ken park...fuck off and grow up already

I hate moral films. I just rewatched Ken Park, and, while I liked many aspects of the film, I hated the script on many levels, and the bonuses reveal how stupid one of the co-directors was.

I’m not shocked by the nudity. In fact, I rather like it, and I like the fact I can be turned on by graphic sex in the film, which isn’t to say it’s an essay on the pros or cons of pornography (luckily enough). I don’t want to treat the sex like a gimmick for this film… The sexual relations are its core metaphor…I mean, if we can think that there’s something deviant in the mother asking her daughter’s boyfriend regularly for sex…well, it’s bizarre, because the thing I actually find deviant is how she’s not able to say it because people will think it’s deviant. I like their sex scenes, they’re oddly touching. And when the girlfriend ties up her boyfriend…ooooohhh, so outre!!! Whatever…a little pantyhose and spit is something we can’t be shocked at unless we’re virgin porn readers. The sex is the least of the problems, and probably the loveliest aspect of this film.

The story, where every parent is stupid, or drinks, or smokes, or masturbates, or abuses, is retarded. Everybody has a fault, but, showing the pregnant mother smoking and drinking…ooohhh, bad…yeah, but it’s also a little too easy. Like saying all the moral problems in the world are because too many mothers are drinking and smoking while pregnant. GAHHHH!!! Stop the fucking hand-holding already!!!

What an asshole…The co-director, Ed Lachman, said he wants us to be turned off by the sex scenes. What an asshole. What an asshole…this guy should NOT be making films, or talking about anything intelligent with anybody if he’s not honest enough to say what it’s like to be turned on, or to pontificate on what is healthy sex and justify his coolness by saying he “used” to be a skater. Dickhead. Skaters should sue him for misappropriation and slander.

Evidently, he feels he’s avant-garde enough to say that threesomes are ok, avant-garde enough to show a real masturbation scene, but ooohhh, the asshole fathers are all child abusers… the paternalistic tone evident in the overall condemnation of parents is pathetic and so easy, and only reinforces this kind of conservative close-mindedness that makes zombies out of the people. Let’s just all nod our heads sadly all together and mourn our sad and traumatising youths…oh, how I was wounded when I was young! Blah blah blah…everybody has shitty memories from being a teenager, being picked on, having a hard time with parents…the world is full of trauma…but, hello, dealing with it is part of life and part of being human. Honour your ability to be a human being and think for a fucking change!!!

Oddly enough, this film reminds me of a subplot in happiness, where the father (pedophile) is asked a question by his son, on whether he wants to fuck him too…and the father says he just masturbates. This is one of the sweetest and most beautiful declaration of love ever accomplished on the cinema. What we have is a man with a predeliction, whether it be a result of external causes or something he was born with, the focus is not on blaming or explaining, but on just showing that this is how he can love his son…Ken Park fails so miserably in this respect.

What’s wrong with these people?

Maybe Ken Park is ultimately a really american film, in the sense that everything has to have some bullshit moral explanation, and that even people who stand for the left and avant-garde in the states are stilled buried in this incredibly superficial reasoning…like whole country is caught in a passive-aggressive escher puzzle.

I’d much rather hear a republican say he’s disgusted by porn and s & m because at least then the mainstream is clearly stated, and we avoid the double-bullshit syndrome. The new “resistance” to the conservative stance is as mainstream as what it fights against. I hate Ed Lachman, I despise the morality in this film, I’m disappointed that Larry Clark has become such a religious junkie.

Maybe the only film I love, complete unqualified love, by Larry Clark, is Teenage Caveman…which is the only film he should have made. (and also features tiffany limos and stephen jasso…the only reasons to go see this movie, oops, besides maeve quinlan, who’s also fucking good...all puns intended)