Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Boys Don't Cry
Movie Review: "Boys Don't Cry"
Director Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" (1999) starring Hillary Swank as Brandon Teena depicts the life and death of a young woman who believed that she should have been born a man. Teena concealed her female gender and successfully convinced almost everyone she knew that she was really 'Brandon,' while she was living in a small town in Nebraska. But then, Teena's real identity was discovered, and she was raped, beaten and killed by some 'good 'ol boys' who were threatened by his/her ambiguous gender.
Teena, when her identity was concealed, was first accepted as one of the boys, and she even began a romance with a woman named Lana, who loved 'Brandon' because Brandon was the first person Lana had ever dated who was kind and sensitive. Brandon Teena first won Lana's heart when 'he' gave Lana a flower, something that Lana had never received before from a lover.
However, although Brandon Teena was very different from many of the cruel lovers Lana had known in the past, in the persona of Brandon, the central character was very much one of the boys. In some ways, this was the paradox of Brandon's ambiguous identity. Brandon was not a politically correct or socially aware transgendered person. S/he was very much a part of the highly 'gendered' society of the American West, where men were men and women were women. Part of Brandon's confusion lat in the fact that he did not know anyone else like 'himself,' he only knew that no available female identities suited him, so he assumed the persona of maleness. Maleness for Brandon still meant hanging out in bars, drinking, and hanging out with petty criminals. Ultimately, Brandon Teena's story and the movie "Boys Don't Cry" condemns the stifling limits of American cultural conceptions of both maleness and femaleness, as well as the limited mindset of the characters that victimize and act violently towards Brandon and Lana.
Works Cited
Boys Don't Cry." Directed by Kimberly Peirce. 1999.
Does that make her a lesbian? The movie ignores an in-depth consideration of this issue, which is unusual. After all, Brandon's murder is motivated, at least in part, because of his homosexuality and refusal to comply with gender norms that would dictate he be attracted to males. Lana is neither murdered nor raped; clearly, the characters in the movie see a difference between Lana and Brandon, even if both
Film Analysis: American Beauty Women's Sexuality Film Analysis: American Beauty Film Analysis: American Beauty American Beauty (1999) was written by Alan Ball, creator of the HBO series 6 Feet Under, and directed by Sam Mendes. American Beauty centers around the Burnham family, who, on the surface seems like a picture-perfect, white, upper-middle class, suburban family. The protagonist of the film is the father and husband of the Burnham family, Lester, who, fed up with
War Films Taking Jeanine Basinger at her word would leave us with far fewer war films than we think we have. Basinger is a 'strict constructionist,' accepting as war films only those that have actual scenes of warfare (Curley and Wetta, 1992. p. 8; Kinney, 2001, p. 21). That means that the four films that will be considered here, and especially the two World War II films, are not war films.
film "Yentl" "Yentl" is a tale set in 19th century Poland, portraying a vivacious, independent little girl called Yentl from the Polish Jewish community, who was doggedly determined to follow her dreams despite knockbacks. Yentl obstinately wishes to pursue education in a community where academics, particularly Jewish religious learning, is strictly reserved for males only and is forbidden for girls. Posing as a youth, Yentl, however, flouts all societal rules and
Q1. Explain the impact of the social and cultural influences on sexual attitudes and behaviors as it relate to Brandon. Boys Don’t Cry depicts the challenges faced by a young man in the 1990s attempting to transition from female to male. Transgenderism is the technical term used to describe someone who was born a particular anatomical sex, but identifies as the opposite gender. The film shows the difficulty of transitioning when
Magdalene Sisters Peter Mullan's 2002 movie The Magdalene Sisters depicts the dark side of Irish culture, church, and history. From the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland ran profitable asylums for women. The laundry businesses allowed the convents to earn money while keeping socially scorned women behind bars. Yet far from being a place of spiritual refuge, the Magdalene laundries often became torture houses