How's that for an attention grabbing headline?
But seriously. Taylor Lautner. Being used as a major marketing hook for the most recent Twilight. Pushed out there in all his buff glory. He's a child. He's seventeen! I understand that the target market for this film may be teenage girls, but the rest of the world is watching as well. They're watching, they're perving, they're lusting, and he's seventeen. It's close to eighteen, he's almost legal, surely he's close enough, right?
It baffles me that this is all ok when people create such a do about fifteen year old models wearing clothes on catwalks. That a film like Ken Park can be banned in Australia for depicting underage sex (between actors who are, actually, of age) when, arguably, they are sexualised to a far lesser degree than Lautner is in this film. Why must he be built (he put on 30 pounds of muscle or something for the role), buff (his body is spectacular, when you move away from the fact that he is, in the eyes of the law, pretty much a child) and waxed to within an inch of his life. Why does he need to be so highly manicured and manipulated to be this idea of perfection? What does that add to the character? What does it add to the film, other than fangirl (and fanboy) hysteria pushing the film up by another $100mil? It's a bottom-line requirement, and doesn't that effectively make it akin to kiddie porn? Really? Sure, he's not 10, but there's not a great deal of room for distinction - it's a black and white world we live in.
I guess the argument could be made that the film is an allegory pertaining to abstinence, and that by making him such an attractive being in such a sexual way it is promoting quite the opposite of carnal knowledge. Yes, he's attractive, but we shouldn't fuck him because he's a werewolf and therefore we should abstain. At least until we're married (though isn't he too young to marry?) So his sexual power is just another temptation against which we must rail in order that we may create glory to... that big man in the sky.
I don't buy it. He's seventeen. End of story. Sure, craft Robert Pattinson into a sex symbol. He's at least 23, even if I don't get the attraction. But don't deliberately manufacture a symbol who is this young. It's exactly the same as walking a girl down a runway with a see-through blouse. Worse, I'd argue, because this film is going to be seen by a hell of a lot more people than snaps of the latest Prada collection, or whatever. Most people will only see that girl's photos when the news makes a big deal about it. Everyone, everyone will see Taylor Lautner with his shirt off at some stage. And everyone will feel a rustling in their loins. And everyone over the age of eighteen should be ashamed of that.
I'd post a picture to illustrate, but I think that would be the ultimate hypocrisy. If you google him you'll find the pictures in nanoseconds.
Showing posts with label Ken Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken Park. Show all posts
Monday, 7 December 2009
Saturday, 14 November 2009
He came. He skated.
And then he shot himself.
Such is the beginning of Ken Park, Larry Clark's 2002 feature. I've been wanting to see Ken Park since the Office of Film & Literature Classification refused to give it a certificate for release in Australia, even stopping the Sydney Film Festival from screening the film (ordinarily, festivals have been given fairly free reign to screen whatever they want, especially the majors, presumably because they're not about to show blatant pornography.) The fiasco almost got the venerable Margaret Pomeranz arrested, after police shut down a highly publicised screening of the film she was involved with at, if my memory serves me, was at the Balmain Town Hall. (And here's a little article about the controversy...)
Again, if my memory serves me correctly, Ken Park was refused classification not because if contained actual sex (something that was quite controversial for a while in Australia, and saw much campaigning on both sides), but because the characters having this actual sex were under-age, even while the actors may not have been. The sex, however, is not particularly erotic - the first sex scene is a teenager performing cunnilingus on his girlfriend's mother, seems more educational to the young male. Ultimately, the entire film is about the home life of the teenagers, and the sex (of which, really, there isn't much of) is another facet of their immaturity and their growing up. None of the sex acts (until the final threesome scene) occurs without risk and danger involved - the risk of a parent, or a husband, or a lover walking in. The repercussions of these acts are often brutal and traumatic. In the end, three of the teenagers find happiness in uncomplicated sex with each other without the risk of discovery or judgement, and it's actually kind of beautiful.
