Douglas Messerli | The Gap Between Desire and Apprehension: The Problem of Man and Boy Love [introduction]

the gap between desire and apprehension: the problem of man and boy love

by Douglas Messerli

Although I have breached the subject tentatively and more openly in my 2000 essay on “Crossing the Divide” which concerns young boys just shy of the age of sexual consent, I have not yet spoken directly about very young, prepubescent boys who have imaginary, willing, or unwilling relationships with boys and men of age. Indeed, I will perhaps save the cases of the unwilling, raped or coerced boys (mostly in documentary form) for a later date, particularly given the restrictions presented by such posting sites such as Google. The closest to such a film in this grouping is Uncle David, although the boy here seems absolutely willing if highly coerced and misled. Perhaps the most explicit sexual relationship of a boy with an older man is so far represented in these pages by Albert J. Bresson’s 1983 film Abuse, but there the so-called “abuser” represents an escape from the child’s far worse parental tortures.

 

    But any discussion of younger boys in connection with sexual feelings, imagined or acted upon, is dangerous territory in our current climate when any sort of pedophilic relationship brings up what I might describe near societal panic. We can easily explain why this is: the abuse of a young person, of whatever sex, is one of the most horrific crimes against youth possible and can have long-term negative consequences upon survivors of such acts. One can particularly comprehend why anyone who has children or truly cares about their welfare would find such acts indefensible and worthy of criminal punishment.

     Yet, if only out of interest in the long history of man/boy, woman/girl relationships from the Ancient Greeks to the present, we have to at least consider the reality that despite our social aberration of this behavior, our legal criminalization of these acts, and our notable attempts to prevent them, that they have continued in rather alarmingly large numbers. Moreover, many of the adults and the youths involved in sex declare that it was the younger individual who sought out the older or who, at least, was mutually involved in the act. While we perceive that children often do not know what they are doing with regard to sex, while adults should be rational enough to discourage such desires, the mutuality of some of these acts suggests that perhaps we have not explored either the intense desires or pressures of sexuality sufficiently enough to fully comprehend them and to recognize the reasons for their existence and evident commonness. As Alfred Kinsey long argued, if one finds a kind a sexual behavior prevalent though history in rather large numbers, we surely have the responsibility to more throughout examine it as objectively as we can.

      Let us begin with the presumption that any sexual actions regarding a younger person with an adult against the younger person’s desire is simply an issue of rape and abuse, and should be punishable to the full extent of the law—although the laws of many cultures, including perhaps our own, can be draconian. But that is another issue I shall not approach.

     Moreover, let us argue that just because a child appears to be willing and even desirous of sex with an older person does not give any adult the freedom to act. And it is the adult’s responsibility to control the situation by moving away from it and discouraging the younger person from pursuing such dangerous engagements.

 

    But then what? There still remain children who truly want and feel they need sexual engagement with an older person, particularly when they are gay or lesbian and cannot find anyone of their age with whom to even talk about their feelings let alone discover someone their age with whom they might engage in sex. By walking away from such young men and women we might possibility be putting them in danger in the way that director Connor Clements explores in the film I discuss below, James, in the movie I analyze in 2021, Softie, or even in Bressan’s 1983 work Abuse.

      First of all, we must remember children are now engaging in sex at ages unthinkable in earlier generations, in part because of the entire society’s perhaps unintentional encouragement of sexual openness through the internet and the media in general. For heterosexual children, it is now almost natural they will begin exploring sexual activity as early as 10 or 12, certainly by their early teens, no matter what our personal viewpoints, values, or religious beliefs. But what do homosexual boys and girls do at that age; what choices do they have to even discover their sexuality let alone to explore sex itself? Certain aspects of our society have long permitted straight young children to express their sexual feelings without ever imagining that gay, bi-sexual, lesbian, and transsexual children also have such emotional desires.

     I know that such desires of young boys exist because even in the late 1950s, I was just such a child. Living in the conservative, protected society in which I did, indoctrinated in the fears of even talking about sex, I was never abused and to my knowledge did not even meet someone who might have desired to abuse. But I would not have resisted, in fact would been overjoyed, I am certain, had some older person ever had such sexual desires toward me or wished to introduce me to sex. I truly believe I would have gladly left my innocent cocoon behind as I did the very moment when I finally realized that I was far enough from home that I need not report my behavior any longer to family or friends. I was the kind of child desperate for someone to talk to about and engage in sex. Without having anyone to help me into a sexual world, I remained painfully in a closed-off (closeted would have meant that I was hiding something or had had some experience whereas I had had none) world where I remained without anyone but imaginary future friends.

      In the following discussions of the six films I’ve chosen, accordingly, I make no prescriptions and do not argue for any particular solution to the dilemmas revealed, but simply try to observe the problems faced by the younger individuals and point to the difficultly of their situations. In at least one of the works, I find the solution despicable, even as a kind camp fantasy statement which it may have intended to have represented, and cannot forgive the horrific influence of the adult upon the younger boy. But in the other 5 works I can only proffer my deep sympathy for the youths who cannot seem to find a way out of the predicaments they face and for the adults who themselves can offer no way to help them without endangering their own lives.

      The six films I discuss come from many different cultures: James by Northern Ireland director Connor Clements, released in 2008; Blocks, directed by Chilean filmmaker Marialy Rivas of 2010; Uncle David, an “improvisation” by British performer David Hoyle and porno film star Asley Ryder, also from 2010; US director Evan Roberto’s 33 Teeth of 2011; US filmmaker Tony Garcia’s Discretion from 2015; and Hunt by Norwegian director Gjertrud Bergaust from 2018.*

 

*The films about which I’ve just written are obviously not the only films that deal with the complex subject of love between younger and older gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. I’ve already discussed some of these issues over about 50 essays on feature and short films, all of which—and I’m not even including the numerous older and younger “brothers in love” films or the several movies and documentaries on young gay male prostitutes—concern themselves in one way or another with love between two beings of significantly different ages. For a more complete, although not exhaustive list, see my discussion of Margien Rogaar’s Breath in 2007.