 Starring: Brad Renfro, Nick Stahl, Rachel Miner, Bijou Phillips, Michael Pitt
Director: Larry Clark
Year Of Release: 2001
Plot: Teens Marty and Bobby have been friends since they were little kids, but Bobby is abusive and cruel, treating everyone around him like scum or whores. After Marty starts dating Lisa, Bobby gets even worse and forces himself on her friend, Ali. Lisa then decides she wants Bobby dead, and with Marty and a group of others onboard, they try to find a way to kill the unpleasant teen. |
I’m kind of fascinated by Larry Clark. I’m also kind of aware that anyone who knows Clark’s work might think I’m a perv just for writing that. He’s a director who makes films that aren’t quite like anyone else’s, probably because no one else would have the guts to create the sorts of movies that he does.
Ever since his 1995 feature film debut, Kids, caused a storm of controversy (beforehand he was largely a photographer, although covering similar territory), he’s made several movies set in a teenage world of casual sex, drugs and violence. While that might not sound particularly unusual, the difference is that he makes movies from the inside, getting the teenagers’ perspective in films that aren’t afraid to deal head-on with the sexuality of young people.
This really is unusual, because normally when directors make movies about out of control teens, the films tend to sit outside what the young people are doing in moral judgement of them. These movies also tend to be coy about what the kids are getting up to, with the sex implied rather than shown, and little discussions of the issues surrounding this (due to the fact a lot of people get upset at any mention of people under 18 engaging in sexual activity).
Clark goes right inside a very uncomfortable world, where sex is pretty much the equivalent of saying hello, the idea you shouldn’t take drugs doesn’t even cross people’s minds and violence is a way of life. You are shoved into a youth culture that is a complete moral vacuum, and it is rather disturbing, both because it seems honest to some modern teens’ experience of the world, and also because it’s difficult not to feel like you’re doing something wrong by even thinking about the problems surrounding teenage sex.
If you make a film where you show youngsters shagging and taking drugs, it’s gonna upset a lot of people, even if the movie is highlighting very real issues. Clark’s films Kids, Bully and Ken Park have all met indignant reactions from people angry about the fact a film had been made showing such explicit sex between young people, often involving characters who are under 18, even if the actors are older (Ken Park goes as far as having real sex on show). Kids even had protestors showing up outside cinemas, particularly in the UK, to denounce what they saw as moral perversion.
However like most films that become controversial, they do so because they provoke a strong reaction in the viewer. Clark’s film feel voyeuristic, and they are very sexual, but in an uncomfortable way. The camera leers at the young people in an uncomfortably pervy way, as if when watching the film you’re only one step away from paedophilia. It’s for this reason that Clark’s films have been so contentious, and if you purely look at them on the surface, you can understand why.
In Bully, seemingly half the movie is teenagers naked in bed, and even when they’re not, there are random shots where the camera is looking between a girl's (clothed) legs. It really does make you feel a bit dirty watching it, and it’s difficult not to initially wonder whether the middle-aged Larry Clark is a little too interested in teenage flesh.
The controversy didn’t start with his films, as for several decades before he made moving pictures, Clark’s photographs of underage-looking young people engaged in sexual activities (often mixed with the suggestion of violence), had people arguing over whether it was art or just a rather creepy way to get around anti-child porn laws. They are incredibly complex images that deal with dysfunctional families, the formation of sexuality, religious intolerance, social behaviour, masculinity and the construction of identity, however some are also pretty challenging and explicit, and so as a result they’ve proved controversial. That said, they’ve also influenced filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant and Martin Scorsese and copies of his photo are held in such august places as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Getty Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
There is a point to what Clark does though, which certainly isn’t just about titillation. He doesn’t want his films (or photos) to be a comfortable journey for the audience. He wants to take you inside a world you’d otherwise sit in unthinking judgement of and make you squirm while you’re made to understand the world these kids live in and why they are the way they are. It’s a hyper-sexualised culture, and by bringing explicit sex into the films, he both entices and repulses, and he does it very deliberately. The films provoke a strong reaction because rather than being coy, Clark shows what’s going on by putting it right in front of your face so that you can’t ignore it, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.
