trans kids. Sciamma doesn't seem very aware of this -- well, why would she be, she isn't trans. But what I'm saying is that she seems to have made a film about someone who may very well be a transboy while seeing it largely through the lens of lesbianism, not of being transgender. Hence the ending scene, which made me a bit uncomfortable. I thought that, if Sciamma really wanted to leave things open to interpretation, it could have ended on a more ambiguous note. Sciamma claims that the ending is open to interpretation anyway, which it is, but it's just the way she does it...it's that lens of lesbianism rather than transidentity again.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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Further to what I said above about the film being shown in schools in France: I always swore up and down that when I grew up I would remember what childhood is really like, and I don't for one minute think that the film will lead to a wonderful spread of tolerance. I think a lot of kids, and teachers, will be bored by it and by the mandatory class discussions that will follow. I think a whole lot of kids will snicker and crack jokes and use "tomboy" (a new word for the French) as an insult and generally make fun of the film for while, then forget it without its having made a dent. That will be by a long way the majority reaction. I would bet a lot of money on that. But in some class somewhere there will be a kid with gender identity worries who will see him/herself on screen for the first time, and that kid is going to be done a whole lot of good by the movie.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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A fair few polyamorous people consider themselves queer, so even though there's not a trace of homosexuality or gender variance in it, let us include Agnès Varda's third film, Le Bonheur (Happiness), a bright, visually unusual film about open relationships, cheerful and straightforward on one level but with some disturbing stuff going on under the surface.
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I'm dying to see Romeos and Gun Hill Road, both new films about transgender teenagers in the middle of physical transition -- hormones, but no surgery yet. In the former the main character is a gay FtM boy in Cologne, Germany; in the latter she is a straight MtF girl in New York, of Puerto Rican extraction. Both films have gotten some pretty good, though not brilliant, reviews. Both seem to represent a new generation, if you will, of trans-themed films, one focussing on the practicalities of physical and legal transition and offering a bit more hope than the trans-themed films of yore.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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A few more thoughts on 'Tomboy'. Sciamma (the filmmaker; openly lesbian, not particularly 'butch') says that when she was a kid, in the eighties, short hair for girls was in, so she had a short haircut and would sometimes be asked if she was a boy or a girl, though that wasn't what she was trying for.
All well and good if the film had been set back when Sciamma was growing up. But it's set in our day (is it? I think so, but I did find the absence of video games odd -- I've known few kids who preferred outdoor play to video games all or even most of the time) and little girls wearing short hair these days is just very seldom done. Sciamma says that when she was casting, the little girls she auditioned became alarmed at the prospect of having to cut their hair off for the role. That should've told her something. For a ten-year-old female-bodied child like Laure/Mickaël to wear boys' clothes and a boy's haircut, even though it's not a crew cut, is a big deal, a big statement. We're told in the film that the family have moved around a lot. Laure/Mickaël must therefore have gotten the "Are you a boy or a girl?" question a lot, in her various new neighbourhoods and new schools -- growing up in the nineties, I got asked that on the playground myself, though my hair was always at least to my collar. I remember that my hair was my badge of femaleness, of normalcy; that when asked, instead of answering I turned around to show the asker(s) its length. Yeah, ze must have gotten that question a lot, ze must have been read as a boy, ze must have been teased about being such a 'boyish girl' -- on the school playground by kids in other classes at least, supposing that when ze was younger ze had less freedom to play with the others in the neighbourhood without hir mother introducing hir.
Looked at this way, it seems that when once again Laure/Mickaël arrives in a new neighbourhood and once again ze's mistaken for a boy, this time ze thinks, in effect, what the hell, I'm going for it -- hence in part the happiness, the vertiginous sense of liberation ze finds in hir new role. And when ze fights the boy who pushed hir sister, for once ze's fighting as a boy, not fighting because ze's been teased for being such a tomboy. Not that I expect the film to undertake excavations of Laure/Mickaël's past. It's not that kind of film. But a quick line or two mentioning that past would have helped a lot.
