>Start thinking about the concepts of gender and
>sexuality, in terms of how these are reified by
>our society. This will lead you into the wild
>world of postmodernity and all sorts of
>representations, ideologies, propaganda, `morality' tracts and the rest of it.
Last night I took my daughter and a friend to see Wall-E. All I knew about this movie was that it was from Pixar and that, according to an editorial posted here and written by either Penn or Teller, it's central theme was global warming.
It had very little to do with global warming. It was mainly about two robots falling in love and I found it at best annoying and at worst disheartening. The story genders two robots, named Wall-E and Eve, has them dancing, holding hands, watching love scenes from Hello Dolly, saving each other from certain peril. Not only do you have male/female robots, but you've got a smarmy love story set 800 years in the future. May the deep void forfend that Erich Segal lasts that long.
But there is hope. Across town XXY is playing. I think it's best the kid wait a while on this one, but I'll make sure the dvd is on the shelf when it's time. Here's a little bit of an interview with the director:
http://www.cinemawithoutborders.com/news/127/ARTICLE/1477/2008-02-20.html
Cinema Without Borders: XXY is a daring and unusual film, what inspired you to make this film?
Lucia Puenzo: XXY is based on a short story called "Cinismo", from the Argentine writer Sergio Bizzio. From the moment I read that story -the sexual awakening of a young girl who has what doctors call genital ambiguity- I couldn’t take it out of my head. I began to write with that image in my head: the body of a young person with both sexes in the same body. I was especially interested in the dilemma of inevitable choice: not only having to choose between being a man or a woman, but also having to choose between a binary decision and intersex as an identity and not as a place of mere passage.
CWB: How much research was done on the subject before writing the scri pt?
LP: Months of research
I worked with doctors, geneticists, teachers, parents of children who were born with different diagnoses of intersexuality, and young adults who had or had not been operated when they were born. The time I lived in Paris, in the Cinéfondation, I contacted Alex Jurgen, a German intersex person who made a documentary of her life (Octopusalarm) in which, after of years of operations and taking hormones to become a man, Alex realizes he will never be merely a man or a woman.