Movie Reviews

Kinsey. Dir. and prod. by Barak Goodman and John Maggio. Twin Cities Public Television/TPT and Ark Media in association with the BBC, 2005. 90 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698; 800- 344-3337; < shop@pbs.org >; < http://shop.pbs.org/education/ > [Sept. 12, 2005]) Kinsey. Dir. by Bill Condon. Fox Searchlight Pictures/Qwerty Films, 2004. 118 mins.
In the last ten years, the life and work of Alfred C. Kinsey has been the subject of two scholarly biographies by James Jones and Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, one novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, and the two films under review here. The American Experience documentary, Kinsey, and the Fox Pictures film of the same name follow the trajectory laid out by these earlier treatments of the subject, though the PBS version seems to give more credence to the psychological biography penned by Jones than the Fox Pictures production does. Both treatments emphasize that Kinsey's training as a biologist and his gall wasp research were key to the scientific method he brought to his analyses of human sexual behavior, especially his emphasis on large samples and the variations found in nature. Both film versions are highly cognizant of the issues Kinsey raised in his sex research and the controversy and relevance that "speaking sex" and exploring sexual knowledge continue to have in the early twenty-first century.	1
Alfred C. Kinsey conducted the first comprehensive study of Americans' sexual behavior. George Platt Lynes took this photograph in 1950, two years after Sexual Behavior in the Human Male made Kinsey a household name. Courtesy American Experience/George Platt Lynes/Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Inc.
Kinsey's personal life and experiences are of critical importance to his research on human sexual behavior in both films. The repressive environment of his childhood home, his early "fumbling" attempts at sexual intimacy with his wife, and his sexual attraction to men and women all inform Kinsey's rejection of contemporary literature on sexuality where he finds "moral prescriptions, thinly disguised as science" to "endorse a narrow range of sexual behaviors" (Kinsey, American Experience). It is this initial experience as a scientist "offended" by the lack of empirical data on sex that prompts Kinsey to "set the record straight." While teaching a marriage course at Indiana University (1938–1940), Kinsey seeks the sexual histories of his students, friends, and colleagues and from there begins his "crusade" to research sexuality through one-on-one interviews. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey establishes the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University and assembles a research team, his "inner circle," that accompanies him on his quest to "liberate" sexuality in America.	. . .