Is It Wrong If I Say "We Were Watching KIDS In Class..."?

This one particular lecture was entitled "Bad Cinema". It conjured up images of films like "Batman & Robin" and "Aliens Vs Predator" and other such tales of tripe. However, much to my disappointment, this wasn't the kind of bad they were thinking of.

Instead we were treated to a showing of Larry Clark's 1995 movie "Kids". The general air of this film seems to be that of controversy. It details the lives of several teenagers who undergo social antics such as underage drinking, sex, drugs and crappy ghetto-talk. The main focus of the film is on Jennie who, despite having only had sex once, discovers she has contracted HIV (Oh shit indeed!). She then goes in search of the guy she lost her virginity to whom we find out is busy ploughing other virgins. I think the gist of the film was to portray the gritty reality of what young kids (as opposed to 'old kids'??) get up to when parents aren't around. In fact, there are hardly any adults in the entire film.

At the risk of turning this entry into a bloody film review, I didn't think "Kids" was as controversial as our lecturer made it out to be.

So why make 'bad' films?

We all know that controversy draws attention, whether it's video games, films, artwork or that party trick I used to do with an elastic band and a tent pole.....ahem.

Or maybe films are so shocking because they show an un-sugarcoated portrayal of what goes on in real life. Maybe people just aren't prepared to admit that these things happen in their towns and cities and, indeed, in their own neighbourhood. "Scum" showed that prisons are not how we percieve them in those watered-down programs such as "Bad Girls" etc. "Trainspotting" hit a sore spot after people began believeing that it glorified drugs (as Mark Renton says about heroin, "Take your biggest orgasm, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it"). And "Kids", well that seemed like a sort of wake-up call to Parents.

You will find that most controversial films do have a message. Albeit it often a surreal and discreet one. So it makes me wonder whether these so-called disputed films are as bad as these so-called experts claim. Or perhaps they are justified in their actions and bannings and so forth. Maybe they feel that people can accept what goes on in the real world, but they don't need to be subjected to them on-screen. But the obvious argument against that isno one's making them watch these films.

For more info on Larry Clark's "Kids", go here.