Reviews
Monica Castillo
November 17, 2023
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Years earlier than I discovered her story, Shere Hite’s title loomed massive in my sociology lessons. Her self-titled report about feminine sexuality was simply as talked about as Kinsey’s and Masters and Johnson’s findings. However, in current popular culture reminiscence, Kinsey acquired a film, and Masters and Johnson acquired a TV present. Hite had been relegated to dusty cabinets behind thrift shops. Nicole Newnham’s sensible new documentary, “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” brings her phrases again to life for a brand new technology.
Pulling textual content from Hite’s writings, the surveys that knowledgeable her well-known work, newscasts, and interviews with associates and former flames, Newnham constructs an interesting portrait of an bold girl. She was good and fairly, somebody who modeled in sexist advertisements of the day and critiqued their shallowness. She created a glamorous self-image that threatened the Patriarchy but caught their consideration. Ultimately, she paid a heavy worth for findings like how few ladies really felt glad with their male companions, the rampant infidelity amongst married {couples}, and the way few folks on the time understood ladies’s sexual organs in any respect. Hite’s insightful phrases information the documentary from one a part of her life to the subsequent. Some come from the numerous media appearances she made throughout the heyday of her publishing profession when TV hosts invited her to scandalize their viewers. Much of the movie’s narration is predicated on Hite’s writings and carried out by Dakota Johnson, who loosely matches Hite’s naturally breathy voice, giving us a way of the individual behind the persona she introduced in public interviews. Her eventual disappearance solely is sensible on this painful context: her detailed emotions about her background and the way the elevated scrutiny from ethical majority varieties and chauvinists wore on her spirit. When she begins to defend herself, some within the documentary want she hadn’t fought again in opposition to sexist critics, however her righteous anger feels so managed compared to the blatant assaults on her character and her work. In essence, she was slut shamed out of historical past, and we’re compelled to reckon with that loss. Newnham (“Crip Camp”) lucked out on a topic who made quite a few tv appearances and infrequently posed for photographer associates, abandoning a big visible archive. Newnham and editor Eileen Meyer creatively use these components to inform Hite’s story and the ladies of her time. They herald different footage of the period for instance the world of Hite’s survey responders: moms holding infants, getting ready dinner, or getting ready to pose for a household portrait. They’re previous dwelling films, zoomed in to maintain the identities nameless, similar to with the responders. There are additionally historic scenes from occasions like NOW conferences and Florida’s homophobic panic in opposition to homosexual rights led by Anita Bryant and her fundamentalist ilk. As the early feminist motion defined, the non-public was political, and these bigger cultural moments are additionally an important a part of Hite’s story.
“The Disappearance of Shere Hite” seems like an epitaph and a reclamation of her legacy. It’s much more poignant at a time when persons are dropping reproductive rights, and LGBTQ communities are dropping their hard-won protections. It is an introduction to the thirtieth bestselling e book of all time and an emotional journey of a lady who dared to talk reality to energy. The movie is stuffed with archival riches that lead from one fascinating story to the subsequent, from nonsequiturs like how Hite was the mannequin for 2 ladies in a James Bond poster and the way her one-time New York neighbor Gene Simmons used to swing by for events to impactful moments like funding opposition to Bryant’s homophobic campaign and the expertise of connecting with different ladies at feminist protests. The documentary exhibits how a lot she sacrificed and believed in her work. “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” acknowledges the struggles, hostile questions, and misogynist abuse she endured. But it additionally finds house for the neighborhood she discovered, her cultural influence, and the impact she had on folks. Newnham’s documentary mourns and celebrates this spectacular determine in order that future generations will perceive why she—and the work she pioneered—nonetheless matter. Now enjoying in theaters.
Monica Castillo
Monica Castillo is a contract author and University of Southern California Annenberg graduate movie critic fellow. Although she initially went to Boston University for biochemistry and molecular biology earlier than touchdown within the sociology division, she went on to evaluate movies for The Boston Phoenix, WBUR, Dig Boston, The Boston Globe, and co-hosted the podcast “Cinema Fix.”
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The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023)
116 minutes
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