Sean et al.:
I'm kind of surprised that the majority of films that people are mentioning in relation to bioplitics are science fictional -- I think that there's nothing really science fictional about biopower (it's here already, right?), which is one of the problems with Rabinow's "biosociality"...
Anyhow: I would recommend that you take a look at some teen films, which I think do an amazing job of conflating issues of sexuality, desire and productive power. The ones that immediately come to mind are "But I'm a Cheerleader," "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and "Saved," each of which addresses how individuals become desiring subjects. But these are all rather recent: I'm sure you could find teen films from the 1950s that do much the same thing and might be even more accesible to your students for the purpose of critique. But I think your students will find any Foucaultian critique of teen films pretty revealing...
Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Department of Anthropology
University of Minnesota
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~wolf0358/
I'm kind of surprised that the majority of films that people are mentioning in relation to bioplitics are science fictional -- I think that there's nothing really science fictional about biopower (it's here already, right?), which is one of the problems with Rabinow's "biosociality"...
Anyhow: I would recommend that you take a look at some teen films, which I think do an amazing job of conflating issues of sexuality, desire and productive power. The ones that immediately come to mind are "But I'm a Cheerleader," "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and "Saved," each of which addresses how individuals become desiring subjects. But these are all rather recent: I'm sure you could find teen films from the 1950s that do much the same thing and might be even more accesible to your students for the purpose of critique. But I think your students will find any Foucaultian critique of teen films pretty revealing...
Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Department of Anthropology
University of Minnesota
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~wolf0358/