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Title: Gender tango Reference: Producer, CTV. Abstract: Examines the cultural conditioning of the sexes and poses the question, what is the true nature of femininity? Features: child beauty contestants in the US; Maria, an Avon Lady, who earns her living selling cosmetics by canoe on Amazonian backwaters; Billy Tipton, a famous jazz musician, who lived her life as a man in order to be accepted into the male world of jazz; two societies in the South Pacific – one that treats women as dangerous, almost evil beings, and another whose women live with power and dignity. Library of Congress subjects: Reviews and Numerical Ratings (3) The gender tango metaphor is cheesy, but this video is a good introduction to gender issues. Comprised of a series of self-contained stories. Good production, and provocative topics that would serve as good bases of discussion. Brian Fuller (1) Slow-paced, with little content that a lecture couldn’t dispatch with snappily. First the camera lingers on children & infants in beauty competitions, but to what end? Ok, they’re young to wear makeup, the outfits are silly, the kids look stressed, and one mom ironically talks about her daughter having a choice. It’s a sentence, not five minutes! Next, a section on a female who lived as a man and pursued a musical career. His biographer is weirdly embarrassed when she refers to his “possible uh partners”, but perkily calls his life a show of confidence. His partner, on the other hand, suggests a deep inner sorrow. Noone actually says “homophobia” or “heterosexism”. Later, a two-spirited person is shown in the context of a bunch of history photos, and off we go on the unchanging-then=now images of spiritual, outdoorsy Native people. I just couldn’t watch the whole thing. Kathy Bischoping (3) This video basically spoke of the different identities that men and women take on, which result in unequal power, as gender draws rigid lines on what constitutes maleness and femaleness. The video provided good narratives, allowing me to see how gender in constructed and forms meanings that we’ve come to naturalize. For example, in New Guinea I was able to conceptualize how a bifurcation of gender produces differences in rights. Although different societies and communities are shown, almost all have the common idea of femininity being inferior to masculinity. What was an eye-opener to me was that they showed an existing society where men and women were treated as equal in power, rights, and status. That’s different from what we normally see and it really did open up an alternative way of thinking from what we’re socialized to think. I really enjoyed the active voice that the video portrayed. It had different speakers of different faculties talking about gender and the way it is constructed. They vocalized alternative ways of thinking outside of what we’re socialized to think. I think this was among the best videos I saw for this project. It was well-organized and the different perspectives were engaging. Marsha McQueen (undergraduate) (2) This film presents a very shallow understanding
of gender and sexuality. These concepts are understood through the framework
of identity politics and as such, ideology becomes solely responsible
for shaping a human being’s gender and sexuality. Different material
contexts are used instrumentally to illustrate various gender identities.
Consequently gender is wrenched from the social and material relations
that shape it, and women in the developing world are presented as identical
and interchangeable, more exploited than women in the developed world.
This movie is probably suitable for an upper year undergraduate course
where the students are capable watching it from a critical perspective.
Sarah Newman
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