Cinemusings

I am a sucker for watching movies over and over again, which is a problem for me when I don't OWN the movie because I end up renting it a lot (or seeing it in theaters if it happens to be playing there) and spending a lot of money. Call me crazy...I like to support horror movies and independent movies when they come to my town if only to show the theater and rental places that indeed people DO watch these movies and that they CAN make money on these movies. This is less successful in the theater because me buying one ticket doesn't make as much of a difference as me renting a movie when there's only one copy in the rental place and thus my renting that one copy is noticeable. Don't look at me like that it makes sense in my head.

Anyway, this desire to support independent cinema in my area is why I trotted into my local Family Video last Friday hoping to rent a movie that I've rented a few times, Jack Ketchum's "The Girl Next Door," because it's a disturbing but brilliant little movie and I want to show my Family Video that disturbing but brilliant movies have an audience in this town. This particular movie seemed in jeopardy to me because it's a very tough movie to watch but I chomp at the bit when anyone calls it exploitative (more about that later) and the past few times I rented it, the person behind the counter said things such as, "Have you SEEN this movie?" and when I indicate that I have indeed seen it they say "my friend saw it and they said it's bad... like not just bad, MORALLY bad" so I was worried about the safety of my movie. Well, this particular day, I scoured the shelves for the movie and didn't find it anywhere. Getting more pissed by the moment, I went up to the counter and asked the woman there "What happened to 'The Girl Next Door'"?

What follows is hilarious guys. I wish you could have been there. The Manager avoided my eyes and I swear to god she said this, "Um...there's two different movies called 'The Girl Next Door.'" Then she walked away. Uh...yes, I'm aware of the fact that there are two movies with that title. I spoke up "Yeah, I know there are two, I'm talking about Jack Ketchum's "The Girl Next Door," the one that came out on December 4th, I've rented it several times..." she sighed and continued to stand with her back turned. See, they know me at that video place. I'm the one who rents strange freaky movies that disturb people, the one who rented the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" on Christmas eve and had a clerk ask me "Are you SURE you want to rent this? Do you KNOW what this movie is about?" and I'm the one who always requests strange, disturbing movies LIKE "The Girl Next Door" every time I go in and don't see them on the shelves.

I stood there for at least a minute before the girl behind the next counter spoke up and said "Isn't 'The Girl Next Door' that movie that all those people complained about so we pulled it from the shelves?" At this point, the manager whipped around and glared at the girl, and it hit met. People weren't supposed to KNOW that they pulled the movie off the shelves. I asked why they pulled it, and the manager said "The content was offensive." I said "Well, it's not supposed to be a fun movie to watch." We were in a stand-off for a few minutes after that, staring at each other, but finally I asked if I could order the movie through their website and she checked on that, and they wouldn't let me (the movie came up flagged for "objectionable content" which pisses me off because you can even order porn through their online ordering tool as long as it's porn that they carry in that location... if I can choose to view porn, which is unquestionably adult content, why can't I choose to view "The Girl Next Door"? It makes no sense. The movie had a sticker on it warning of "adult content" anyway...what's the problem?)

Thwarted in my attempt to buy that movie, I further inquired if the video place carried another movie, "Mysterious Skin," and again, that movie is flagged for "objectionable content," and the lady said "we can't put it on our shelves if people complain that it has "objectionable content." I asked her what "objectionable content" was, and she said (speaking obviously of "The Girl Next Door") "a little girl is raped and tortured!" as though that settled it. Yes, the rape and torture of that poor girl is horrible, I've said it myself. So did the filmmakers. That's why they made the movie in the first place. The same goes for "Mysterious Skin" as well; young boys are molested and a young man is raped in that movie, and it IS difficult to watch. I pity the movie that shows ANYONE being raped and plays the scene for fun and laughs. Nevertheless, I didn't want the standoff at the counter to get TOO heated because it's not the manager's fault if the movie was pulled from the shelves and I didn't want to be an ass, so I asked if I could order "Mysterious Skin," and she said since that movie wasn't removed from the shelves (because it was flagged before it could be put ON the shelf) I could still order "Mysterious Skin" through their website at least. So that's what I did.

