#sex ed meta

[catty-words]

the complicated familial dynamics captured in this moment tickle me.

all otis wanted throughout season one was an acknowledgement from the adult world that jean's treatment of him as a case study was inappropriate and crossed boundaries, yet as soon as he gets another adult in his corner about her blurring the lines between her work and her home life, he pushes back because, well, complicated feelings about fatherhood and masculinity but also. he doesn't care for this random dude undercutting his mum, who is very good at her job and taught otis everything he knows.

i love the way he still manages to assert his initial complaint, though, snotty-teenager style.

[amelia-creatrice]

Sac de frustration..

Le sac pour contrôler votre vessie en solitaire ou en couple vous permettra de découvrir un contrôle cérébral hors du commun, dans le même univers que la chasteté, mais appliqué à la vessie. C'est une pratique éducative dans le domaine du BDSM. En cuir véritable toutes mes créations sont fabriquées à la main.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

saw someone be like “why does nobody ever talk abt black pete when discussing toxic masculinity in ofmd?” and like. it’s bc there’s nothing interesting to say abt it. he was sexist abt doing feminine things. then he had gay sex and it fixed him. the end.

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Camilla: don't let strangers touch you. don't let strangers see you naked. sex stuff is right out. also breakfast is the sexiest thing.

Nona, left alone for five minutes: *climbs on top of a corpse she's never met to smooch*

[zykamiliah]

what about bingqiu?

this is my response to this post. i didn't want to reply in the same post because it's going to get really long, and i disagree with almost everything, so this way i may avoid the discourse. haha. anyway, i'm gonna try to answer each of op's points.

-why bingqiu are a couple:

♦ because despite everything, they've chosen each other. not because they're soulmates (though mxtx did pull the string of fate thing), but because they genuinely want to spend time together

it's very subtle but they do share some values and similarities: they both repay kindness with kindness and believe that one should pay back those who hurt you twofold/tenfold. furthermore, they are both petty bitches. as @fireandgrimstone pointed out here, they're both busybodies: they get restless if they aren't doing something.

on that note: self-preservation is not a core value they share. sqq is terrible at self-preservation. from the first moment, instead of minding his own business, he risked losing points (which would terminate his account and kill him) just to protect binghe when he was being bullied by ming fan and co. sqq couldn't stand by watching someone being bullied. then during the demon invasion, he was ready to risk his own life to protect all the cqm disciples. he was willing to self-destruct to take out sha hualing.

the thing is that sqq likes to lie about himself and say everything he does is out of self-preservation, but it isn't true.

so, if it wasn't out of self preservation, why did sqq pushed binghe into the endless abyss? yes, it needed to happen, but he didn't do it to save himself. he can't hurt binghe just to protect himself. he did it because he brainwashed himself into believing this was the best for binghe, that binghe needed to in order to become strong and achieve his fate.

(chapter 4: conference)

♦ because they give each other what they need. consistent love, support and understanding was something lbh really needed, and those 2-3 years before the immortal alliance conference did wonders for binghe to allow himself to feel vulnerable and be more in touch with his own feelings. this will get screwed up post-endless abyss but sqq does encourage him in the extras to express his feelings and talk about what he thinks and feels.

now, what lbh gives to sqq may not seem obvious (thank you for the help, luuny!♥), since sqq's layered narration is tricky to deconstruct, but by the end of the novel lbh can get past sqq's tsundere/savin face bullshit. sqq has all his toxic masculinity ideas and internalized homophobia that he keeps dragging everywhere he goes, and his relationship with lbh, who was supposed to be the epitome of masculinity, has allowed him to shed off some of it. but not all. thus, lbh knows when sqq needs to be pushed or coaxed into doing something he already wants to do but thinks he shouldn't want and doesn't know how to justify (sex for example). lbh also gives sqq the whole domestic package: someone to dote on, someone that does the chores and takes care of him, because frankly sqq is good at many things but he fails at self-care.

