Christopher Stollery | dik / 2011

misreading sexuality

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Stollery (screenwriter and director) dik / 2011 [10 minutes]

 

Although Australian director Christopher Stoller’s 2011 short film dik bills itself as a comedy, it is actually a rather disturbing example of parental hypocrisy and homophobia that gives us a clue to some of the difficulties the truly innocent six-year-old son Andrew (Keilan Grace) of the couple Robert and Rachel (Patrick Brammall and Alexa Ashton) may have to face in the future as he is shuffled between the two given their impending separation and divorce.

     Their divorce-defining argument is rooted in a simple child’s picture which the couple’s son has been asked to draw and describe in writing something he enjoyed during the weekend. Andrew proudly displays his drawing and writing project to his parents, who mostly ignore it until Andrew finally pushes it before his father. The words above the picture read, in childhood letters:

      If the message seems to be that Andrew likes “ribin Tims dik,” Robert doesn’t bother to even ask his son as about it before he falls into something close to apoplexy over the fact that his son has been possibly sexually experimenting with his best friend Tim. What’s worse is that soon after he sees his son painting the grass pink, because, he responds when asked why, it is one of his favorite colors. His father insists that he use green, thus destroying any childhood creativity the boy might want to develop.

     Parents have a way of doing that, as well as some teachers. But Rachel reminds him that at six Andrew simply growing sexually curious and exploring. Certainly, she argues, Robert did the same thing.

     But her husband will not even begin to talk about any such childhood encounters, which she declares means that he did have some childhood male-on-male experiences. She reminds him that it might be good if he could recall them to put his son’s activity in perspective, to help explain their child’s natural curiosity.

     Finally convinced that he might discuss the matter, he admits he had a sexual experience with another boy at 18. This startles Rachel even more than Andrew has disturbed his father. Suddenly, for Rachel her husband is a secret homosexual, who at a far later age than innocent childhood experimentation possibly had sex with another male. Has he been imagining it during their sex in years since while having sex with her?

      Robert defends himself, arguing he was still a kid, just exploring things, but when it comes out that he also had sex with another male at age 25 when they took a trip to Europe when he and his wife her around together, she goes ballistic.

       He points out that she probably too has had fantasies about other women; but she insists, in a kind of reverse chauvinism and hypocrisy if nothing else, that two women imagining such an act is completely different than two men, particularly men fantasize about two women having sex, while she is completely disinterested the idea of men having sex with one another.

       So the fight escalates until, she admits that she now realizes why she has thought something was missing in their sexual life. He demands to know she begin feel dissatisfied with this sex. She admitting perhaps that it was just recently, hinting, he insists, that she has had something new and different to compare their sex to—Rachel finally admitting that she has indeed been seeing someone else, her female yoga teacher Claire, with whom she declares she has had wonderful sex.

      Robert hits back, not only arguing that, unlike him, who has remained faithful to her throughout their marriage, she really has been “cheating.”

     But again, she insists it’s something completely different, describing him as a faggot and a queer, whole he hits back by calling her a dyke, remarking that his young 25-year-old friend was a great cocksucker while she can hardly open her mouth and keep her teeth away from his organ.  The name-calling continues, as she finally leaves the house, surely never to return.

       In the last scene, Robert is busy packing up boxes for his move, as he tells Andrew to get ready to visit his mommy, where evidently he will now be living. But the boy demands to finish his sketch and description first. This time, however, the picture is of his father and mother, with the word “bik” written ever his daddy’s head. What are you drawing? Robert asks. “That must be me. What am I saying?”

       “You always say that to mommy,” Andrew shyly responds. The child has previously asked what dyke means, with Robert responding that it’s something in Holland. Suddenly Robert perceives that his son may not be as sexually inclined as he is perhaps a bit dyslexic, or simply confusing his “b”s and “d”s as many children do at his age.

       Opening the earlier drawing which he has just balled up into a wad, Robert asks his son to read him the message on his first drawing, the one that lit the fuse on the parent’s breakup over their sexual gender preferences. Andrew reads it straightaway, “I like riding Tim’s bike.”

       Yes, this is funny, but the consequences of both Rachel’s and Robert’s misconceptions about not only their son, but about their sexual gender consistency is rather tragic. It’s not just a mistake in comprehension of their son’s words, but in their entire perceptions about sexuality.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).