The very next day, I went to the theater and watched a recent movie called "Jumper." This may sound like it has nothing to do with what I've been discussing here previously, because "Jumper" sure as hell doesn't have any graphic rape or torture or anything like that, but it will all make sense in a moment, I promise. I have to say, after watching "Jumper," I loved every minute of it because the movie is pure fun from beginning to end, but it does have its exceedingly stupid moments and the worst parts of the movie are the times when it tries to have a plot. The plot is clunky and doesn't make sense and the movie would be better off as a collection of action set pieces without scattered moments of jumbled plot that end up adding nothing to the story because there's no time to develop them in the midst of all the adrenaline-fueled testosterone filled balls-out fight sequences. No time at all.

I've heard people complain that the BOOK that "Jumper" is based on is a great book with a lot of plot and depth and nuance and that the movie ruins everything that made the book good, and I don't doubt that. I'm sure that if I'd read the book before seeing the movie I would have been pissed at what the movie did to the wonderful world that the book created. As it was, I enjoyed the ride. But watching this movie put some things into perspective for me. "Jumper" was a top movie in our local theater for over a month and people went to see it in droves. I can't fault them, because it's fun to watch and it doesn't tax my brain or my emotions and thus was the perfect escape from my long and crappy day at work, which greatly increased my enjoyment when I watched it.

"The Girl Next Door" and "Mysterious Skin" and "Jumper" have something in common then; they're all movies based on books. I've read the first two and I respect both the books AND the movies but that's difficult to do, because books have much more time to develop their stories than movies do, and movies are challenged with the task of introducing characters and getting across ideas in a few minutes while books have entire chapters in which to do the same thing. This is why a lot of people who are fans of books hate the movies based on those books, because the movies cut things out and change scenes around all in an attempt to convey the message of the book while still adhering to the rules and running time of a movie. While I'm sure that "Jumper" in its book form is far more in-depth and thought provoking than the movie, I'm equally sure that it doesn't present any ideas that are as graphic or disturbing as "Mysterious Skin" and "The Girl Next Door." By virtue of this fact, the images shown in both "Mysterious Skin" AND "The Girl Next Door" are going to be far more disturbing and difficult to watch than anything shown in "Jumper."

The question, however, is whether the images shown in these movies are "obscene." There's no question that the torture and rape and stolen innocence of a child is an obscene thing; but for the purpose of classifying the movies as "porn" or "garbage," I can't agree with that. These movies have too much to offer, too many ideas, too much style and brilliance for me to assess their purpose as mere titillation. Furthermore, as far as "The Girl Next Door" being "child porn;" while the young character in "The Girl Next Door" the BOOK was twelve years old, the movie never states her age, and the actress who portrays the character is eighteen. Because the actress is eighteen, the movie can't be construed "child porn" by any definition of the term, but it's important to remember that actresses who are over the age of eighteen aren't allowed to portray underage girls in porn, which is why if you go to the adult bookstore (or the porn section of Family Video) you'll see covers proclaiming "barely legal girls!" because even if the actress is over the age of eighteen, it's considered crossing the line to have that girl play someone under the age of eighteen for purposes of titillation.

That I can accept, and given that distinction, I can understand that it is difficult for people to watch the movie "The Girl Next Door" and see a girl who looks so young having these terrible things done to her, and I'm sure they wouldn't care that the actress is over the age of eighteen. Similarly, in "Mysterious Skin," even though the actor Joseph Gordon Levittis over the age of eighteen and his character says many times that he is nineteen around the time the big rape scene happens, he still looks painfully young and that makes the scene even harder to watch. So wait. I've been talking about how the adult film industry no longer allows actresses to portray underage girls in their movies (at least in the legitimate adult flicks, I don't vouch for the amateur or underground stuff) even if the actresses are over the age of eighteen.

So am I jumbling "Mysterious Skin" and "The Girl Next Door" into the "porn" category and thus contradicting myself and agreeing with Family Video and others when they object to the content of these movies? NO. No I'm not, but it's not just people in my town who don't appear to "get it;" a popular horror magazine ran a recent article on the movie "The Girl Next Door" and the letters section of that magazine this month is full of people calling "The Girl Next Door" exploitative garbage; saying it was practically porn. Now people are going to hear "OMG it’s CHILD PORN" and make judgments about the movie without even seeing it, and that enrages me almost as much as it did to see this movie removed from the shelf at my video store.

