Andrew Denton: ‘The Boy’. What’s it about?

Germaine Greer: The Boy is the male person who is no longer a child, but not yet a man.

AD: Mm-hm. And what… You admire this form very greatly. What is it that you admire?

GG: Well, no, the Boy has a kind of beauty which is not accessible to females or to younger or older men. There is a moment in a boy’s life when he is transcendentally beautiful.

The most striking thing about Twilight: New Moon is its shockingly aggressive sexualisation of Taylor Lautner’s body. The filmmakers contrive to place Lautner (playing teen werewolf Jacob) in all sorts of Mills and Boon type situations that pay tribute to his taut, sculpted, adolescent body. Here, he is peeling his shirt off to wipe blood from the brow of Bella after she falls from her motorbike. There, he is caught topless in the rain with water dripping off his chiselled pectorals as he warns Bella to stay away from him. Here again, he is topless and crouched over Bella as he resuscitates her on the beach with waves crashing at their heels. The near-naked male form has of course been in plenty of previous mainstream films, but in New Moon the camera’s gaze is exclusively one of sexual desire, that element neither disavowed by the spectre of death as in 300 nor by humour as in Bruno. I suppose this is the reason that Lautner’s torso is such a shocking spectacle, as well as the fact that the torso in question is only seventeen years of age.

AD: You said in an interview with the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ a couple of years ago, “A woman of taste is a pederast — boys rather than men.”

GG: Yeah.

AD: What do you mean by that?

GG: Well, boys are beautiful, see, they’re not beardy and singlety.

(BOTH CHUCKLE)

AD: What are… What’s…?

GG: My favourite example of this, by the way, is Russell Crowe. When Russell Crowe was 18, he was the most winsome, lovely creature. Now he’s this sort of puffy, shambling, baggy, belligerent… He’s completely different. The charm has evaporated completely.

I saw New Moon with a female friend who spent a good proportion of the time peeking at Lautner’s adolescent splendour through her fingers, her pleasure accompanied by an overwhelming guilt. I myself have often felt that feeling of guilt that accompanies visual pleasure but sitting in the privacy of a darkened theatre, I was determined not to let guilt ruin my experience. But should I have felt guilty? I don’t think so, but a large portion of people seem to think so.

Nic Nunziata of CHUD wrote:

I hate Twilight pretty much as passionately as anything I’ve ever hated before…If you’re a lady and you’re under 21, good on ya. Enjoy what you built. Your dollars and zeal have led to a tonal shift in the cultural landscape. If you’re 35, I hope your holes seal up.

Meanwhile Gabe Toro of The Playlist described the film as “regressive, socially-damaging and all-around shameful”:

Worth noting is that the opener is more than TWICE that of “Twilight”’s mammoth first weekend, which means that, somehow, despite word getting out that these were seriously dangerous, creatively bankrupt and socially inhuman books and movies, the base expanded.

What do societal responses to New Moon reveal about what desires are permissible in mainstream culture? One issue centres around the gender divide: male heterosexual desire is normalised in female objectification, is even afforded the privileged status of Art in the ironic appreciation of exploitation cinema. But turn the tables and desire suddenly becomes “socially damaging” and “regressive”. Another issue centres around age divides: is it morally abhorrent for an adult to find pleasure in the spectacle of youth? The attitudes of Germaine Greer and the many middle-aged women with whom Twilight is very popular have been compared to pedophilia. But isn’t there a distinct difference? Isn’t visual pleasure innocent?

AD: There are those who say — have already said in print — that what you’re doing is creepy. It’s no different to an old man staring at a young girl and lusting after them.

GG: (CHUCKLES) Well, you can’t stop the old man staring at the young girl and lusting. What are you going to do — tell old men that they must be blindfold or something? I don’t think that’s particularly creepy as long as they understand that they’re not…they have no right to lay hands on that person. But you can’t stop them. How could you? I mean, the luminous figure of a beautiful young girl walking down the street and the old men sitting on the wall, leaning on their sticks. What are you going to say? “Look the other way, you dreadful old bastards”? What are you going to say? It’s part of the joy of life is admiring the beauty of things that are beautiful. What is important to me about the Boy is that once upon a time his beauty was understood and celebrated by people of both sexes. A boy was allowed to dress in very bright colours, he was allowed to show himself off in the street, he dyed his hair, he wore make-up, he wore a little cap tipped over his eye with a big feather in, he wore tight pants and cropped jackets and so on. And the girls looked down from behind their jalousie and talked about the best-looking boys.

Now, that’s still evident in rock culture, where a lot of it is just straight sexual display. Sex might happen as a result. But if you actually look at what happens with young women. What about the Hansons, you know? They were 8, 10 and 12 or something. Maybe they were 10, 12 and 14. They were they were very young-looking boys and the girls were crazy about them. So it’s this remarkable period in a boy’s life which is replete with tragedy and glory. If he’s a mathematician, he’ll be best when he’s 16.

The answer is yes and no. From one perspective Looking is one of the most basic pleasures we have, it hurts no one and is a freedom that should be fought for. But from another perspective, images do drive an economy that trades on exploitation, be it body fascism or age fascism. New Moon is certainly guilty of this: as Emma Watson was enhanced by photoshop in the promos for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Lautner was forced to undergo extensive weight-training to avoid being replaced in his role as Jacob. But New Moon is also not wholly without interest in this regard: New Moon offers as a legitimate alternative to Jacob’s werewolf, Edward’s vampire. That is, the Twilight fan is invited to find pleasure in the Abercrombie-ready body of Taylor Lautner and the body of Robert Pattinson which more resembles that of a malnourished drug addict. (That Pattinson was required to have a sixpack painted on him does show there are limits to the democracy of New Moon).

But when it comes to visual pleasure I, for the most part, am siding with Germaine. Don’t sweat it, own it. And certainly with New Moon, appreciating the beefcake on display is important because in almost all other respects New Moon is a terrible film: Chris Weitz’s hacky camera trickery destroys the endearingly authentic teenage rhythms, moody atmosphere and sense of place that Catherine Hardwicke brought to the first Twilight film. Bella’s highschool friends become background props. Bella’s dad, who in the first Twilight was an interesting stoic but loving figure, in New Moon becomes a run-of-the-mill sitcom father. Sometimes you need to find pleasure where you can find it and it’s no point being ashamed of it.

Above: A scene from Death in Venice featuring Björn Andrésen described by director Luchino Visconti as “the most beautiful boy in the world” and the model on the cover of Germaine Greer’s art monograph “Boy”.

Below: Titian’s 1542 portrait of the twelve-year-old Ranuccio Farnese.

Interview excerpts are from a 2003 episode of Enough Rope. (Whole transcript is available here.)

[Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and is currently based in Tokyo.]