The Confession

Later in the film during scene 19, Kinsey takes his father’s sex history. The scene offers a twist on the conventional confession: this scene of sexual discourse features the pastor confessing to the scientist. When Kinsey the younger returns home for his mother’s funeral, he asks Kinsey the elder to contribute to his study. After breaking through some discomfort his father confesses to having had a “chronic condition” in his youth. He tells his son that
There was a problem. A chronic condition, the doctors called it. I was outfitted with a tight strap that I had to wear at all times. It kept me from coming into contact with my genitals. It was a highly embarrassing remedy but it proved effective. The condition was cured…I was ten [years old].



Here again is the image of the repressive hypothesis at work. The film presents the viewer with an obvious case of physical sexual repression. What Foucault might comment is that its presentation comes within an exposition on scientific discourse and confession. Here the father actually believes that the repression provided him with a cure. Kinsey the scientist thinks that he knows better because of his work. Therefore the father represents the repressed and Dr. Kinsey the person caught up in the repressive hypothesis. In the film, it is Dr. Kinsey who absolves his father when he says, “I’m so sorry, dad.”

What the scene says along with Foucault is that sexual discourse took the form of a confession; a confession to science with the expectation of revelation. But above it was shown that Kinsey’s true revelation comes later from an encounter – thus the filmmakers may be seen to support Foucault’s hypothesis that the science of sexuality provides only limited and masked access to truth and identity.