diving into manhood?
by Douglas Messerli
Rozlyn Clayton-Vincent (screenplay), Dean Francis (director) Boys
Grammar / 2005 [8 minutes]
It’s difficult to know what precisely to make
of Australian filmmaker Dean Francis’ short film about bullying in the extreme.
That extreme, in this case—not the first instance of this crime to show up in
short gay cinema, and not the worst if you consider those films that end in the
victim’s death—is a gang rape in the locker room shower with a large segment of
dowelled wood.
The
victim, Gareth (Matt Levett) is not the typical gay boy, but a diver who seems
to be fairly popular with the others, and if one looks closely at the eye
contact between him and one of the sideline observers, Nick (Tom O’Sullivan), watching
his dive in the first scene, he perhaps even has a sexual admirer among them.
The problem, if you can describe it as such, is that Gareth has taken an
art book of the naked male form into the locker room with him, arguably a book
he’s reading for his art class, yet admitting that he himself likes the human
form. Nick, who discovers Gareth with the book seems to have no choice but to
draw attention to it jokingly before the others discover it, wondering whether
the pages are stuck together. Gary attempts to fight him for the return of the
book, Nick pinning him to the lockers asking, “Do you like this human
form?”
Gareth’s answer is equally provocative, “not bad,” which forces the
others now in hearing distance to respond as such homophobic schoolboys
generally do, by calling him a faggot; and before one can even imagine things
get out of control as the others drag him into the shower and painfully fuck
him with a dowelled stick.
As
they leave, Nick attempts to briefly comfort him, but when Gareth pushes away,
he insists that it is all Gareth’s fault, presumably for not being careful in
covering his sexual tracks so to speak, in bringing the book into the open and
even accepting Nick’s sexual challenge.
Even worse—if one might imagine using such a phrase given the horrific
events I have just described—is that having told his father—who appears to be a
dean or teacher at the school—about the rape and requesting that he leave the
school, Gareth if forced the face off with the rapists themselves along with
his brother, all of whom his father has invited to dinner, believing that
confronting the experience is the best remedy. “We have all had to go through
the same thing,” he argues, “even your brother. It’s what you make of the
experience that most matters.”
Repeating this absurd logic in front of the others, the father seeks out
agreement even from Gareth’s torturers, Nick now appearing very much like the
school trouble-maker played by Malcom McDowell in the 1968 film if… but
who is quickly on his way to becoming the Malcom McDowell of The Clockwork
Orange (1971) smiles in smug agreement. As his father chatters away—“some
boys it makes them stronger, gives them resilience”—Nick almost challenges his
former friend, leaning toward him, “Are you a man, Gareth?”
Gareth lunges toward him, pushing him to the floor and lifting his hand
through the air to bring down fists upon his face. His father holds his brother
back, obviously feeling that the “manly behavior” is not being properly acted
out. But just as quickly Gareth’s arms move into an embrace of his tormentors’
face as he hugs Nick to himself tearfully crying for his inability to stop
loving the man he knows he should now hate, Nick also moving his arms into an
embrace.
Surely this strange enactment of love is not what his father had hoped
for. Or is it? Does this all-male community accept rape as a force to help the
weaker come to terms with their homosexual feelings? The values of this world
are so very perverted that we might almost imagine any possible scenario, come
to almost any illogical conclusion. In this world one thing alone is clear,
brutal violence is confusedly interlinked with love.
Los Angeles, March 15, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March
2023).
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