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Portrayal of gays in media
Representation of gays/lesbians in cinema
Representation of gays/lesbians in cinema
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“The Kids Are All Right” is in a way a typical suburban family comedy-drama or dramedy film. The family starts out happy in a transitional period with the oldest kid about to go off to college and the youngest trying to figure out who they are. One big departure from this archetypal dramedy is that the plot centers on the kids finding their sperm donner and how the parents deal with it. Without any context, due to heteronormativity, most mainstream movie goers are generally very likely to assume this was a heterosexual parental unit. In this film, that is not the case. The parents in questioned are a same-sex married couple, lesbian couple to be more precise.
This story was meant to be a very personal movie co-written by the director. This
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is felt in the movie and is a reason among many for its critical response. Many reviews lean in favor of it, but of course there will always be some different points of view. Including the views from the represented minority in this group that bring up important questions about sexual identity and political agendas. Dr. Nicole 'Nic' Allgood, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist and the family’s breadwinner, played by Annette Bening and Jules Allgood, the family’s caretaker and beginner entrepreneur, played by Julianne Moore are a loving same-sex couple that each gave birth to a child by using the same sperm donor. Joni (Mia Wasikowska) is the oldest daughter of the two and has recently turned 18 and graduated high school. Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is the youngest son, and is interested in meeting his sperm donor. Laser gets Joni to arrange the meeting with him, you must be 18 to try to contact a person’s donor. Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an organic foods restaurant owner and the sperm donor in question, gets along with the two kids and eventually gets involved into their, and their parent’s lives. It all escalates when Jules has an affair with Paul while working on his backyard. Eventually, Nic finds out at a dinner and the family that had been slowly unraveling, falls apart completely. The night before Joni leaves for college, Paul shows up again where he is yelled at and alienated from the unit. After this ordeal, Jules admits her faults. The movie ends with Joni at college and Laser, Nic, and Jules riding off as a close knit unit again. Lisa Cholodenko is the co-writer and director of this film.
Cholodenko actually based this movie on snippets of her life and experiences she’s had. The first drafts of this film started back in 2004, Cholodenko at the time was single and started to see all her friends get married and have kids, including some lesbian couples who used sperm donners both friends and anonymous. When she moved out to Los Angeles later that year, things changed. Cholodenko met Wendy Melvoin, whom she eventually married, and Stuart Blumberg, whom she co-wrote the film with. Due to these events, eventually the story that was originally going to feature a family’s white-water rafting trip morphed into the simple and grounded yet powerful story that ended up in the …show more content…
film. Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko combined their experiences, Blumberg was an anonymous donner and Cholodenko used an anonymous donner to have kids, to make this film feel real. They both set out to make write a movie that they connected to personally. No political agenda was actively thought about during the process. Cholodenko while talking about her film described herself as “not an overly political person… I just see these as human rights issues. This story is meant to be an exploration about what all families face: the anxiety, comedy, pain and pathos of watching your family shape-shift on you.” Since the movie wasn’t overtly political as a result of this, many critics felt that it gave a realness to it.
In 2010 when it came out, same-sex marriage wasn’t legal in all 50 states, it was a hot-button issue for the whole country. Over 50 percent of the nation said they were for legalization making it a perfect time for this movie. From the first showing at Sundance, it was clear that the critics loved it. It got universal acclaim for the unconventional yet conventional story and the performances from the whole cast. Review aggregator sights prove this. Metacritic has it rated as 86 out of 100 and categorized in “universal acclaim.” It’s certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with 93% of 205 critics giving it a positive review. In all, it was called "Worthwhile as both a well-acted ensemble piece and as a smart, warm statement on family values, The Kids Are All Right is remarkable." It even did well in the award season. It was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and won two Golden Gobes: Annette Bening for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and Best Motion Picture Musical or
Comedy. With all films, not all critics liked it. One review that shows negative side from the LGBT(Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender) community is “The Kid’s aren’t all right” by Jack Halberstam, a Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam brings a spotlight on to what he and many lesbians point out as problems. It includes Jules and Nic not being femme or butch enough, putting lesbians in an unflattering light, lesbian sex is shown as boring compared to straight sex, and Jules and Paul’s relationship. This out of the blue connection angered many because they say it supports the myth that all gay women secretly desire men. This scrutiny for every detail could be because of how rare of a movie this is. The $4 million budget movie originally was only shown in film festivals like The Sundance Film Festival were it made its debut. Once Focus Films took it up after all of the praise it received, it had a limited release at seven theaters. Eventually, on July 16th that release increased to 38 theaters, seven days later it was in 201. On July 30th, “The Kids Are Alright” ended up in a total of 847 theaters that grossed a total of $34,705,850. It is not a very frequent occurrence to have such a widely spread and commercially successful film portray lesbians, or people in the LGBT community, at all. What is even less common is having them be the main characters of it. Louis Peitzman of the San Francisco Bay Guardian explains this mentality in her article “Lisa Cholodenko on “The Kids are All Right.”” “It wasn’t an issue for me, but I think for a lot of people, they expect more rigid definitions. We don’t see a lot of queer characters on screen, and so when we do, many want them to be perfect: the queer voice, the lesbian, the gay man. And when they step outside those boundaries, suddenly it becomes an issue, politically.” No person is the same; sexuality and gender is a wide spectrum. Calling out Cholodenko for not portraying lesbian correctly invalidates her experiences. It is understandable why parts of the LGBT community is upset that they weren’t portrayed. With the increase of acceptance to this community, there expected to be an increase in showing the whole spectrum in film. Making sure everyone’s experiences validated. “The Kids are All Right”
In 1987, there was a Syphilis outbreak in a small town Alabama, Tuskegee. Ms. Evers went to seek out African Males that had this disease and did not. They were seeking treatment for this disease, but then the government ran out of money and the only way they can get treatment if they studied. They named this project “The Tuskegee Study of African American Man with Syphilis”, so they can find out where it originated and what will it do to them if go untreated for several months.
