Max Gebhardt
South Africa’s censors have banned public viewing of the movie Kids and are even considering prohibiting private ownership.
Kids is by all accounts a disturbing movie. While HIV-positive Jennie lies half-comatose on ecstasy after visiting a night club, she is raped by a teenage boy — just one scene from the new movie which immediately had the South African censors reaching for their “banned” label.
Larry Clark’s debut movie Kids has earned the distinction of being the first movie to be tossed into the trash can in the new South Africa by the director of publications.
The decision is likely to stir controversy but, the censor feels so strongly that he is considering slapping an illegal possession rap on anyone found in possession of the movie.
Producer Anant Singh’s Videovision Entertainment owns the South African rights to Kids and will be appealing against the decision.
Kids contains virtually no scenes of nudity, but there are “scenes of explicit copulation movements and orgasmic or mechanical sounds,” the publications board said.
According to reviews in The Guardian of London, Clark’s movie is about a day in the life of a gang of white teenagers, in the Upper East Side of New York, who spend their time hanging out, skateboarding, bashing people, puffing monster joints, guzzling beer and having sex with virgins.
Considered by some to be a breakthrough in its upfront portrayal of America’s youth, the movie first claimed the spotlight at Robert Redford’s Sundance festival before receiving acclaim on the official selection at this year’s Cannes film festival.
But, artistic achievement aside, the movie’s moral depravity and “lack of merit” has resulted in a banning under the old (1974) censorship act rather than the new act, which has yet to be approved by parliament.
But David Wilson of Motion Picture Marketing said that Kids would most likely also be banned under the new act, since it deals with under-age sex and the new act stipulates that 18 is the minimum age for depictions of sex acts on screen.
According to Bill Wilson of the prestigious UK movie magazine, Sight & Sound, few people would find this movie shocking if its primary subjects were inner- city black kids.
This is clearly not a view shared by the censor. In his letter to the distributors of Kids, he refers to the fact that some of the characters in the film don’t seem to be older than 12 or 13 although it is stated in a scene that the girls are meant to be 16.
“The film also contains scenes portraying lesbianism, sex orgies and frequent shots of teenagers doped into oblivion and some violence.
“In the light of the current wave of sexual exploitation of children and paedophile cases given prominence in the media, it was agreed that the present film can only do harm,” the censor said.
His distaste was also fueled by scenes of groups of boys and girls discussing their sexual exploits in a “crude and vulgar manner”.
“Crude language in the form of `fuck’, `fucking’ and `motherfucker’ and some profanities abound,” the censor board said.
Derek Malcolm, renowned film critic of The Guardian, described the movie as both “true to life” and “fake as hell”.
“It is like a documentary, with actual people doing actual things, but it isn’t one: the cast is not under age, since it couldn’t be by law … Even so, Kids is a fairly remarkable film since it makes you confront things you’d do anything to avoid either as relatively uninvolved spectators or as anxious parents.”
Tat Wolfen of the Free Media Lobby has questioned the constitutionality of the ban under the provision of freedom of speech.
“Who is to decide what is in the interest of the public? This sounds like a return to the bad old days of the censorship board under the National Party,” he said.
In a separate development, the censor board has decided to overturn its January ban of the art movie The Doom Generation as long as two cuts are made where they consider there are vulgar references to Christianity.