Feminist and Queer Pedagogies in The Prime of Jean Brodie and Billy Elliot

Abstract

Good mentors are difficult to come by, but when we find one, they have the ability to influence us in important ways and critically impact the life decisions that we make. Mentoring thus plays a significant role in the lives of students. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Billy Elliot (2000) are films about such mentors who are extraordinarily courageous, influential, and also controversial, challenging conventional ideas about gender, sexuality, education, and other troubling ideologies that shape human experiences. In this chapter, I argue that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Billy Elliot function as texts that embody feminist and queer pedagogies and mentorship ideals. Even though these two movies focus on different issues within two different time periods in British culture, they both feature strong and pedagogically complex, innovative, and revolutionary female mentors. Both Jean Brodie, a private school teacher in Edinburgh during the 1930s, and Mrs. Wilkinson, a dance teacher in a mining town in northern England during the 1980s, employ critical pedagogies, particularly feminist and queer approaches, not only educating students but also mentoring them to discover new ideas, find their talents, and also explore different ways of expressing their identities. They achieve these through their efforts within and outside of classroom settings, therefore, their approaches to education can be defined as a critical peformative pedagogy. Both films focus on strong female mentors and the transformation of characters and, in this sense, I argue that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Billy Elliot convey influential stories and function as forms of mediated pedagogies infused by, or that embody, feminist and queer ideals.