I had the opportunity to see the film Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution at the Newport Beach film festival last Spring - it premiered on Netflix today. The documentary is entertaining, informative and heartbreaking all in one breath, a difficult task to pull off for any filmmaker.
The documentary follows different college students as they experience the annual party of spring break. As the film unfolds we see how men and women view the experience differently as it investigates the deeper ramifications of this annual rite of passage. The film is a raw experience (definitely NSFW/TV-MA) - but is a critical story that needs to be seen.
I remember sitting in the theater the first time I saw the film behind an older couple. For the first 30 minutes of the film, the laughter from them was audibly jarring as male students at spring break plotted their way into sexual encounters with any girl they could find. And while it's disturbing to see, we've been culturally desensitized to the kind of male behavior so IT IS entertaining. I found myself laughing too.
45 minutes later, there was no sound from the audience. No laughter from the couple in front of me. Because you begin to feel your own complicity, whether intentional or not, in the creation of a culture that relegates sex to a transaction as opposed to a meaningful experience. It's deftly edited, balancing the ups and downs of the spring break experience with a didactic look at how we culturally arrived at a place where women are seen as objects as opposed to individuals. How do men and women perceive themselves? How do they truly perceive each other?
These are big questions presented through the lens of the warm beaches, tanned skin and heavy drinking that is the spring break experience. As the entertainment industry deals with its own skeletons of past sexual abuses, abused power dynamics and the rising MeToo movement the film is more timely than ever. I hope that you check out Benjamin Nolot's film, it is on NETFLIX starting today (Feb 1) and share it with someone who you care about - especially if they are a college student.
