20,000 Species of Bees: Fictional film as a tool for queer pedagogies

Abstract

Films on trans children often portray transgenderism as a disorder with a tragic ending for the protagonists, thereby ignoring the existing research on children being capable of expressing their own gender. In this article, we perform a close reading of the feature film 20,000 Species of Bees from a queer and feminist perspective. We focus on the potential of the film as a tool for educational practice as part of queer pedagogies. This coming-of-age movie portrays a family in which both daughter and mother undergo an identity crisis, challenging the traditional (gender) norms in the Basque society in which they are embedded. We argue that, unlike some of the recent films featuring trans children, 20,000 Species of Bees breaks with the conventional structures of mediated trans identities as problematic and opens a new perspective on the pedagogical use of the media, particularly cinema, as a space for imagining a ‘future to become’.