Fuck it, I'mma do a close reading of just twenty seconds of the film They/Them.
These are the first two thing we see after the title card anounces the film has properly begun.
The Fourteen Campers
Four of the Six Camp Councilors
Let's start with just these two shots which in combination are about seven seconds long. One of the things the film's gonna have themes about is heirarchy, and these shot establish the existing heirarchy between the campers and councilors, but the heirarchies within each of the two groups.
Starting with the campers, there are fourteen campers in the line up, and about half of them are actually significant characters with roles in the story rather than extras filling up space in the camp rooster. You can't really guess which ones because there's almost no visual hierarchy between them. They are all relatively equally framed. Let's draw some circles and you'll see what I mean. Which group do you think is the group of important characters?
1
2
If you answered 1, you're incorrect. If you answered 2, you're also incorrect. For both, I circled a mix of important and unimportant characters, but they both look like a reasonable cast. Even the two entirely in the backgound that I didn't circle at all are visually distinct enough to be darkhorse candidates for important characters after considering their obscurred so heavily by their position in the shot. The campers aren't differenciated here: They are standing on equal footing with each other.
Now, contrast that with the councilors.
The first thing you might notice is that the councilors take up a lot less space individually and as a group because there are fewer of them. But, look at the building their on, and how massive the film makes it out to be, taking up two thirds of the frame and even then, spilling out. even if their are fewer councilers, and they collectively take up less space, the building their standing on, which can be understood to represent their institutional power as the camp's councilors dwarfs the scale of the campers who more than triple their number. You immediately get the sense that the staff is the group holding all the power in the relationship.
And then within the staff, there's an existing heirarchy:
The only person standing is the man, who stands at the most central and highest position taking up twice as much space. The three women each sit on the steps in ascending seniority (The woman on the porch is the most senior, and the woman sat on the lowest step is brand new that year.) You can very clearly get an impression of the power dynamics at play in the group through proxemics which will be reenforced throughout the film.
But that's not the end of it. They're positioned around the outside of a large double door: There's room for two people between the left two councilors and the right two. The composition has left enough room for two whole people there.
Enter the next shot.
Cut to black. The center of the black opens up, and slowly and confidently one man walks out from behind those double doors, and for the first time in the scene, the camera follows him down the steps toward the campers.
This Man is Owen.
I don't need to tell you he's in charge.
(#very here for this kind of analysis because im garbage at it and find it fascinating) Good news for @bostonbakeddeans: I still have more to talk about these twenty seconds.
Now that I've talked about how this scene establishes the heirarchy which the rest of the film will be working from, lets talk the next neat thing I noticed, while writing the first part of analysis: let's talk about the value.
Here are the first two images again in gray scale.
The Campers
The Councilors
Look at how light is treated between the two images and how that creates a nifty little implication that will continue throughout the rest of the film.
- The brightest areas in the campers' shot is the road behind them that they came in on. The darkest areas are the baggage the campers have brought with them. (The apparent goth on the right is there too, but you've gotta have a goth in a queer film and I'd sooner forgive the film for putting a snag in my spaghetti sweater of a close reading by including a queer goth than I would forgive it for having none queer goths.)
- The brightest areas in the councilors' shot are their clothing. The darkest areas are the inside and under the cabin, followed by the shadows of the cabin eeves.
Taken together this primes the audience, very subtlely, for the idea that the campers are leaving the relative safety of the road (which plays with the opening scene in interesting ways) by coming into the camp, and the idea that underneath the bright polished exterior of the camp, some darker nature simultaniously lurks and looms engulfing the camp entirely.
And as Owen opens the doors and the darkness he emerges from frames the campers in a narrow claustraphobic shot, the audience is primed to understand that while all might seem fine, the darkness has already unhinged its jaw and is poised to swallow the campers whole, and Owen is the focal point at the heart of that hungry darkness. As the narrative unfolds this idea which these twenty seconds establish will be revisited and reenforced multiple times.
But, I've got one more image to show you before I let go of values. The image of Owen standing in front of the other councilors.
Do you see it? I wouldn't blame you if you don't, because it's not a trope into and of itself but a clever inversion of the trope. Forgive me readers, for I must post christian iconography to make my point.
Do you see it now? The parallel between Owen and Jesus on the cross? Owen's arms outstretched like a proud unbattered jesus, but his head crowned not in light but in darkness, like an anti-halo. I've used this motif once in my art (only cause I just discovered recently™ it and I don't art very often.)
