Bad Cinema- Kids (1995)

Well, i did find the film interesting, gripping, shocking and sad. The questions our group were asked were A) what did you find shocking and why? and B) What added to the realism of the film? I shall tackle these in reverse order. What added to the realism? I think the way it was filmed meant that as a member of the audience, you felt as though you were part of that gang, you became immersed in their lives as you followed them around. Also the language made it real, it was as though you were eavesdropping and people were just talking naturally and unguarded. Also, it was real...however much we would like to shield ourselves from the realities of adolescent life these things happen, it is real life. I have worked for the last two years counselling 13-19 year olds and everything i saw in the film is part of real life for many young people; drugs, unprotected sex, sexually transmitted diseases, beatings and violence, it all happens. I found the scene where the guy got beaten up absolutely brutal and sickening and yet i spent 12 months counselling a lad of 14, who was savagely beaten by ten 15 year olds to within minutes of his life! It would be very easy to dismiss this film as a piece of sensationalist cinema in bad taste, but sadly it depicts real life for more and more young people today, and not just in America, here.

Secondly, what did i find shocking? Well, all of it really...though i didn't find it surprising, which is something else. I found the violence shocking, the fact that young people can set about a human being like he is an animal i found gut wrenching; worse was the thought that people enjoyed this, they laughed and whooped, they egged each other on and they congratulated each other on a job well done, while a person lay battered and bleeding on the floor. And we are meant to be civilised...well we have really come a long way from the barbarians and savages then haven't we.

I found it shocking that in the 21st century, with all the information and education on safe sex, that kids still sleep around without protection...it's like playing russian roulette with your life.

I found it shocking that kids were left to take drugs and alchohol with seemingly no interest or input from parents. As an older student, i probably watched it from a maternal view, and i couldn't help but think, where are their parents? Why aren't they worried? And yet it is more and more common.

Most shocking of all i guess was the fact that it is real. It is nice, customary even, to watch a scary or shocking film and then console yourself on the way home that it isn't real, that it's all going to be ok. But no, it's reality and i can't preach too much because it's exactly what i did as a kid. I went to parties where there was loads of booze and spliffs being handed round, where people slept in the bath and you had to step over the piles of sick. Where you rushed to the clinic the next morning to get the morning after pill and relayed all the close calls to your mates. Nothing's changed much, except now i'm watching it through wiser eyes and thinking, "god, did we really get away with all that, it's a wonder i'm still here". And that's what kids do, race through life at hundred mile an hour, seeing what they can get away with and waking up one day and saying "Shit, what happened" A very apt end to the film...at some point in everyone's life, for whatever reason, i reckon we all sit up and utter those very words. The biggest changes i see are the prevalence of drugs, and stronger ones than we could ever get hold of, and the levels of violence that seem totally commonplace now. I find it scary to think where it is all going to end.