What deepfakes inherited from Hollywood
DEEPFAKES DIDN’T START THIS FIGHT
Acclaimed Doc Body Parts Supplies the Missing Context
Three years ago, most people had never encountered an AI-generated deepfake nude of someone they knew. But over just the past year, AI image tools were used to “undress” real women and girls faster than any safeguard could contain. One analyst from Wired documented more than 15,000 sexualized images generated in a single two-hour stretch.¹
Ever since, governments have been scrambling to catch up, and universities have been facing mounting pressure to write policy for a harm that didn’t exist when their current students enrolled.²
But while the technology behind all this is new, the fundamental questions it raises have run through a century of Hollywood filmmaking: Who has the right to make an image of a woman’s body? Who profits from it? And how much say should the woman herself have in any of it?
For educators wondering how to connect that Hollywood history to what students are seeing on their feeds now, our bestselling documentary Body Parts is an eye-opening place to start.
An Essential Classroom Film on Consent, Agency & Power
Body Parts, from filmmakers Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Helen Hood Scheer, both university professors, traces the history and evolution of sex on screen from a woman’s perspective. Along the way, it exposes how Hollywood’s portrayals of desire and intimacy have long been shaped by unequal power and the dominance of the male gaze.
Blending film history with first-person testimony from Hollywood stars, showrunners, and industry insiders, including Jane Fonda, Rosanna Arquette, Joey Soloway, Rose McGowan, Karyn Kusama, Angela Robinson, Emily Meade, and David Simon, Body Parts pulls back the curtain on the pressures, compromises, and abuses behind some of Hollywood’s most iconic scenes. At the same time, it spotlights the actors and industry leaders who have pushed the industry toward reform.
Part film-history lesson, part industry exposé, and part primer in media literacy, Body Parts invites students to think critically about consent, agency, power, and the role media images play in shaping how we understand sexuality, gender, and intimacy. It also gives educators a compelling way to challenge the familiar idea that popular culture is “just entertainment,” showing how seemingly escapist stories can shape real-world attitudes, workplace practices, and struggles over whose voices, bodies, and desires matter.
Are you an educator or librarian? Click here to learn more about how to get Body Parts for your classes or collections.
Interested in booking a screening? Filmmakers Helen Hood Scheer and Kristy Guevara-Flanagan are available for virtual Q&As. They’re also available for in-person screenings in the Southern California area. “College Students Using Deepfakes to Harass Could Be Investigated, Punished Under Proposed Law,” by Piper Hutchinson, Louisiana Illuminator, April 23, 2026.
PRAISE FOR BODY PARTS
“Body Parts serves as a crash course on Hollywood cinema’s often troubling representations of female bodies, desire, and agency … Though its initial draw for some audience members may be frequent appearances by women actors such as Alexandra Billings, Jane Fonda, and Rose McGowan, it also features the perspectives and expertise of a broad array of women working in film production. … A fantastic primer for those interested in a Hollywood history of sex and women’s agency on screen … It possesses great pedagogical potential.”
— Video Librarian
“Astonishing … What makes [Body Parts] so remarkable is its steadfastly non-puritanical approach.”
— The Guardian
“Clever and damning … [a] sweeping yet focused analysis that exposes the truth about the power of images to shape the world’s views of women.”
— Indiewire
“Reveals the seedy truth behind the production of sex scenes in American film and television, the toll such scenes have taken on those involved, and their lasting impact on real-world women and girls.”— Vogue
