Course:CSIS200/2025/Learning from Trauma in Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin"

Learning from Trauma in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin

Mysterious Skin Deluxe Unrated Director's Edition DVD Cover (2006).

A bizarre trend has emerged on YouTube: amateur predator-hunters stage sting operations to entrap pedophiles online. Posing as underage teens or children online, the hunters attract online pedophiles to meet them in person. When they arrive, the hunters confront the adult, almost always a man, and threaten to call the police. Frequently, the confrontations turn violent. The hunters brutalize their creep they just caught with furious abandon, without any fear of legal recourse.

In Western culture, child sex abuse is subject to both profound obsession and intense stigma. Some of the most popular television programs focus intently on child sex abuse and pedophilia, like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and To Catch a Predator. The broad discourse and media portrayals of this abuse are frequently sensationalist and lack nuance. These portrayals emphasize the sickness and perversion of the abusers, diverting attention from the damaging impacts on the lives of survivors of the abuse. The 2004 film Mysterious Skin upends the mainstream Western discourse of child sex abuse, pedophilia, queerness, and desire, revealing society’s failure to protect children and the problems with suppressing sexuality.

Defining Perversion

The concept of perversion originates from the changing of one’s religious affiliation. Perversion later gains a sexual connotation, with Freud’s labelling of homosexuality as perverse . British philosopher Jonathan Dollimore describes perversion in his book, Sexual Dissidence, as “very often perceived as utterly alien to what it threatens, and yet, mysteriously inherent within it.” Perversion is a cultural construction set in opposition to normality, appearing as an external threat. What appears as perverse and what appears as normal relies on social forces beyond the power of individuals. There is an instinct to combat perversion by finding and eliminating its source. Yet as Dollimore points out, perversion is inherent. There is no way to eliminate the source of perversion. Human beings never fit into the concepts they construct. To be human is to be perverse.

Defining Pedophilia

A study from the University of Oxford created these risk estimates of long-term outcomes following childhood sexual abuse.

Canadian psychologist and sexologist Michael Seto defines pedophilia as “a recurrent, intense sexual attraction to prepubescent children." Because of the intense stigma, the majority of people who feel sexual attraction to children do not seek treatment from a therapist. Many may not even know that therapeutic treatment is an option. Without seeking treatment, people attempt to suppress and hide their sexual feelings for children. This suppression frequently leads to people committing sexual crimes against children.

Exploring how to prevent child sexual abuse requires a deep consideration of how pedophilia begins in an individual. Using the lens of perversion, is it worth considering whether pedophilia is a sexual orientation? The purpose of asking this question is in no way to justify acting on pedophilic desires. The purpose of this question is to wonder, “Can [pedophilia] be tolerated when it is not accompanied by criminal actions?” Would the toleration of non-criminal pedophilia encourage more people to seek out therapeutic treatment? If more people receive therapeutic treatment, would fewer children suffer child sex abuse?

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Gregg Araki’s film adaptation of Scott Heim’s novel, Mysterious Skin, follows the parallel lives of its two main characters: Brian Lackey, played by Brady Corbet, and Neil McCormick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the summer of 1981, both Brian and Neil were molested by their baseball coach. From there, the characters’ lives diverge.

Gregg Araki on the set of Mysterious Skin.

Brian is unable to recall the memories of the abuse, immersing himself in the world of UFOs and alien abductions to explain his lost memories. Neil starts working as a prostitute in his hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas, and then moves to New York City. On Christmas Eve of 1991, Brian and Neil’s lives finally intersect once more, where they can finally give each other something no one else can.

Portrayal of Coach Heider

Compared to mainstream representations of child sex abuse, Mysterious Skin takes an entirely different approach to explore the devastating realities of this abuse. Rather than being the focus of the story, Brian and Neil’s abuser, Coach Heider, appears only briefly throughout the film. The moments when Coach is on screen are through Neil’s eyes: “Desire sledgehammered me." The film purposefully avoids caricaturizing Coach as a disgusting creep. The actor who portrays Coach, Bill Sage, is a survivor of child sex abuse. Sage describes his desire to play this character as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing…‘it was necessary to show how normal abusers can appear.’”