The film that interested me for this assignment was “Boyz n the Hood”. The movie was about a Los Angeles neighborhood expanding of drug and gang culture, with increasingly tragic results. It was about how one teen had family support to guide him on the right path in life regarding the social problems around him. The other two teens in the film wasn’t as fortunate and fell into the social problems of drugs, violence, and gangs; where one ended up dead.
Overall the film was a very informative film for a more homophobic audience. The content was relatable and connected well with the information and discussions that have been within our society for a long time. It was a well-done film that really questions the homophobic opinions and while this is still a very real debate in today’s society the film does a great job at arguing the homophobic opinions.
The Importance of Being Earnest film produced in 2002 compares to the original version reveal different changes. The change modify the motion which the author would like to transmit in the original document. The important changes are the modification of some stage of direction. The actors changed some stages of direction and created their own. The second change is skipping of some sequences. The actor of the film choose to ignore some sequences which were in the original version. Moreover, the actors added some stages which were not in the preview version. The other point is the incapacity of transmitting all the motion which we can perceive in the reading. Finally, the actors did not show enthusiasm in their performance as we can feel it in
What if I told you that I know the outcome of your life and where you will end up before you even know it? Wouldn’t you be scared? See for a regular person who has a supporting family around them this question will almost feel almost like a death sentence. Nobody wants anyone to judge them before they even go through life on what they will end up being.
The popular dancing movie, Footloose, was directed by Herbert Ross in 1984. Craig Brewer, produced a remake of Footloose in 2011. Both of the original Footloose and the remake, have multiple differences that split them apart. Although they follow the same theme, the sequence of events that took place happened in different orders and well as some characters were not present in the remake as they were in the original. The acting, dancing, and setting were varied slightly but it followed the same trend as the original. Directors Herbert Ross and Craig Brewer, directed the same film, while Craig Brewer made the film more modern, while keeping the film following the same trend.
...ow well they played the part and told the story. Of course, like other directors Lisa Cholodenko wanted recognizable actors in order to achieve a more grand recognition for her work.
Worried about being the perfect mother, wife, and balancing her job with family life at home.
Miss. Evers Boys is a movie based on the real life study called “The Tuskegee Study” that took place in Macon County, Alabama, where 400 black men who had syphilis and 200 black men without this disease participated on this study without knowing the terrible truth behind it. Also the participants were poor and uneducated sharecropper who fell for Miss. Evers persuasions and rewards that doctors were offering to participants. The main results that doctors were trying to obtain from this experiment was to gain information about how African Americans men’s bodies reacted to syphilis. During the 1930’s, society believed that black men were inferior to white men, so diseases were supposed to affect differently black men. This study in particular, the participants were not informed about the capacity that this disease could damage their human system and they were not viewed as a human being and they were used as lab rat. Furthermore, one of the doctors who were involved in this experiment Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr used the term “necropsy” that is an autopsy performed on animals when speaking about the participants of this experiment (Mananda R-G, 2012).
The film Babies is a film that follows four babies from San Francisco, Tokyo, Mongolia, and Namibia through their first year of life. The film has no talking or narrative. In many scenes, you don’t even see adults. This helps you get to see a baby’s perspective on the world. This movie showed how different cultures are when it comes to raising children.
Justice has began to commence for many of Canada’s Indigenous people now that considerably one of our Nation’s darkest secrets has been spilled. The Residential School system was a collection of 132 church-run, government-funded boarding schools that was legally required for all Indigenous Canadian children. Canadian Residential Schools ran up until 1996 and, for decades, the secrets from within the walls of the institutions have been hidden. But now, the truth has finally come to light.
I have chosen to review the film Boyhood written by Richard Linklater that took twelve years to film. In the movie Boyhood, it illustrates the life of a boy named Mason Jr. through the many stages of his childhood to adolescence to becoming an adult. The movie follows Mason Jr.’s life through his years of kindergarten, middle school, high school, and to college. Through these milestones in his life encounters society with socialization, culture and norms that are exhibited through his family, friends, and others. With factors of social classes, and gender that influence Mason Jr. as he grows and fits into the society that is formed. From the events and milestones in Boyhood, it is able to show human behaviour in society from our
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
It is just one scene where the children come to the realization that parents are people too. When the coworker/suspected boyfriend of Samantha played by Kristin Chenoweth, drops in on the family kidnapping is an example of this. Another is the scene where the parents are discussing what went wrong in their relationship after the family puppet therapy session. The kids seem to over hear this dialogue between their parents and realize that they are not super heroes they are people.
...f this film include sexual content, violence and graphic details. But, when viewing this film we have to be aware of this and only let children see this movie if the adults feel that it will not affect them in any way, such as making them feel that this behavior is appropriate or any other thing that might be in their minds.