I am interested in surveillance. This includes all types of surveillance, but for this project I am focused on the 1962 Mansfield Tearoom Bust. This type of witch hunt on sex devi- ants encouraged me to divulge the moral dilemma surrounding modern and historical views on homosexual- ity. The topic of impersonal sex in a public space is as Laud Humphreys explains it: a phenomenon that per- sists as a widespread but rarely stud- ied form of human interaction1. This concern is echoed in the content as well as in the formal approach to my work.
Caught (2009) is a surveil- lance film; it consists of an intricate system of identity conflicts, deeply woven in the quietness of the charac- ters. Lester, a happily married fireman, risks ruining his life and family as he is tempted by extramarital urges. On one hand, 8 mm film is used to ex- plore Lester and the loiterers, as they frequents the bright, lively public bathroom, quietly looking for quick love; on the other hand, Lester’s home life with his wife Paula and their son is a bleak setting, made warm only by the hope Paula has for her marriage to Lester. We observe Lester and Paula’s body language, their love for one an- other, and their mistrust for one an- other while they chat about changing a diaper. We as viewers are the invited spectator into the private lives of these conflicted characters.
The film will be saturated with images of men having impersonal sex in a public bathroom, exploring the quiet intensity of a forbidden pastime. The setting for this type of deviant
behavior allows us to explore a public bathroom, a space that is typically pri- vate, while observing male sexual be- havior at it’s most complex and pri- mal. This type of footage is always problematic; it repulses and attracts the viewers. Filmmakers too often hypocritically use the voyeuristic ap- peal of sex in their work while con- demning it with a moralistic commen- tary. In my piece, the “subjective” commentary is replaced by the highly objective point of view of the police officers viewing the surveillance, and ultimately the audience engulfed in the drama.
The choice of this inappropriate object of desire certainly com- ments on the complexity of human nature and the difficulty of aligning moral and sexual desires. But some- thing else is at work here: the erotic gaze on the body of the men, emascu- lating them, transforming them from subject to object. This type of tech- nique has been used countless times in ethnographic films, but here the “powers that be” observe a form of mating, the homosexual kind, crimi- nalized as public indecency attributed by a psychopathic disorder.
Unlike most of my previous work, Caught fits into a definable filmic genre. I am interested in this narrative because it tugs at the emo- tions of a hero conflicted, as well as exploring a time in our history when being different was considered a so- cial malady. I intend to create a dra- matic piece that moves the audience to care about our hero Lester, despite the mess he has gotten himself into.
