Interactivity and Accountability

Interactivity and Accountability by  Sarah Stein and Edward Yip, Dartmouth.edu, 2005
This seemingly innocent introduction by a child artist hides the shocking content within Mouchette’s website. Allegedly authored by a twelve-year-old French girl, “Mouchette” is a complex site consisting of various secret links, electronic interactive texts, and poems that reveal the multiple faces of the artist, along with her fears and obsessions. Loosely-based on the 1937 book by Georges Bernanos and the 1967 Robert Bresson movie, Mouchette, the website seems to expand upon the basic storyline of the film. The movie portrays a girl suffering from the pains of abuse, an alcoholic father and dying mother. Eventually she finds that her only escape from the hatred and sexual abuse in her life is suicide. Not only does the net artist draw several character similarities to the female protagonist of the film Mouchette, but also relates similar thematic ideas. The various subpages of the site use visually-shocking pictures, images of flesh and blood, and interactive forums of taboo subjects to explore themes of sexual abuse, violence and hatred, and loneliness. The anonymous authorship of the site, as well as the user interface, poses an underlying question of identity, leaving the viewer curious what the true nature of the website. By creating an interactive site that encourages audience participation, Mouchette.org challenges the viewer to confront these disturbing themes and make a decision of further conduct.
The whole article is archived here: dartmouth.pdf

The site from which the clipping comes has disappeared, but  this excerpt is still archived:

Folksonomy | My Name Is Mouchette. I Live In Amsterdam. I Am Nearly 13 Years Old