Gabriel Borgetto, Matthias Bäuerle, and Bernd Faaß | Studies on Hysteria / 2012

the intolerant nudists

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gabriel Borgetto, Matthias Bäuerle, and Bernd Faaß (screenwriters and directors) Studies on Hysteria / 2012 [8 minutes]

 

Calling up the major early German study of Studies on Hysteria from 1895 by Sigmund Freud and physician Josef Breuer, Borgetto’s, Bäuerle’s, and Faaß’ dark comic film of 2012, Adam (Philip Wilhelmi) discovers in the world in which he lives like all his people totally naked, a pair of blue jeans, gifted to him by two dressed angelic forest dwellers.

    Adam takes the pants home, not knowing what quite to make of them, they are of rather harsh material, but given the intricacy of the stitching must, he argues, have been soft of caring individuals. And he isn’t quite sure how to wear them, first attempting to enter then headfirst, and place the pantlegs around his neck.

     Finally, as he tosses them down in disgust beside him in his bed, he suddenly recognizes that they are meant to adorn his legs, and in a sudden moment becomes the ancient world’s first James Dean, daring to present his denim covered body to a world of intentional nudity. Although a few women are utterly delighted by his new style, most of the community is outranged, shocked my the quite apparent difference in his dress from the undress of all the others.

      In a kind of psychological upbraiding of all of Freud’s and Breuer’s theories, this new Adam is the source of outrage not because he has dreams of nakedness, but because he dares to travel down the town lanes in our notion of naturalness, polite denim pants. Something is clearly different in the community, and it not just our now totally queer hero, but is sensed in the quietness of the village. Community members have already marked his house with a bloody message of shame.

      The naked priest of the community (Moritz Berg) has already gathered his naked community behind him to forsake and punish the sinner who dares to wear pants.

      It is not female hysteria, but a male version of “extreme emotion and frenzied behavior” that characterizes the community outrage and they grab hold of the well-dressed sinner and put a noose around his neck.

      The narrative voice asks of himself, is he obsessed, but realizes that living without his pants is not a possibility—at which point the small stool on which stands is pushed away as he is hung.

     We realize obviously that this short film is a masterful satire of societal and sexual difference, by I must admit, as Dr. Barry Nyle commented on his Letterboxd review, “the only problem[ is] that it feels like a commercial of Jeans more than a poignant allegory.” If only Levi Strauss and Co. or American Giant, Bullet Blues, Bridge or Boro, Gustin, or Rouge Territory could have gotten their dirty paws on this little German gem.

     Thank heaven they didn’t, and the short film still serves as a remarkable statement of male hysteria against the difference of those males who dare to express that they are not part of the heterosexual normality of the culture at large. Even Freud might have learned some big lessons from little satire.

 

Los Angeles, December 25, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).