Gender, Identity, Regulation And The Public Sphere - Larry Clark
Mark Maltby
BATV1 - Audiences
Choose a film or Television text (factual or drama based film or television programme) and critically discuss the intended target audience. Consider the imagined social demographic, paying particular attention to either gender and identity, or regulation and the public sphere.
Introduction
From its conception over a hundred years ago, people have looked to cinema for entertainment and a degree of escapism from their day to day lives. The function of providing such escapism, with material to take the viewers mind off of their worries and problems, is now amply fulfilled by television, with its constant cheap and immediately available supply. The cinema has been forced to diversify from its traditional material and one of its more successful reactions to this competition has been the injection of greater realism into its pictures (Phelps : 1975)
The object of this paper is to discuss in some detail the 2002 film Ken Park, directed by often controversial director and photographer Larry Clark. Particular foci will be the imagined social demographic, toward which the film was aimed, and subsequent regulation and public sphere debate generated by the films release.
Ken Park ‘documents’ the lives of four teenagers living in the rural Californian town of Visalia. Their dysfunctional families and sexually charged behaviour mean that the film contains many scenes of a controversial yet realistic nature. Clark himself admits, in numerous interviews, that his style of direction is one which encourages the camera to capture the whole scene, and not turn away as the content becomes graphic or violent. (1)
"I decided that I wasn't going to turn the camera away, or shut the door, or shoot from the waist up." LARRY CLARK 2002
Exposition
The first point to consider is the imagined social demographic towards which the film was aimed. It is a commonly accepted phrase, ‘there’s no accounting for taste’. One can find many...
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