Neil McCormick and Desire

In Neil’s relationship with Coach, Araki directly confronts the viewer with an eight-year-old’s sexual desire. For the mainstream imagination, it is almost inconceivable that a child might somewhat willingly go along with sexual abuse. Western society views childhood as an idyllic stage in human development, devoid of sexual experience or expression. It is far more convenient to ignore this uncomfortable truth than to confront the facts of life.

Children think about sex much earlier than adults would like them to. Because Neil’s desire for Coach is so intimately intertwined with the abuse he suffers, the long-term impacts become extremely difficult to disentangle. Coach gives Neil five dollars every time he abuses Neil. For Neil, this monetary transaction becomes a key part of his sexuality. Gordon-Levitt’s performance painfully reveals the complex damage of his summer with Coach:

“I was his prize. I was his one true love."

At fifteen, Neil begins soliciting for sex in Hutchinson. He hangs around Carey Park, scrawling a message on a park bathroom stall advertising his services. Neil finally gets to leave Kansas and arrives in New York City to reunite with his childhood friend, Wendy Peterson, played by Michelle Trachtenberg. In New York City, he continues working as a prostitute. Wendy appeals to Neil, “Maybe you should try to find some other, safer way to make money."  Neil desperately desires to replicate the relationship he had with Coach. The “one true love” from his childhood becomes like an unattainable high he cannot help but chase. Neil's fascination and infatuation with sex leads to him damaging his relationships with the people around him.

Brian Lackey and Memory

On the flipside, Brian is an unwilling participant in the sexual acts Coach forces him into. Another character of Mysterious Skin, Eric Preston, played by Jeffrey Licon, describes “his vibe [as] kind of weirdly asexual." The opening narration of the film is Brian recounting the moments after Coach abuses him:

“Five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours lost. Gone without a trace."

After seeing a UFO with his mother and sister, Brian becomes convinced the disappearance of those five hours is connected to an alien abduction. The scenes of Brian’s alien abduction feature a distinct blue light, later revealed to be the light from Coach's front porch.

The gray alien fingers caressing his face capture the invasive terror of Brian’s experience. An alien abduction has many of the features of a coercive sexual assault. There is an invasion of bodily autonomy, a lack of consent, and gaps in knowledge and comprehension. As Brian uncovers more of his lost memories, he realizes the answer to his missing five hours may be more sinister than an alien abduction.

Brian Lackey dreams of his supposed alien abduction.

Brian’s asexual vibe is an important contrast to Neil’s hypersexuality. The effects of the abuse Brian survives essentially rob him of his sexuality. Through his investigation of his potential alien abductions, Brian meets a woman named Avalyn Friesen, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub. Avalyn attempts to initiate a sexual encounter with Brian, but quickly runs into a barrier. In the novel, Brian recalls

"The secret to the reason I’d never approached anything remotely resembling sex: it would take me back to something I didn’t want, a memory that had hovered for years, hidden, in my head. Her hand clamped around me, one finger gingerly tracing a line up my penis, stopping at the tip. I felt as though a part of me were vanishing.”

Contextualizing the Setting of Mysterious Skin

President Ronald Reagan (left) shaking hands with conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (right). (21 Mar. 1983)

Like any other film, the physical and temporal setting of Mysterious Skin is worth investigating. Both Scott Heim and Gregg Araki place great importance on the timespan of the events in the story: 1981-1991. With rising American military dominance around the world under the Reagan and Bush presidencies, a “mass cultural regime focusing on xenophobic and paranormal threats to the US” quickly captured the mainstream consciousness. Rising social conservative movements steered this mass cultural regime toward a politics of morality.

For a long time in American history, dominating beliefs about sexuality enforced a cultural status quo. With the expansion of both “heterosexual and LGBT styles of sexual practice aspiration”, social conservatives blamed the chaotic complications of a collapsing economic system on cultural liberalization. For example, blaming the economic struggles of Black Americans on the disintegration of a heterosexual, monogamous parental structure.

