Badder cinema (and tv)

The kind of cinema that most challenges moral censors isn't, I don't think, representations of immorality, but an amoral approach to these representations. Kids doesn't seem to suggest any condemnation of its teenage drug users and their promiscuity. More recently, Kidulthood attempted the same uncompromising approach to its juvenile characters. Whenever they hit the tabloid press, as they always seem to, the justification for the methods of these texts is fidelity - that they are a realistic depiction of their generation.

I'm always suspicious of claims towards verisimilitude in fiction, particularly when it's used to justify exploitation, sensationalism, and pornographic representations. However, even if these claims are accepted, realism is hard to maintain, and frequently becomes yet another formulaic melodramatic mode. The path from Kids, through Kidulthood to Skins is clear. Having never been able to maintain interest through a full episode of Skins I'm probably not qualified to comment on its quality. So I'll quote from the series PR puff for the last episode of the current series, instead.

"This is not your usual dose of teenage angst, this is serious stuff. At the end of the last episode, we watched in horror as Freddie was beaten to death by a baseball bat by Effy's psychiatrist. Now, in this dramatic finale, Naomi's house becomes the stage for multiple showdowns as everything comes to a head. 'It's a dramatic ending,' says Jack O'Connell, who plays Cook. 'You'll need the tissues.'" We Love Telly, 13-19 March 2010, p.9.

If that's not a desperate descent into melodrama, then I'm not sure what would be.

You can watch the scene here, apparently recorded by someone on their mobile phone while watching tv. What the hell is that about...?