My use of the anti-halo here depicts Let Me Solo Her as the figure of my None of Fucks Tarot card. I stumbled upon it initially but then decided that it was so cool and I revised it to make more pronounced. Other artists who inspired me had depicted Let Me Solo Her with the saintly halo of classic christian iconography, and I didn't jive with that interpretation of the character (who I consider seporate from the player that performs him, I ain't sayin' any of the following about the player: he's a very kind person that's actually helping people for helping peoples' sake.)
Let Me Solo Her was to me, a wretched sinner of pride, so wrapped in his past glory of defeating Malena that he became obsessed with reliving that glory and found himself compelled to travel to other worlds when beckoned for aid, not to help those who summoned him, but for the the diminishing yet still addictive thrill of victory. The anti-halo signifies that whatever kindness or sainthood you perceive in his actions are imagined, as he considers you less than a means to an end: He takes such sinful delight in slaughtering of the goddess of rot that he'd even deign to help so weak and worthless a wretch as you. He is no saint, he is no man of god. He is thoroughly and completely a hedonist endulging vice.
Now, I can't tell you whether John Logan et al had any of this in mind when they framed this shot the way they did, and I know they knew not of Let Me Solo Her; and honestly, I did pick a frame which strongly emphasized the parallel, and other frames in the shot and scene don't maintain that compostion. It'd very easily be a possibility acknoweledged that I'm simply injecting symbolism from my personal vocabulary into this reading of a film that can't really support it...
If the rest of the film didn't back me up. This goes a bit beyond the twenty seconds I'm analysing but while his opening monologue is full lies, half-truths, omissions, and all sorts of manipulative bushshit, he utters at least one complete and total truth.
"I can't make you straight. I don't wanna make you straight. Gay people are a-okay with me. If you're happy the way you are, then more power to you. And I know what you're thinking: you hear the words 'gay conversion camp' and you start to imagine all kinds of homophobic bullshit: that is, not what we're about here. "And let me tell you another thing: God? God doesn't hate you either. And any sonvabitch that tells you otherwise is a bigotted asshole; and that is officially the last time that you're gonna hear about the man upstairs. I promise you. "But I'm guessing that some of you are here, because in some way, you're not happy. Maybe you don't fit in, people make fun of you; Maybe you want to find some new kind of peace, a new way of thinking about yourself. Well, you give us this week and we might be able to help. "And if not, just enjoy the sunshine and work on your tan."
Any then, you don't hear about god for the rest of the film. Owen is not a man of god. He's at the center of the darkness running a conversion camp because he enjoys hurting vulnerable people and the queer campers that come to his camp make for easy targets; and every other councilor? Well, they're there to hurt people too.
Owen is not a man of god; even if that anti-halo wasn't intentional composed, it remains poignant. The values in this scene were expertly choosen to establish the tone of the story and the mood of the setting, and align audience to both. It's absolutely masterful work.
And that's all I can say about it to anyone that doesn't want spoiled over any of the story's plot's major twists. I have about two paragraph-worths' more to say, but I can't talk about it without giving away one of those major plot points. It's not a point that solves the story or anything, but it's still pretty important; and, while I firmly believe that Story Spoilers don't Spoil Stories, I also believe informed consent is the most important aspect about whether findings in that linked study will hold true anecdotally when spoiling anything larger than a plot bunny, so I'm going put those two paragraphs-worth of analysis under a read more for those who've watched the film, those that don't mind being spoiled, and those that want to be spoiled.
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THIS READ MORE: DO NOT CLICK THROUGH IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THEY/THEM MOSTLY UNSPOILED.
I feel I must again emphasize that this is an analysis of a mere
Twenty Seconds
of the film. Before this reblog, I've typed more than 2,000 words here analysizing those twenty seconds including alt text and excluding quotes. That's 100 words of analysis per second. And sure, I tend to wax poetic, but I was relatively direct and to the point in this this post. Even if twice so brief-tongued a person as me provided the analysis covering the same points, they'd get 50-65 words a second. The film is so fucking dense with analysizable details while still being very enjoyable as popcorn fodder.
Please. Watch this movie. Please, watch They/Them. It's so fucking amazing.
Guess who's not done talking about this movie and has another post coming to discuss it, as soon as I finish rewatching the film with a specific aspect to read for in mind? That's right, it's this fucker who's brain has affixed itself to this film and won't fucking let go.
This story has meat on it's bones and I'm not gonna be done chewing on it until I've picked the bones clean and sucked their marrow dry.
















