I read a preview review of The Kite Runner which pointed out that while certain scenes in the book are horrifying enough, to see them on the screen it was impossible for the reviewer not to worry about the actors, the children, who acted them out. I think for this reason I might need to skip both movies.

I think I learned all I need to know about child molestation reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

There was child molestation in that? I think I read it in high school. Maybe. Or maybe the only Angelou we read was All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. For which we made a totally awesome movie trailer that I am still proud of, even though I don't have a copy of it.

I don't know the story of The Kite Runner, but I know the kids and their families had to be relocated by the movie company because they feared for their safety after the movie came out. Scary shit.

There is a terrible, terrifying honesty at the core of Mysterious Skin that will make it chillingly recognizable to some viewers and important to recognize for others.

I agree that the honesty, terrible and terrifying, is there, but why is it(and what is) important for me to recognize? I'm back to "pedophilia, bad, check". Unless this is visited upon my own life or the life of any child I know, why is it important for me to endure this overly visceral experience? I would love for real people in real life to be spared this horror, so why should I want vicariously witness this in my "entertainment"? /not rhetorical

to see them on the screen it was impossible for the reviewer not to worry about the actors, the children, who acted them out.

I was thinking this too with MS, and not just the child actors, but even the adults. At least, as it seems, the kids didn't know what they were doing.

I had thought for the longest time that the reason we could never really see Adam Baldwin's face in Radio Flyer was because he had chosen to not be filmed shoulders up because he didn't want to be associated with child abuse.

You don't like the movie. I do like the movie. That's okay. I just think it's a really important film, which is why I guess I keep talking about it. But I've said my piece.

I could be way offbase here, but I think honest--if brutal--portrayals of pedophilia could be validating for victims of that abuse. To have people made intimately and horrifiedly aware of the enormity of what was done to them, the single factor that shaped and influenced their entire lives may help them feel able to rejoin the human mainstream, if they feel more fully understood.

I could be pulling this out of my hat, but I've always felt that movies about catastrophes, whether global or private, make us more human, help put us in each others' shoes for the space of suspended disbelief, and foster tolerance and understanding.

It's when filmmaking veers into voyeurism and exploitation that I complain about "too visceral" or "too detailed, too real." Honesty is necessary, exploitation is repellent. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who is occasionally uncertain where that line lies.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is occasionally uncertain where that line lies.

Yes. For instance I would tell everyone that Pan's Labyrinth is an amazing film and that they should definitely see it but while I was watching it I found myself saying, "Wow, that character is really evil. Jeebus he's evil! OK I GET IT! STOP! STOP!"

I tend to prefer art that makes me uncomfortable, so this discussion of Mysterious Skin has made me want to see it. Plus, Joseph Gordon Levitt.

My take on Mysterious Skin is that it's a Gregg Araki film. It's designed to be shocking and crude and confrontational and unhappy. That said, it's the most professional, coherent, and pretty Gregg Araki film I've ever seen, so.

One of the things I like about it is that its premise is to debunk the stories people invent to make their lives have a narrative. Both of the protagonists are mired in their own self-fictions (one more obviously fiction than the other), and the film empathizes with the impulse to fiction, even as it strips those fictions away one by one.