This week we watched the movie Kids. Kids is a film centered on a day in the life of a group of sexually active teenagers in New York City and their unrestrained behaviour towards sex and substance abuse. I found many of the things in this movie to be very upsetting and disturbing, and a lot of it goes against what I think about sexual ethics.
When it came to many of the characters thoughts on AIDS, they actually believed that because they had sex with only one person they were safe. Clearly these teenagers were uneducated on the subject, and just like I talked about in the previous week, they must be educated on sex very early on in their high school years.
In the movie, sexual ethics amongst the characters were based on social interactions and peer pressure. Many of the teenagers had this misconception about sex/AIDS and this misconception was based on lack of education, role models (i.e. parents) and most influential are their friends. I am also very influenced by friends when it comes to sex, however my friends are not a negative influence. In the movie Kids however, the teenagers are all a bad influence on each other.
This movie made me aware that there are teenagers out there who live their lives like this and who have not been sexually educated. I found this very good in broadening what I think about teenagers and sex. I would like to go into the field of social work after my undergrad and I think it is really good to know that teenagers do things that the characters did in the movie. It is good to be knowledgeable about these issues for future reference. This movie also really played into the topics I discussed last week on the antinomies of childhood sexuality, and the issue of education them about sex.
