Product: Kids (1995)
Rating: 5.0
a certain valid humanity, finally up on the screen
This film reminded me of a quote of Spike Lee's early in his career, when asked why he made films: "To put our humanity up on the screen." Spike meant black folks seen unfiltered through a white sensibility; I felt something similar seeing my 1970's/80's adolescence puked up in video in "Kids." Oh yes, it was that unsupervised, amoral, and drugged-out; it was that brutal and ugly and without forethought; the only difference is that for folks my age, it was less suicidal (HIV then being in its infancy). In the mid-eighties I was an HIV counselor to homeless youth, whose participation in a study necessitated their revealing their personal i.e. sexual lives. I knew I could be trusted; they didn't, but eventually many of the kids did tell me what was truly up. I paid a lot of attention to how the straight media responded to this film, and most of it was infuriating. I suspect it's a form of denial to say that most kids don't live lives like those in the film; maybe most don't, but some do. And those kids are not throwaways, just like I wasn't. One small quibble: screenwriter Harmony Korine has claimed in interviews that the dialogue was written to the word and that there was no improvisation. I doubt that (not to take away from Korine's achievement). The early scene between the girls, especially, sounds improvised. If it was, he should acknowledge it.