I'm not sure though that Sciamma considered Laure/Mickaël's past. Which is fair enough. It depends on the kind of film you want to make. Hers is very realistic in some ways, notably the portrayal of the kids' games, but in other ways it's not primarily a realist film: it's an analysis of gender roles. All well and good. But though Sciamma says that her protagonist can be interpreted any way you like, I think that Sciamma's lesbianism predisposes her to put a lesbian slant on the question, as my transgenderism predisposes me to put a transgender slant on the question. Of the end, Sciamma said that in telling Lisa that hir name is Laure, after which Laure/Mickaël smiles, Laure/Mickaël is realising that ze doesn't have to lie to be who ze is. Which kind of stunned me, because if you were assigned female at birth and you feel like a boy, present as a boy and choose the name Mickaël for yourself, then Mickaël is your name and a boy is what you are. In a way, of course, Laure/Mickaël is lying by doing that, but if ze is transgender, then in another way ze isn't. Which brings me back to my original point: that Sciamma has made a film about a person who may well be transgender without really considering what being transgender feels like. Lord knows there's enough information out there on trans kids. She could've done a little bit of research.
Mind you, I love the film, I admire Sciamma's work (she also made 'Water Lilies' and the short film 'Pauline'), I highly recommend it. This-all is just...something to bear in mind.
[ 11-27-2011, 07:08 AM: Message edited by: bump on a log ]
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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This is going to sound odd, but The Aristocats.
I have less of a history with Disney than many. When I was little I went through something of a Little Mermaid phase: I got my mother to buy me a Little Mermaid board book and I later had a casette of songs from the movie together with another storybook of the movie that you followed along in while playing the casette periodically. But I never actually saw the movie till I was grown up! While still small I watched Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree over and over. I also saw Aladdin, The Lion King and 101 Dalmatians, and I'm pretty sure I saw The Jungle Book, and I had a Jungle Book storybook too, and I saw at least sizeable chunks of The Lion King 2 and Mulan. But the rest of Disney, the big princess movies and stuff, I never saw, except for a clip here and there, till I was grown up and decided to watch them.
Except The Aristocats. I think it was the summer I was nine, but it may have been the summer I was ten, that my mother and I were house-sitting for a friend and, being an obsessive type, I became obsessed with The Aristocats and Toy Story, which the friends had on VHS (yes I'm that old), and watched them both over and over and over and over. Recently I re-watched The Aristocats, first in English and then in the Latin American Spanish dub, and found that it held up well. I was puzzled to find that it's generally considered lesser Disney. Yes the plot is basically a string of vignettes rather than a coherent story, and yes it borrows heavily from Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians, and yes there are some plotholes and Edgar the butler makes for a feeble villain -- but I thought it was good nonetheless, and I have high standards. I admit that nostalgia must be playing a big part in my assessment, but still!
Anyway, my point here is that The Aristocats is one of the least rampantly heteronormative Disney flicks. Sure, the whole thing is about Thomas and Duchess finding love and his becoming a stepfather to her kittens, and at the end we're told that Thomas and Duchess are also going to have kids of their own. But Duchess, when she meets Thomas, is a single mother. Not only has Thomas been around the block a few times -- we expect that -- but she's been around it at least once, because there are the kittens to prove it! Frufru the horse and Roquefort the mouse seem single, as does Edgar, though we don't really know for sure about any of them. Madame, the cats' human, is single, and so is her lawyer and old friend Georges. Both of them are getting on in years, but though they clearly have a soft spot for each other and some kind of history together, they don't end up married -- they don't seem to want to. They are happy as they are. Madame's significant others are her cats. Abigail and Amelia, the English geese whom the cats meet, have 'spinster' written all over them. They are sisters, and they are happily single together, keeping each other company. They also have their Uncle Waldo, who seems single, though again we don't know for sure, and he has them. Yeah, Uncle Waldo's probably an alcoholic, but still. Thomas has a group of lively jazz-playing bachelor friends who hang out together and he is particularly close to one of them, evidently his longtime best buddy. And when he gets together with Duchess, Thomas doesn't have to give up his old friends -- they turn up in the basement of Madame's mansion, since she has used her wealth to start a home for the alley cats of Paris.
