THE SKIN I’M IN is my first solo feature documentary. It’s the latest in a series of unflinching autobiographical works I call “embodied media,” in which I use my personal stories and my body to challenge cultural assumptions and norms around sex, gender, and sexuality and to break the often-strangling silence of shame.
Autobiography has long been an act of privilege for powerful or famous men with access to the means to document and distribute their stories—stories structured around superlative acts and accomplishments, not shame, doubt, or failure.
In our social media moment we’re all suddenly autobiographers and media makers. Opining, ranting, confessing, and exposing have become daily rituals. So why do so many of us still feel so alone, unheard, ashamed, and ambivalent? I want to restore a sense of political urgency, critical reflection, artistry and play to acts of digital autobiography.
- Is digital democracy a pipe dream or a real possibility?
- Are you a part of any online communities that are using the tools of our moment (YouTube, Facebook, WordPress, etc.) to start real conversations or exchanges about culture and identity? Share them with us.
Do you feel documentary can really incite or foster social change? If so, share some examples with us.
Share your thoughts and comments in the “making media” blog feed below, and I’ll keep posting mine as well.
First of all I am really impressed by the opennes and as far as I can imagine, the brutal honesty concerning your past in this movie. I also liked the idea of showing the audience how the tattoo is brought into being.
But I am posting my comment here, because I realized when watching the movie, that I am (of course?) judge people in the context of my experiences. I never really questioned myself, except for my teenage years,.. and never met knowingly a person with such a stirring past. Therefore I expect people to be in peace with themselves and maybe have been ignorant against problems or people and their thoughts. I am sure the movie openend my mind and gave me the opportunity to rethink my relationship to other people.
I thank Broderick for that chance!
Thanks Esther. I often wonder how much of my personal struggles are/were chemical/genetic and how much are cultural. I think American culture’s attitudes about body and sexuality have had a lot to do with my senses of dis-ease and alienation. It’s good to get a German perspective, and I’ll be curious, as comments on here progress, to get more global insights.
I was thinking about that too, but I never considered you as a “real” american, because of your tme in Asia and your berlin years, but maybe California has more influence on or mind as I would like to admit. I just remebered that I started to be more critically with my body and became even more vain there than I have ever been in Germany. Can Hollywood has so much influence on our self-perception?
Thanks first of all for letting us screen the movie! I didn’t necessarily start thinking about the way media can support real conversation at first. More about how they reproduce normative images again and again. We take them in and don’t question them. And then I realized how you do the exact opposite by juxtaposing all those identities and ideas of self. I find it very courageous that you made this movie about yourself!! Also, I agree with Esther that assuming people are at peace with themselves doesn’t help in getting to know them as individuals. I also really liked the storyline with the
(comment function gives me trouble)…with the tattoo. It frames the movie nicely. And it really is a journey that you depict there as well.
Ulrike, thanks for being a part of the very first screening party–in Berlin no less, which is obviously a special place for me and for the film. I’m glad the ideas you expressed are coming through and that the tattooing journey works for you as a thread to weave together my reminiscences and my cultural questioning.