Using Film in the Classroom/How to Read a Film

"You Should Be in a Dress and Camisole": Reading Gender in the Novel and Film Adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird Through Setting, Character, and Event.¹

Introduction

“Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water.” Judith Lorber ² When you ask people when they first came to understand the concept of gender through their own lived experiences, many people pause and struggle to answer with much specificity. Yet, for those who, in some form, challenged the established gender norms of their family, community, or larger society, those moments are easy to recall. Fathers grabbed the doll out of their son’s hands, mothers wrangled their daughters into a dress for church, girls were suddenly told that they had to start covering their chest when boys were still able to able be shirtless, or boys in pain were told that big boys don’t cry. These moments are both small and substantial. Added together, they become an unwritten curriculum of shame where we learn by force to appease those policing the behaviors by denying some part of themselves.

Students across the nation still face the rigid rulebook of the gender binary every day. School systems, policy decisions, teacher language all actively and accidentally work to concretize the norms of gender at a huge cost. According to Teaching Tolerance,

Compared to the general population, gender-diverse kids face drastically increased rates of bullying, assault, depression, school drop-out, drug abuse, self-harm and suicide. A 2009 report from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network paints a grim picture. Nearly 90 percent of transgender youth surveyed had experienced verbal harassment at school because of their gender expression. Two-thirds expressed feeling unsafe at school; more than half experienced physical harassment. A quarter experienced physical assault. Most of these incidents were never reported to school officials.³

Our policing of a gender binary through policy and rhetoric limits the ability of our students to understand themselves and others in a safe space. Gender rigidity thrives when dialogue is restricted and dies in its deconstruction.

Part of this kind of identity work is learning how to separate the parts from the whole and, in this case, begin to see the water as a fish. In the novel and film adaptation the character Jean Louise “Scout” Finch first appears at age six. This is the age where gender identity begins to form through memory and repeated efforts of others to effectively socialize the child to the gender norms of society. Scout is a gender deviant, but her age and absence of a mother allow her a degree of gender freedom that others in Maycomb may not experience. This is particularly true for Mayella Ewell, the accuser in the novel and film. Mayella also deviates from gender norms largely because of her class status and, like Scout, the absence of a mother figure. Yet Mayella’s age, 19, does not afford her the same space to explore her gender identity and her failure to achieve the full form and presentation of Southern womanhood is likely a part of her motivation to accuse Tom Robinson of rape. The novel and film use different stories to shape the gender identity of each character. By comparing the novel to the film adaptation, students can begin to see how gender is formed through the unwritten rules of society, enforced by members of the community, challenged by Scout and, to some degree, Mayella through the violation of norms, and the final acquiescence of both to perform gender within the rules.