Mysterious Skin
The beloved and I went and saw Mysterious Skin, screening at the Melbourne Film Fest, the other day. Family First (aka Assemblies of God - born-again mecantilists) and the Australian Family Association (Opus Dei type Catholics) are currently seeking to have the film banned.
A was apprehensive that I’d get all ‘I hate arthouse films’, as I often do - often, because so-called ‘arthouse’ had a habit of producing a bond of pretension between filmaker and audience and little else. Too often, filmakers get license to be dull, ponderous, you know: meaningful. But if it takes such effort by a filmaker to establish meaning, they’re not very good at making films. And audiences are supposed to (often do) endure, because in enduring, one is thereby indicating one’s apparent sophistication. In a word: bourgeois. But, no. Though I’ve remarked on Araki’s films in similar terms before, this film I liked - quite a lot. Although I think some in the audience were confused, for much of the film - they thought the main character’s life was hip, for at least half the film - though, he was just damaged as hell, an empty black hole.
Apparently, Family First (Assemblies of God) are not quite so taken. Though, I think they’re taken in another way: what is it about those censorious religious types that invariably has them describing certain activities in lurid detail? Richard Egan, from the AFA and who has not seen the film but read a synopsis of it, said: “being able to get hold legally of a DVD where they can play the scene over and over again, showing the adult baseball coach fellating an eight-year-old boy… could prove very helpful to some paedophiles.” Got that? Mr Egan has been playing that scene in his head, his scene (not anything he’s actually seen) over and over again.
In Australia, banning films is not referred to as ‘banning’ - although this is the effect: public screenings are criminalised. It’s called “denying a film classification”. And those who argue for such feel compelled to talk about the ostensibly censorable aspects of that film (in completely spectral form, of course) over and over again. It’s a mysterious world it is.