Then there are Napoleon and Lafayette. They are two dogs, completely unrelated to the main plot and to each other, who live in the countryside and spend their time chasing passing vehicles, something which Napoleon sees as a serious military operation. They're both male, in case you didn't guess from the names, and Napoleon is Lafayette's military superior and is always snapping at him. But there's a remarkable scene in which Edgar, in an attempt to get his, Edgar's, bowler hat off the sleeping Napoleon's head, scratches Napoleon's back to get Napoleon to stretch out. Napoleon half wakes, enjoys the scratching, thinks Lafayette is doing it, gives Lafayette instructions. Lafayette, similarly half woken, also thinks he is doing the scratching. Napoleon has an orgasm from the scratching. I'm not making this up or reading too much into it. It's as plainly implied as anything of the sort I've ever seen. Then when Napoleon is fully awake and Lafayette is still half asleep, Lafayette is tipped into Napoleon's bed by Edgar, and Lafayette cuddles sleepily up to Napoleon, who irritatedly pushes him away. I swear to you all that those dogs have got something going on. It's as plain as the nose on your face. Deliberate homosexual innuendo in a Disney film.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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On Sunday saw my first Jarman film: 'Caravaggio'. A good one if you like bisexual themes, hints of S&M or in-jokes about camp cardinals and Popes. Messes around with gender a bit too: the Cupid of Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia is modelled by a woman.
I did suspect there was a bit of modern gay revisionism going on (so what else is new): Caravaggio is into a brawling tough who is rather far, physically and otherwise, from the male ideal of his day, an ideal which his art suggests he shared. But I don't know nearly enough about the subect to be sure.
Anyway, this is Jarman, the film's about Jarman, not about Caravaggio. You have to go in expecting that or you will be disappointed.
The visual tableaux I thought were stunning, but my visual sense is so bad that I can be deeply moved by the visual equivalent of bubblegum pop. I don't know what someone with an actual artist's eye would think of them.
At sixteen I would probably have been up in arms over the anachronisms Jarman throws in -- typewriter, trains, suits -- but I see now that these touches, when used right, are a way in, a window, a means of allowing us to empathise more fully with the past, that other country.
Posts: 170 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2011
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quote:Originally posted by bump on a log: On Sunday saw my first Jarman film: 'Caravaggio'. A good one if you like bisexual themes, hints of S&M or in-jokes about camp cardinals and Popes. Messes around with gender a bit too: the Cupid of Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia is modelled by a woman.
I did suspect there was a bit of modern gay revisionism going on (so what else is new): Caravaggio is into a brawling tough who is rather far, physically and otherwise, from the male ideal of his day, an ideal which his art suggests he shared. But I don't know nearly enough about the subect to be sure.
Anyway, this is Jarman, the film's about Jarman, not about Caravaggio. You have to go in expecting that or you will be disappointed.
The visual tableaux I thought were stunning, but my visual sense is so bad that I can be deeply moved by the visual equivalent of bubblegum pop. I don't know what someone with an actual artist's eye would think of them.
At sixteen I would probably have been up in arms over the anachronisms Jarman throws in -- typewriter, trains, suits -- but I see now that these touches, when used right, are a way in, a window, a means of allowing us to empathise more fully with the past, that other country.
God I love Jarman so so so much...
quote:Originally posted by eryn_smiles: Has anyone watched "Cloudburst"? I really liked it.
Couldn't find a trailer but I watched a clip, looks awesome, I gotta see it!
-------------------- There are seven billion sexual orientations! Posts: 348 | From: Leeds UK | Registered: May 2011
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So excited to add so many to my to-watch GLBTQ list!
My favorite film so far is Shortbus. It's by John Cameron Mitchell, the same guy who made Hedwig & the Angry Inch- which I saw somewhere earlier on this list.
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