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August 10, 2005

Some Thoughts on Mysterious Skin

Mysterious Skin
Directed by Gregg Araki

This is a tough film—a film that watches a pedophile’s well-designed grooming methods, and records the eventual fulfillment of his grim fantasies. But it is mostly a film about how his two victims (nine at the time of the abuse) deal with the molestation in their late-teens.
One victim replaces the memories with fantasies of alien abduction, and the film watches his slow and agonizing recovery of the “authentic” memories. The other teen sells himself to old men in parks, but we realise that there’s more to this than a quick buck—this teen has equated perverse relations between himself and older men with sexual and emotional fulfillment, yet he is constantly nagged by the blackness of it all.

There’s little hope here—the teen prostitute is wrecked in many ways, and jogs drunkenly towards annihilation, whilst the other teen is sad-pathetic in his sophisticated self-deceit. The film does, if this needs to be said, hammer home the grim repercussions of child abuse.

***
Some time in June, the federal attorney-general, Phillip Ruddock, was notified of a moral contamination. The source of alarm was Mysterious Skin.
Ruddock had been notified by the South Australian a-g, impotent to impose censorship since such jurisdiction had transferred to the federal body.
Prior to this contact, the SA attorney-general had received his notification from Christian-right lobby groups—groups with names like Family First, and the Australian Family Party, and Think of the God-damn Children Party, and…

What’s interesting here is the fact that the film had not yet been viewed by any member of this censorship-chain. Not one.
Curious.

Those mentioned charged that the film could inspire pedophiles, by either giving them something to “think about”, or actually inspiring the fulfillment of fantasies—the cross-over from pedophilia to pederasty. It’s a problematic charge, considering the director has taken great pains to prevent any child actor being involved in, er, compromising situations—-in other words, the director, in making a film about traumatized children, did not, in turn, want to traumatize his child actors. He achieves this well.
Secondly, the film unambiguously documents the profound damage wrought from child abuse. If we are to accept that this film could “inspire” pedophilia, well then, we must also accept that it could also diminish it, as hopeful pederasts view the unchallengeable truths of abuse.

But, fuck it… if the chain of censorship won’t view the films they condemn, then we must laugh it off as atavistic horse-shit, and be done with it…

***
There may only be one thing wrong with this film, and it’s this: it’s terrible. While the film’s right to be released is currently contested in stuffy hallways, common sense demands that I try out Voltaire’s old maxim: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. It’s an obvious invocation, but a suitable one, and Voltaire was always very good with the aphorism. After turning down an orgy, having attended one the night before, Voltaire chimed: “Once: a philosopher; twice: a pervert!” proving he also had a very good sense of humour.
But it may also need saying that freedom without restriction is a chimera, and that this idea goes right back to Plato. Let’s borrow from that old bore Walter Lippmann, who, despite his pretensions, pays here a decent service to Plato:

If there is a dividing line between liberty and license, it is where freedom of speech is no longer respected as a procedure of truth and becomes the unrestricted right to exploit the ignorance, and to incite the passions, of the people. Then freedom is such hullabaloo of sophistry, propaganda, special pleading, lobbying, and salesmanship that it is difficult to remember why freedom of speech is worth the pain and trouble of defending it.

The space between Plato and Voltaire isn’t intractable. The space can be mediated with common sense: placing restrictions on freedoms can be one way of ensuring higher ones—i.e. restrictions on freedom of speech coming in the form of racial vilification legislation can be seen as a trade-off to prevent citizens suffering racism, an extension of cruelty. In other words, if the exercise of speech translates to an exercise in cruelty, we must look at placing restrictions on the former to prevent the latter.
But if we are to legislate against “exploit[ing] the ignorance… of the people” we would be right in demanding that our legislators act as pragmatic and thoughtful representatives, rather than fierce mouths of piety.

Posted by Marty at August 10, 2005 10:56 AM

Comments

Posted by: Patrick at August 10, 2005 3:58 PM