Cross-posted at Moment to Moment.
When Mysterious Skin was first slated to be shown in Australia, there were cries from the usual suspects that it might be used by paedophiles as a how-to manual or how to groom their victims. Thankfully, the call for a review on the film’s rating saw its original rating maintained.
While I understand that some people may worry about the promotion of paedophilia, after seeing the film I’m sure the censorship board made the right decision. I won’t get into the politics of censorship here, it’s a huge topic and one that deserves a post in its own right.
I believe that honesty about child sexual abuse is the key to reducing it; I also believe there’s any way Gregg Araki’s film can be construed as somehow aiding and abetting paedophiles. It’s too complex and it shows the wounds of child abuse far too clearly.
The film details the lives of two young men who, as children, were molested by their baseball coach; Neil, who is gay, and who has become a teen hustler, and Brian, a buttoned-up naif who has blocked out the abuse and instead believes he has been abducted by aliens. The movie uses flashbacks to the early 80s, but for the most part the narrative takes place in the early 90s.
Neil is played wonderfully by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (best known from Third Rock From The Sun), embodying a starkly believable adolescent nihilism — the world barely seems to touch him, as he holds himself distant from both his experiences and his pain.
Neil describes how he first meets his abuser; the baseball coach, a hearty blonde man sporting one of those horribly creepy late 70s moustaches. The coach sets up an elaborate seduction and his home seems to be a wonderful haven for young Neil; he has a world of junk food, video games and toys around him, and Neil is entranced. And yes, seduced.
I can understand how the scene detailing Neil’s first abuse is horrifying to many viewers, indeed, it should be horrifying — both for the way the coach insidiously begins the abuse and also because Neil insists that he enjoyed it. He claims he knew even at age eight that he was gay and says he fell in love with the coach. Years later Neil insist that the abuse “was real love”.
The complexity of Neil’s emotions is one of the most confrontational things about this film — and is one of its greatest strengths. It is unsentimental, and unsparing. Neil is a victim but he is not victimised; you never once pity for Neil in the same way that you do Brian. Neil is a tragic character but he also a survivor.
Indeed, Brian’s character (Brady Corbett) is Neil’s very opposite, his binary; at one point he is described by another character in the film as “asexual”, and he is an almost completely child-like young man. His innocence, and the fervour with which he latches onto the abduction as the key to his missing time, nosebleeds and bed-wetting, is both distancing and touching.
Brian remembers quite clearly the events preceding his “abduction”; in flashback, we see young Brian at a baseball game, his huge, puzzled eyes magnified by the very large glasses he wears throughout the film. It starts to rain and the next thing Brian remembers is his sister finding him cowering in the basement with a bloody nose. Given the tenor of the early 90s when alien abduction fever seemed to grip the mass media, it makes perfect sense for Brian to latch onto this as an explanation for his disturbing “lost time”.
As a young adult, Brian contacts a woman he sees on TV who also believes she has been abducted, and through speaking to her he realises that his disturbing dreams feature another boy. He seeks Neil out in the hope that he will be able to shed some light on his experiences; even as he knows, deep down, that it wasn’t an alien abduction. He misses Neil by moments; Neil goes to New York where his hustling takes a darker and more dangerous turn.
And yes, the film is disturbing and has several very graphic moments; of course the child abuse is never directly shown but it is quite clear what’s happening beyond the confines of the frame. There’s a particularly unpleasant scene towards the end of the film where Neil describes exactly what the coach used to do. This is key to Brian finally understanding what happened to him as a child, and Neil’s unfliching account spares neither Brian nor the viewer from the full horror of what happened to both boys.
But this should be disturbing. I don’t want to watch a film about child abuse and not be disturbed. Being horrified, feeling angry and sickened — these are what we should feel about what Araki has depicted. That’s not to say the film is manipulative, because it isn’t, thanks mostly to the performances of the two leads, and to the children who played them as eight year olds. Araki employes several very tight close-ups on the children’s faces, which emphasises their vulnerability and confusion, but he doesn’t overplay the emotions either.
Nor is Araki sentimental about childhood, young Neil certainly isn’t the sterotypical Hollywood child — at one point, he effectively tortures a disabled boy and it’s hard to like him for most of the movie. This realness, this refusal to paint either Neil or Brian as one-dimensional steretypes, makes Mysterious Skin significantly more intelligent and realistic than many other films that have covered similar territory.
And, unlike attempts such as Mystic River, which also dealt with the ramifications of abuse, Mysterious Skin does not sentence its characters to unremitting misery. Instead it offers the possibility of hope.
Araki is a wonderful film maker. Both Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation had a big impact on me when I saw them in the 90s.
What gets me about these censorship challenges is that they’re all launched by the SA Labor Attorney-General on behalf of groups like the AFA. Now, why is that?
Haven’t seen Mysterious Skin yet - am looking forward to doing so - thanks for a great review, Kate.
Kate, do you know if the recent (and also excellent) Pedro Almodóvar film Bad Education generated a similar reaction? Similar theme.
