KIDS ON KIDS - RETHINKING LAST SUMMER

Denise Reich / New York Amsterdam News / October 7, 1995

Note: In this roundtable, two kids from the movie, Telly and Jenny, are mentioned. Telly calls himself "the virgin surgeon" and Jenny is one of his "conquests."

This summer, director Larry Clark brought the world his vision of the teenage experience in the movie Kids. Is teenage America really a cesspool of unsafe sex, drugs and boredom? Children's Express kids who've seen the film respond.

Reniqua Allen, 14: I knew there was going to be some sex but I didn't know the movie was going to be focused around that. I thought it was going to be about different types of kids.

Sasha Whyte, 14: It wasn't soap opera-like. It just showed very graphically a day in the life of some kids. What I'm afraid of is that some adults will watch this and think this is what all kids do.

Ariana Hellerman, 14: I thought it was going to be more violent and I thought the kids were going to be street kids. I didn't think they were actually goin g to have families.

Sasha: That showed to some extent that these kids could be like us.

Ariana: I expected it to be really pornographic because of the NC-17 rating.

Denise Reich, 18: I thought it was NC-17 just because people were intimidated by it. Schindler's List was more graphic. I think it's a shame that "Kids" was NC-17 because it's a movie that kids should see.

Sasha: America works that way. Look at My So-Called Life. In certain ways it stunk but in a lot of ways it was very realistic and it went off in one season. People would much rather see shows like "90210," where people are all blonde and perfect.

Tennille Astor-Dias, 18: There's so much emphasis today on safe sex and on condoms that thinking about somebody that doesn't have safe sex is too frightening to look at.

Denise: Sex and kids in general make people very nervous. You don't want to think of kids and sex together at all.

Osiris Adorno, 18: The whole thing about Telly didn't make sense. This kids likes to have sex with young virgin girls, where does he get AIDS? Maybe he had a lot of sexual encounters before, but it didn't seem like it.

Sasha: I think every girl knows a guy like Telly, who's really slick like that. I'm not going to say all guys are dogs, but in high school there's always the guy that does that sort of thing.

Tennille: Yes, there are kids like that, but is that the most fascinating thing about kids in our society? I haven't seen a movie yet that portrays kids that are honest and good and positive.

Sasha: But the happy medium is boring and doesn't get its message across. People need to see something like Kids because it's graphic and it shows the extreme.

Denise: I think that the movie did accurately represent a lot of kids in America but I really don't think it should be taken as some revolutionary exposé of every teenager's life. I resent that a lot of adults are taking it that way.

Tennille: The director, Larry Clark, has done this kind of thing before in his books, like "Teenage Lust," which came out a couple of years ago. I can't help but think that he gets a kick out of doing things like portraying kids with needles and syringes in their arms. It's what sells for him. It's what gets him press.

Osiris: Some of his photos seem very pornographic, and he seems to be taking them for himself. Like it's his own personal perversion or something. I felt the same way about the movie.

Sasha: I'm sorry, but watching that movie, I doubt he was doing it for shock value. The sex scenes were just so bad. They weren't like 90210, where everything is perfect.

Denise: The only character I sympathized with was Jenny because I felt that she didn't follow the same sort of lifestyle as the other people. She really believed this guy's line.

Ariana: It seemed that Jenny didn't have a voice, because if I were her at the end of the movie, I would have gone up to Telly, even if he was in the middle of having sex.

Osiris: It's a really fucked-up thing to walk in on. But the scene showed no real emotion. It showed nothing. I think if they would have taken the time to have the kids try to deal with the situation right there, it would have been more realistic.

Sasha: I don't think there was anything unrealistic about this movie except about Telly getting it so much.

Osiris: They wanted it to be like a documentary so they didn't develop the characters enough and everyone got lost that way.

Denise: I think the point of the movie was to portray a faction of the teenage populations. Not the majority, but a part of the population that does exist. There was a subtle message about AIDS, and that life isn't fair.

Children's Express is a news service reported by children ages 8-18.

Talkabout:
1. What have you heard about the film Kids? Have you seen it?

2. What do you think so many adult reviewers think that this is a realistic depiction of teenagers in America? How do you feel about this?

3. Do you think the NC-17 rating for the film was fair, even though it meant that many kids couldn't see it?