The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

"The Disappearance of Shere Hite" is a documentary about Shere Hite's and it discusses about her bestselling book The Hite Report that liberated female orgasm by revealing most private experiences of thousands of anonymous surveys. Her findings rocked American establishment and current conversations about gender, sexuality. Prior to seeing the film, I have read about Hite in several courses before but I wasn't fully aware about her popularity and importance. This documentary does a pretty good job and presenting Hite's work and the type of person she is.

Director Nicole Newnham understands how to approach this documentary with interesting discussions, good tone and appropriate structure without feeling overly soapy or inconsistent. The visual presentations and uses of archival footage were used well and the narration from actress Dakota Johnson provides good insight of Hite's writing and personality she was like.

Throughout, the many interviews from various members who knew Hite or study majors related to Hite were very interesting and helped to provide a lot of context. However, there were a few interviews that felt a bit out of place or could have been shorten as if it was going on a little too long. Also, the film does feel a little too long as some moments could have been deleted and the film would still be pretty good. Overall, it's an interesting documentary and I can see this documentary being used in Gender Studies or Sexuality courses.

Rating: B+

This is a terrific documentary on the life and work of the sexologist Shere Hite, whose survey on women's sexual practices, The Hite Report, became a huge bestseller in the 1970s and '80s. To detractors, she was a "man-hater," to fans she was a feminist icon.

The doc covers Hite's troubled childhood, her precarious existence on the fringes of New York's artistic community, her hard work planning and publishing the sex surveys, her sudden rise to fame, jousting with the media and male critics, and her eventual retreat from the limelight. The movie sets the context really well, and uses contemporary film footage, interviews with Hite, personal records and memorabilia, and the testimonies of colleagues and publishers to create a full picture of her ideas and impact. The editing of these different elements into a cohesive story is outstanding.

I've never thought much of Dakota Johnson as an actress, and her voicing of Hite's words throughout the movie are typically lifeless. However, I give her props for putting her money and influence behind the making of the film. She was a producer and it must have been hard to pitch. She can be proud of the result, a thoughtful, well edited look at the life and work of a controversial and fascinating woman.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite is a powerful documentary. Following Shere's life journey was interesting, and I appreciate all that she's done for women. The documentary was fantastically made. It featured fascinating interviews, lovely music, cool retro footage, and creative narration. In addition, the film flowed smoothly and was easy to understand. Despite it being nearly 2 hours long, I was hooked throughout and did not lose interest. My favorite thing, however, is the message. The documentary was truly empowering to me, and it will remain close to my heart. I definitely recommend giving it a watch!

Devastating and informative look at feminism and censorship and how the press handle women's viewpoints. I found the utter lack of respect on public television very disturbing, most of the time the people had never read her books.

The archival footage throughout and many interviews with close friends really made for a very enjoyable watch although a sad story that left me in tears at the end. It's a shame that Shere isn't alive to watch this lovely tribute to her work.

This woman deserves to be known and sadly seems as though she was erased from history. It's so fantastic that Dakota Johnson made this film; hopefully putting Shere back in the limelight.

Greetings again from the darkness. Little bits of movie trivia are always fun to learn, and this documentary throws out a doozy. I must be late to the party because I had no idea Shere Hite was the model for the Bond girls on the poster for DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971), the James Bond film starring James Bond and Jill St. John. More people surely know Shere Hite as the writer of the groundbreaking best-selling book, "The Hite Report on Female Sexuality", the 600-page tome first published in 1976 that inspired much discussion and debate.

Documentarian Nicole Newnham serves up a remarkably detailed and encompassing look at Ms. Hite and the impact of her writings and interviews. She opens with a clip from a 1976 interview author Hite gave, and inserts a clip of Hite's commentary in 1994 while re-watching her own interview nearly 20 years later. Throughout the film, we see significant archival footage of Hite appearing on talk shows and at other venues, and actress Dakota Johnson recites some of Hite's written comments and observations.

Hite faced constant criticism of her writing and was forced to defend her research at every turn. Was her questionnaire biased? Was it even scientific? The label of 'sexologist' was ridiculed by many, despite her approach of expounding on The Kinsey Report from years earlier. What began as a frowned-upon graduate school thesis, grew into a cultural phenomenon and made Shere Hite a celebrity ... something that her modeling career never did, despite posing for Playboy and numerous paperback covers for romantic novels.

Hite faced the backlash. She even appeared on Oprah's show in front of a hostile male-only audience that belittled her and tried to discredit much of her work. To her credit, Hite followed with other books, and only wore down for the criticism after many years - leading her to ultimately renounce her U. S. citizenship and move out of the country.

Regardless of one's thoughts about Hite or her writings, she sold over 20 million books, and her most popular is listed as the 30th best selling book of all-time. She was certainly a trail blazer and inspired discussion and debate on what had been a previously taboo topic. Newnham's documentary provides a fitting retrospective to the late Shere Hite.