Sex aside, the film is fine. It's not a spectacular work of cinematic genius or anything. It's just a film that kind of tries to muddle its way through the ideas of teenage isolation in a post-angst world, and, to some extent succeeds, though its success is somewhat flat, possibly because of the apathetic world of youth it takes place in. This isn't 1995, remember, when Clark made his debut with Kids, a searing work with much better commentary - probably because, right then, we're looking at the years before the internet when escape for teenagers was through music and the year before Kurt Cobain had dies. Possibly an overly simplistic take, but I think this is the world that Clark and writer Harmony Korine inhabit. Ken Park is set in the naughties - does anyone really care?
To this end, though, it does capture it. The character of Shawn doesn't overly care that he's carrying on an illicit affair with his girlfriend's MILF. The character of Peaches lies to her dad simply and keeps doing what she wants to do on the sly. Claude is probably the most dramatic, but he too takes the easy route out. So, yeah. It probably does capture that apathy. But that just makes it kind of hard to care.
Look, it was a decent film. I don't think it was tight enough, though it of course looked beautiful (with Ed Lachman lensing and co-directing, it would be disappointing if it didn't.) I'm going to give it a middling 2.5 stars, because I think it was that kind of film. The controversy, however, will keep it in the minds of Australian cinephiles for much longer - epic fail on the OFLC front.
Such is the beginning of Ken Park, Larry Clark's 2002 feature. I've been wanting to see Ken Park since the Office of Film & Literature Classification refused to give it a certificate for release in Australia, even stopping the Sydney Film Festival from screening the film (ordinarily, festivals have been given fairly free reign to screen whatever they want, especially the majors, presumably because they're not about to show blatant pornography.) The fiasco almost got the venerable Margaret Pomeranz arrested, after police shut down a highly publicised screening of the film she was involved with at, if my memory serves me, was at the Balmain Town Hall. (And here's a little article about the controversy...)
Again, if my memory serves me correctly, Ken Park was refused classification not because if contained actual sex (something that was quite controversial for a while in Australia, and saw much campaigning on both sides), but because the characters having this actual sex were under-age, even while the actors may not have been. The sex, however, is not particularly erotic - the first sex scene is a teenager performing cunnilingus on his girlfriend's mother, seems more educational to the young male. Ultimately, the entire film is about the home life of the teenagers, and the sex (of which, really, there isn't much of) is another facet of their immaturity and their growing up. None of the sex acts (until the final threesome scene) occurs without risk and danger involved - the risk of a parent, or a husband, or a lover walking in. The repercussions of these acts are often brutal and traumatic. In the end, three of the teenagers find happiness in uncomplicated sex with each other without the risk of discovery or judgement, and it's actually kind of beautiful.
Sex aside, the film is fine. It's not a spectacular work of cinematic genius or anything. It's just a film that kind of tries to muddle its way through the ideas of teenage isolation in a post-angst world, and, to some extent succeeds, though its success is somewhat flat, possibly because of the apathetic world of youth it takes place in. This isn't 1995, remember, when Clark made his debut with Kids, a searing work with much better commentary - probably because, right then, we're looking at the years before the internet when escape for teenagers was through music and the year before Kurt Cobain had dies. Possibly an overly simplistic take, but I think this is the world that Clark and writer Harmony Korine inhabit. Ken Park is set in the naughties - does anyone really care?
To this end, though, it does capture it. The character of Shawn doesn't overly care that he's carrying on an illicit affair with his girlfriend's MILF. The character of Peaches lies to her dad simply and keeps doing what she wants to do on the sly. Claude is probably the most dramatic, but he too takes the easy route out. So, yeah. It probably does capture that apathy. But that just makes it kind of hard to care.
Look, it was a decent film. I don't think it was tight enough, though it of course looked beautiful (with Ed Lachman lensing and co-directing, it would be disappointing if it didn't.) I'm going to give it a middling 2.5 stars, because I think it was that kind of film. The controversy, however, will keep it in the minds of Australian cinephiles for much longer - epic fail on the OFLC front.
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