This essay explores the roles of gender and sexuality in the movie 52 Tuesdays. It discusses the impact of gender transitions and the exploration of sexual desires by the protagonist. The film encourages a progressive outlook towards these issues.
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Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS Analysis of 52 Tuesdays Name of the Student Name of the University Author Note
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1Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS Gender and Sexuality Role in 52 Tuesdays The movie 52 Tuesdays is an Australian coming of age movie directed by Sophie Hyde and released in the year 2014. The movie is a story about a young girl and how she deals with her motherās transitioning gender and sexuality roles. This movie was screened at the Sundance Film Festivals in the year 2014. The film won a lot of accolades on being screened at the Film Festival at Sundance which includes getting nominated for the Grand Jury Award and winning the Best Director Award for the film.Apart from that the movie was also screened in many other countries of the world when the movie won a lot of other countries where it also won a number of other accolades and award for the movie. The purpose of this essay is to determine the roles played by sexuality and gender in the movie 52 Tuesdays. In the movie 52 Tuesdays, it is shown to the audience how the lead character, a young girl named Billie has to deal with her lesbian mother Jane, who is divorced from her father Tom and lives with her uncle Harry. Billie has to cope with her motherās decision of changing her gender into a male and starts calling herself as James. The movie deals with various themes of sexuality. Sexuality and themes of gender are an important element in most of the movie itself. This essay will explore how these themes of sexuality and gender plays an important role in the movie 52 Tuesdays.The movie has presented the topics of sexuality and gender issues as one of the most important topics in the movie.Sexuality also plays an important role in the movie as it is the theme along with the theme of gender in the movie that keeps the story of the movie going forward. Gender and sexuality is first seen in the instance of Billie and her mother Jane. Jane, as shown in the film is a lesbian who expresses her desire to become a male and wants to call herself as James. From this revelation, it can be stated that the Australian Film 52 Tuesdays talks to the audience about the augmented sexual education that is becoming an important part of teenage life in the modern times. The film is
2Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS a story of the painful realizations that 16year old Billie has to encounter with the fact that her mother is lesbian and she wants to change her gender to a male one. The story explores Billieās intimacy with bodies, sex and other gender roles as she experiencers sex with two of her friends which encourages the audience to have a new look at the gender roles in the society. However, it must also be noted that the film also experiences an individualās relationship in various ways by exploring the relationship that Billie shares with James knowing that she is the child of a transgender parent (Singh, 693). The film also deals with Billie and her experiments with the sexual life by involving into a relationship with two older teens named Josh and Jasmine in an apartment provided to her by her uncle Harry, while she misses her appointment with James every Tuesday. This relationship is basically out of Billieās curiosity and her desire to know about sex and what is it like. This issue is said to be quite common among the teenagers especially during the time when they are in the stages of their puberty and all kinds of desire fill up in their minds. It is exactlythese questions thatmotivatesBillie,the filmāsprotagonistto exploresexual relationship with the other two teens maned Jasmine and Josh who are already exploring when she meets them. As stated by Benson (83), these sexual encounters between the three characters in the film are treated by the film as normal yet interesting to the teens, the sexual encounters chronicles Billieās journey through the world of sexual encounters which she had the desires of exploring out of curiosity due to her motherās transition. Apart from sex, gender also plays an important role in the film 52 Tuesdays directed by Sophie Hyde. The themes of gender has also been explored in the movie in various ways. The film communicates to the audience the āpromise of changeā in the movie by changing Billieās mother from a female to a male. The film states the message that James is also searching for a life that is authentic and real like Billie. While Billieās sexual adventures are without any particular direction, her mother has already made the decision herself when she
3Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS had decided to undergo the transition. Although this causes difficulties among them as her mother being a male is an entirely different person as she was being a female and she tries to establish a different kind of relationship with her child which is again different as her being a male is not the same as she was when she was a female (McWilliams, 151). With the concept of changer of gender that the film uses, the film encourages the audiences to consider the fact that having change in the roles of the gender might be beneficial for them as it will help the audiences to explore choices that will be richer for them than just being male and female.It is because of the common notion that the male bodies are expected to be muscular which explores mostly the homosexual relationship that was shared by two male characters in the movie by the name of 52 Tuesdays.This also gives the audience to think about the concepts of different sexuality in the movie itself.The role of gender also present challenges for James as the director poses the challenge for the queries like good parents are supposed to take care of their children. Following this query indeed causes problems for Jason as it is different for him to as it proves to be difficult for a transgender parent to look after the needs and the wants of her child. Thus, gender indeed proves to be a problem for James. As stated by Kath (202), the film also explores the themes of responsibilities that are reciprocated between the child as well as the parent in the movie. The film states that the gender transformations that takes place are done within the context of family, friends and the known acquaintances of the people and it is the main reasons for all the causers of tensions, anxiety and the frustrations that are a part and parcel of the daily life of all the families. Thus the gender in the movie not only explores the variety that the gender transformation can give to the audiences but also the problems that comes with transition. This is seen in the caser of Billie and her mother. Her motherās transition from female to male causes problems for herself as she becomes a male person and has to look after her daughter in a different manner than she did as a female.
