Sex (Ed): The Movie

This brisk, illuminating, and frequently entertaining documentary offers a historical overview of the “official” and “unofficial” channels for teaching and learning about sex in America over the last 100 years. Looking at different eras during the 20th century as well as more recent history, Sex (ed) digs deep into film archives, noting that movies have always been a primary source of information—or, more often, propaganda—concerning sexual anatomy, behavior, morals, diseases, and attitudes. While sex education curricula has varied wildly depending on locale and time, films have run the gamut from illustrating basic biology, to warning servicemen about venereal disease (while also strongly suggesting that women are unclean and untrustworthy), to teaching safe sex rituals in the age of AIDS. Some of the old footage is truly fascinating, including clips from great American filmmaker John Ford's World War II-era Sex Hygiene and the Disney studio's typically magical, hand-drawn animation films about female reproductive organs. Jumping into the 1950s and ‘60s, government-sponsored sex-ed movies often looked like mainstream drive-in fare, featuring sex-crazed young people with too much freedom (especially after the arrival of birth-control pills). The ‘70s and ‘80s brought their own zeitgeist to the sex film genre, with a later tilt toward safe sex themes. The last part of Sex (ed) addresses the contemporary Internet era, a time when the easy availability of pornography online is yet again reshaping sexual consciousness. Serving up a fascinating and enjoyable history of sex education, this is highly recommended. (T. Keogh)