OSHER 59 - Cinematic Switching Places: Men playing Women; Women Playing Men

In Some Like it Hot (1959), Victor/Victoria (1982), Tootsie (1982), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Ballad of Little Jo (1993), women assume male roles and men assume female roles. Why? Inversion of conventional binary gender roles in these pre-1994 films creates comedy, but opens up these definitions to multiple cultural meanings. Beyond humor, characters and spectators find unexpected meanings. What constructs of gender do these films reveal? What constructs do they undermine? How do these switching gender films change over time?