Tom Garber | Sartanim Ba Hol (Crabs in the Sand) / 2012

giving pleasure

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Garber (screenwriter and director) Sartanim Ba Hol (Crabs in the Sand) / 2012 [11 minutes]

 

On an ocean beach Noam (Or Shefer) 13, with his little sister Maayan, and her female friends, Elinor and Tami, wait for the girls’ father to come back from visiting the beach prostitute. Clearly the father has allowed Noam and Maayan to join them on their outing, the girls arguing that, while they know their father is visiting a prostitute, at least their father takes them someplace, hinting that Noam and Maayan’s father won’t even take his children to the ocean.

 

    Lonely and bored, Noam climbs for a better view of their girls’ father fucking the prostitute, himself masturbating as he watches. Noam is curious, but unsure of his own sexuality or even of what sex really means. He simply observes, yet is obviously affected by the bodily movements and the feelings of pleasure it appears to provide them both. And today he appears more than a little curious.

      The same beach is home to mentally challenged 30-year-old man, Michael, with whom the children often play games. He is particularly attracted to Noam’s sister, and has apparently regularly played the game the children now recognize as “Shula,” obviously a kind of hide-and-seek game with which they engage him.

      Today, when Noam encounters him, they first engage in a kind of chase, the older man dancing heavily back and forth in a weaving pattern as Noam pretends to run after him, Michael already beginning to call out Shula.

      The girls now also spot him, and evidently enjoy playing their games with him, despite Noam’s suggestion that they should leave him alone. They describe him as “miserable,” but Noam corrects

them, insisting that he is “retarded.” Yet he is obviously willing to let his little sister play the role of “Shula” with the adult man.

      She runs forward chanting the name, as the other girls join her. Later, holding the hands of two of the girls, he is led back blindfolded, calling out the same name, “Shula.”

      But as the girls bring him back to their little sand fort, it appears that today Noam has other ideas for his older friend. He moves forward, hugging the man intensely, seemingly claiming him as his own lover, just as he has witnessed the girl’s father dominating the prostitute.

      Michael, still blindfolded, is surprised and somewhat disturbed by the turn of the game, the actual encounter with his imaginary Shula. Michael attempts to reach up and take off his blindfold, but Noam asks him to keep it on, suggesting that “Shula” is shy.

      Suddenly Noam runs forward, tackling the older man, landing him flat on the beach. Noam runs his hand across his chest and Michael, partly in joy, but also with clearly some nervousness, both giggles and growls at the boy’s touches.

      As the girls watch, Noam unzips the man’s pants and begins masturbating him. Elinor receives a phone call from her father, as he begins to call for her further down on the beach.

      She, followed by her sister, runs off toward him, Elinor pushing Noam away from the man as she passes, calling him a “retard.”

      At that moment, Michael pulls off his blindfold and is startled to see Noam by his feet looking back at him. Maayan demands Noam get up and come with them to car.

      We see them riding in the car together, Noam clearly contemplating the events of the day and his own actions. It is clear that perhaps even he doesn’t know why he has behaved in that manner, or even knows the significance of his actions, that he has, in essence, raped a man.

   Neither can we fully imagine his motivations. Is he seeking out his own version of a prostitute, knowing nothing of women, seeking out one of his own sex? Is he expressing, subliminally, his own latent sexuality in masturbating another male, knowing that there is no one who might give him such pleasure, nonetheless, offering it up to someone else?

     Some viewers who have written about this have described it as a terrible or horrible behavior, declaring the movie as offensive. But I believe, if you attempt to comprehend the fact that children are sexual beings, and that Noam’s behavior can be recognized as not intentionally being violent or brutal—although certainly he has just witnessed a kind of selfish sexual act, a man having purchased a woman to satisfy his sexual needs. I might suggest that the boy is simply experimenting, attempting to imitate the pleasure that the adults seemed to have taken in the act; but he is confused about what he is seeking and knows nothing about what his behavior signifies.

      The metaphor is established in the title, with regard to an earlier moment in the film in which we have observed the young girls, playing with the sand crabs, moving them about without any regard to the fact that they are a life form with their own needs and purpose. Noam’s behavior regarding the larger life form of the full-grown mammal is little different. It is a game for him, like the girls who can interrupt the normal path of the tiny crabs by lifting up their bodies and placing them somewhere else, so too does the boy suddenly perceive that he has the power to affect another human being, to offer him sexual pleasure. He has little concept of just how powerful and terrifying those acts can be.

      Director Tom Garber himself has suggested that in this film he had hoped to put the often-ignored subject of childhood sexuality on society’s agenda. Given the general international terror of even bringing up the subject of children and sex, I suspect he may not find a truly open audience. But I admire him, as I have others in the past, for once again bringing up the subject.

 

Los Angeles, September 7, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).