Desire in Tunisia

What I liked most about this film is that this boy’s struggle is universal. We all at one point or another want to be acknowledged as an adult and take on new responsibilities but at the same time, we wish to hold on to that bit of childhood that allows us to live carefree while there are minimal expectations of us. The largest struggle during this time of life is curiosity. At the age of 12 or 13, we start learning about what desire is. We start to realize the things we know nothing of and have a great desire to learn about the adult world, ourselves and the opposite sex.

In relation to the producer of this film, this is the first time I have heard of desire being linked to nostalgia for something that has been lost. It makes perfect sense and I wish I had thought of it before but I think it might be one of the strongest forms of desires because it can rarely be fulfilled. You can’t just reach back into the past to grab or relive what used to be so it becomes a lifelong desire and nostalgia for the past, in this case, for a Mediterranean society before the police state existed.

When I think of prohibition of incest, I think of prohibition of desire. It’s human nature to desire others and it’s also human nature to act on our desires. To prohibit sex outside of marriage, while I understand the need for it, seems destined to failure. It’s very difficult to control peoples’ desires and I don’t think we should. But then again, we shouldn’t use sex as a weapon or a method of revenge either.

I thought it was so interesting that there is technically room for only one man in the country who is the president and all other men are emasculated. This is such a departure from so many other cultures that place importance on the man as the leader of the house and the most important person in the family. To say that all other men in the society are emasculated by the president is like saying that the responsibility of the president is to govern the entire country as if all of his people were his family and all other men are simply enforcers of the main man’s orders. Maybe that’s why all the men in this film seem to have all the time in the world to spy on little boys and stare at women.