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4Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS Thus, from the discussion held above, the readers can understand that sexuality as well as gender plays an important role in the movie 52 Tuesdays (Murray, 82). The movie which is presented in a form of 52 Tuesdays shows the life of Billie, the 16 year old protagonist of the movie and how the life changes fort all of them as she discovers that her mother is a transgender who had decided to transition into a male.This raised the curiosity among Billie to explore her sexual needs and desires which caused her to engage in sexual activities with the older teens.Most of the gender roles in Australia are said to be male oriented and they all form the archetypes of Australian identity in the country.Thus, the experts argue that it is only natural that the Billieās mother would change her gender into a male character. While some other experts believe Australian gender, roles are more male centred which does not give a chance to the other gender roles in the movies. These movies generally present women as a secondary character to the men with nothing much to do. However, in the recent times many transgressive female characters are shown to be taking the role of the protagonist. This change in the roles of the gender is what the film tries to covey to the audience.The film states that this is perfectly normal among the teens, especially those that are in the period of puberty. This is because this is a time when the teenagers learn about a lot of things which increases their curiosity about those things like sex as well as gender. This motivates the teens to explore such areas of their life and indulge in such activities (Crewe, 78). Similarly, gender is also another important factor which plays an essential part of the film. The film communicates to the audience not only the varities that the change of the genders can give to the audiences but also communicates the problems that the transitions can bring to the family like frustrations and other emotions. This is evidenced by the fact that Billie is caught at the school when she was found to be sexting with Jasmine and James and Tom are being called to the school. Thus, the film shows both the positive and the negative sides of the gender and sexuality to the audience while it also tells the audiences to take a
5Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS more progressive outlook to the issues of sexuality as well as the gender transitions that the individuals go through in their real lives, The film is a tale of the journey of two characters - one who transitions into a male from a female and the other character who starts to explore her own sexual desire (Benson, 20). The film states that Jamesās search for a real and an authentic life continues into a life-long search while Billieās search for her sexual and her personal anxiety is considered to the natural cause of the teenage anxiety that is suffered by every teenager at some point in their life. As stated by White (83), thus, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that the movie 52 Tuesdays indeedmanagesto portray the conceptsof sexuality and gender accurately in the movie by portraying the journeys of its lead character Billie and her explorations of her sexual desires as well as James longing for an authentic life. The film conveys an important message regarding the gender and the sexuality to the audience of the film and also encourages them to have a progressive outlook toward these issues. It is because of these issues presented in the film that the film had managed to win so many accolades worldwide and had managed to win many awards at the film festivals. Indeed, the film manages to present a complex and important issue to the world.
6Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS Reference List Benson, Chloe. "Queer capers: All about E and lesbian cinema."Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine186 (2015): 20. Crewe, David. "Following trending topics: Social media in modern teen movies."Screen Education79 (2015): 78. Dooley, Kath. "A promise of change: 52 Tuesdays (2013)āa case study of collaborative, low- budget feature-filmmaking practice."Studies in Australasian Cinema8.2-3 (2014): 150-162.
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7Running head: ANALYSIS OF 52 TUESDAYS McWilliam, Kelly. "āIt was the summer when everything changedā¦ā: coming of age queer in Australian cinema."Australian Screen in the 2000s. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 191-206. Murray, Virginia, and Kath Dooley. "5 52 Tuesdays."Community Filmmaking: Diversity, Practices and Places(2017): 83. Singh, Anneliese A. "Transgender youth of color and resilience: Negotiating oppression and finding support."Sex Roles68.11-12 (2013): 690-702. White, Patricia. "Age Appropriate? Sundanceās Women Filmmakers Come Next."Film Quarterly67.2 (2013): 80-84.