Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts

The Catcher in the Rye

Title: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
ISBN: 0316769533

Plot Summary: Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from his prestigious prep school for failing all of his classes. Rather than confront his parents with this news, he checks into a hotel, leaving only to visit his sister in secret, confiding in her as he can never do with his parents. After a failed sexual encounter with a prostitute, a disturbing one with a teacher, and another brief outing with his sister, Holden reflects on his current situation, regretting the fact that he cares about his old friends enough to miss them.

Mean Girls

Title: Mean Girls
Director: Mark Waters
Authors: Tina Fey (screenplay), Rosalind Wiseman (book)
Cast: Lindsay Lohan (Cady), Rachel McAdams (Regina), Tina Fey (Ms. Norbury), Tim Meadows (Mr. Duvall), Lacey Chabert (Gretchen), Amanda Seyfried (Karen), Lizzy Caplan (Janis), Daniel Franzese (Damian)
ASIN: B0002IQJ8W (DVD)

Plot Summary: Cady was raised in Africa by her well-meaning yet clueless zoologist parents. Upon relocation to American suburbia, she finds herself totally clueless about how to fit in socially with her peers. She initially becomes friends with two other outcasts, hip, sardonic Janis and her friend Damian, a boy she describes as "almost too gay to function." Cady is soon adopted as a pet project by the popular girls in her class, whom Janis describes as "The Plastics." She initially does so with the intention of bringing down Regina George, the leader of the pack and Janis's former best friend. However, in the process, Cady gets drawn into their web of backstabbing, lies, and passive aggression, unwittingly becoming just as vicious and shallow as they are and abandoning her old friends. When Regina finds out about Cady's plot to ruin her, she makes the contents of a secret "slam book" the Plastics keep public, and the entire school is thrown into pandemonium. Cady eventually mends fences with Damian and Janis, but not before she and the entire school makes an effort to get past its mass avoidance of direct confrontation.


Clueless

Title: Clueless
Author/Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: Alicia Silverstone (Cher), Stacey Dash (Dionne), Paul Rudd (Josh), Donald Faison (Murray), Elisa Donovan (Amber), Breckin Myer (Travis), Jeremy Sisto (Elton), Dan Hedaya (Mr. Horowitz), Wallace Shawn (Mr. Hall), Twink Caplan (Miss Geist), Brittany Murphy (Tai).
ASIN: B00001MXXE (DVD)

Plot Summary: Cher Horowitz, a rich, spoiled Beverly Hills teen, enjoys shopping, hanging out with her friend Dionne, and playing matchmaker to all the people in her life. However, she's not as good at it as she thinks. Although Cher successfully matches two of her teachers together, when she tries to get Tai, the new girl in town, together with Elton, an obnoxious rich kid with a famous father, she finds out too late that Elton is interested in her instead, and Tai only has eyes for Travis, a good-hearted if slightly dim slacker. When Cher tries to pick out a love interest for herself, Christian, the object of her affections, turns out not to be as interested in her - or in her gender - as she had hoped. Throughout Cher's matchmaking misadventures, Josh, her ex-stepbrother who is living with Cher and her lawyer father, provides sardonic commentary, often provoking Cher into arguments in the process. However, it is not until Tai sets her sights on Josh that Cher realizes two things: first, that she has less of a clue than she thought about matchmaking, and second, that she may not hate Josh so much after all.


The Sandman: A Game of You

Title: The Sandman: A Game of You
Author: Neil Gaiman
Illustrators: Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, Bryan Talbot, George Pratt, Stan Woch, Dick Giordano
Lettering: Todd Klein
ISBN: 1563890895

Other Books in Series: Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House, Dream Country, Season of Mists, Fables and Reflections, Brief Lives, World's End, The Kindly Ones, The Wake.

Plot Summary: Barbie is a young woman with an active fantasy life, living in the city with a quirky group of friends including a lesbian couple, a male-to-female pre-operative transgender, a witch, and a quiet, somewhat mysterious man who turns out to be working for the book's main antagonist. When Barbie is visited by Martin Tenbones, a large dog from the realm of Dreams, he tells her that the fantasy land of her dreams is being threatened by a malignant being known as the Cuckoo. Alarmed, Barbie travels mentally to dreamland, leaving her comatose body behind in the waking world. After finding out that George, the quiet man, is in league with the enemy, Thessaly, the witch, kills him and draws down the moon to help her and the other women in their quest to find Barbie. However, the moon will not let Wanda, the transgender, accompany the three other women, as she feels he does not count as a "real" woman. While left behind with George's head, Wanda is ultimately killed by Thessaly's magic raging out of control. Barbie eventually defeats the Cuckoo, but not without paying a price, both in terms of the land of her dreams and the loss of a dear friend.


Freak Show

Title: Freak Show
Author: James St. James
ISBN: 0142412317

Plot Summary: Billy Bloom is a teenage drag queen. He has moved to Florida to live with his father, a well-known local figure, and goes to a conservative high school where his flamboyant persona and outfits make him an outcast, figure of ridicule, and occasional target for violence. He makes a few friends and even falls in love, but it is as hard for the people around him to learn to live with him as it is for him to live with them.


Luna

Title: Luna
Author: Julie Anne Peters
ISBN: 0316733695

Plot Summary: Regan, a high school student, lives in a troubled household: her father, himself the victim of physical abuse as a child, bullies Regan's brother Liam into accepting traditional gender roles; her mother, a prescription drug addict, uses denial as a coping mechanism; and Liam himself is transgender, attempting to make the slow, painful transformation from his male body to the female person he believes he truly is. Regan attempts to help Liam/Luna as much as she can, but this often comes at the expense of her own time, effort, sanity, and even social life. In the process, both she and the reader learn not only what being transgender truly means, but also the effect it has on the family unit, how society reacts, and what effect this has on the transgender individual.