Eden Poag | Boys Beware / 2021

barbie’s fault

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eden Poag (screenwriter and director) Boys Beware / 2021 [5 minutes]

 

Eden Poag’s version of Boys Beware is also an appropriation film, using images of the 1950s over which the original’s narrator once again drones.

     But Poag’s work is probably the weakest of them all, taking obviously pots shots at gender definition, even suggesting that the reason why young men may turn into gay men is all Barbie’s fault. Tell that to Greta Gerwig!

      The first third of the film displays numerous Barbie dolls and period women attempting in various ways, through dress, dance classes, and in other ways to emulate their favorite childhood figure.

       The first two boys we encounter are seemingly naïve, particularly one who believes he has found true love, while the second, more cynical roommate makes fun of his confusion of love and sex or perhaps even dating. Even though he seems to have his own girl, at one point he commands the other to get into bed, although they are separate beds.  

     But as we watch the younger boy finally put on his pajamas, we get a strong sense, that the other, more experienced boy, might not mind if the younger crawled into his own bed instead of the other bed, a space only a short distance from his.

     Another found episode concerns what appear to be a boy and his female prom date. She has evidently told him that her real interest is in girls, now attempting to explain to him why she prefers girls by asking him what he likes about them, interrupting herself in the middle of the question to ask if he’s straight.

     Throughout the date they appear not to be able to stop talking about her sexual preferences, she hinting that he has an almost inordinate obsession about her love of the same sex.

      The last found film is about a young man seeing a psychiatrist because of his unhappiness over being gay, hoping for some sort of cure or, at least, some way to make it all better. The psychiatrist compliments him for his fortitude, his desire to overcome his “illness,” but obviously offers no help except vaguely expressed statements such as the fact that his patient will have to decide what he wants to do about the “now,” as opposed the “past.”

    Throughout their conversation, images of Barbie keep appearing, as if their existence had something to do with his disinterest in the female sex.

       Frankly, it is difficult to even guess at Poag’s logic for gathering the clips he has chosen, all of which seem share only the dissatisfaction of these young men and women with their own lives, except perhaps for the young boy who we know will soon be disabused of his analysis that he finally found the “right” girl.

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).