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July 10, 2005

Mysterious Skin

I've never really been a big fan of the work of filmmaker Greg Araki. Like A. O. Scott, I felt that many of his films sought to shock viewers without offering anything larger. In retrospect, part of my distatse for Araki's films may have derived from viewing them on poor quality VHS, but that's another story, but in part because of Christopher Sharrett's discussion of Araki, I believe in the essay, "The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture," I'd been wanting re-evaluate my take on Araki's films, and Mysterious Skin (IMDB), speifically with its celebration of community and alternatives to the nuclear family, ultimately deeply impressed me.

The film is based on Scott Heim's novel and couses on the experiences of two 8-year-old boys on a Kansas Little League baseball team. The film's opening shot, of the 8-year old Neil, brightly lit, with Froot Loops raining down on him appears to be a playful image of childhood innocence, is re-interpreted when we realize that the cereal shower is the means by which Neil's "All-American" coach seduces his "star player," before molesting him sexually throughout the summer (titles mark the date as 1981). Because Neil's father has left, he relishes the attention from this father figure. As many critics have noted, Araki's staging of these scenes is very effective, often isolating the young boy to emphasize his emotional response to what's happening.

Neil's teammate, Brian, has a much different trajectory, as he relates in voice-over that several hours of that summer were erased from his memory, and that he'd been working to figure out what happened during those lost hours, when he woke up in his parents' cellar with his nose bleeding, ever since. Araki's film elegantly cross-cuts between the two characters as they grow into adults, with Neil growing to become a male hustler, first in his Kansas hometown and later in New York, where he lives with a childhood friend. Neil's cool exterior clearly masks the pain associated with the molestation. Brian, meanwhile appears nerdy, and as one character describes him, "oddly asexual." Desperate to learn what happened, Brian logs his dreams in a journal and eventually becomes obsessed with the idea that he may have been abducted by aliens after watching a TV show called World of Mystery, featuring a disabled girl from a nearby town. Although it's clear to the audience that Brian was also molested by the coach, Araki reveals this information visually on gradually, allowing Brian's memories to unfold slowly, as he remembers the presence of one of his Little League teammates, who turns out to be Neil, and then later as the alien hands that caressed his face become human. The film culminates in a Christmas Eve reunion between Brian and Neil, when they are around 19 years old, and without being too specific they acheieve a sense of community through their shared need for discovery and understanding about this traumatic moment from their past.

What I liked most about the film was its celebration of community. Neil is supported by fellow teenagers, Wendy and Eric, who care about Neil despite his emotional distance. Eric later "adopts" the lonely Brian when he begins looking for Neil to find answers to his questions about his lost past. The film also has several amazing sequences, including the Froot Loops scene, but also a compelling sequence in which Neil encounters a dying AIDS victim who asks him only to rub his back, making explicit Wendy's reminders of the dangers of hustling. Mysterious Skin, in general, handles these emotional complexities very well, explicitly criticizing child abuse and some of the dehumanizing ways in which lost souls like Neil are treated, while clearly relishing the ways in which new communities can be created.

Posted by chuck at July 10, 2005 1:13 PM

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