Class Five - Other Films about Gay Rights

Before there was Milk, there was Wilde. Le Placard's main character wasn't really gay, but there are plenty of films that feature real life gay people. Wilde is one of them. And unlike the recent Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who portrayed gay activist Harvey Milk, Oscar Wilde-portraying actor Stephen Fry is gay. Fry may not have received an Oscar for his Oscar, but he was the winner of the Seattle International Film Festival Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actor. Really, isn't that just as good?


About.com has a list of Gay and Lesbian Films

AfterElton.com created a post called 50 Greatest Gay Movies of All Time!

AlterNet.org posted The Best Movies About Gays


Had you previously seen any films with gay characters that you thought were particularly good? Did any film make you think about gay rights differently?

I can remember seeing Philadelphia in 1993; Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington were wonderful in the drama about fighting against discrimination facing a gay man who is dying of AIDS.


Did you read about any films that you'd like to see? I did! My "DVD's to rent" list has officially expanded. One of the movies is In & Out with Kevin Kline. In some ways, it's like Le Placard when an straight man is "outed" as gay and has to deal with everyone's new view of him. Wikipedia describes the inspiration for the plot:

The film was inspired by Tom Hanks' tearful speech when he accepted his 1994 Oscar (for his role in Philadelphia), in which he mentioned his high-school drama coach Rawley Farnsworth, and his former classmate John Gilkerson, "two of the finest gay Americans, two wonderful men that I had the good fortune to be associated with" - unaware that Farnsworth was still 'in the closet'.The film became one of mainstream Hollywood's few attempts at a comedic "gay movie" of its era, and was widely noted at the time for a 10-second kiss between Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck.

Guy Damman wrote an article for the Guardian Film Blog, How Gay Films Made Me a Better Man, when he reviewed a new book Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema by Steven Paul Davies in December 2008. He states:

I was, for many years, one of those who looked away. It wasn't that I wanted to, or that there was any genuine homophobia in my attitudes. Yet I simply found I just couldn't quite cope with the sight of Rupert Everett canoodling with Michael Jenn in Another Country, or Daniel Day Lewis getting it on with Gordon Warnecke in My Beautiful Laundrette. Now, though, with the progress of cinema's slow journey out of the closet and the gentle readjustment of my sensibilities - and perhaps those of millions of others, too – I can, with pleasure.

Though our focus is on popular culture films, I think it's worth mentioning Celluloid Closet, a 1995 documentary of the history of gays and lesbians in cinema. It was based on the book of the same name by Vito Russo.



Have your attitudes about gay people changed as cinema has come out of the closet?

Class Five - Gay Rights

There are a huge number of organizations who advocate for gay rights. Two are
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and PFLAG: Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

There's an extensive list of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) groups around the world here.

Alvin Fritz of University of Washington Libraries has assembled a very comprehensive list of national and international gay and lesbian organizations and publications. His table of contents is as follows (each one is a link):

ACADEMIC/PROFESSIONAL/EMPLOYEES

ARCHIVES/LIBRARIES

BOOKSTORES/VIDEOSTORES

BUSINESS

CULTURE, HISTORY, AND THE ARTS/MUSIC/CINEMA/RADIO/TV

EDUCATION

FOUNDATIONS

HEALTH/SUPPORT GROUPS/AIDS

HUMAN RIGHTS/LAW/POLITICS

NEWSPAPERS/JOURNALS/PUBLISHERS

RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY

SPORTS/SOCIAL/RECREATION/TRAVEL

What groups are you aware of? Were you surprised at the number of organizations listed within these links?

Class Five - Le Placard (The Closet)

This is the sole comedy in our social justice series. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) summarizes Le Placard:

François Pignon, a very bland sort of man who works as an accountant in a rubber factory, is about to be fired. His new neighbour comes up with an idea to prevent such a thing to happen: he spreads the rumor that he's gay so that the factory management might be afraid they'll be sued for sexual discrimination. Of course, nothing happens as it should, but the changes in François Pignon's life -and other people's too- is drastic!

The Political Film Society nominated the film for its 2001 Human Rights Film award. You can read the society's review here.

There's a great little film review blog called In the Mood. You might like to check out this post, where blogger shepster talks about Le Placard and other films of Daniel Auteuil.

Here's the trailer for the film:



If you have trouble viewing this here, you can go to this link for youtube and watch it.

What did you think of Le Placard?

