1. Human Sexuality Final Project “Featured Films”

2. Purpose For my final project I chose to watch three of the “Featured Films” found throughout our textbook and present their theme and main concepts. I will also compare and contrast the films in their similarities and differences in regards to human sexuality.

3. So let’s get to it!

4. Dan in Real Life Dan in Real Life is a movie about Dan Burns, a widower newspaper advice columnist, and his attempt to understand love while being a single dad to his three daughters. While visiting family in Rhode Island, Dan meets a lovely lady and spends an afternoon with her without realizing that time has flown by them. Dan’s mystery lady zooms off in her car, already late to something she had already planned. Later that day, Dan meets his lovely lady. Except he realizes that she is her brothers girlfriend. The laughs and tears begin there and continue as Dan learns valuable lessons from the ones he loves most.

5. Dan in Real Life Theme: When you find love, do everything you can to keep it. Dan loves his brothers girlfriend, but how could it ever work? With love, it works. Main message: Love is not a feeling, it’s an ability. Learning to love and how do it right takes time.

6. Dan in Real Life Chapter 7 teaches us about Love and Communication in Intimate Relationships, and the subheading of Similarity is where Dan in Real Life shows up in our text. This movie does a great job portraying why having similar interests, hobbies, and goals help to create a healthy and long lasting relationship.

7. Dan in Real Life Topics of Human Sexuality Falling love through similarity: Dan meets Marie in a bookstore. They both love books and reading. Widower: Dan has lost his wife and finds love with another woman. Single parent: Dan is raising three daughters after his wife’s death. Jealousy: Dan tries to create feelings of jealousy in Marie by going out with another women. Young love: Dan’s daughter Cara is in the middle of a Jr. High love story with her boyfriend that Dan disapproves of. Kissing: Kissing and the sense of touch is a way that affection is shown.

8. Juno Juno is about a 16 year-old girl and her journey through pregnancy that came from one single night of curiosity with the boy she liked. She first decides to abort the pregnancy, but later changes her mind to giving her child to a loving husband and wife through adoption. While struggles of love occur between Juno and her boyfriend, the same happens to the two prospective parents of Juno’s unborn baby.

9. Juno Theme: The birth of a child can bring couples together or push them apart. Juno and Bleeker fall more in love through the pregnancy while Mark and Vanessa realize that they are growing apart through the pregnancy. Main Message: If you work hard enough in relationships, you can make it all work. Juno wanted to be with Bleeker, and because she fought for it, it happened. While Vanessa wanted to work through their problems, Mark did not and had no desire to fix his relationship with his wife.

10. Juno Chapter 12 teaches us about Sexuality during Childhood and Adolescence, and the subheading of Adolescent Pregnancy is where Juno is located. Juno does an excellent job in making the teenage mother act and talk like a teenager. They treat pregnancy with the respect and beauty it deserves, but mixes Juno’s naivety and youthful exuberance to portray adolescence in the adult world of pregnancy and child birth.

11. Juno Topics of Human Sexuality Adolescent Pregnancy: Two 16 year-olds have coitus and pregnancy results. Coitus: A male and female engage in penile-vaginal intercourse. Birth Control: Condoms or other forms of birth control are not used by either party. Abortion: Juno originally wants to abort her baby but then changes her mind. Adoption: Juno moves from abortion to adoption to give someone who can not have children the chance to fulfill their desires of parenthood. Jealousy: Juno becomes jealous after learning that Bleeker will be going to Prom with someone else.

12. Anger Management Dave Buznik, played by Adam Sandler, is “wrongly” sentenced to anger management classes. While he does not believe that he has any anger problems, his girlfriend sees that he is angry at himself and secretly puts on a two week act to help him realize his potential and his abilities. The courses that Dave goes through tend to make him angrier than before, and comedy ensues.

13. Anger Management Theme: We all could use some help from the view of outside looking in. Buddy, Dave’s crazy anger management mentor, helps Dave through silly and sometimes border-line anger management exercises. Main Message: Anger does not have to be directed outward, it can also be directed inward. Dave realizes that he is not angry at other people, he is angry at himself for not living up to his potential and standing up for himself.

14. Anger Management Chapter 16 of our text teaches about Atypical Sexual Behavior, and under the subheading of Transvestic Fetishism is where Anger Management is located. The film contains a scene where Dave is faced with a male transvestite posing as a women. Dave is very uncomfortable about the whole situation.

15. Anger Management Topics of Human Sexuality Lesbians: Dave is in the same anger management class as lesbians. Porn stars: The same lesbians that are in Dave’s anger management class are also porn stars. Large Penis: Dave views his penis as smaller than the rest and judges his against others, and even asks his lesbian friends if size really does matter. Transvestite: A cross-dressing man is part of Dave’s anger management course. Public displays of affection: Dave does not like to kiss his girlfriend in public; handshakes are more appropriate for him. Body viewing in bed: Dave is asked by another aid in Buddy’s tests if the reason he won’t sleep with her is because she believes that she looks like a porker in bed. Jealousy: Dave tries to make his girlfriend jealous by showing up at the same restaurant she was at with fake girlfriends.

16. Similarities All movies deal with love, but all show different paths that lead to the end goal. All movies also have some sort of act by the main character to try and invoke feelings of jealousy in their girlfriend/boyfriend. Both Dan in Real Life and Juno have teenagers in love in their stories. While Dan in Real Life has a subplot of his teenage daughter, Juno is a teenager and the main story revolves around her.

17. Similarities Dan in Real Life and Anger Management have quite, soft spoken men who in a way come out of their soft shell because of the interactions they have with their girlfriends. Anger Management and Juno both deal with love and its ups and downs with sarcasm to help cover up the pain and true feelings that the characters have.

18. Conclusion Watching Juno I was expecting to see a lot of Human Sexuality topics, but I did not expect so much in Anger Management. Even though the topics were not critical points of the movies storyline, they were still brought up more than I was expecting. Each movie brought in separate parts of human sexuality into every day life. With all three movies being romantic comedies, they approached them similarly.

19. Conclusion Movies attempt to portray real life. Probably the most attempted portrayal of life is love and all its parts. All three movies did a great job with their specific audience. All three movies also did a wonderful job in showing how prevalent the topics of human sexuality are to everyday life.