♦ domesticity and companionship. for bingqiu it wasn't like other couples who were first attracted to each other from one reason or another and from then on the relationship developed. the first period of their relationship is mostly platonic (poor binghe is suffering the teenage hormones), and was based on the easy domesticity and companionship they shared. and honestly that's such a simple yet beautiful kind of love. they genuinely like spending time together, living together, talking to each other. they never get bored of being together or of each other, which brings me to

♦ the obsession. like, it's honestly hilarious how obsessed they are with each other. sy was already obsessed with pidw protagonist bingge, but in svsss he got to love and get obsessed all over again with his own binghe aka bingmei. and from lbh's pov it's more or less the same: he had a complicated relationship with original sqq, which was the start of it all, but the person he loves is not the cold shizun from the past who he needs to prove himself to, but the one that's always trying to protect him, even if it's from himself. in both cases, their relationship started with distance, with the shadow of the other version of each other they'd known before. but what made them fall in love weren't those ghosts from the past, but the person they could see underneath it all: the hardworking boy that just wanted to be loved, and the closeted man who wants to give love and help others and have a purpose and belong to something (binghe understands that sqq would be unhappy if he couldn't visit cqm, qjp and his sect siblings). this relates to the fact that

♦ they understand each other better than anyone else. it takes them time, but that's the point of their journey and by the time we read about their relationship in the extras, we can see that despite everything, they not only understand each other very well but actively try to understand each other better. they already made the mistake of making too many assumptions, and they're not doing that again.

________________

another point that op got wrong:

off the top of my head an example would be how bingge (he-with-no-shen-yuan) took a harem of beauties so he could control xin mo but bingmei (he-with-shen-yuan) decided to just... cripple people's cultivation (...) what i'm getting at is that binghe was willing to pay other people's lives just so he didn't have to be intimate with anyone except shen yuan.

bingge too was cripping other cultivators to get ride of the excess of demonic qi, it's just that after he captured the three nuns from tianyi overlook they taught him how to achieve the same result using dual cultivation. (thanking @stardust-falling for their notes on this topic!)

(chapter 9: borderlands)

[sarucane]

Ed Teach's Stories

From practically the moment we meet him, Ed's identity is unstable. We know who is he (Blackbeard) from context, from the story told by the the room around him, by Izzy and the flag his crew. But the thing is, Ed doesn't fit the story of the Mad Devil Blackbeard. Two of his first few words are "good" and "love" for crying out loud. He's called "Blackbeard," but his beard is grey.

This instability exists because Ed himself isn't sure what story he's telling--or wants to tell. "I shouldn't be bored, I'm fucking Blackbeard!" All through his early episodes Ed is in increasingly desperate tension with his own identity. He's trying to tell stories within stories, wanting all the stories to be true at the same time, yet aware of the reality that the world is constantly trying to wipe one or another of the stories away. And not really trusting that he can tell the whole story of who he is.

In the first season of OFMD, Stede wears a different outfit every episode. Yet Stede remains the same: despite his internal tensions (almost despite himself) there's a stability to his identity. But all through both seasons of OFMD, Ed putting on a new outfit means he's trying to tell a completely different story about himself.

And underneath this cacophony, there's Ed. And Ed is himself a chorus of stories, a living contradiction. A patricidal murderer who was protecting his mother; a paragon of masculinity who longs for softness and fluidity; a man renowned for violence and madness who has in fact carefully cultivated that reputation and is extremely careful with his violence; a killer who doesn't kill, yet who does kill all the time just at a bit of a remove; a half a dozen names and personas and yet always Ed; unloveable, yet deeply loved.

At the beginning of the show, Ed isn't actually good at telling his own story. He's good at listening to other people's stories, and conforming himself to them often without conscious effort. But when he tries to really tell his own story--asking Stede to run off to China, singing his break-up song song, going to become a fisherman--he fails. We don't understand in the first season why his judgement clouds, why he becomes weak when he tries to tell his story. But in the second season after spending half an episode in Ed's mind, a painful truth is undeniable: Ed, like Stede, doesn't think he's worthy of telling his own story.

So instead of telling his own story, Ed let other people tell his story. In the first season, Ed built off what Izzy told him he had to be. But he couldn't lose himself in Blackbeard, no matter how hard he tried. So in the second season, when Ed couldn't face living with his contradictions anymore, he wrote an ending worthy of Blackbeard.

All this, because Ed thinks he can only be "himself" by telling one, single story about himself. By denying his contradictions, rather than embracing them. Splitting himself in two to tell himself a story, rather than telling the story himself.

What Ed doesn't believe or trust is this: For Ed to really be himself, he has to be impossible. Two contradictory things, at the same time.

The second season of OFMD is about learning to embrace all these contradictions. In each episode of OFMD, character look at the same object or situation (a wanted poster, a unicorn, a velvety suit, a relationship, a past trauma) and they tell two completely different stories about it. Sometimes one of those stories turns out to be wrong, but more often than not both are true, and something else--something beautiful-- is born from the place where those contradictions meet. And the characters, Ed most of all, learn to accept and balance this dissonance.