Class Four: Some Extra Bits

I discovered some miscellaneous goodness to share:

1. Remember the line "Si se puede" that the strikers shout? I told you that Cesar Chavez and others in the United Farm Workers used it as their slogan. Read more here.


2. I found this photo on Flickr, a photo sharing site. It is by Artful Dodger, also known as Kate. It was taken march 4, 2008 in Portland at Pioneer Square. Here's the caption

Human rights demonstration by www.backbonecampaign.org/ with demonstrators wearing frog costumes and bearing "Si se puede" / "Yes we can" slogans.

3. There's a great list of videos and resources regarding work and workers on the Labor Studies site for Hofstra University.

4. If you'd like to know more about the National Labor Relations Act, this is a good place to start.

5. I just saw a trailer for a new movie coming to theatres about immigration starring Harrison Ford and Ray Liotta. It features a whole host of different stories. You can read a review here and click on a link to watch the trailer.

What have you found?

Class Four - Comedians take on Unions, Immigration and Health Care

It's time once again for the funny bits. Sure, these are serious issues, but American popular culture folks love to poke fun at everything.

Stephen Colbert's staff over at Comedy Central's The Colbert Report has assembled a medley of pieces he's done on labor unions. You can check it out here.


Have you ever seen The Onion? It's an elaborate parody newspaper and website with satirical video news reports dubbed ONN - Onion News Network. Writers have produced several humor pieces on immigration, which you can view here, here, and here. They also did a piece in which an illegal immigrant from Mexico replaces a Lucent Technology executive because he's willing to work for less:



I discovered a site that compiles clips from various places, metacafe.com. Here are two commercials on the site labeled funny - health insurance:


Funny - Health Insurance Commercial - Free videos are just a click away

Perhaps we should have a class in the future that just focuses on social/political issues in commercials! Then again, maybe not...

Have you seen any amusing takes on the subjects of immigration, healthcare, or labor unions? It's time for show and tell! Click on the comments and share.

Class Four - Immigration Issues

In Bread and Roses, Maya enters the United States illegally. At the end of the film, she's sent back to Mexico. While the primary focus of the movie is on unionization to get fair wages and healthcare for the workers, her experience highlights the plight of illegal immigrants.

There are numerous organizations on both sides of the issue of illegal immigration. It's a topic that often provokes heated debate. The Politics of Immigration provides a list of resources here which includes books, films and links to many groups such as Border Action Network, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and Families for Freedom.
I found some interesting teaching materials at Rethinking Schools. They offer a unit of materials based on the book The Line Between Us: Teaching about the Border and Mexican Immigration which includes activities such as this one.

Southern Poverty Law Center has a partial list of the major anti-immigration groups here. There's an interesting article at Politico.com about how some of the groups have sought to appeal to environmentalists and form an alliance. Writer Ben Adler notes:

Readers of the Nation and other left-leaning magazines may have noticed a new addition to the usual advertisements — full-page advocacy ads by an ad hoc coalition of anti-immigration organizations.

The ads place the blame for traffic and sprawl, frequent villains for urban-oriented members of the left, on population growth, another such villain. The kicker? That population growth is blamed on immigration.

The Sierra Club, a group originally founded to protect and preserve wilderness lands, was targeted by anti-immigration groups seeking to take over the Board of Directors. The unsuccessful attempt of a few years ago is described in this Christian Science Monitor article.

Were you surprised by any of the information you read in these links? Were any of the concerns of one side or the other more compelling to you?

Do you know anyone who is an immigrant, legal or otherwise? How many generations of your family have been born in America? Are you like me, a descendant of varied ancestors' different immigration dates? How does your own experience shape your perspective on the issue of immigration?


Did Pilar Padilla's portrayal of Maya's story change your attitude about immigration? If not, why not?
If yes, in what way?

Class Four - Health Care in America - Toward a Just System

Health care in the United States is one of the most complicated issues facing social justice advocates. In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health. There were 191 member nations included in the study. A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries. However, the U.S. is a leader in medical innovation, with three times higher per-capita spending than Europe. The U.S. also has higher survival rates than most other countries for certain conditions, such as cancer. You can read more about these statements above which are made here.

^{The Center for Economic and Social Rights discusses the philosophical question of whether people are entitled to healthcare in their piece The Right to Health in the United States of America. For a different view, check out this: The Political Fallacy That Medical Care is a Right. How do those two views grab you?}

AFL-CIO offers its take on What's Wrong with America's Health Care.

What do you think of the situation? Have you had any personal experiences that convince you there's a problem? Or is everything hunky-dory?