Southern Comfort

Now for another installment from the English 227 LGBT broadcast.

Southern Comfort, directed by Kate Davis and released in 2001, is a documentary detailing the lives and journeys of Robert Eads and the people dear to him.

Honestly, much of this film seemed to me to go hand in hand with Freeheld. The connections between them are monotonously obvious, but my mind drew them nevertheless: in both, the person who is the primary focus of the piece is battling terminal cancer and both have themes of struggle against and rejection from parts of the larger "normative" societies they live in. However, Southern Comfort has a host of themes and issues all its own.

For one, it centers around the lives and struggles of Transfolk, who, we discussed several times in class, are "a minority within a minority," especially where education and awareness are concerned. There seems on a whole to be less opportunity for Transfolk to form their own communities, become established as an identity, and be accepted outside of the larger LGB superminority. In a way, Southern Comfort is a motion against this lack of proverbial social screentime.

The film takes its name from another institution which is working towards stronger Transfolk communities, the convention Southern Comfort. It is the largest conference of its kind in the United States and has a reputation of safety and inclusiveness for all LGBT people.

Throughout the documentary, Robert and the people nearest and dearest to him - his "chosen family," as he would say - discuss the issues and concepts of passing, identity formation, rejection, acceptance, self-creation, and the attempt at forging the ideal community. All of these are legitimate, important, and exceedingly prone to triggering conversation (or debate).

Like Freeheld, Southern Comfort is poignant, heart-felt, and vivid, and, also like Freeheld, I would absolutely recommend it.

Links
IMDb
Wiki, both for the film and the convention

Postscript!
Fun Fact for all you Grammar Geeks:
I have it on very good authority that
Transgender is an adjective.
Transsexual is a noun.
And don't let Dictionary.com tell you otherwise!