The documentary Body Parts is not simply a behind-the-scenes look at on-screen sex, nudity, and the necessity of intimacy coordination. The documentary also serves as a broader crash course on Hollywood cinema's often troubling representations of female bodies, desire, and agency.
Throughout Body Parts, viewers are invited to think critically about how the movie industry is one of the greatest forms (however skewed, misleading, or otherwise incorrect) of sex education in the United States. Not only do movies influence how young people create unrealistic and damaging expectations for sexual behavior, but they also, through their heavy-handed use of body doubles and digital retouching, enforce unrealistic beauty standards. Further, the film gestures toward issues of representation and the harmful stereotypes that have informed women of color’s casting as both hypersexual and asexual beings, as well as depictions of queerness, trans subjects, and the desire and desirability of persons with disabilities.
One of the most appreciated aspects of this film is its chronological survey of sexuality in Hollywood filmmaking. Film critics and scholars such as Mick La Salle and Stephane Dunn usefully contextualize the history of women’s participation in the film industry, including the often-overlooked roles of female screenwriters operating in the earliest decades of American cinema and the ways their voices, as well as a lack of stringent censorship, created an environment in which authentic, female-driven storytelling could prevail. As the documentary demonstrates, depictions of sex and women as agents of their own desire were greatly tempered with the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code in the early 1930s. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s would push the boundaries of how sexuality was presented on screen.
Today, as the filmmakers suggest, the Times Up and #MeToo movements have greatly influenced how women behind and in front of the camera have regained greater power and agency. Though there is still much work to be done, the film describes the increasing amount of protections put in place to protect women in the industry, and it celebrates how, in the narrative as in life, women’s desire is becoming less likely to be punished.
Though Body Parts’ initial draw for some audience members may be frequent appearances by women actors such as Alexandra Billings, Jane Fonda, and Rose McGowan, it also features the perspectives and expertise of a broad array of women working in film production, ranging from writers and producers to intimacy coordinators and hair and makeup artists. It is through the combination of these voices that the film becomes a fantastic primer for those interested in a Hollywood history of sex and women’s agency on screen. As such, it possesses great pedagogical potential.
What type of college/university professors would find this title valuable?
Professors teaching feminist film theory would find Body Parts a useful supplement and introductory text, as it presents, in as accessible a manner as possible, many of the major questions about the gaze, desire, and intersectionality that shape these theories without getting bogged down in the theory and scholarship itself.
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
Body Parts could be assigned in a range of courses, including Gender & Sexuality Studies, Film History, Film Theory, and Media Studies.
Why would it be daring to show this film?
Screening Body Parts might be daring if the bulk of the audience is uncomfortable talking about sex and desire or watching simulated sex scenes; however, the documentary usefully addresses why this is.