Antone's Nightclub
Appreciates 'Mysterious Skin'
RECEIVED Thu., Aug. 4, 2005
Dear Editor,
At the risk of sounding condescending – aww, screw it – I must say that I feel embarrassed for Jennifer Chenoweth’s assessment [“Postmarks,” July 29] of both Gregg Araki’s film Mysterious Skin and Marjorie Baumgarten’s critical response to it [Film Listings, July 1]. Anyone who can refer to the film’s treatment of pedophilic sex as “glib” or “smug” clearly did not see it through to the end.
The film charts a history of sexual abuse and manipulation and its messy aftermath with graphic candor and without sensationalism or prurience. It demonstrates poignantly that both pedophiles and survivors of childhood sexual trauma are complex human beings, at times worthy of empathy or at least greater understanding. In Chenoweth’s cinematic world, it would appear that pedophiles need to be marked with trench coats and lascivious stares, and should meet with a well-deserved demise.
Chenoweth intimates that anyone, including Baumgarten, who finds value in this movie must be titillated by images of exploitative intergenerational sex. With this logic, I must get off on watching women slowly succumb to devastating cancer because I hold Terms of Endearment in high regard. The representation of sex that is violent or of compromised consent need not be an erotic spectacle; it is these sexual scenes, neither glib nor smugly presented, that structure the imaginative and libidinal lives of the film’s two main characters, for better or worse. Chenoweth’s half-baked and knee-jerk reaction to this film is symptomatic of the contemporary climate of irrational and unexamined fears of child endangerment in which we find ourselves living.
At the risk of sounding condescending – aww, screw it – I must say that I feel embarrassed for Jennifer Chenoweth’s assessment [“Postmarks,” July 29] of both Gregg Araki’s film Mysterious Skin and Marjorie Baumgarten’s critical response to it [Film Listings, July 1]. Anyone who can refer to the film’s treatment of pedophilic sex as “glib” or “smug” clearly did not see it through to the end.
The film charts a history of sexual abuse and manipulation and its messy aftermath with graphic candor and without sensationalism or prurience. It demonstrates poignantly that both pedophiles and survivors of childhood sexual trauma are complex human beings, at times worthy of empathy or at least greater understanding. In Chenoweth’s cinematic world, it would appear that pedophiles need to be marked with trench coats and lascivious stares, and should meet with a well-deserved demise.
Chenoweth intimates that anyone, including Baumgarten, who finds value in this movie must be titillated by images of exploitative intergenerational sex. With this logic, I must get off on watching women slowly succumb to devastating cancer because I hold Terms of Endearment in high regard. The representation of sex that is violent or of compromised consent need not be an erotic spectacle; it is these sexual scenes, neither glib nor smugly presented, that structure the imaginative and libidinal lives of the film’s two main characters, for better or worse. Chenoweth’s half-baked and knee-jerk reaction to this film is symptomatic of the contemporary climate of irrational and unexamined fears of child endangerment in which we find ourselves living.
Dr. Casey McKittrick