Written By: Théa Sebaaly
Edited By: Sofia Tantalo
Photo courtesy of Walter Popp, image licensed by Unsplash
Jane Schoenbrun’s most recent film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a work of meta-cinema that follows two interwoven timelines: the storyline of a fictional 80s slasher franchise, the titular Camp Miasma, and the making of its modern “reboot”. The older slasher delves into gender non-conformity, exclusion, and revenge, centring the character of Little Death played by Jack Haven. Conversely, the events of the ostensible “reality” in this Jane Schoenbrun work explore themes of repression, curiosity, and, ultimately, lesbian sexual liberation. In this movie, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) is an older actress and behaves as a sort of psychopomp who guides Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder), a younger filmmaker who admires her, through both her production of the film reboot and her first orgasm (or little death, attained through introspection and personified by Jack Haven’s character of the same name). Kris reveres Billy as an erotic mentor, keen on learning her ways. This pairing’s exploratory journey thus courses through intellectual, creative, and sexual paths. The atmosphere of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma borrows from Greek Tragedy the miasma associated with unresolved or unavenged deaths in order to reflect spiritual pollution resulting from queer repression, and its dissolution through sexual self-exploration.
A psychopomp, from the Greek ψυχοπομπος, is a spirit guide whose role is to lead the recently deceased through the afterlife, such as Hermes or Charon.
Some examples of Greek tragedians employing miasma in relation to contagion and the dead are The Oedipus cycles by Sophocles, and the trilogy of the Oresteia.
Μιασμα: Attic Greek for Miasma; spiritual pollution.
Little Death: The character, their death, and their return as a Fury.
The film introduces the audience to the herald in charge of clearing out miasma in its universe: Little Death. This character is introduced as gender non-conforming and maligned by the campers and counsellors alike, to the point of being drowned and having their death covered up by the entire community. They are physically pushed out of the realm of the living, and sequestered as a ghost at the bottom of the lake, keeping their perceived (and wrongfully imposed) queer miasma away from the other campers. Sophie Mayer addresses pollution in relation to marginalized groups in film, in her article on framing pollution in dialogue with desire: “Environmental pollution is paralleled in each film with what could be called human “pollution”: the presence of marginalized human characters such as economic migrants, indigenous people, and lesbian and gay people.” (Mayer, 2023, 145) This highlights a parallel between the assumed pollution present in Greek Tragedy, which is supposedly kept at bay through enacting burials on the outskirts of the polis, and the marginalization and sidelining of queer and trans individuals from the general populace. While Little Death is rejected out of fear of the miasma that their queerness might exude, their killers and those complicit in their wrongful death are the true carriers of spiritual pollution, who must then be cleansed. As do the Furies in Greek Tragedy, Little Death takes their vengeance through blood and death. In the same vein, Margaret Visser writes in her article Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens, “The blood which the Erinyes are pursuing which undeniably provokes their arrival on stage, is as substantial as the Erinyes themselves: if there were no blood, there would be no Erinyes.” (Visser,1984, 193) In this passage, the Erinyes, or Furies, are beings prevalent in Greek Tragedies, meant to clear the miasma by enacting vengeance upon those who have tipped the scale of justice through murder. Visser stresses the inseparable nature of the vengeance-seeking Furies and the blood they are drawn to. Similarly, Little Death’s vengeance inflicted upon the camp counsellors who allowed and covered up their drowning in the first Camp Miasma movie, as well as their later emergence from the lake and butchering of the characters present around the camp, are acts that ultimately center and produce bloodshed, in almost comical quantities. While the spiritual pollution clears, as the vengeance takes place, the snow melts away, and warmer weather is restored around the camp grounds. This change in scenery reinforces the idea that Little Death is a Fury and purifier of miasma rather than its bearer.
Πολις: city-states in Greek Tragedy.
Such as Aeschylus’ Emenides, the third play in the Oresteia trilogy.
Little Death: The experience, the atmosphere, and the landscape.
Furthermore, the buildup towards and experience of Kris’s “little death” manifests through a gradual evolution of the climate and atmosphere. While Billy begins as a recluse in the physical and social sense, Kris is more closed off sexually and emotionally. Moreover, the weather around the campgrounds reflects this “stuckness” through the fog and snow. On one hand, the young filmmaker struggles to see the road ahead and traverse it, thus is left with no other choice but to leave her car and inhibitions behind. This clouded vision and physical obstruction reflect her inability to get out of her head and into her body to experience pleasure. On the other hand, Billy’s social inertia is enforced by her reclusivity within the boundaries of her home, in the camp away from the public. In this sense, Mayer also argues that certain “films un-screen nature, through a filmic relocation of the human in the environment, returning to a more intricate, interdependent and diverse ecology.” (Mayer, 2023, 148) Both the actress and filmmaker are relocated to an abandoned sleepaway camp surrounded by a forest and a lake, taking them out of the urban space and into an independent natural environment. While Billy does mention going out to buy food in the first third of the film, the audience only sees her indoors for the time being. Likewise, this isolation is comparable to the miasma ostensibly associated with the dead in Greek Tragedy, especially in relation to the custom of burying them outside the bounds of the city in order to avoid contagious spiritual pollution.
