ABSTRACT
The storm has devastated everything in the Bathtub, a swampland town, and the few lone survivors are gathered together in a bar on a floating barge when Wink, a dying, sometimes abusive, and often drunk black man, turns to his 6-year-old daughter and asks her: ‘Hushpuppy, did I ever tell you the story of your conception?’ (Beasts: 35’29). Hearing the question, the other bar patrons chuckle with anticipation and recognition. We get the sense that this question, and the story that it heralds, have been relayed before: ‘When me and Hushpuppy’s Mamma first met we was so shy, we used to sit around, and drink beer, and smile at each other. One day we was so shy we just napped’ (Beasts: 35’40). Cut between shots of Wink, Hushpuppy and the bar, we are transported to dreamlike sequences of a younger, fresher Wink whose gaze never strays from a woman, clad only in a pair of white briefs, as she lingers about, and shoots, kills and cooks an attacking alligator. ‘Your Mamma battered that gator up, and set it to fry’ (Beasts: 37’06), Wink tells Hushpuppy and the crowd, ‘and Hushpuppy popped into the universe maybe four minutes later’ (Beasts: 37’14). What are we to make of this shared dreamlike fantasy sequence of Hushpuppy’s conception? In this chapter, I shall argue that this scene from Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), and the film itself, can be approached in a way that offers up and problematizes a queer mode of translating sexuality – and other joyous, pleasurable and painful aspects of adulthood – for children.
