Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
It's Day 3 at the excellently-programmed Inside Out festival. One of the more interesting films to catch this afternoon is It's Still Elementary: The Movie and the Movement (pictured) over at the National Film Board. It's actually a documentary about another documentary, 1996's It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, a groundbreaking film that showed elementary school teachers discussing homosexuality with children. But don't worry if you haven't seen its predecessor: It's Still Elementary is still a really fascinating doc exploring the controversy and the impact of the earlier film. It's also evidence that arguments that younger children "won't understand" these kinds of conversations are entirely bogus, and the now-grown-up kids from It's Elementary have only good things to say about being involved in the project.
For something fun later on tonight, try the Spanish flick Boystown. A totally crazy black comedy that plays with horror/thriller conventions, Boystown is the unlikely story of a homicidal real estate agent who strangles old ladies with great apartments in Madrid's slowly-gentrifying gaybourhood, Chueca. Once they're dead, he renovates their flats and sells them to trendy gay couples with the dream of creating a hip, artsy guppie community. Things get complicated when one of the old ladies leaves her apartment to bear-ish gay couple Rey and Leo, who both get dragged into the murder plot. A comedy with brains, Boystown satirizes both urban planning and gay stereotypes. Serial killer Victor is an impeccably-groomed gym-bunny who goes to all the hottest events in Madrid, while protagonists Rey and Leo are chubby guys who'd rather talk about X-Men comics in their sweats than go to the spa. Though it steers clear of the emotional depth of his more recent work, Boystown happily achieves a frenzied zaniness in a similar style to Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar's madcap 80s comedies.
Voodoo Woman, 12:00 p.m. at the ROM
Free to Be...You & Me, 1:00 p.m. at the NFB
A Jihad for Love, 2:15 p.m. at the Isabel Bader
Before I Forget, 2:15 p.m. at the ROM
It's Still Elementary: The Movie and the Movement, 3:00 p.m. at the NFB
Gag Reflex, 4:45 p.m. at the Isabel Bader
This Kiss, 5:15 p.m. at the ROM
Boystown, 7:00 p.m. at the Isabel Bader
Vivere, 7:15 p.m. at the ROM
Were the World Mine, 9:15 p.m. at the Isabel Bader
Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of Papí and Wil, 9:45 p.m. at the ROM
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Wow, that would be a painful billboard to have to see every day. So intentionally incendiary and hateful.
I can already guess that its not here in Toronto, and probably not here in Canada at all, but where is that billboard?
We could always just leave talk of sexual lifestyles out of the classroom...
Sexuality ≠ sexual activity. It's not like schools are teaching people how to give better blowjobs.
And sexual orientation isn't a lifestyle. Season tickets to Raptors games or vacationing in Europe is a lifestyle.
Marc: Sexual orientation will influence the way in which a person interacts with others. In this way sexuality is inevitably intertwined with lifestyle.
I have to ask what practical necessity there is in teaching kids about sexuality; homosexual and heterosexual variants alike. Parents should be teaching children these things.
I have to ask what practical necessity there is in teaching kids about sexuality; homosexual and heterosexual variants alike. Parents should be teaching children these things.
But they don't, because they believe in "abstinence", and then their 14 year old daughter ends up knocked up, and with an STD, because she thought she couldn't get pregnant the first time.
iantri: Just like when sex-ed gives them a belief in the infallibility of birth control? Sounds great until probability turns against the teenage couple and they become young parents.
Health and sexual education belongs in school because parents often don't teach their kids, or they don't teach them accurately. It does not make kids more promiscuous, but it does make kids more informed on what kind of decisions they are making with their sexual health. And kids need to know that there are alternative sexual orientations in the world outside of binary heterosexuality, mainly because they don't exist in a bubble and they're going to encounter it no matter what.
And anyone who is being taught in school that birth control is infallible—which I highly doubt, by the way—is being lied to.
As for "sexual orientation influencing how a person reacts with others," so does everything else. Sexual orientation is a separate thing from lifestyle, although it may obviously play a part in one's lifestyle. An appreciation of lesbian cruises, for example. Or a penchant for wearing hideous Ginch Gonch briefs. Or activism for human rights.
iantri: Just like when sex-ed gives them a belief in the infallibility of birth control? -- PickleToes
And anyone who is being taught in school that birth control is infallible—which I highly doubt, by the way—is being lied to. -- Marc
I haven't been out of high school all that long, so its clear in my mind what I was taught. I remember copying down tables of birth control methods and their effectiveness, both "best-case scenario [perfect use]" and "real-life".
Crappy instructional method, but it was made perfectly clear to us that BC is not 100%.
It's early on in the fest yet, but so far everything I've seen has knocked it out of the park, starting with the opener (Like A Virgin) on Thursday night. Congratulations to Jason St. Laurent, John Davies, and the whole InsideOut team -- this year has been phenomenal. I've been enjoying the Queer Here/Queer Now symposium, and I agree with you Johnnie about Boystown being a (dark) comedy with brains. (And the director, in town for the fest, is bear-alicious, if you go for that sort of thing.)
Also caught Jon Gustafson's Were The World Mine tonight -- another stunner. It got panned in NOW but I really liked both the story (cribbed together from Gustafson's earlier short, Fairies, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream) and the music. The boys weren't hard on the eyes either, but the rugby ballet really made it for me. Watch for the soundtrack, it's worth it.
Personally, I believe that math has absolutely no place in the classroom and is a private matter that each parent should be given the choice to inform, or not inform, their child about.
Get a clue, Pickle Toes. Sexual education is not the cause of unwanted pregnancy.
As for you, Marc, I don't ever want to hear you badmouthing Ginch Gonch again.