In the second third of the film, Kris begins to open up about her connection to Camp Miasma and its role in her sexual awakening, after being unable to answer Billy’s questions about herself in detail. The audience now also gets a glimpse of Billy in the outside world as she smokes with her new protégée, and while both are out in the cold, they confront this blockage and face it head-on, beginning a deeper and more personal conversation, getting past sanitized conversation, and to sexual openness. Their attempt at sex is obstructed when Kris is unable to reach an orgasm due to the lingering mental block she has been carrying. While they have both advanced towards liberation, they are still unable to reach the full potential of their freedom. The filmmaker spends the night at her new mentor’s place and grapples with her repression.
In the final third of the film, under Billy’s mentorship, Kris begins to sense Little Death’s hunger and their approaching steps. They both leave the bounds of the home together and walk towards the lake in search of Little Death, and as the latter emerges from the lake, the snow and ice over and around the lake melt away to reveal green grass and weather fit for a night at a summer camp. The colours of the landscape are brighter, and the atmosphere is lighter, no longer weighed down by fog, humidity, and snowfall. The obstruction that impeded the young filmmaker’s movement is now undone; her car is no longer trapped, and she can finally leave the camp. Nonetheless, she chooses to stay in order to follow through on her introspective journey. The couple is separated, and Kris watches some of their colleagues, acquaintances, and their partner be butchered by Little Death. Then, covered in blood and partially clad, Kris runs back towards the house and finds Billy in her bedroom, waiting for her. Finally ready to reach the great release, Kris embraces her dark fantasies and examines both the fear and pleasure that they entail. She lies down with the woman she so deeply desires, and lets Little Death “in” by allowing herself to be impaled. As their blood bursts out, pools, and splatters, she experiences her first (lesbian) orgasm in an intimate act of radical self-acceptance. Red blood mist fills the atmosphere, as pain, passion, and pleasure culminate in death. In this context, bloodshed and catharsis are inextricably tied.
Καθαρσις in Attic Greek.
Moreover, as Visser points out, blood is directly tied to the role of the Fury “the Erinys was born. She lusted for blood, pursued blood and was herself blood-spattered as a sign of her duty and her sphere of operations and also of her method of punishing transgressions involving bloodshed. The Furies were pollution fiends and also Poinai (Vengeances).” (Visser, 1984, 201) The value of the blood imagery exists in contrast with the prevalence of water in this film. Blood clears miasma, while water carries it. Little Death is a Fury that enacts their duty through blood. This release is followed by a revival. The lesbian couple then leaves the confines of the domestic space, now freed from the supposed miasma previously lingering around them. They sift through the convenience store, still covered in the traces of the previous night, drenched in blood and wearing the same nightwear. There, they display public affection and encounter the cashier who compliments them. This scene illuminates Billy’s liberation as she is finally seen interacting with the outside world, and Kris’s newfound freedom as she goes from being awkward and anxious to confident and unrestrained. Little death, as a euphemism for the orgasm and the personification of sexual liberation, creates room for unbridled pleasure and its intersection with fear and alternate forms of desire. Billy and Kris’s survival of their little death thus discredits the comparison of their queerness to the contagious miasma emanating from the dead in Greek Tragedy.
To conclude, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a film that deliberately points its viewers to themes of vengeance in relation to sexual liberation, through references to Greek Tragedy. In this work, all three of the central characters partake in a liberatory transformation through death. This path is reflected in the atmosphere of the movie, specifically through natural substances invading the screen and transgressing upon the characters, such as water (in the form of mist and snow) and blood. The tragedy of this film is flipped when the viewers are faced with catharsis, surging from queer deliverance. Nevertheless, this leaves the question: is such catharsis enough to balance the queer suffering present throughout this story, or do pain and injustice continue to drive the narrative?
Bibliography:
- Sophie Mayer. “Dirty Pictures: Framing Pollution and Desire in ‘New New Queer Cinema.’” In Screening Nature: Cinema beyond the Human, NED-New edition, 1, edited by Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway. Berghahn Books, 2023. P. 145–161. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.15238521.13.
- Margaret Visser. “Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens.” Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 2, 1984: 193–206. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709287.
