Protecting The Private Life

"Shame" is not only quite a surreal movie, but an oddly surreal movie. The main character shows such complex and conflicting emotions through very little dialogue, that it's actually quite hard to confidently know what's happening. Don't watch it if you expect fast-paced plot, or tonnes of awesome sex. While there's a huge amount of sex in it, it's almost entirely deliberately soulless. I'd compare Shame to hypnotically lethargic movies like Blue Valentine or Lost in Translation, but with a slightly more sinister tone. 8/10

1. Incredibly intense plane crash. Only matched by the Super 8 train crash. 2. Equal parts frenzied violence and methodically paced humanity. 3. The action scenes had the camera a bit more zoomed in than I'd like. Think the Bourne movies but more zoomed in. Don't expect any "Taken" shenanigans from Liam Neeson. 4. It's a profoundly human movie - the fear and death experienced in a desperate situation. 5. When faced with so much fear and death, what is your motivation to keep living? 8/10

Gender is said by many sociologists to be "socially constructed". But many feminists now insist that sex is socially constructed as well. This insight differs greatly from earlier feminist positions that saw sex as biological and gender as social/cultural. This is a fundamental difference in thinking, and thus has a wide range of implications, many of which are discussed below. In this discussion, very distinct definitions of "gender" and "sex" will be used - here, "gender" refers to "gender roles" (as coined by sexologist John Money (Money, 1955)) , and refers to "the array of socially constructed roles and relationships, personality traits, attitudes, behaviours, values, relative power and influence that society ascribes to the two sexes on a differential basis. ... gender is an acquired identity that is learned, changes over time, and varies widely within and across cultures" (Esplen & Jolly, 2006). "Sex",...