By comparison to the corny patness of Brian's story, Neil's seems to present the bald reality of a slutty, narcissistic gay boy's misadventures. And Araki certainly puts into a feature film words and actions I've never seen outside gay porn. (You hear, for instance, some snippets of gay smack-talk, with its distinctive impersonal exhortations, e.g., "Suck that cock!") As a narrative artist, however, Araki doesn't have adequate command of this material, but he doesn't seem to be working intuitively, either. Rather than clinching the case for more explicit treatment of sex in fiction, Mysterious Skin made me wonder what we get out of such scenes at all. (What follows are some thoughts offered to open the topic up, not to lay it out definitively.)
In the first place, representations of "sex" have the appeal of vicariousness: we fantasize about doing what the characters are doing (with one or the other of the characters and/or the actors playing them). This is part of the attraction of vicariousness in movies in general, which includes countless aspects apart from sex. The purest example might in fact be something like travelogues, which show us experiences we may then arrange to have for ourselves. Vicariousness also encompasses objects of fantastic identification, such as the knight of romance with his impossibly apt and effective prowess. The entire range of possible, improbable, and impossible projections can come together in a single movie, Stanley Donen and Peter Stone's Charade (1963), for example, in which the gorgeous, chic male and female leads fall in love among the picturesque sites of Paris, and which culminates when he saves her by force and ingenuity from the villains and then proposes to her. Of course, the sex in Charade is implicit, romantic, but it wouldn't change the analysis of vicariousness if it were explicit, whatever it might do to the tone of the film.
Next, the depiction of sex also has the element of utility. This is what distinguishes porno from "romantic" films like Charade in which the sex is suggested, in scenes of the lead couple necking, or sublimated, as in the game in the nightclub which requires them to pass an orange tucked under their chins without using their hands. Like a recipe, porno is fully oriented toward getting a specific result; if you don't get the result the porno has failed. Much more so than the appeal of vicariousness, the element of utility depends on a taste for the "types" engaged in the action. Charade works as romance for me even though I'm not heterosexual; it wouldn't work for me as porno even--especially!--if Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant took their clothes off and went at it.
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Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Alan did you try and e-mail me? Eric?
2 - claire
I found this film ridiculous. Never has the subject of sexual abuse been tackled in such a ridiculous manner. The heavy and disturbing abuse scenes were obviously put in to try and shadow the dreadful acting (minus Neil he took a good shot at it) I was nauseated throughout and felt that the film totally depended on shock value.
3 - Alan Dale
Hey Claire,
Thanks for the comment. The abuse scenes were odd to me b/c their purpose escaped Araki's control. They seemed dreamily erotic, which might make sense for Neil but not Brian. The addition of the recovered-memory detective story turned it all to cheese.
4 - B79
Apparently you don't realize how this works. I was abused from age 4-6 by my neighbor and had 20 years of repressed memory... saw 7 psychologists and I thought all my problems were becasue of my parent's divorce when I was 8. Even the short memories I did have pointed to but never showed proof that anything happened. I lied to myself without realizing I was lying, that the abuse ever happened. But looking back now, I know it did. I was laying on a bed with a camera ponted at me... I was told my the man that if I said anything that my parents wouldn't want me... these things I occasionally remembered in the 20 years but discarded them as just memories with no meaning. Repressed memory DOES HAPPEN. I thought I had a happy childhood. In my teens I was depressed everyday but didn't know why.
As for the movie... that's what happens in real life. I'm sorry that you can't handle the scenes but that's real life. You know that a child might go through when he/she says they were abused and how they can be affected... but do you REALLY know what they went through? These scenes hint to it. A child that young can not mentally process that event... not enough life experience so the mind pushes it away as a defense mechanism. Please be more open-minded about this movie. I basically lived this movie because there was the man's son (my age) with me too.
These "graphic" scenes which really are just implied scenes puts you in the place of the child. If you can't handle it, think of how the child must have felt.
5 - anne
I absolutely agree with the last posting stated. I wrote a paper on this for a graduate level class on the effects of trauma on children--it was assigned by the professor. You don't seem to understand trauma at a basic level and it shows in your review. As for the uneasiness, again, as stated above, these are events that happen to real people. As a society we must come to understand our fellow people's experiences.
6 - Peter
I was abused, and the film is so resonant, I'm still off balance a few days after viewing it twice. The writing of the view is thorough, exceptionally well written, and engaging for as long as it is, but as someone just overwhelmed with watching the movie, I have to tell you memories do get pushed away due to childhood trauma. I was sexually abused, but for many years didn't label it molestation because I was just like Neil, craving male physical contact, and still cannot remember the first incident that led to a year long inappropriate sexual relationship at age 5-6 with my babysitter. The AIDS safe sex stuff bangs you over the head, but I'm fascinated with how many reviews and comments find the mutual seduction either implausible or titillating. Trust me, it's real.
7 - alan
there's a mistake in the title; it should say "unfuckingbelievable".