I am honestly still shell-shocked from watching Boys Don’t Cry. I have been sitting with this movie for over a day now and hoping I’d be able to write this fabulous blog post critiquing the movie but I am still unable to. I finished the movie curled up in my bed with my new stuff-a-plush and still felt the movie weighing me down the entire time. After the movie ended, I began to research the story behind the film and came across the recording of the police interrogation. I found it difficult to listen to but think it is still extremely interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lswb1SFl_gY I think it is also interesting that the Brandon Teena/ Teena Brandon’s family seems extremely reluctant to allowing Brandon to still identify as male years later.

I think it is interesting to compare The Help to Boys Don’t Cry in terms of how much detail and how explicit the two movies are about the oppression and ignorance around the main characters. Boys Don’t Cry holds almost nothing back. Whereas The Help has a very strong feeling of sugar coating on the entire situation. Both are movies about people who do not have a lot of previous representation in the media. But I think both do the topics justice. The audience is what changes for these films. The Help is something I could comfortably let my 9 year old brother see where as Boys Don’t Cry is something I’m not even sure I am old enough to handle viewing. Racism and homophobia are still large parts of our society. These movies have two extremely different ways to approach how these topics are portrayed but both received a large amount of both criticism and acclaim. For Boys Don’t Cry, Hilary Swank received an Academy Award for Best Actress nd Chloë Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The Help was awarded Best Supporting Actress to Octavia Spencer and nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress (Viola Davis). Both Received nominated and awards at the Golden Globes as well. These two movies on such opposite ends of the spectrum still received such similar awards. I think it is interesting when we think about the decisions that go into filming a movie.