February 14th, 2010 | Artical written by: admin
Artical filed under: Comics, Pop culture

British director Matthew Vaughn is out promoting his new movie, ‘Kick Ass.’ In his recent interview with the Daily Beast, he notices that in American cinema you can unleash wanton violence that splatters brains, chops off heads and unleashes gallons of blood all over the place. But sex? Ahhhh, that’s different. Add kids and all bets are off.

We adults always freak out when kids act ‘too grown’ on film. Remember ‘Kids’, the controversial movie by Larry Clark? In 1995, no one in my generation had ever seen such a raw, deliberately unvarnished portrayal of teenagers. I saw it and thought ‘Word, that’s how it is.’ Parents saw it and thought ‘NOT MY MANDY!!’

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was the first movie I ever saw that touched on the deep-seated (but usually unspoken) fear in adults toward wild, out of control children. In the graphic novel, Kickass takes that theme and ramps it up to hyper absurd levels. A young heroine named HIT GIRL goes Rambo on a bunch of street thugs – but not before dropping the C-BOMB in a room full of grown men. Even the normally ‘open-minded’ Brits found this too tough to take. David Cox, a film critic for The Guardian, wrote:

“A sorry milestone has been passed. The c-word has become acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies. We’ll be the poorer for it.”

Back on our side of the pond, movies like KIDS and KICKASS chip at the myth many parents have about their “angelic, innocent’ kids. Matthew Vaughn is discovering that America is built on myths, and we don’t like when people tinker with them. Here he is talking about the differences between Europe and the U.S.:

“I was told that the difference between England and America is the sense that if I said to you, ‘I want to fuck you tonight’ in a sexual manner, you’d get an R,” he continued. “But if I said, ‘I want to fuck you up and blow your head off,’ you’d get a PG-13. In England, it’s the other way around… I associate with the European attitude. I think sex is far less disturbing than violence.”

What do you think? Do we Americans have it backwards? Are we afraid of our youth? And more importantly – will KICK-ASS ROCK?!

Go here for full interview.