Dottie Gets Spanked and Other Films

Todd Haynes to appear in person for introduction!

Dir. Todd Haynes. 1993, 30 mins. DCP Digital restoration courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. After Poison, Todd Haynes, inspired by his own childhood fixation on I Love Lucy, directed this poignant, marvelously transgressive short film about Steven, a young boy in 1960s suburbia obsessed with a female sitcom star. The film moves elegantly between color-coordinated domesticity and the black-and-white of television screens. Steven’s fantasy world is a shadowy, cartoonish dreamland with an edge of emergent, prepubescent sexuality. Isolated at school but finding solace in his Dottie-inspired drawings, Steven is encouraged by his mother in his obsession and tolerated by his father, until his drawings reveal too much. This brilliant short will be screened alongside other crucial works from Haynes’s career.

Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Sundance Institute

Total running time: approx. 73 mins. 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.