Perhaps the most ironic thing is that underneath the sex and drugs, Clark’s films tend to be rather conservative in their morals. On the surface Bully may be titillating and violent, but below that Clark expounds some very traditional values. The film is in no doubt that these kids have gone wrong somewhere, but rather than going the easy route and just blaming them, the film pins it on society.
It is a world where kids have no parental oversight or real connection with their family. Sex, drugs and violence are continually sold to them on TV, through music and in videogames, and so with no societal boundaries or guidelines, the kids make up their own rules, taking their cues from popular culture, where rappers talk about how life is all about pussy (while women are second class citizens), computer games promote violence as the solution to problems, and parents don’t care what their kids are up to, as long as they’re not causing trouble for them.
Bully, which is based on a true story, is an all out condemnation of a society that has lost control of it youth and doesn’t seem to care. Ultimately Clark’s moral compass is very conservative, even if the film initially seems pretty permissive. He uses sex and violence amongst young people to challenge the viewer, basically saying that while it’s uncomfortable to watch (because of the conflicted feelings it raises in an adult viewer), we need to look at these things so that more teens aren’t lost into a moral vacuum, and that our endless desire to look away and not deal with teen issues (particularly around sex) is partly what’s causing the problem.
Cinema is normally seen as a passive experience, but it isn’t with Clark, as he constantly makes you question whether you should be seeing what he’s showing you, or whether the fact that we are uncomfortable looking at these issues head-on, for whatever reason, is part of the problem.
Although those who have been horrified by his films never would, they ought to watch Clark’s short documentary, Impaled, which was part of a collection of explicitly sexual shorts called Destricted. More than anything else he’s made, it shows how he really wants to shout about issue others are too afraid to even whisper about, but which are real and ought to be addressed, no matter how difficult. In Impaled, Clark interviews young guys who’ve answered an advert to have sex with a woman on camera. These teens talk about how they view sex and how the fact they’ve been exposed to pornography through the internet from a young age has shaped their sexuality (often to a bizarre extent). Then he chooses one of the guys to shag a woman on camera, with Clark comparing what the young man thought it would be like with the reality.
While incredibly explicit, it’s also an undeniably powerful and worrying indictment of a world where everything that many teens know about sex has come from pornography (both because of the ease of access and also that their families won’t talk about it with them), with this causing a complete and worrying distortion of reality (it really is shocking what some of these youngsters think sex should involve, purely because they’ve seen it in porn).
It shows that while people get indignant about Clark’s films showing a world of teenage sex, there are really serious issues that no one is talking about, purely because the moral police start screaming as soon as there’s any mention of it, and it make people feel uncomfortably like paedophiles to be confronted with it. However while it may be a bit pervy, Clark is one of the only artists willing to tackle these subjects head on in such a provocative and challenging way.
In the end, I can’t help but feel there is something a little pervy about Clark, as he does seem to have a life-long interest in jailbait flesh that’s stretched across his entire career, but he’s brave enough to channel that into provocative movies that are uncomfortable to watch, but incredibly rewarding and socially minded. I think Bully is a bit of a masterpiece, and it gets right under my skin every time I watch it. Clark may cause outrage, but it’s just a shame that the anger has to be directed at his films, rather than people engaging with the points he’s making and getting angry about that, because he seems to making valid points about social issues nobody else is really dealing with.
Some critics can’t get past the subject matter and so lambast the director for being obscene, exploitative and bordering on child pornography (which they’re not, as nobody is going to watch his films to get their rocks off), but in my opinion there’s so much more going on in his films than that.
Incidentally, while I’m on the subject of Larry Clark, I mentioned earlier in this article his movie Ken Park, which has never been released in the UK. While it was very controversial for its use of real sex in a film about teenagers (and got banned in Australia for that reason), that wasn’t why it didn’t come out in Britain. Tartan held the UK rights and was preparing a release, but before that could happen Clark punched Tartan head honcho Hamish McAlpine in the face and tried to strangle him at a celebratory dinner (allegedly over remarks McAlpine made about 9/11 and Middle East), resulting McAlpine getting broken nose. As a result, Hamish pulled the film’s release, and so it’s never officially come out in Britain at all. Clark may be a brave artist who not afraid to say what’s on his mind, but punching the man who’s releasing your movie is rarely a smart idea.
TIM ISAAC
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