Thematically speaking, I'd argue that's why the second season of OFMD is more fantastical than the first: fantasies are contradictions, real and not-real at the same time. And isn't that what transformation is, in the end? What you are and what you are not, meeting and becoming "you"?

Transformation isn't all good. At first, Ed's fantastic stories hide his pain or invoke despair

But later, the fantasies make their way into reality. The impossible begins to shape reality--and opens a way for hope.

In the last episode of S2, Ed emerges from the waves as the kraken--but there's 3 musical tracks playing, three themes: the kraken, Ed, and Blackbeard. Then he reads a love letter, and has a deeply romantic moment with his boyfriend. He puts on a new outfit to escape the British, yet his personality doesn't change at all. When Izzy first apologizes to him, Ed says "I'm the one who should be apologizing," but then Izzy changes his entire understanding of their relationship. Becomes the first family figure to offer Ed permission to be himself.

Contradictions galore, and yet Ed is still Ed. Both who he was formed into by other people (his father, Izzy, Pop Pop) and yet who he is.

In the final scenes, Ed begins to finally accept the tensions of his life. He tells Zheng that yes, he wants to kill Richie--but he doesn't go on a revenge quest. And while before his forays into being someone else meant changing his name, his clothes and mannerisms, his whole story, he doesn't act like that at all in the last scene of the ep.

And Ed's been able to do all this, to come this far, because of Stede. Stede, who Ed was drawn to because he was a "fancy man who leads a brigade of imbeciles," yet had won a fight with Izzy. Stede, who looked at Ed at his lowest moment, after Ed had admitted that the entire basis of their friendship had been in bad faith, and said, "I'm your friend." Stede who, even knowing Ed wouldn't want to hear from him, poured his heart into letters about how their bond was unbreakable.

Stede is everything he is, all at the same time. And when Ed was drowning in his own contradictions, (a rope tied around him that he could not undo and yet had put on himself) trapped somewhere "inevitable, yet impossible," Stede appeared as a fantastic, beautiful creature and brought him home.

Stede lets Ed be everything he is, and sees it all as true and worthy of love. Even when Ed fucks up, it's all right.

And sometimes, telling two different stories about something doesn't lead to a fragmented self, doesn't drive people apart.

Sometimes, it means understanding. Means acceptance, safety, connection.

From discordance (contradiction), harmony. A gentleman can be a pirate. A man can be a bird, or a unicorn. Izzy can have been one of the good ones and a fucking nightmare. And Ed can tell all his stories, they can all be true--and he can still be Ed.

[intermundia]

Jedi are forbidden from sex because when two jedi fuck their force signatures spread through the temple and yoda gets a headache knowing when two jedi are going at it lol

the way yoda avoids this is to heavily imply that he enjoys it when they do go at it, which i would say would be effective mood killer

[forpiratereasons]

thinking also about ed wearing a string of white pearls and not wearing stede's black cravat - ed wearing a fine thing, ed wearing a beautiful thing like that instead of the more chainlike necklaces he wore in s1. thinking about the pearls being small and imperfect - they're not huge round pearls that have had lots of time to grow, they're newer, they're delicate. thinking about how pearls are formed by an oyster trying to protect it's soft insides, about how it happens when something unexpected slips in between the hard shell and hurts the inside of the oyster, so the oyster covers it to protect itself.

without knowing the context it's hard to say, obviously. but the symbolism i'm getting from it is: i have been hurt and i have been protected. my protection of self is beautiful and worthwhile and is itself a fine thing and i'm still learning how to do it, a bit, how to protect that soft inside of me.

combine that with ed's tied-back hair, the symbolism of his openness and vulnerability, and it's such a great combination. he's opening himself up but he'll protect himself; he deserves to protect himself. he's cautious and learning but he's also trying to put himself out there to be known again.

in s1, ed and stede fall together so quickly, it's such a whirlwind. in many ways, it's falling in love with the mask of each other - stede never opens up to ed, so ed falls in love with stede as a fun time, with stede as a purveyor of fine things, with stede as full of bravado and so much confidence it makes him stupid, and on the flip side, stede is still considering the mask of blackbeard all the way into ep 10. you can't be blackbeard with your blackbeard! he's absolutely lovely--er, and of course, a bloodthirsty killer.

maybe s2 will be about a more careful coming together. about love as a choice - not as a current sweeping them along but as a deliberate step toward each other, and what it means to love. what it means to choose each other. what it means to choose to act with love even when that's hard. what it means to choose to be vulnerable and intimate even if that might get you hurt. to put yourself in someone else's hands like that, and to trust them to keep you.

to let someone in, knowing they can hurt you and trusting them not to, and to choose to see what beautiful thing you can make together.

