Transfigured Nights

Undoubtedly, in many ways, the Internet is a fucked tool of virtual socialization that has empowered collectives of crypto-perverts from all around the world to unite from the comfort of their living rooms in strengthening the social fabric of their sexual insanity. One of the creepiest yet equally pathetic subcultures I stumbled upon on the internet somewhat recently is so-called ‘masking’, which is a sort of cyber meta-cross-dressing that involves grown men, both gay and straight (and every in between), who take on human doll personas where they wear female masks, drag, and even fake tits and exhibit their foul fetishism for all the world to see via webcams. Although Channel 4's documentary Secrets of the Living Dolls caused a stir all over the internet and Twitter in early 2014 after 2.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the hermetic world of ‘female masking,’ New Zealand auteur David Blyth (Red Blooded American Girl, Ghost Bride) created an experimental documentary half a decade earlier, Transfigured Nights (2009), that offered a more subversive and dark, if not semi-campy, look at the disturbing cyber culture. Beginning his filmmaker career as the closest thing to a ‘Kiwi Buñuel’ with his avant-garde surrealist short Circadian Rhythms (1976) and his absurdist feature-length satire of suburbia Angel Mine (1976), Blyth would also be responsible for New Zealand’s first horror film, Death Warmed Up (1984) aka Death Warmed Over. After Death Warmed Up got some international attention (Alejandro Jodorowsky is a notable fan of the film!), Blyth made his way to Hollywood and directed a couple horror films before falling into the undignified world of television where he even directed episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Not surprisingly, it was not until Blyth moved back to New Zealand that he would go back to his roots and once again direct provocative auteur pieces, including the patently perverse arthouse-splatter flick Wound (2010). Aside from Wound, Blyth also began directing a series of documentaries, including Our Oldest Soldier (2002), which is about the director’s WWII war hero grandfather, as well as a couple docs on sexual fetishism, which include the S&M/BDSM-themed work Bound for Pleasure (2002) and Transfigured Nights. An insightful and decidedly debasing document of mixed-up men ranging from Vietnam War veterans to white British Muslims who derive maximum ecstasy from emasculating and degrading themselves by wearing anime masks and fruity costumes for voyeurs across the globe via webcams, Transfigured Nights is a totally trying yet strangely rewarding document of Occidental decay that is scarier than any David Lynch film and ultimately reminds the viewer why Muslims are so eager to keep the Western influences out of their nations that they are willing to blow themselves up to accomplish such a goal. 

 With masker names like ‘Hog-Tied,' ‘More Rubber Sir,' and ‘Miss Piggy,' it is easy to see that the subjects of Transfigured Nights take their creepily contrived online personas rather seriously. The human train wrecks of Blyth’s film want to give you a private show, as it fuels their seemingly unquenchable thirst for exhibitionistic self-debasement and pseudo-self-glorification. ‘Mr. Jeffus’ is a virtual human pig who got into rubber and cross-dressing via his early interest in female gloves. With the emasculating encouragement of his equally rotund wife, Jeffus does female housework in high heels and a full-body leather suit. ‘Kuniko’ is a kinky creep who does not enjoy talking but wallows in wearing Japanese schoolgirl anime masks and tying plastic bag after plastic bag around his head, as if one bag is not enough. ‘More Rubber Sir’, who randomly discovered his fetish for rubber one day after trying on various wetsuits, is a crypto-queer who is too afraid of the commitment that goes with actually meeting real people in real-life person, so instead he gets on a webcam and shows off his coveted Israeli gasmask. ‘Michiko’ is from Hong Kong and believes it is “no fun to play male characters” because “girls get all the attention.” Although his family is ashamed of his peculiar proclivity towards wearing Japanese anime character masks, he sees what he does “as an art” and wears his costume as much as he can. ‘Hog-Tied’ is an ostensibly heterosexual American truck driver who has blown no less than $2,500-$3,000 on his rubber gear. At any given time, Hog-Tied wears upwards of seven layers of rubber and enjoys putting a vibrating egg in his panties while he wallows in his own personal hell of unhinged hedonism. The ‘Lady of the Mask’ does not like to talk, but s/he sure can wear a mask and wig and do it in a rather grotesque fashion that might even give a child a heart attack. Indeed, Lady of the Masks sports multiple masks at once, peeling each face off with the fury of a maniac chick that cannot decide on what ‘personality’ to wear that day. 

 Undoubtedly, ‘Deeba’ is one of the most disturbed figures of Transfigured Nights and he has no qualms about exposing his metal derangement. A 38-year-old British IT worker of partial gypsy extraction who as he states himself, “came to the Muslim faith, believe it or not, on 9/11,” Deeba states he has never derived pleasure from his penis and speculates that doctors may have ruined his genitals, as he remembers them fiddling with his member when he was a kid. A brazen burka fetishist, Deeba somehow believes that other Muslims will accept him despite the fact he is a tranny that gets a sick kick from posing in various elaborate female Islamic garments. To Deeba’s credit, s/he is not politically correct and matter-of-factly states, “I’ve often wondered if dyslexia and gender dysphoria are linked. Every single TS I know is dyslexic.” ‘Miss Piggy’ may be many things, but s/he is certainly not shy as a proud self-described “lifelong tranny” who loves to expose his/her shriveled up man-cunt for the world to see. An unmarried 65-year-old Vietnam War vet with no children, Miss Piggy confesses, “I was in the U.S. Army and went to Vietnam…I was a door gunner and paratrooper but not by choice.” Undoubtedly, it seems being in the army did little to toughen up Miss Piggy as s/he, “loves big hair and high, high heels.” Describing himself as, “part performance artist and part pure exhibitionist,” Miss Piggy believes masking, which he has done for over 30 years, is about, “recreating yourself as art…your own intimate canvas…and using that to escape from conformity.” Rather unfortunately, Miss Piggy concludes ‘her’ web cam performance by flashing her nasty bits. 

 Featuring an audio clip of Bela Lugosi yelling “pull the strings” from Ed Wood’s banally bizarre pro-transsexual docudrama-exploitation flick Glen or Glenda (1953), Transfigured Nights certainly has a sometimes humorous tone that manages to make the experience somewhat more palatable, though the entire experience as a whole is still nothing short of a sort of metaphysical molestation. Indeed, as someone who has read Richard von Krafft-Ebing's timeless tome Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (1886) in its entirety, I still cannot wrap my head around how anyone could become sexually aroused by wearing an Asian cartoon character mask, but then again, we live in a decidedly depraved era where children’s films feature sexual innuendos and eroticize animated characters. Advertised with the tagline “Mondo Webcam,” Transfigured Nights is ultimately an aesthetically and thematically wayward work that blurs the line between exploitation and art cinema and that also manages to pay tribute to Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi but has more in common with a Werner Herzog doc when it comes to depicting the cold, hard truth about humanity's idiosyncrasies. An (anti)cinematic achievement of sorts in that auteur David Blyth managed to direct an entire film without having to even leave his computer, Transfigured Nights is cinéma vérité 2.0 as a strikingly singular low-budget work made in an age when any moron can make a movie and have it seen by simply uploading it to YouTube. Featuring an electronic score by Blyth's regular composer Jed Town that is certainly more fitting than the Schoenberg composition that the film may or may not have derived its name from, Transfigured Nights is an audio-visual nightmare in expressionistic webcam form that must be preserved at all costs in a time-capsule as evidence of the sort of social afflictions that popped up as the West was taking its last gasp. 

-Ty E