2012 52 min 1-932869-68-9 This film has subtitles English

Flirting With Danger

Power & Choice in Heterosexual Relationships
Featuring Lynn Phillips

or

Synopsis

Social and developmental psychologist and author Lynn Phillips explores the line between consent and coercion in this thought-provoking look at popular culture and the ways real girls and women navigate their heterosexual relationships and hookups. Featuring dramatizations of interviews that Phillips conducted with hundreds of young women, the film examines how the wider culture's frequently contradictory messages about pleasure, danger, agency, and victimization enter into women's most intimate relationships with men. The result is a refreshingly candid, and nuanced, look at how young women are forced to grapple with deeply ambivalent cultural attitudes about female sexuality. Essential for courses that look at popular culture, gender norms, sexuality, and sexual violence.

It is possible that after watching this film you might want to talk to someone about your own experiences. See "Related Links" below for some resources.

(Viewer Discretion Advised: Contains Sexual Imagery & Language & Explores Adult Themes. There is a separate "high school version" of this film that has been edited for profanity.)

Release Date:2012
Duration:52 min
ISBN:1-932869-68-9
Subtitles:English

Trailers

Watch the trailer

Filmmaker Credits

A Media Education Foundation Production
Based on the work of
Lynn Phillips
Produced, Directed & Edited by
Sut Jhally & Andrew Killoy
Story Editor
Jeremy Earp
Additional Editing
Jason Young
Acting Coach
Alex Peterson
Associate Producers
Lynn Comella
Associate Producers
Megan Mortimer
Executive Producer
Sut Jhally
Featuring
Annie Bradford
Featuring
Ana Darrow
Featuring
Leslie Diana
Featuring
Alana Fallis
Featuring
Kelsey Flynn
Featuring
Morgan Hammel
Featuring
Katherine Hart
Featuring
Maria Hinojos
Featuring
Rebecca Holtz
Featuring
Dana Kaplowitz
Featuring
Trenda Loftin
Featuring
Nicole Morris
Featuring
Nomita Ramchandani
Featuring
Katie Speed
Featuring
Ren Steger
Featuring
Evy Yergen
Director of Photography
Steven Vote
Location Sound Recordist
Andy Turrett
Colorist & Sound Mixer
Rikk Desgres
Pinehurst Pictures & Sound
Media Research
Scott Morris
Media Research
Jason Young

Filmmaker Biographies

Lynn Phillips View Lynn Phillips's Filmmaker Page
Ph.D.
Lynn Phillips, Ph.D., has taught in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts since 2005 and is the 2012 recipient of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award. A social and developmental psychologist by training, she teaches courses in media and critical cultural studies, with a particular focus on issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality; media impacts on children's wellbeing; and the health and environmental implications of consumer culture. Her publications include Flirting with Danger: Young Women's Reflections on Sexuality and Domination, Unequal Partners: Power and Consent in Adult-Teen Relationships, and The Girls Report: What We Know and Need to Know about Adolescent Girls. Committed to participatory activist research, she has collaborated with such organizations as Planned Parenthood, battered women's shelters, sexual health and education programs, and grassroots programs and foundations supporting girls and youth development. She is currently working on a second documentary film with the Media Education Foundation, based on her research on "hooking up" on college campuses. She has appeared on National Public Radio, the CBC, CNN, ABC, Fox News, and other television and radio programs, and her research on adolescent girls' issues has received front-page attention in the Washington Post and several other national and international news publications. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development from the University of Pennsylvania. Bring Lynn Phillips to speak at your campus.

Resources: Downloads and Related Links

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Praise

"This powerful film provides an honest and in-depth analysis of the situations faced by young women as they navigate sexual relationships, including ones tinged with various degrees of violence. In interviews with the author, the women openly discuss their relationships, fears, and desires, and they explain how they negotiate society's contradictory messages about women's sexuality. Phillips makes a compelling case that we need to move beyond the simplistic analyses of victim vs. agent and coercion vs. consent, which limit the ways that women and girls can discuss and even understand their own experiences. I am excited to show this engaging and thought-provoking film in my classes."
Lisa H. Schwartzman
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University
"Lynn Phillips's interviews reveal the contradictory messages that young women embrace about sexuality and femininity -- messages that leave them often feeling both confused and powerful, crazy and confident, but also leave them vulnerable to exploitation and assault. This bracing film will make you squirm -- and provoke exactly the conversation our society needs to be having -- with both young women and young men. I can't wait to share this with my students!"
Michael Kimmel
Distinguished Professor of Sociology at SUNY Stony Brook
Author of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
"This powerful films explores why our ideas about 'consent' don't match the experiences of actual women. Phillips' film is at once a wake up call, asking feminists to rethink the ways we frame victimization and power, and a poignant exploration of the real dilemmas young women face as they try to craft meaningful sexual lives."
Amy C. Wilkins, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado
"This is a riveting film, one that is essential viewing for all North American adolescents and young adults. Flirting with Danger is destined to be a classic pedagogical tool that will be of much value to teachers from a broad range of scholarly backgrounds."
Walter S. DeKeseredy, Ph.D.
Professor of Criminology at University of Ontario Institute of Technology
"This film reveals the sexual pressures and realities of our culture through media, music videos, and film. An important learning tool that has the potential to change the landscape and help girls find their power."
Patti Feuereisen, Ph.D.
Author of Invisible Girls : The Truth About Sexual Abuse
Founder of Girlthrive Inc.
"This is definitely a necessary teaching tool in combination with the book Flirting with Danger. The intimacy of stories told by young women will allow students to gain control of their sexuality and resist cultural discourses in the male-dominated society."
Shu Ju Ada Cheng
Associate Professor of Sociology at DePaul University
"Lynn Phillip's Flirting With Danger is one of my favorite books to teach because it reflects so well the contradictory realities of my students' lives and opens the door to honest conversations about sexual consent, control, victimization, and agency. There's something especially powerful about this film adaptation of her research findings, however. Maybe it's the visual display of hypersexualized media juxtaposed with abstinence-only educators ranting about the dangers of sex punctuated with the genuine struggle of young women trying to make sense of it all. Add Phillips' clear, direct narration of her analysis, and this is one of the best films I've seen in a good long while."
Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed,D.
Professor of Education at Colby College
Author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes
Co-Founder of the Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge (SPARK) Movement
"Flirting with Danger is an important film and teaching tool, documenting the complex terrain young women must navigate as their emerging sexual identities and desires remain eclipsed by cultural double standards and mixed messages. Young women's newfound right to sexual desire has been readily co-opted and conflated with their sexual desirability and sexual performance in the service of men. Lynn Phillip's work -- powerfully explored in this film -- reveals how young women continue to be held responsible for men's pleasure, and continue to be held accountable for their experiences of sexual victimization, to the detriment of their safety and well-being."
Jody Miller
Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University
Author of Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence

Press Reviews

Hey Sex, Ed
Anthropology Review Database
Not blaming the victim, not being a victim: Viewing "Flirting with Danger"

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