Junior's Gaze and the Need to be Seen

Pelo Malo (2014) was an absolutely devastating film to watch. It shows such a visceral rejection and stripping of identity of a queer child by the one who is supposed to love him the most, his mother. Something that really struck me throughout the film was the power of Junior's gaze. The way he constantly looks at his mother, at Mario, at himself in the mirror, his gaze is an element that runs throughout the film. 

I think looking and people watching is definitely common among children; many kids like to observe the world around them, looking for examples of how to be a person in the world. Junior's gaze definitely has a bit of this, especially with the way he watches Mario the shopkeeper, whom he clearly looks up to and wants to emulate. But he also uses his gaze as a way to get a reaction out of his mother when he is lacking any kind of loving attention from her, and also uses it as a tool to express his own love and affection towards her, that he so desperately wants to receive in return. It's especially heartbreaking for him when he watches the love the mother gives to the baby, playing, laughing, and touching him. There were a number of scenes where this happens, and usually Junior is watching from another room, through a doorframe or a crack in the door, which creates this sense of physical separation from his mother that reflects the emotional distance between them. I think that this treatment and neglect that Junior gets from his mom could definitely contribute to his obsession with "fixing" his hair, trying so hard to make it straight in an attempt to make himself fit within the racial societal norm, perhaps so that his mom will love him as she does his lighter skinned brother. Though, as we know, this only worsens her disappointment in him as she begins to think he is gay, which adds sexual deviance to the racial deviance perceived by his mom.

The mom's rejection of Junior is made extremely evident by her unwillingness to return his gaze. It often seems that she is viscerally uncomfortable with his presence, and particularly with his gaze on her. In one scene, when Junior is standing on the chairs in their living room, he yells "look at me!!" several times, and still she refuses to look at him. I interpreted this as her being unwilling and unable to truly "see" him for who he is, for who he wants to be. It seems, to both Junior and the audience, that she would much rather he just not exist. The moments where she does finally return and hold his gaze are the most disturbing and heart-wrenching of the film, when she purposefully makes eye contact with him through the crack in the door when having sex with a man, and then when Junior buzzes his hair off. In the scene where Junior shaves his head, she stares back at him in a very tired and cold way, while he stares at her somewhat defiantly, almost like this is his last attempt at being seen by his mother. I wonder if the time he spends gazing at himself, mostly his hair, in the mirror, is a way of reflecting back the gaze that he wants to receive from his mom, but never does. Or maybe he adopts instead the critical eye of his mom, and turns that back onto himself. 

There is one last thing I wanted to talk about, and that is the very last scene of the film, where Junior stands with the other school children, who are all singing a song, except for Junior, who stands with his shaved head, unmoving, silent, and rather zombie-like. It reminded me of the zombie scene in the short film Savage, where the children had all been forcefully assimilated and stripped of their identities. And I think that is exactly what happened to Junior, he has also been zombified, stripped of his personality, individuality, and queerness, and forced to assimilate into the acceptable 'norm' before he even really had a chance to grow and develop into his self.