[otteranha]

With Hopper gone and Mr. Wheeler incapable of giving a goddamn, Karen and Claudia ambush Steve the week before their boys start high school and implore him to give their boys The Talk- sort of a Birds and Bees 102, if you will.

Obviously the boys know where babies come from, more or less. What they really need is the please-don’t-make-us-grandparents-yet lesson. Only Lucas has a dad present and caring enough to give his son periodic check-ins and chats about >ahem< milestones in a young man’s life. And El may be in California but Mike is begging to spend spring break out there and Hopper’s instruction began and ended with keeping the door open.

Steve is bright red and inching towards the door as they make their arguments for why he’s the best, nay the only option, to take up this responsibility but well- he remembers his own mistakes. His own early misadventures buying condoms, using condoms and so forth. It would have been a huge burden off his teenage shoulders to not be figuring the whole damn thing out through trial and error, absolutely incapable of considering consequences until it was all over and consequences were the only thing he could think about. Until next time. Besides, he thought laughing to himself, Mike would absolutely die.

[catty-words]

rewatching the series because it's been a minute since i've been in my sex education feels and i wanna be in the proper headspace for season four. anyway, this moment in 1.08 caught my attention -

- for the way it's reminiscent of maeve's introduction. we meet the legend of maeve wiley first, not the complex and beloved character we come to know, and her flipping off the untouchables during eric's monologue serves as a refusal to participate in this narrative. her peers can think what they think - she'll be maeve wiley the way she wants to be maeve wiley.

otis hasn't had so strong a backbone. over the course of the season, he lets down eric on his birthday and blames maeve for 'making him' question tom because he can't admit he'd prefer to be doing that in the first place and he lets jackson push him into compromising his friendship with maeve to jackson's advantage and he tries to have sex with lily until he's whipped into a panic because his father made him anxious about having not done it yet. again and again, he allows his fear and neuroticism to dictate his life - until the above moment.

like maeve defying the gossip-mongering, here otis is defying the literal narrative jean has committed to paper. his parents have both contributed to otis' crippling discomfort with sex - they built it into something of legendary proportions, something that has the power to ruin happy lives - and he's done letting that define him.

[sunnykeysmash]

I hope in inflates when Frank finds the bathroom he's actually opening all doors in the Charlie apartment and when he opens the closet the dennis sex doll falls limply on him like a skeleton and he shoves it back inside and says something like "we'll talk about what to do with that thing later"

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ok but speaking from experience as someone who's had first kisses w a crush. y'all KNOW ed was getting his plan in place thinking abt that kiss the whole time, playing over every tiny detail while he robbed a guy for a dinghy. motherfucker probably got all fluttery and giggly thinking abt the little noise stede made. probably couldn't stop smiling when he thought abt the way stede's jaw fit perfectly in his hand. probably sat down to take a minute when he remembered how stede's eyes took a moment to flutter back open. probably got DIZZY thinking abt stede's crooked smile and the way he'd whispered, "you make stede happy"

rolling up to the dock with his bag of stuff already planning how he's gonna kiss stede again, kiss him properly, as soon as they're safely away. maybe thinking he won't be able to wait, that he'll kiss him again as soon as he sees him because his heart literally feels like it's going to burst out of his chest he's so, so happy

[salamanderinspace]

My problem with "fanfic is not sex ed" discourse is that sex ed is also not sex ed. Not in the authoritative way people are implying.

I've poked around the recommended reading for sex ed and kink ed and it's almost always regurgitated propaganda that barely extends to queerness and often is riddled with ads for expensive collectible props or costumes that, IME, are not really necessary.

At least in fanfiction you get an idea of some of the things that are in peoples' hearts. They're not always direct or literal representations but there's generally some kind of emotional truth in fandom porn.

I understand not wanting to feel responsible for your readers' reactions when your work is the first on [whatever kink] they've encountered. I don't think anybody has the mental or emotional capacity for that weight, 24/7, but the answer is not to displace responsibility solely onto people who are young and uneducated. It's to spread it all around, some. Fanfic is sex ed but it's one chapter in a very lengthy syllabus that actually never ends your whole life and involves lots of sources including, but not limited to, traditional and historical publications, community discussions, personal experimentation, asinine youtube videos, google results, the dictionary, at least 5 different ideological models of consent, contradictory philsophy on core principles like "what is a human" and "what is love" and "what is identity," weird porn, and probably at least one mentor or two.

