Perversion the Social Relation

Exotic Rituals and Family Values 97airport scene. That voice thus facilitates the bleeding of what might bethe semi-private club into the official site of governmental surveillance,thereby linking to one another the various kinds of watching—official,pleasurable, obsessional—that take place throughout the film. 15In the film's first spoken words, the older agent waxes philosophical tothe rookie: rather than provide the trainee with a list of material signs ofguile to watch for, the seasoned agent raises an analytic question abouthistory, causality, the derivation of the present from the past. As a meansof determining who might be smuggling, he says, " You have to ask yourselfwhat brought the person to this point. . . . You have to convinceyourself that the person has something hidden that you have to find. Youcheck his bags but it's his face, his gestures that you're really watching."In this remark, the deceptiveness of appearances, and the questionof the past's determination of the present, become analytic challengesto the investigator, both the rookie agent and the film viewer. In fact,though the customs officers don't yet know it, the young man currentlyunder surveillance, exotic pet store owner Thomas (Don McKellar), is atthis moment smuggling rare birds' eggs, strapped to his torso in a mockpregnancy, into Canada. Thomas's examining his own face in a mirrorbehind which the young black customs officer observes him is the firstof many occasions on which characters who imagine themselves to beenjoying a private viewing of self are in fact being observed by another.In the next scene, an irritating young yuppie with whom Thomas hasshared a cab from the airport avoids paying his share of the fare by givingThomas some ballet tickets he's just learned he can't use anyway: it's anobviously uneven exchange, though the passive Thomas seems bemusedrather than resentful. At the moment that the yuppie gets out of the cabacross the street from a strip/dance club called Exotica,' we see a youngwoman, Christina (Mia Kirschner), entering the club, followed by ascene in which the club's DJ, Eric (Elias Koteas), lasciviously introducesanother dancer's act by promising that she will show the spectators "themysteries of her world." The scene then cuts to Thomas at home, unwrappingthe eggs from his body, exposing his own mystery. The followingseveral scenes cut back and forth between shots of Thomas arrivingat the ballet and picking up an attractive single man with his extra ticket,and Christina beginning her act at Exotica, dressed as a schoolgirl, whileFrancis (Bruce Greenwood), a morose-looking man in his forties, stares