Sex/uality Artifacts

Blackbird is a 2014 film that centers around the life of a seventeen-year-old boy as he attempts to navigate through his spiritual, sexual, and emotional hurdles in his life. Seventeen-year-old Randy Rousseau is an African American boy being raise in a small conservative town in rural Mississippi. As with many boys his age, Randy begins to experience wet dreams, but a concern arises when he wakes up and realizes those dreams were about boys. For some, this may not be a problem, but for a devout Christian like Randy, his homosexual dreams are cause for concern. Throughout the film, Randy struggled with accepting his sexuality, and eventually experiencing a sexual awakening during which he decided that his feelings were not a sin, and that he could love who he wanted to love, and also be a Christian.
During the Vision panel, the term intersectionality was brought up. This term refers to how different aspects of a person’s identity intersect to form the person that they are. For example, Randy’s race, religion, and sexuality all played a role in how he felt about himself, how he was expected to behave, and his ultimate beliefs. Randy was heavily involved in a church/religion that taught him that homosexuality was wrong. In addition, in his traditional African American family, sexuality was not something that was discussed, especially a sexuality that differed from what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” in the Black community. For Randy, being an African American male who identified as both homosexual and a Christian meant that he would be faced with a lot of opposition and criticism. Intersectionality and this film relates to class because it is important that we as helping professionals, consider all aspects of an individual’s identity in order to best serve their needs and to provide the most effective resources possible.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3181920/