And if you don't have time to do all that before you turn 18, you're not doing it wrong. People are so terrified of doing it wrong and heaping "don't get ideas from fanfic" on top of that doesn't help.

[sarucane]

Why did Ed headbutt Stede?

This one is fairly straightforward in the show but also fun to rant about so here goes!

I think the short version of this answer is "because Ed had no other way to communicate FUCK OFF at that moment." Ed can't talk, doesn't seem able to move, and is very unclear on exactly what's going on and what he's doing (even a while later he has a deeply revealing conversation with a confused rabbit--he's definitely not all there in this moment). Still, Stede's wrong when he suggests it was an accident: Ed owns the action later when he yells "I'm glad it hurt, that's the point of head butts!"

That being said, it's worth taking in the context for a sec, because Ed does love Stede and there is a theoretical potential for this to go to a very dark place. Balancing the violence of the pirate world with portraying healthy relationships is quite a challenge for these writers, as it'd be easy to tip over from healthy to very unhealthy.

In the same episode, Mary gets stabbed in the back quite deeply (it's knocking on bones) and it barely bleeds, let alone hurts once it's out. Ed and Stede have both been run through with swords but since "the important bits" didn't get hit, they needed no recovery time. Hell, Ed got shot in the arm and hit in the face with a cannonball in S2E2 and he's fine by halfway through E3. A headbutt is nothing on this show, it's like a kid elbowing another kid on the bus.

Ed head butts Stede because he's angry and in emotional pain, he's a pirate and pirates (not to mention many humans) express emotions through violence, and Ed can't break a chair or smash something--so the headbutt is the only available option.

And in terms of walking that line between health and unhealthy/violent relationship: the headbutt not only does not take place while Ed and Stede are in a relationship, it is itself a way of Ed saying "WE ARE NOT IN A RELATIONSHIP 'CAUSE YOU DUMPED ME FUCK OFF." When Ed is in possession of his faculties, he is still using violence to externalize emotions, but Stede is emphatically not a target of that violence.

Ed doesn't even look at Stede from the moment the anger starts rising, and he turns his back on Stede and moves to another part of the room entirely to smash shit. Not the most mature response, but consistent with Ed's character and history while also pointedly sidestepping that dangerous territory.

And Ed's anger fueling the headbutt is completely justified.

Stede and Ed are often in different emotional places within their relationship, but they're rarely as far apart as at the beginning of episode 3. Stede is acting (in fairness understandably given the near death thing) absolutely no differently than he would if they were, at that moment, in a romantic relationship (which fits with his whole "I didn't dump him, we're on a break" schtick). But Stede quite brutally broke Ed's heart, triggering a crisis that led to Ed being so convinced he's "not loveable" that he despaired of living at all.

Stede says "I thought I lost you," and the only appropriate response to that is "YOU DID," and that needs to be made clear to Stede, because there's a difference between "being on different pages in a relationship" and "being on different pages about a relationship existing." Ed is hurt, badly, and Stede's total lack of acknowledgement of that is absolutely infuriating. Like Ed says, hurt is the point of head butts: Ed was hurting and Stede wasn't, and that distance in experiences demanded a response, so Ed seized on the only one available to him.

[spenglernot]

STORIES TELLING: NED LOWE AND THE DEATH OF POOR REPRESENTATION IN OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

In history, Ned Lowe was one of the most sadistic and violent pirates in the early 18th century, so he’s an obvious choice for a villain for season 2, episode 6 – Calypso’s Birthday.  What is interesting is what the OFMD writers chose to do with him.

Lowe announces himself to the crew of the Revenge with great fanfare (cannon ball attack) and gets right to the point.

Ed is thoroughly unimpressed.

Cut to Ed and Stede tied up while Ned attempts to set the mood so he can monologue about why he wants to kill Ed.

Ed knows what’s coming. He is going to suffer but he still can’t be arsed to meet Ned with anything but vaguely bored dismissiveness (and Stede is happy to play along).

Up on the deck, Ned prepares the crew for his big, dramatic moment of symphonic torture.

Note that the Revenge crew is tied down, braced by vices and generally unable to protect themselves from imminent torture and possible death, but their spirits are up. They don’t seem terribly fussed.

