American Experience: Kinsey (2005)

Alfred Kinsey was a little-known biologist when, in the 1940s, he began compiling data from thousands of interviews about the sexual practices of men and women. The results of that research were the explosive "Kinsey Reports." Through interviews with his research assistants, his children, his biographers, and historians, this documentary assesses Kinsey's achievements, while examining how his personal life shaped his career.

Very good

Kinsey is quite an interesting and well made documentary. It tells Kinsey's life and work in a succinct and well explained manner. The documentary includes interviews with Kinsey's daughters, co-workers, colleagues and other people associated with his life and work. The documentary is excellently done and accurately and objectively describes Kinsey's life and work. The documentary also does an excellent job at putting everything in context of the time and culture at the time of Kinsey's work. It also takes into account the lasting effect of Kinsey's work. June 21, 2008

Kinsey's Dangerous Idea

"Kinsey" is a fascinating documentary; I haven't seen the film with Liam Neeson, but it's hard to see how it would be more interesting. It explores the work of Alfred Kinsey, who with his two reports, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, changed the way Americans think about sex, and ignited a controversy that continues to this day.

Viewers follow Alfred Kinsey from his childhood to his death. His father was a Methodist preacher, and very domineering. Kinsey never saw his parents express affection for each other, either. He became fascinated with insects, and wanted to go into biology. His father would not have it, however, wanting him to become a preacher. Eventually, the young Alfred was kicked out of the house with only a suitcase full of clothes. Six years later, he would be a professor at Zoology at the University of Indiana. It was there that he began his sex research, which at the time was virtually non-existent. What sparked Kinsey's interest in the subject was his collection of wasps; each was unique, so he reasoned that sexual experiences were equally unique. He began questioning students and faculty about their sex lives. He decided to then assemble a team of researchers to get a national survey of American sexual behavior. The rest, as they say, is history.

The film does not shrink away from the controversies surrounding the Kinsey Reports and Kinsey himself. For example, in his first report, Kinsey included interview data from one pedophile, Rex King. That caused a huge controversy, and led to rumors, still in circulation, that Kinsey himself was a pedophile and that he conducted sexual experiments on children. That is false, but one need not be a member of the Family Research Council to see that including data from a confirmed pedophile is a bit problematic. The highly contentious issue of whether Kinsey's data was truly representative is explored as well. Kinsey thought that the best way to get an accurate survey of the public was through "100% groups"- he would find groups, such as bowling clubs or sewing circles, and interview all of the members of that group. The criticism of Kinsey's method was that, with the new science of probability sampling, it couldn't represent the whole American population. Kinsey countered that if people were simply selected at random, then they would refuse to participate. Though this isn't shown in the film, in 1953 a team of statisticians analyzed Kinsey's data and concluded that the problems in sex research precluded the possibility of a real random sample. Finally, the film explores the behavior in Kinsey's "inner circle"- he would encourage partner swapping, and would record people having sex with each other for the purposes of research. Eventually, the Rockefeller Foundation, who had funded Kinsey's original research, cut funding. Kinsey became depressed and died a few years later.

"Kinsey" is a worthwhile film that explores the life and work of one man whose dangerous idea, that sexuality is normal as long as it is not coercive, continues to generate controversy today. February 10, 2008

A true pioneer

Though there are a few things left out in this 90-minute film (such as Dr. Kinsey's relationship with his children), most of the important aspects of his life and work are presented in an in-depth, informative, and interesting way. One can't underestimate the importance Dr. Kinsey had on the 20th century. Before he published his two ground-breaking reports on sexual behavior in the human male and the human female, society was incredibly sexually repressive and ignorant. The things he taught about in his class on marriage, human sexuality, and birth control in 1938 and 1939 at Indiana University seem rather tame and normal today, but back then it was a scandal when word got out just what he was teaching his students, particularly because he said that the only abnormal sexual behaviors were abstinence, celibacy, and delayed marriage.

