Kids

The other day I finally had the nerve to rent Kids and watch it in its entirety. (I worked at a movie theatre showing the film when it was released in 1995, but the bits and pieces of it that I saw made me realize that I could only stand to watch it in the privacy of my room, on video.) The movie does present a "realistic" portrayal of some of the heartless, uncaring acts some kids are committing today as a way of trying to feel something in an uncaring world. While the film is shocking and even offensive, I'll give it credit for being the "eye-opener" the accolades say it is, because everything that happens in this movie is (unfortunately) very believable.

But what shocked me most of all has more to do with the act of making the movie itself, rather than the subject matter presented. One of the film's subplots involve a young girl discovering that she has contracted HIV from the one person she has ever had sex with, and she spends the entire film trying to find him. She sees him at the end, finding him in the middle of a party where lots of young kids are smoking pot and drinking and such, but it's too late for her to prevent him from having sex with another of his victims, and so she wanders off listlessly. Earlier in the film she drank something she wasn't supposed to drink, so she's fairly passed out at this point. As she is asleep, one boy undresses her and rapes her.

While this is unquestionably a hideous act, I could only question the motives of the director and other filmmakers in the way they chose this scene to be presented on film. Specifically: in one long, slow, unbroken shot, we see the boy taking off her pants and lowering himself onto her. There is even a very brief glimpse of her bush in this scene, so we know that she is indeed naked from the waist down and not merely "faking it," as with most sex scenes in the movies. (The DVD of Kids is letterboxed, and the pan-and-scanned videotape may not show this extra bit of the scene.)

Thinking about this scene produces a disturbing effect. We are supposed to think that this is an underage, teenage girl (16 or so?) being violated here, though in fact the actress, Chloe Sevigny, was 20 at the time of filming. (After all, the film would be child pornography if it was a real underage kid appearing in that scene.) So what is the point in actually giving the audience an extended view of her being undressed? The boy also drops his pants to rape her, of course, but it seems odd that they film doesn't show his genitals – it only shows us the girl's.

I could not shake the feeling that in spite of the horrible act being presented in this story, this particular scene was filmed in a way to make it seem erotic and even stimulating. After all, the director could have easily fashioned the shot so that we don't actually see this girl's skin; it could certainly have been "implied" that she was being stripped just by showing the boy liftng a pair of pants (presumably hers) and dropping them out of sight. But instead, they put this young actress through an ordeal that many actresses would absolutely refuse to do…because it debases her, the actress, nearly as much as the character she plays is violated by being raped.

I don't want to sound like I'm ranting against female nudity in the movies - even in a movie like this one. After all, these actors and actresses (especially this one) certainly knew what they would be doing when they accepted these roles, and it was a willing decision on their parts. I don't fault any of the people involved for playing these roles, nor do I fault Chloe Sevigny for allowing herself to be filmed in this fashion. It was her choice, and she was certainly old enough to make her own decisions.

My uncertainty is expressed towards the people who chose to present this particular scene in such a way that we might be expected to be turned on by this scene.

There have been several comparisons between Kids and A Clockwork Orange, because of Stanley Kubrick's frank, unflinching portrayal of an amoral, sadistic society in his famous film. I certainly admire Kubrick's bravery for making that film, though there is a comment by Pauline Kael about that movie that sticks in my mind. In her review of the film, she notes that Kubrick gives us an extended, voyeuristic view of a woman being stripped by a gang of droogs (about five minutes into the movie, where a rival gang strips a victim in an abandoned opera theater or something), and she suggests that Kubrick actually wants the audience to be excited by this (for the time) risque scene, despite its perverse nature. (Her review can be found in her book, "Deeper Into Movies." ) This comment might equally be applied to Kids, in that we are supposed to be turned on by the sight of a young girl being slowly undressed…even though it is a rape scene.

This is probably what disturbed me more than anything else about Kids, that the director may actually be revelling in the characters' anarchy, and finding the ways for the audience to actually enjoy it.

(Since the time I first saw Kids, director Larry Clark has since gone on to make several more movies, all of which involve young teenagers, sex, and violence. Two of these films, Bully and Ken Park, could easily be retitled Kids 2 and Kids 3, as they hammer the viewer with the same idea: uncaring, nihilistic kids doing drugs and having sex. It's as though Clark is obsessed with this topic, and he can't present anything other than this. That seems to suggest, unfortunately, that he may indeed be a drooling voyeur getting off at presenting pictures of naked teenagers in as legal a fashion as he can manage. In fact, the subject matter of Ken Park caused it to be banned in Australia; it still hasn't been released on video here in the United States.)