A Picture of Rural Intolerance

Tonight I will be conducting
a filmaic montage of the contruction of gender.
Brief clips of various films
will explore the way our culture
reaffirms and stereotypes femininity and masculinity--
and all the people in between this simple dichotomy.
The montage will "climax," so to speak,
with Kimberly Peirce's _Boy's Don't Cry_.

I really don't have the time this morning to convey how disturbing the violence is in this particular film, not alone the mid-western culture represented.

Oh! and while cueing Mel Gibson's _Braveheart_ just now (as an example of hyper-masculinity) I just noticed: Braveheart's most heroic moment in the film, in fact the entire legacy of his heroism, is initiated at the brutal murder of a woman! She must die in order to create the "drive" and "willpower" of Gibson's recreation of William Wallace--and in a most horrible, horrible sympathetic way as well (after her sexuality has been elevated to saintdom in the previous love scene and challenged by the threat of rape) . . . .

Hope my students get into this!