The Paedophile and ‘I’

Abstract

The year 2004 saw the release of three separate American films which had a focus on paedophilia. The dominant cultural — and legal — response to any and all adult–child sexual relationships is one of intense condemnation. Unexpectedly, however, these films addressed this highly controversial topic in a manner that avoided sensationalism, while simultaneously exposing the complexities of the relationship between the deviant paedophile and the normal sexual self. This article offers an analysis of the differing representations of the paedophile and paedophilic relationships in The Woodsman, Birth and Mysterious Skin. Using a queer theoretical approach, I consider the extent to which these contemporary representations of an otherwise abhorrent sexual form challenge the assumption of and the desire for sexual normality for the viewing subject. In viewing representations of the paedophile, I may hope to see in ‘him’ what I desire to know to be alien to the self, but such a level of sexual comfort is denied me in these films. While none of the films can be said to promote paedophilia, they nevertheless all manage to challenge the distance assumed to exist between this deviant sexual other and the normal sexual self.