Then Stede uses his people positive management style to happily orchestrate a worker uprising in Ned’s crew.

Ned’s crew responds instantly; severing their allegiance to Lowe and telling him off.

The crew sails away and talks profit sharing while Ned dully threatens to hunt them down.

Ned is now a prisoner of the Revenge crew and seems entirely disinterested in his own survival.

And Ned sinks to the depths, without struggling at all.

There is a lot going on in this episode: pay and labor equity direct action, gay love engagement bliss, kink humor, Stede being a hero and saving his crew by playing to his strengths, then having to decide whether to kill in cold blood and feel the consequences of that choice. Ed having one more reason to be done with piracy (while being so impressed with and fond of Stede), and then watching his man make a fraught choice and having to deal with the fallout from that. (And, damn, I haven’t even mentioned the passionate sex bit.) Anyway, back to the point.

Now for the the meta part

The Ned Lowe sequences are perfectly in keeping with OFMD’s signature blend of madcap violence, humor, and big emotional gut punches. But something about Ned Lowe just strikes me as off for this show.

Ned is seriously threatening the crews’ lives, so why don’t they take him seriously?

Why does Ned have such a boring, throwaway backstory?

Why is Ned so nonchalant about his own death; like it’s a foregone conclusion?

Why does Ned have a silver violin and silver spurs on his slip-on dress shoes?

Why is Ned sartorially monochromatic?

And then I realized who Ned reminds me of.

This guy,

Earnst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever (1971)

And this guy,

Scar in Disney's The Lion King (1994).

And this guy,

Xerxes, 300 (2006).

And it sure seems like Ned Lowe isn’t just an episodic villain. He is an archetype of the one-dimensional, stereotypical queer-coded villain that has been endemic in film and television throughout history. The OFMD writers have a lot to say about what to do with this kind of character:

Don’t respect him.

Feel free to openly mock him.

Don’t let him take your joy, even though he will hurt you.

He won’t disappear on his own. You have to throw something at him (take action) to make him go away.

Once he’s in the water, he’s content to drown. He’s not into what he’s doing any more than you are.

Oh and, just to be clear,

The LGBTQIA+ community has a very long history of turning shit media into better stories. So, hey, big media, prepare to have your crap characters wrecked (improved).

Now, back to our transformative pirate show with rich, complex queer characters and a multi-layered plot that surprises me every week and makes me feel big feelings - most of all, joy.

Final thought: I do wonder if Ned Lowe is monochromatically silver as a tribute to/poke at, Hollywood and the silver screen.

This meta was written before OFMD season 2 has fully aired. No idea what’s going to happen in the finale (and I’ve generally fled social media to avoid spoilers). I’ll be back, looking at everyone’s fascinating posts after episode 8 airs.

[celluloidbroomcloset]

I saw a few folks talking about how they can’t write meta/analyze media and I have a suggestion—read some film theory. Not criticism—theory. Consider angles, philosophies, contexts, ways of analyzing media that's not about whether the media is Good or Bad, but how it works.

(Please note: I'm not saying you have to do this in order to write meta or analysis, but theory is an excellent starting point for close reading texts and a lot of the writing within film and TV especially is very accessible.)

A few recs:

Film Theory and Criticism, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. This collects a massive amount of work, important essays, and important perspectives on various aspects of theory and critique. Really a foundational text that keeps on being updated.

From Caligari to Hitler. I believe literally everyone should read this book (or even just the introduction) to understand how film reflects and affects national character. This is specifically about Germany between the wars, but it is frightening how applicable a lot of it is to our current moment.

The Celluloid Closet. One of the seminal texts in studying queerness in film. There's also an accompanying documentary that is excellent.

Monsters in the Closet. This is specifically about horror film, but is one of the first to explore how queerness in particular is typed and exploited in horror.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Laura Mulvey defined the male gaze for an entire generation of feminist film scholars and critics. Her essay is slightly dated but still essential and applicable.

The Dread of Difference. Collects a group of important feminist essays specifically about horror films. Again, a lot of the work is quite applicable overall.

The Monstrous Feminine. Barbara Creed's work is essential feminist film theory.

The Women Who Knew Too Much. Modleski is a Hitchcock scholar and her work is expansive and entertaining.

From Reverence to Rape. Very much a companion to Mulvey, addressing the way that Hollywood itself distorts female roles. Again, some datedness, but important and easy to read.

Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. bell hooks. Don't need to say more.

Any other film folks can add more, but these are the ones that I think are the most interesting and accessible as starting points.