*Spoiler alert*: this post is regarding an old flick called Mysterious Skin. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone (Ben) who hasn’t seen it yet so stop here if you’re thinking about seeing it (it’s good).
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I watched Mysterious Skin last week. There were a few small details that bugged me but overall I really liked it. It deals with child abuse and the ways that children process it, how it affects them later in life, that kind of thing. I think the film did a good job of dealing with heavy subject matter in a way that was credible and believable.
After watching it, I read a bit about the film and learned that none of the child actors knew what the film was about because their scenes were filmed without context or whatever. I can’t think of a better way to make a heavy film with kids in it but I still don’t find this approach to be totally satisfactory. I mean, ok, you’ve shielded the kid from something potentially scarring during the creation process but if I were a child actor and just took part in a flick, I’d want to watch it right away. What would the parents of those child actors say, “sorry Jimmy, that’s actually a really fucked up flick you just took part in so I’m not gonna let you see the result of your work for another decade or so”? That doesn’t seem feasible to me. I’m not saying “let the kids watch Mysterious Skin,” I’m just saying that NOT letting them watch the film they just made would probably feel pretty strange to the kids, and they would probably just sneak off to see it on their own then anyway.
But there’s another aspect of this that furrows my brow. Of course I applaud the makers of the film for addressing a topic that needs to be discussed candidly, but at the same time I wonder if making any film, regardless of its gravity or value, is worth the potential damage it causes to the kids involved in the film — what if the kids somehow watch the film and are like “oh fuck, I didn’t realize THAT’S what would be implied I was doing, how could my parents sign me up for this shit, and ew that movie really fucked me up, etc”? Is that the price society is ok with paying for films about this stuff? I realize that you can’t protect kids from the real world forever, and I agree it’s best to teach them about shit early on, so maybe this falls into that category but it’s still a bit of a grey area to me. Or what if they child actors actually do wait until they are adults to see the films but are still fucked up by it then? There’s no guarantee that they will ever reach a point in their lives when they are ok with having been mislead into making a film that is difficult for most to watch.
Also worthy of note: parents of child actors are big red flags to me. Who signs their kid up for that world full of phony balonies, sycophants, and predators? Then again, I guess I feel like all humans across the board are generally scum, so are Hollywood types any worse than anyone else? Hmmm. Ok well Hollywood is probably on par with global businesses, heavy industries, government, and the dregs of society in terms high concentration of people lacking strong ethics, so yeah getting your kid involved with little league baseball is probably a safer bet than child acting. Ok I can stand behind the “parents of child actors are red flags” comment. Even if my kid really really wanted to get into acting, I would have serious reservations about it.
Conclusions:
- I don’t know where I stand on kids wanting to be actors.
- I am definitely leary of parents of child actors.
- I love good films and think the makers of Mysterious Skin did a good job of protecting the child actors in the film, but I still think kids in disturbing flicks a tricky thing to navigate. This is one of those grey areas where I feel trapped in the middle of multiple viewpoints.
- Jeez, think about the kid in Serbian Film. Imagine watching that at ANY point in your life and realizing what your parents signed up for. I wonder how that kid is doing now.
crimson highway 