HIV/AIDS

The emergence of morality politics and preoccupation with the family structure coincides with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. With the disease mainly impacting homosexual men, social conservatives saw “AIDS [as] the result of the permissive society." Governments across the Western world slow-walked efforts to combat the epidemic.

Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) runs past two posters from the Silence=Death Project in New York City.

In Mysterious Skin, the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is an important backdrop to Neil’s story. One of Neil’s customers reveals his naked body, covered in brown skin lesions resulting from AIDS. This man requests non-sexual services from Neil:

“Don’t be worried. This is going to be the safest encounter you ever had."

Yet, the experience rattles Neil, finally driving him to get a normal job at a sandwich shop. While Neil is still in Hutchinson, he has an encounter with a snack supplier named Charlie, played by Richard Riehle, from out of town. Charlie tells Neil,

“I know what you were thinking. That wasn’t safe. But we’re in Kansas, thank God, not some big city full of diseases. Plus, you’re only a kid.”

Social biases about HIV/AIDS greatly hinder the battle against the disease. According to UNAIDS, HIV/AIDS has killed 44.1 million people since the start of the epidemic. During the late twentieth century, a significant amount of work fell onto grassroots organizations because governments were unwilling to step up. The concept of safe sex originates in activism and organization during the 1980s. The benefits of viewing sexual activity through the lens of safe sex reach beyond the gay community, promoting greater sexual liberation.

Metronormativity

Through Charlie, the film highlights the misconception that HIV/AIDS is only a problem in big cities. This misconception exemplifies the concept of metronormativity, coined by Jack Halberstam in In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. The term describes the societal bias that associates queerness with urban life. This bias erases the lives of queer people across North America: “Queer social histories are not only urban, coastal, and metropolitan but also Midwestern and southern, rural and small town” When Brian Lackey learns of Neil’s way of making money in Hutchinson from Eric, he is surprised:

“I’d thought only women could work as prostitutes; thought it only happened in the largest cities. The idea of Neil-as-prostitute seemed like a feature from the sensationalist TV programs my mother adored.”

Challenging the Culture Regime

Mysterious Skin is a terribly beautiful film. Gregg Araki’s delicate editing captures the visceral experience of child sex abuse, without harming the child actors in the process. Given the intense themes, many sought to censor Mysterious Skin upon its release. The Australian Attorney-General attempted to ban the film in 2005. Australian film critic Margaret Pomeranz defended the film, saying,

Neil finally reveals the truth to Brian.

“People who do indulge in crimes like that, if they saw this film they would understand the damage they do."

Depicting pedophiles as vicious creeps in the media fuels the stigma of seeking help, rather than finding a way to solve the problem of child sex abuse. Physically assaulting people for views online cannot be the answer. The predator-hunters’ vigilante justice is a symptom of a much larger problem. Finding ways to speak more frankly about this serious issue is integral to both ending child sex abuse and creating a more sexually liberated world. As the HIV/AIDS activism of the 1980s demonstrates, finding solutions to problems that may not immediately impact every demographic can help all of humanity. Hiding from uncomfortable truths about human sexuality is not a solution to solving the problems those truths create. Suppression is not a permanent solution for anyone, and this crisis demands action now.

Sexual crimes against children predominantly go unreported, “up to 30 times higher than those included in police crime statistics." With a culture so petrified by sex, it is no wonder children do not immediately recognize the harm done to them. Parents and adults need to step up and engage with children about sex in an age-appropriate manner. Without having the words to describe concepts like consent, children are vulnerable to abuse. Truly protecting children means giving them the knowledge to protect themselves when adults cannot be there to save them.

About the Author

As of December 2025, Marilynn Shea is a third-year student at the University of British Columbia. She completed three semesters at Pitzer College, and one semester abroad at Massey University, before transferring to UBC. She intends to graduate with a B.A. in Political Science in the spring of 2027.

Shea is an aspiring author, violinist, and avid reader. Some of her favorite writers include James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Her work was featured on the website TaiwaneseAmerican.org. She is an American living in Canada, and hopes one day to return home when the violent anti-trans political era is over.