The Other Boleyn Girl

My community event took place on Oct 30th 2014 at three o’clock in the Willie T Library Auditorium. The event was held by another Gender Women Studies professor to elaborate on Intersectionality and how the film relates to gender women studies and the main topics of this course. The movie that was shown was The Other Boleyn Girl. After the movie there was a discussion that had taken place with everyone who watched the movie discussing topics and opinions of how this film connects to topics within the gender women study courses.
The film The Other Boleyn Girl is movie that takes place in sixteenth century England with King Henry and the Boleyn Girls Anne and Mary Boleyn. The King is searching for a girl to be intimate with, so the Boleyn

girls’ father thinks that Anne Boleyn is the girl for the King. When the king arrives in the town he then meets Anne Boleyn, then go out and the King ends up getting hurt. The other sister Mary Boleyn is than obligated to take care of the King and while doing so the king finds something in her when he never noticed her in the first place. The King then makes a request to have Mary and Her significant other to live in the court. He becomes intimate with Mary and ends up impregnating her. In the mean time Anne Boleyn gets exiled for some time. Meanwhile Mary bares a baby boy and Anne comes back to court while the baby is being born. She taunts the King until he can’t handle anymore and gives him an ultimatum. Anne or Mary and the Queen. He chooses Anne only to have her bare a girl, play with the Kings head to make Anne queen and dethrone Elizabeth.
The King ends up raping Anne and makes him hate her. She try’s baring a boy and miscarries. She try’s for incest with her brother but he breaks down and can not do it, but while in the room together someone sees and tells the catholic church and the court, they convict her of adultery and incest and her brother gets killed and Anne gets beheaded.
Within this movie there are multiple topics that connect with a gender women studies course, which I find relatively interesting. Intersectionality for starters plays a major role throughout the whole movie. The cast was all of white race and nothing else. In this case there was also different classes. Within this society only the king whom was white had privilege over everyone in the land. It was not a very intersectional society. Even the Queen didn’t have much say if she was over throne or not. The King ruled no matter what except when the Catholic Church ruled guilty or not guilty in certain cases. The lower class, in this the Boleyn family had not even a say in what the King wanted. Although the Boleyn’s’ uncle was heavily involved in the court, he still was under rule of the King and thus showing that privilege was only for the royal court.
Male dominance is prevalent and a major role-played in this film.

As we can see, the King, the Boleyn’s uncle, father, brother and Stafford these men are the dominant characters throughout this film. The male figures are all in power in this move and are the rulers of the court and King of England. The King presents his power in a significant moment when he rapes Anne. He puts no choice on her and exerts his higher power upon her. Women had no power in the sixteenth century but were always supposed to be there for the man to please him in all aspects of his life. Women have a small ounce of power but only when speaking to another women, for example if Elizabeth Boleyn spoke to Anne or Mary, Elizabeth had the authority in this case. When speaking my thoughts on this film and when listening to others you hear a plethora of different views and standpoints. The Other Boleyn Girl created a high representation of Intersectionality, power, and dominance. Intersectionality is more prevalent throughout the film than I was expecting but as I analyzed their social classes, male and female dominance and how power took over in the sixteenth century it has brought a better understanding or Intersectionality to me. I really took a lot more away from the discussion after the film and enjoyed hearing the ideas that each individual had taken away from this movie. Personally, I feel as if the times have evolved since those times but there’s still a prevalence of the white privilege and male

dominance.