I could lament that people don't get it, because I don't think they do. There are many examples of how exploitation films handle the subject of rape, how the camera lingers on close-ups of the prone victim's body, zooms in on wounds and carnage...basically the filmmakers do everything they can to excite viewers, to show them something they can't see anywhere else, so that even when viewers are shocked they watch anyway because they can't turn away.

"The Girl Next Door" doesn't do this. It doesn't. I want to cover my eyes throughout almost all the running time but I'm disgusted with myself because the camera isn't showing anything, it's lingering on the face of the abuser or on the faces of the neighborhood kids who are in the room while the girl is being abused (often committing acts of abuse themselves in a twisted turn of manipulation from the adult responsible for the abuse) and the movie is hard to watch because of what my mind imagines and what I know is happening even when the camera doesn't show it. "Mysterious Skin" doesn't have any full-frontal nudity either, and far more is suggested than shown, but what is shown is enough to give me chills and worry about who's spending time with my neighbor's kids. That's powerful.

That takes talent that infects my mind and crumbles my jaded cynicism and makes me care about the atrocities that happened to this poor girl and these poor boys. That makes me uncomfortable and very angry, and that is a GOOD THING. That is what art should do, it should shake us up and make us look at the world differently and question our beliefs. "The Girl Next Door" does that and I can accept that people don't like it, but I'm incensed that they think that gives them the right to say other people shouldn't be allowed to watch the movie, either. Indeed, I could lament for hours that people don't "get it" and that they're keeping other people from watching movies that may help them. Yes, I said help them. Seeing someone else experience torture helps me deal with experiences form my own past, and seeing the affect of abuse on the characters of the movie "Mysterious Skin" affected me in ways I never thought possible. It makes me sad that other kids and teens and adults can't have the experience I had because other people are offended by the content of the movie. I think it's fine for them to be offended but why can't they just choose not to watch the movie? Why do they feel they accomplish something by keeping other people from being able to watch the movie too?

I think I know why. It's because those movies aren't like "Jumper." Instead of helping us forget the evils of the world around us these movies highlight those evils and beat us over the head with them until we can't take it anymore. These movies show us innocence and then horribly corrupt and destroy it right in front of our eyes and that makes us weep for our own lost innocence and fear for the innocence of our children and all children. Even if the movies don't make us weep they do something worse...they make us think. About things we don't want to think about. Over and over and over. These movies use images we don't want to see to remind us of things we don't want to acknowledge. It's like we think that if we ignore evil it will cease to exist. We don't want to pop in a movie and come face to face with evil. Who wants that? So people see evil things happening onscreen and they think, "Hey, this is showing evil, I feel dirty now, I shouldn't be watching it" and this leads them to take the movie back and complain and keep complaining until the movie goes away and they don't have to look at it when they go to Family Video. They can control that, they can get rid of that evil movie, and maybe that makes them feel better knowing that at least the MOVIE is gone, and maybe they feel like they have some power over the evil in the world because of that. I don't know.

What I do know is that evil things happen in real life and that evil things happen in "The Girl Next Door" and in "Mysterious Skin" and that seeing these movies, even though they AREN'T real, made me feel better. It's a kind of solidarity with other people who have endured evil that's difficult to explain to people who haven't felt it. It's a sense that the world is fundamentally cracked and fucked up, but that other people see that, too, and I am not alone, and if we can show the evil for what it is we can get it out of the darkness into the light, and THAT'S how we fight it. Not by pretending it doesn't exist but by exposing it so people can discuss it. That's a power and a flicker of hope that I felt in the midst of my pain after watching these movies, but it's a hope that can't grow if people won't allow the movies to be seen.

And if we need nothing else in this world, we need hope. Family Video can do whatever they want in their store, I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying how sad I am that they got the movie in and gave me some hope, then took it away; that they chose to quash discussion and allow ignorance to grow. That's more evil than a movie could ever be.

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