Feminist Philosophers

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Implicit Bias Film? March 3, 2013

Filed under: bias — Jender @ 9:36 am

I’ve been asked to suggest a movie to (vaguely) accompany a public lecture I’m giving on implicit bias. I’m sure there must be tons, but I’m drawing a blank. Suggestions?

 

9 Responses to “Implicit Bias Film?”

  1. Sunil D'Monte Says:
    March 3, 2013 at 10:05 am

    How about the “doll” experiments which revealed implicit racial bias? http://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/1/post/2012/08/a-girl-like-me.html

  2. sgsterrett Says:
    March 3, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    I recall a film (in the 1980′s, I think), in which a woman finds she has the figure to pass for a man, tries on a mustache and applies for a job as a journalist/reporter for which she had earlier been turned down. The experience turns out very differently when she interviews as a man, and she is hired. Her ‘experiment’ to prove a point doesn’t end there, as originally planned, though, and she actually starts the job and works for awhile passing as a man. I think it comes to an end because her fiance makes her feel it is too dishonest or something. I tried to find it, but couldn’t. I am posting what I recall about it in case it might jog someone else’s memory.

    Interviews with the actors about their reactions to the woman actor on the set while she was wearing a tweed blazer and had a mustache appeared afterwards, I recall, and were — most revealing.

  3. LisaS Says:
    March 3, 2013 at 7:48 pm

    Not sure, but at least ‘The Crying Game’ is a good movie, and it certainly trades on implicit assumptions about sexuality. Another movies premised on mistaken identity due to biases about gender roles: ‘Mrs Doubtfire’, which for some reason I saw a clip of recently.
    TV show, not film: ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’…does ‘All in the Family’ count as *implicit* bias? Neither are about implicit bias so much as rely on it, and in shaking it up, for their humor.
    From another angle maybe “Working Girl” or ‘The Help’?

  4. annejjacobson Says:
    March 3, 2013 at 10:15 pm

    Another place for implicit bias is the video “Shit white girls say to black girls” and some of the similar ones. The white girls say some pretty insulting, demeaning things, but they don’t understand that it is coming from negative things about the black people.

    Parents probably provide examples of this in films: as when one says, “But dear I had no idea that you’d mind my commenting on your socks” when of course at some level she did.

  6. Synaesthetik Says:
    March 4, 2013 at 9:22 am

    Or Shallow Hal…I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for. Care to broaden your request a little?

  7. philowitz Says:
    March 4, 2013 at 7:56 pm

    There was a film in the ’80′s: Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman, playing a failed NYC actor, gets a woman’s part in a tv soap by auditioning in drag. Hoffman’s gender reversals provide set pieces on bias. Eventually, Hoffman denounces sexism on set: if I recall correctly, as a final proof of implicit bias, not fully grasped by the film makers, is that it requires a man pretending to be a woman to provide a coherent defense of women’s dignity.

  8. Emjar Says:
    March 6, 2013 at 9:43 am

    Tootsie! That’s the Dustin Hoffman one.

  9. Jender Says:
    March 6, 2013 at 11:07 am

    As E has pointed out to me, another excellent candidate is Legally Blonde: http://thefwatch.com/2010/04/19/she-is-worth-it/


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