Looking Beneath the Skin

Since the New Queer Cinema explosion, the style and content of Gregg Araki's films have changed in seemingly drastic ways. However, my paper argues that his films, although more mature, are just as radical today as they were in the beginning of his career. Mysterious Skin is a controversial film that looks at early childhood sexuality and its relationship to teenage sexual development. I argue that Araki looks at contemporary queer life in all its complexity and demonstrates that both sexuality and sexual development are far too complicated to quantify and categorize.