Arguably a counterproductive exercise in Realism, Larry Clark’s Kids ought to induce vomiting in any remotely moral viewer, as its documentary-like feel only contributes to the ever-growing sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong not only with the youth of this country but also with the sort of person who would give license to borderline teens by portraying such depravity.
A Sentence on Kids
11 Jul
This entry was published on July 11, 2008 at 1:27 pm. It’s filed under 1990s Cinema, American film, One-Sentence Reviews and tagged depravity, Kids, Larry Clark, promiscuity, Realism.
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Perhaps a change of perspective would be in order here. The depravity and degradation portrayed in the movie is not fictional: it is very real, not only in America, but throughout the world. Your statement that ‘…something is terribly, terribly wrong … with the youth of this country …” is narrow and biased, because it is not the kids who wrought the world into which they find themselves, but rather their parents, who had them without giving a thought to the consequences of raising children in such an environment … and the fault of society as a whole.
There are those who subscribe to the idea that having children is a God-given right, yet they do not understand that one has to be in a position to rear them properly first. Here in South Africa we have girls as young as fifteen dragging two or three kids (of their own!) along with them. Some have been prostitutes for years. They had the kids in order to claim government handouts, thinking that this pittanc will improve their lots.
I am now 60 years old an have had no children, simply because I did not think, when I was younger, that I had the requisite skills and knowledge to raise them.
I have dedicated myself to gathering information, to learning as much as I can about everything that my brain can handle. This after dropping out of high school two years before graduating. Now, teachers come to me in search of ways to improve their teaching skills and for information on a wide spectrum of subjects. I contend that all compulsory State-supported teaching methods are wrong, because they give the kids nothing that they can use immediately to improve their living conditions.
I concentrate on teaching the kids skills and honing talents so that they can do something concrete to raise themselves above the squalor in which they find themselves. Poverty is not a state of existence: it is a state of mind, which no amount of job-creation and money will ever eliminate.
The movie should act as a wake-up call to all concerned people that something is definitely wrong with our ‘leadership’, with society and with the whole economic system. Man is the only creature on Earth that is forced to work in order to have such basic essentials as clean water, food and shelter.
You and most other people in the world do not know what it means to ‘live’, because you have to spend most of your lives working in order to support yourselves and your families. I ‘live’: I only do the things that I really enjoy doing … and people PAY me to do some of the things I love doing! THAT, my friend, is LIVING!
It is not the kids or the film-maker who are to be derided, but people like you, who bay at the moon about people like Clark instead of seeing the moral decay around you and who do nothing constructive to change the situaton.
Well arent you a cool motherfucker!!!!
Well arent you a cool motherfucker!!!! Why should we give a shit about ur little story. This is simply just a movie about what really happens. its not poverty, none of those kids live in poverty. ur so stupid. typing ur(excuse me “your”) stupid, long, well worded, nicley punctuated comment because ur parents paid ur ass through law school or some shit . SHUT THE FUCK UP. WE DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU. and i hope ur reading this saying “how ingnorant, how errogant, how rude, how wrong, how immature. But guess what BITCH, i am immature, as a matter of fact, im 15 years old. And i dont give a SHIT. and thats exactly what this movie is about. LIVING. and not ur kind of living. accually LIVING.