Most straight men are too shy to talk about their penises, but most men aren’t Gary Shteyngart. The humorist and writer infuses wit and clarity into everything he writes, but Dana Ben-Ari’s documentaty short, The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, doesn’t give the author anywhere to hide. In this case, he isn’t trying to. A little over a minute into Ben-Ari’s film, he considers the nickname as he crosses a busy New York City sidewalk. He likes the moniker–it’s a good fit. The conversations surrounding one’s manhood and confidence come center stage in Ben-Ari’s film, but when the humor subsides and the laughter peters out, we are left with a compelling portrait of a man who learns how to embrace himself fully, with no apology.
**We have liked Dana Ben-Ari’s film here from The New Yorker‘s YouTube page. Consider watching it and then scrolling through this story before watching our conversation.
Early on in her film, Shteyngart explains, for those not in the know, that in one of his novels, Absurdistan, the lead character has an identity crisis thanks to his own botched circumcision. The acclaimed writer then draws his own to further show how his art imitated life. It’s the unlikeliest example of art imitating life that you’ve had to consider before we dive into Shteyngart’s history of moving from Leningrad to America when he was seven years old. He notes that the former Soviet Union mainly produced “alcoholism and strife” and compares arriving in America not unlike Dorothy opening the doorway to Oz. Possibility loomed and music rang in his ears. After his family settled in Queens, he recalls how an ultra-Orthodox Jewish person who “went door to door to get newly arrived immigrants to circumcize their kids.”
An immigrant, especially at that time, would do anything they could in order to fit in with their peers in a new country, but hearing Shteyngart speak about his embarrassment over his circumcision is troubling for us immediately. “Even as a child, you weren’t protected,” he says. “They could do this to you.”
Ben-Ari talks about the time she spent with Shteyngart while they made this doc, so you feel the trust created between filmmaker and subject. It’s clear that Shteyngart wanted to dive into his trauma like he never had before, and sometimes his eyes evade the camera. His words never stop, though, which should be commended. To see a person who is so eloquent and nimble with words struggle to get his own feelings out shows how important it is to share our truths and our stories in order to help each other.
In the film’s most vulnerable moments, Shteyngart discusses how he was terrified to get an erection while he slept because the pain after his circumcision would cause unimaginable pain and anxiety. We are all nervous balls of tentative energy as we pass through the hell of adolescence, so adding that kind of strife on top of it is tragic for each child. When he describes seeing a particularly pink sky, you know you are seeing unfiltered honesty like never before.
The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong is a revelatory piece of truth-telling. We can laugh at dick jokes and heal at the same time, and Ben-Ari melds the two together beautifully.