“While I understand the concerns of these groups”
WTF? The Australian Family Assictaion is a gay-hate group, plain and simple. (Not that’s there’s any connection betyween gayness and paedophilia, of course - but there *is* a lot of connection betyween gayness and “Mysterious Skin”: Araki is a gay film director, is all senses of the word, and there is a lot of fairly graphic adult-to-adult gay sex in the film (including a horrific rape scene)).
Anyway, I know that you didn’t mean to be offensive in your above comment, Kate, but there’s no way that you would have made the same remark about, say, neo-Nazi groups calling for “Schindlers List” to be banned, for whatever reason. And the AFA’s hate-tactics deserve exactly the same contempt - clear and unwavering.
Fair call, Paul — I’m not terribly well versed on the politics of the AFA (as I said, a post for another time) and I’m sympathetic ONLY with the concern that a film like this could be a “primer” for paedophilia.
Which it obviously wasn’t.
Kate, I’m not sure I understand either - it’s most unlikely that any film commercially released would be a “primer” for pedophilia - and I’m totally at a loss to how the AFA could think that MS was - without seeing it (as usual - only National Party MPs watch films they want to ban - particularly when discussions about X-rated DVDs come up). So I’m not sure why one should have any sympathy with any aspect of the AFA’s concern.
Great review, Kate.
Yes, you’re right Mark, a commercially released film would not be a ‘primer’ for paedophilia. Mysterious Skin is, in no way, that sort of film. I made that clear in my review and I really think it’s an amazing movie.
I also said the AFA hasn’t really been on my radar. I did a quick google when I originally wrote the post and all that come up was the South Australian Attorney general link. I know they’re a religious group who regularly to try to ban films with explicit sex, and as Paul has now pointed out, they are vehemently anti-gay, which is no doubt the reason they were especially concerned about Mysterious Skin.
At the time I didn’t really put two and two together about this. I just assumed a genuine (misplaced) concern about depictions of child abuse — not homophobia.
Obviously, their cries of ‘but it will help paedophiles’ are, in this context, disingenous.
To explain my ’sympathy’. I understand that some people worry about films ‘pushing the envelope’ in terms of what censorship allows. I’m anti-censorship — let adults make up their own mind, unless we’re talking about films which glorify or somehow promote child abuse, such as child porn.
Where the edges are blurry I understand people being worried — oh, this film shows a 14 year old having sex with an old man and it’s okay, next year it will be a 12 year old, the year after it will be a ten year old. I don’t agree but I understand.
In this sense I also understand that some people (religious or not) do feel that the boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not are being tested and that we do need to have some cut-off point. I feel that way sometimes when I’ve caught glimpses of ‘Law and Order’, for instance, when week after week they show young women being sadistically killed. What is the point of this? Why is this entertainment? Why do we ‘enjoy’ watching shows about women and children being raped and murdered on prime-time TV?
As it happens, Mysterious Skin is a serious, sensitive and yes, explicit film that tackles the subject matter with a great deal of wisdom and a clear sense of right and wrong. It isn’t sensationalist. It isn’t cheap entertainment. It doesn’t promote child abuse. It’s not a primer.
I’ll happily change that sentence in the review, BTW, if it helps. (I seem to be having to further explain myself a lot these days. Maybe I need a sub-editor? Anyone?)
That makes sense, Kate. I don’t think you need a subeditor at all. You’re a great writer. That’s the beauty of blogging - feedback which helps to make our writing more transparent and pick up implications we’ve missed or where we think something is obvious and it’s not.
I’ve changed the line, BTW, which I hope clarifies my position.
So, getting back to the intent of your post, Kate, has anyone else seen the film?
And did you see Bad Education? I’m wondering how the two compare given some apparent similarities in subject/treatment.
Poor Kate. You can’t post a thing without treading on the toes of some politically correct interest group.
Thanks Mark. Sometimes having complex positions makes writing clearly very difficult. For me, anyway, other people have no such difficulties! (This wasn’t meant to be about my ego, BTW, I’m happy to explain myself further when others find what I write troubling, inconsistent or offensive.)
I have no time for groups like the AFA but at the same time I do have genuine concerns (questions?) about media representations around child abuse. From the ’satanic child care’ scare of the early 90s to Nic White’s post on journalism vs. sensationalist fear-mongering, there’s this discourse going on about childhood, about sex, about fear, about paedophilia.
I find it disturbing too that people are scared that any depiction of child abuse will be a ‘primer’.
It also goes along with this weird assumption that people make that the media affects everyone but themselves. Oh, I can watch a movie about child abuse, but the general public shouldn’t be allowed to because it might fall into the hands of the paedophiles…
Good points, Kate, with which I agree.
Nah, EP, I just respect what other people say and I don’t think I have all the answers. Unlike some people…
If someone is critical of me, I evaluate what they have to say and if they have what I feel is a genuine point I’ll modify my existing position. I’ve realised I can learn a lot from my fellow human beings.
I even used to be like that with you. But then I realised you’re just a provocative pussy-cat.
Kate, while cats rule the world, we humans do have to exercise some countervailing power sometimes
Or is it the dog-person in you coming out?
Ps - what’s the meaning of the title - Mysterious Skin? It sounds like something you would download for your phone or iPod!
Pps - Kate, you rule. More posts here, please!