the geek
by
Douglas Messerli
Michael Burke (screenwriter and director) Fishbelly White / 1998
Surely one of the oddest short gay films ever made, Michael Burke’s 1998 Fishbelly White might also be described as one of the post poetic and subtle of coming of age films. The young boy at the center of this work, Duncan (Mickey Smith) lives on a farm on which his father raises pigs and chickens. Duncan’s farmyard responsibilities seem mostly to consist of gathering eggs and keeping the chickens from fighting, particularly from hurting the young dirty-white hen (presumably the source of the film’s title) who the more colorfully feathered hens regularly torture through their pecks.
Not only is Duncan a tender soul, who
loves all animals and can hardly bear the squeals of a hog his father hauls to
the kill, but he is especially attached to his white hen probably because he
identifies with her situation in being regularly attacked by the others.
Duncan, like the white bird, somewhat like
his chicken has immature features and is shorter than other boys of his age
with milky pale skin and red hair. It doesn’t help that he bicycles around the
country carrying his white chicken in the in the front basket. As he moves back
and forth down country roads older boys or simply his schoolmates who are more
mature drive by in in a truck, honking and calling out names.
Obviously this kid, beyond puberty but not yet fully aware of his sexuality, is terribly insecure, the fact of which we witness as he attempts to provide security to his chicken by putting its head into his own mouth to calm it down. It is a strange gesture which truly does make his relationship with the chicken, as the boys who pass him call it, “weird.” And surely Duncan feels like an outsider, trying desperately to be friends with those who taunt him, bravely giving a friendly wave as they speed past.
Their taunts have also apparently affected
him to the degree that he has come to hate himself, and when he steals away to
a dilapidated old farm out-building, he pulls out a cigarette and his lighter
and, like youths who cut their arms, applies burns to his stomach.
The only boy in the area who seems
willing to be his friend is the handsome neighbor Perry (Jason Hayes) whose
family raises cows, animals Duncan also likes as we see him, when visiting the
farm, gently petting the cow who greets him at the front gate.
Perry, obviously a popular kid in this
rural community, has also taken a shine to the awkward Perry and seems to have
a kind of friendly brotherly attitude toward him. He not only kindly talks to
him—although when the other boys pass in their truck, he quickly scrambles off
the fence where he is sitting with Duncan telling him to do the same—but
suggests, in a friendly manner, “You really shouldn’t carry that chicken
around. It looks weird.”
He
invites Duncan to milk the cow, but living on a farm with only chickens and
pigs, Duncan is as much a neophyte to the process as would be a “city slicker,”
and to help show him how to manipulate the cow’s udders, Perry puts his hands around
Duncan’s in order to manipulate them properly so that the cow releases her
milk. The act flusters his friend, who immediately makes an excuse to leave.
In the very next scene we see Duncan fervently
singing in the Sunday church service with his family, but as he looks over at
the heavily bosomed woman next to him, stops mid-phrase, fascinated it appears
with her tits which perhaps reminds him of Perry’s hand upon his together
massaging the tits of the bovine. So caught up the memory is the innocent that
when the congregation sits for prayer, he remains standing for a few moments. Coming
to with the realization that everyone is watching him, he bolts out of the
church in embarrassment.
Retreating to Perry’s family farm, he and
Perry have the conversation I outlined above, Perry bowing out of the passing
boys’ invitation to join them at the swamp (where, we soon discover, they
intend to kill frogs by lighting firecrackers under them, a brutal behavior
which makes Duncan sick), choosing instead to go swimming with his awkward buddy.
Much like the Dennis Quaid character in Peter Yates’ Breaking Away (1979),
he quickly strips to his underwear and dives in the river, while Duncan still
fully dressed and terrified of the long jump into the river below, remains
seated on the railroad trestle above.
When Perry returns he urges his friend to undress
and swim, the boy taking off his pants but resisting the jump. The boys take
out cigarettes, Duncan lighting Perry’s with his own lighter. When Perry spots
the burns on Duncan’s chest, he asks about then, Duncan telling him simply that
they’re burns. “You want to feel them?” he asks, almost like Christ permitting
Thomas after the crucifixion to put his fingers in risen man’s wounds. Oddly
enough Perry obliges, asking whether or not they hurt. “Not much,” Duncan
responds. When Perry admires the lighter, Duncan makes him a gift of it. Perry,
almost as a gentle reward, pushes the boy off the trestle into the water below.
Obviously Duncan is terrified by the fall, but now feels brave in having actually
survived the swim.
During this remarkably homoerotic moment, Perry says nothing, neither admitting to nor denying what is happening, but
simply looking down in total acceptance that the innocent sitting below him has
suddenly revealed his budding sexuality to both of them. There is something
almost sacred in the moment as Perry without judgment allows the boy to explore
what he is seeking, both through his nascent desires and his sudden recognition
of why he has so long been put into the position of the outsider. His own hand
has spoken what no words might ever have.
Soon after, Duncan tells his chicken that
he must leave him at home when he is about to begin his next bicycle outing, but
at the last moment he cannot resist restoring his bird to its protective place
in the bike basket. Once more the local yokels pass by him, mocking him and
calling out “Chicken man,” this time their open flatbed filled with girls and
other boys including Perry.
They stop the truck, asking him if he
wants to join them. This time he at first rejects their invitation, but they
insist, telling him to throw his bike in the back. Perry once more attempts to
protect him, arguing with the leader that “he doesn’t have to join us if he
doesn’t want.”
Yet Duncan insists he will finally join
them, as they grab his bicycle and demand he break the neck of his chicken. The
leader taunts him further with words that surely hurt beyond even the
self-induced burns he’s suffered: “Perry here thinks you’re a fag. Are you a
fag?” I’m not a queer he insists, now ensconced next to Perry in the tuck bed. “Get
rid of the chicken” they insist.
Clearly terrified by their taunts but
this time more determined and braver than we have previously seen him, he places
the chicken’s head, as we saw in the first scene of the film, into his mouth,
presumably to calm her fears from all the screaming. But this time his teeth
come down upon her neck, breaking it, as he pulls away the body tossing it to
the side of the road.
All are shocked as he finally spits the
head out of his mouth. One girl screams and pounds on the front cab for the
those riding there to let her in. Blood has formed above and under the boy’s
lips. Perry pulls out a cigarette and a pack of matches, instead of the lighter
Duncan has given him, lighting the butt and passing it on to the person—now not
just an awkward friend, but a true geek—who sits next to him. Without even
knowing it, all recognize that something important has happened: not only has
Duncan been willing to give up the life of his beloved pet to become their
friend but he has irrevocably declared his outsiderness to these pitiful representatives
of normalcy. He has dared to prove his queerness in return for love.
Los Angeles, February 11, 2021
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February
2021).
No comments:
Post a Comment