I mentioned watching Larry Clark‘s Kids (1995) in my Sunday morning installment of “What I Watched“, but I kept thinking about the above shot throughout most of yesterday and today and didn’t want to send the disc back to Netflix without grabbing a capture.
If you haven’t seen it, the film follows a group of New York City teenagers over the course of one day and it was considered highly controversial back in 1995 as it’s loaded with underage sex, drinking and drug use and doesn’t shy away from some startling material.
The narrative has two focal points, one being Jennie (Chloe Sevigny), a young girl who learns she contracted the HIV virus after her first sexual encounter and the other, more prominent characters, being Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Casper (Justin Pierce). Telly is the partner that presumably infected Jennie, and over the course of the film we see him have unprotected sex with two underage girls (one 12, the other 13). He’s only 16-years-old.
The above capture struck me as we are periodically brought back to Jennie’s search around the city for Telly. As the world outside the taxi window passes by we hear her say, “I’m not gonna die.” It’s a powerful moment.
Almost just as powerful was a trip to the IMDb message boards after watching to see what people had said, and were saying about the film. Some comments in-particular struck me pretty hard, proving it’s a narrative that remains important and if controversial means alarming, than sound the bells:
…you know? The whole HIV/AIDS thing was still kind of an issue back then…where people were actually still in the midst of believing it was an epidemic. In this day and age, we kind of know that AIDS is rare…I think it may even be in the 1 percent category. It is nowhere near an epidemic, and time has proven that.
Oh, it’s kind of rare? Is that the case?
Then there’s this in which the entire point of the film is lost on the commenter:
Not only did I live in that area, but I was part of that whole scene. It was all exaggerated.
1. The girl getting “HIV” from one time sex. This was done for dramatic purposes.
2. No group of kids hung out in Washington Square park and got high, and never did they just jump one guy and beat him up. I used to hang there everyday and I don’t think I ever saw a fight. Cops were all over the place. WSP is a chill out park.
3. You rarely see 14-16 year-old kids hanging out in the streets of NYC. I don’t think I ever saw young kids like that hang out in the park.
The dialogue and acting was trying too hard to be controversial.
Sure it was interesting, but there was no story. One girl looking for a guy is no a story. At least not enough. What it was was a bunch of little episodes over years cramped into one film.
This commenter is clearly missing the forest for the trees, not to mention the complete dismissal that someone could contract HIV from their first sexual encounter. I assume you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex then?
And finally this comment referring to a scene where an intoxicated and unresponsive Jennie is asleep on a couch and Casper proceeds to have sex with her without her ever waking up. The commenter, believe it or not, is attempting to debate whether what was seen constitutes rape or not:
Hence, during the couch scene, he asks jenny to wake up for sex as if it’ll be consensual. When he understands that she was high, he then forgets about waking her up and instead starts having sex with her while in her intoxicated state. To him, it was just plain simple sex. The word “Rape” must have never crossed in his mind.
The part where he “forgets” to wake the girl up is so ignorant I’m almost speechless.
The power of the film takes on a greater effect after reading comments such as these. Comments from people that consider it too preachy, those that dismiss it as unrealistic, those that believe HIV isn’t anything to worry about and those willing to debate whether or not it’s rape to have sex with someone who is entirely unresponsive.
The film was written by Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers) when he was only 19-years-old and while it does have some highly disturbing scenes, I think it’s well worth a watch.
