Mandy Sanguigni Dr. Park Mini-assignment #2 October 15, 2016 Independent Lens: Two Spirits On October 14th, 2016 in class we watched “Two Spirits” by Lydia Nibley. Basically the film explored the cultural context behind a tragic and senseless murder of the main character. Fred was part of an honored “Navajo” youth who was killed at the age of sixteen by a man who bragged to his friends that he was nothing but a “fag”. While walking home from a carnival he was chased by one of his friends. Once his friend caught up to Fred, he pulled him down from a mountain and smashed his head with a heavy rock. Fred laid there for five days straight where two young boys found his body lying there. He was labeled as a “two-spirit” who was possessed of balancing masculine and feminine traits. In the film, there are two parts that are put together effortlessly like the people it discusses. Most of the documentary focuses on Fred’s murder, but the real issues in the film were those of the lesbian, gay, and transgender community and how its members were viewed in a …show more content…
Almost all continents try to recognize and integrate more than just two specific genders. Some terms include “transgender” and “gay”. Many people classify gender with three things such as only having two sexes (male/female), only having two sexualities (gay/straight), and only having two genders (male/female). Around the globe, many have their own traditions for establishing genders. In the film, “Two Spirits”, Fred was not just a boy who wanted to be a girl, but he wanted to be both a boy and a girl. He was identified as a nadleehi in his Navajo culture. According to Western societies they have no straight connection to this tradition, while other communities are strict with either origins of sex, sexuality, or gender. Knowing about different cultures on how one view gender diversity can make one understand the gender expression
The film Jindabyne, is a story about death, marriage, and race in an Australian town in New South Wales called Jindabyne. In the film, four men go fishing, and one of them discovers the dead body of a young indigenous girl. Instead of reporting what they found to the police immediately, they decide to stay and continue fishing. They decide that there is nothing they could do for her, so they tie her legs to a tree and continue with their fishing, reporting the death only when they return home. After they are done with their weekend of fishing and report the incident, conflict starts, as the men are criticized for not respecting the dead. Through the story of the town’s reaction to the four fishermen’s response to the dead girl, the movie shows Australia to be fragmented and divided over white-indigenous relations.
Inspired by Nicholas Kristoff and Cheryl WaDunn’s novel, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide became a two-part documentary that came out in 2012. The film includes six actresses/activist, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Olivia Wilde, America Ferrera, Gabrielle Union, and Diane Lane, who travel to six different countries, Somaliland, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Cambodia, and India to highlight the oppression of women and girls. With the help from Nicholas Kristoff, they get the opportunity to meet extraordinary women who dedicate their lives to help women and girls within their countries.
In Intersexion: A Documentary about Being Intersex, an intersex individual named Mani Mitchell travels around the United States and the world to meet with other intersex individuals in the hopes of sharing their stories and raising awareness of the condition. Throughout the documentary, many individuals share their own personal experiences, but they often feel similarly about being intersex. They feel that being intersex is not a problem, but the way they are treated because of it is an issue. Many were subjected to genital surgery and forced to conform to the male-female sex binary. They discuss the consequences of these things as being physical, emotional, social, and psychological. While the documentary covers many aspects of being intersex,
...n that the diversity of Two-Spirit people keeps them from being defined only as shamans, artisans, homosexuals, transsexuals, asexual and the source of shame for some tribe. In my opinion, folklore about Two-Spirit people would reveal the traditional perceptions of these people and this is what should be studied.
Similarly, but discussing more sacred stories the documentary Spirit Doctors was filmed with the purpose of education and to answer the documenters question of how to handle culture and its responsibilities, which became a video that aims to preserve ceremony. The Elders, from both Blood and Cree nations, who are shown through the documentary, decided that it was time that these certain ceremonies were shared openly. They discussed this as an opportunity to remind Indigenous people of their roots and that “ Nothing is forgotten. Only left behind” (Burke, 2005). Indicating that returning to ceremony and regaining language though difficult will never be impossible and also imparting stories and traditions that would normally be passed on solely
“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).
Within the German Democratic Republic, there was a secret police force known as the Stasi, which was responsible for state surveillance, attempting to permeate every facet of life. Agents within and informants tied to the Stasi were both feared and hated, as there was no true semblance of privacy for most citizens. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie The Lives of Others follows one particular Stasi agent as he carries out his mission to spy on a well-known writer and his lover. As the film progresses, the audience is able to see the moral transformation of Stasi Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler primarily through the director 's use of the script, colors and lighting, and music.
The concept that gender is limited strictly to two categories, male and female, has been around since the beginning of mankind. The notion, also known as gender binarism, states that “human beings are by nature either male or female” (Shalko). In past societies, people have followed this idea of only two genders; however, in more recent years, people have uncovered a whole new variety of gender identities. This concept is called gender fluidity; it is the idea that gender has no boundaries that prevent people from expressing who they really are. In today’s world, gender is a touchy subject to speak or write about. Many people are unaccepting of the idea that there are more than two genders. It goes against everything they have ever learned.
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
In the United States, it is most commonly taught that there are two genders: male and female. However, the 2005 documentary Middle Sexes challenges that idea by looking into the cultures of other countries throughout the world. While a large portion of the United States population thinks that non-cisgender and queer people are unnatural or freaks, that opinion is not global. Many people who follow Christianity in the United States find it morally offensive to be anything but straight and cis, while many other religions and cultures embrace non-binary and queer people as the doing of their god. Middle Sexes looks into the differences between the North American social standards for gender and how they are clash with other cultures’ beliefs. The
“The Hours” directed by Stephen Daldry intertwines three women of distinct time periods as one. Virginia Wolf of the 1920’s, Laura Brown from the 1950’s and Clarissa Vaughn of modern time. The movie alternates with rough regularity between these three main characters. The movie centers on the feminist perspective of the three main characters and their respective time periods in American society. Daldry achieves purpose through plot, symbolism, and motif in a way that draws the viewer in on prominent attitudes and perspectives of each character that reveal theme. Virginia Wolf writes her story, Laura Brown reflects on the events in the story, Clarrisa Vaughn lives the story in modern time. Daldry cleverly organized the movie into three distinct
1980. Warner Bros. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Music by Wendy Carlos and Rcachel Elkind. Cinematography by John Alcott. Editing by Ray Lovejoy. With Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd.
Almost everyone has a favorite genre of film, but how everyone defines their favorite genre can differ greatly. Horror is one of the genres where its definition can be perceived differently by many people. Like all other genres, horror does have rules and traditions that must be included in order for a film to be considered a horror film. These rules and traditions include a protagonist, an antagonist, an escape or escape attempt of some sort, and very influential audio and visual effects.
‘Like it or not … one cannot be gender-neutral in this culture ' (Bordo 2003: 242). With reference to your own examples, discuss the construction of gendered identities and differences in popular culture.
This week our topics cover gender and sexuality. The two films "Bliss", directed by Abdullah Oguz and "Ma Vie en Rose," (My life in Pink), directed by Alain Berliner addresses certain issues about gender and sexuality and give the viewer insight into how other cultures and customs can react to such things.