Mouchette is a really successful online persona: a sad, creepy little girl based on the 1967 film by Robert Bresson. The website has been around for years and years and as far as I can tell the identity of the people behind the persona is still unknown. My favourite thing about Mouchette is the email. There's lots of places to make comments on the site, and having done this I periodically receive email such as the one below:
Dear Sally McKay,
Last time we met in private, on a page that I made for you alone. We shared that brief moment just once in our lives, never again will you see that page. But now I made a new private page for you only:
http://mouchette.org/to/you?Sally_McKay,4e45bf9966bd2cc144256fd0e74f33b9
Look everywhere, the page has some secrets inside
I can't wait to have you click on me again,
*bisou*
Mouchette
The page I was taken to was incredibly disconcerting. Too-close-up pink skin, panting little girl breath, and a bar you could pull that showed an image of raw muscle tissue underneath. When I tried to go back a second time I got the message:
the page you are looking for is not hereI'm not comfortable with the child suicide, sexuality and violence. But being comfortable is not what Mouchette is about, she's provocative and she knows it. There's a forum for sending Mouchette hate mail that is also unnerving in it's brutality. But panning through the random painful angry posts, made me think about the genuine challenges of free communication in public space. People ain't always pretty.
you won't ever see it again
return to: sally mckay and lorna mills
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