Woman of the Hour Teacher Tips

I created reflection questions for Woman of the Hour thinking of that group of students I often have in a class that are eager to watch more movies that will challenge the way they think about the world, or give them something to dive into. The students you want to challenge up, but in the early years of teaching you may not have the energy or accumulated lessons or confidence to give them a suggestion or an assignment on the fly.

The reflection questions can work as an extra credit or enrichment assignment, they could work if you have students watch the film on their own and you want them to prepare for a class discussion in order to start a unit. But if you're just looking for a quick one off activity or lesson where you watch 20-40 minutes of the film without getting too graphic or too uncomfortable, I wrote up quick descriptions of parts of the movie that I would show in a ~50 minute class session.

I've also included here a PDF that will give you access to an editable Google Doc of the viewing questions mentioned at the end of this post.

8:30 minutes to 24:30 Gives you ~ 15 minutes of viewing that doesn’t include graphic violence

Quick plot breakdown of 8:30-24:30:

• Anna Kendrick’s character, Sheryl, arrives home from her failed audition
• Her neighbor, a fellow actor she runs lines with, can’t take the cue to leave/give her space as she takes a call from her agent
• Her agent tells her she got her a gig on The Dating Game Show to try and cheer her up / get her to keep acting
• Sheryl winds up going for drinks with her neighbor that never left
• Sheryl wakes up in bed with her neighbor the next morning (nothing graphic shown, she just looks over it)
• We meet a young runaway girl as she tries to sleep and scrounge money from a laundromat
• While smoking a cigarette beneath stairs, our photographer killer (which students wouldn’t know at this point if you start at 8:30) happens upon the runaway girl and approaches her
• Sheryl arrives at the lot for the Dating Game Show
• Sheryl gets her hair and makeup done, the women talk her up, the talk show host, a man, complains about what people like today and ask Sheryl “not to play so smart… you know boys, they’re babies” and tells her he just needs her to “laugh and smile over and over”
• Another family arrives on the lot to attend the show in the audience
• Sheryl enters the stage

24:30-29:20 gets graphic toward the end of that 5 minute sequence

We see our serial killer happen upon another woman in NY, who asks him to help her move her belongings into her apartment. We’re mostly in the apartment with them as this happens, though there are cuts to watching the attack take place through the foggy skylight windows above.

29:40-35:00 action overview:

• Sheryl begins her show appearance
  • We meet the 3 contestants who seem to fit stereotypes of #1 attractive and not very intelligent, #2 attractive and shamelessly overconfident/entitled to patriarchal norms, #3 smart
• A woman in the audience, Laura, recognizes contestant number three and knocks over a monitor as she runs out of the studio to try and gather herself in the car

35:26-44:30

We enter a new sequence that shows the Dating Game Killer in the workplace (probably would stop here unless you have a long, long class session, in which case, you could show up to 46 minutes of the movie without showing anything too graphic (assuming you skip over 24:30-29:20)

• A young man enters the LA Times building looking for Rodney (contestant #3, the “Dating Game Killer”)
• Rodney is questioned by detectives, though we only see the conversation through a window
• Rodney cries in the bathroom, encounters the young man, who tells Rodney he can’t do a photoshoot with him later
• We see an open glass door that opens onto a beach, and pull back into a room where a woman is dead on the bed (but we only see her long hair /the back of her head as she lays on the bed)
• Back to the game show, Sheryl’s hair and makeup touches her up and they tell her to have fun and do/say whatever she wants because she won’t be kicked from the show
• Laura (the woman who is trying to gather herself in the car) has a conversation with her boyfriend about how she knows bachelor #3, and her boyfriend gaslights her though he doesn’t realize it

If you watch 8:30-24:30, or up through 35:25 but skipping 24:30-29:20, you might ask your students:

• What do you notice about power dynamics between men and women?
• Where does power come from in these scenes? How can you tell?
• In what ways do the women have or take back what power they can?
• What do you make of the male characters? How are they depicted?
• Do you see any of these dynamics in the world around you today? (might want to ask this one carefully or with pointed areas from which to draw on depending on your comfort level given the election)

If you watch through 46:00, you might also ask your students:

• What stereotypes do you see illustrated? Why do you think this is the case?
• What is "odd behavior"? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
• What do you think you would think of Rodney if you imagine yourself as a character in the movie in the time in which it takes place?
• What do you make of the conversation between Laura and her boyfriend in the car?