The neo-Puritans of today who wax nostalgic for a past that never really was clearly have no idea just what it was really like back then. Back when Dr. Kinsey and his associates were conducting their interviews and doing their research for the reports, the only form of sex that was considered normal and moral was between a man and a woman within marriage (and then only intercourse, not any other varieties of sex). Things such as oral sex, masturbation, and homosexuality were criminalised and considered deranged instead of perfectly normal natural sexual expressions. A lot of people (particularly women) who were brought up sheltered from any knowledge of sex or told that it was dirty and sinful had no idea what to do once they were married and finally allowed to do it, as though they were suddenly supposed to turn into skilled receptive partners who knew exactly what they were doing and what they liked. Dr. Kinsey himself couldn't even consummate his own marriage for several months, not until his wife had a corrective surgery. People viewed sexuality in terms of morality and immorality instead of science or one's own personal convictions, and placed so many strict limits on what was and wasn't considered to be acceptable, basically dictating to everyone how to behave in the privacy of their own homes based on an arbitrary sense of morality. And when the report on the human male came out in 1947, the public for the first time discovered that a lot of men visited prostitutes, had had affairs, regularly masturbated, dreamt about sex, had had gay experiences, and had had premarital sex. The 1953 report on the human female caused a huge backlash, however, because people didn't want to be confronted with the proof that women were actually sexual beings instead of angelic wives and mothers who had no sexual desires and didn't even like sex. Unfortunately, Dr. Kinsey didn't live long enough to see all of the liberation movements of the Sixties and Seventies, when his work would be fully validated and society would finally snap out of its Puritanical repression.

The film also explores some of the controversies in his work, such as some of his rather unorthodox methods (like taping his associates having sex with one another), how he used data from the journal of a pedophile as standard information about sexual responses and behavior of young boys, and how he tended to interview people who were white, outside of the mainstream, and college students, instead of getting a more broad sampling of the entire population, even if some of those people would have given less earth-shattering responses to the survey. It also explores how he viewed human sexuality and his research as a science, a part of nature, and for that reason didn't feel the need to impose any moral limitations on it, such as saying that pedophilia is wrong or that sex is about love, not just biological urges, and that having affairs with one's associates just to further the research might not be the best idea.

Overall, it's a fascinating look into one of the people who had the most impact on the 20th century, helping to bring America out of the Victorian era and into modernity, into an era where morality is a matter of one's conscience, not something arbitrarily dictated to one by a bunch of self-appointed authorities with a very black and white view of the world. April 2, 2007

Better than the Hollywood movie

I thought this documentary was great, and I considered it a nice supplement or even antidote to the dramatic film. You get to meet and hear from Kinsey's colleagues, and you get more about the science and the lasting cultural impact of the man's work. I noticed the word "bias" in one customer review headline, and I suppose that's because Kinsey comes off so clearly as a hero in this documentary (or did to liberal-scientific me at least). Well, um, could that be because he really was a hero? I wonder how many heroes Western civilisation would have left, if we had docu-dramas of the sex lives and marital issues of all of them. The PBS film doesn't ignore the sex and personal dynamics of Kinsey's circle at all, and in fact may dish more dirt than the movie, but people who were there seem today, in the interviews they gave for the documentary, utterly unconflicted and full of admiration, not to mention love, for the man. That had a big effect on me. June 12, 2006

Science is Sexy

This was a great documentary. It was objective for the most part painting kinsey as neither a hero nor a villain. Too often I find that Kinsey is portrayed as one or the other. He played a large part in revolutionizing sexual research as we know it today but as the documentary showed this came at a price. His statistical methods were questionable as well as some of his methods of research. His level of authority and interactions with his employees were also questionable. He had his own agenda which clearly tampered with his objectivity as a scientist. But at a time when Americans were sexually repressed he was a voice of reason. He preached tolerance and acceptance and made it OK to talk about sex in the open and let it be known that it is normal to be sexual and nothing to be ashamed of. But the documentary also showed how Kinsey put science before everything. Even when it came to his family and making moral judgements at times.
But I felt like the documentary also glossed over a few subjects that could have been explored in deeper detail such as his marriage to Clara and his relationship with his children which was barely mentioned. Also, they never really said what specific masochistic tendencies he indulged in especially after he became depressed. The latter part of his life after the publication of his second volume of work was covered too briefly. I thought what his colleagues had to say on how he didn't include love in the "mechanics" of sex was also interesting and how he seemed to be detached. Ironic how the "father of sex" couldn't make love.....I would recommend the documentary and the movie with Liam Nieson as a complementary package. Whereas the movie portrayed him almost as the hero of sexual research, the documentary goes on to show that there were a few chinks in the knight's armor but without demonizing him. March 17, 2006

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