Moral Decay and the Widening Gap Between the Haves and HaveNots

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Moral Decay and the Widening Gap Between the
Haves and Have-Nots
2

• Kids (1995)
• Bell Curve (1995)
• Both highly controversial.
• Controversy, as much as the original texts
  themselves, are source of insight into
  contemporary culture.

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The Bell Curve (1995)

• Richard J. Hernstein Charles Murray
• Thesis IQ, increasingly, determines our ultimate
  social status.

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The Bell Curve (1995)

• Why?
• A. growth of meritocracy
• Intelligence, not social origin, is rewarded,
  increasingly
• 1950 50 of top ¼ of IQ go to college
• 1970 72 of top ¼ of IQ go to college
• 1980 80 of top ¼ of IQ go to college
• B. nature of work
• Intellect, not brawn
• Pace, rate of change

5
The Bell Curve (1995)

• Political Dimensions
• Intelligence is not evenly distributed
• Intelligence is genetically determined
• Differences between races
• The creation of a insurmountable divide
• New superclass (education, intelligence)

6
Kids 1995

• 24 hours in the lives of urban youth
• Response
• realistic portrayal
• moral decay
• alienation

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Kids Response and Late Victorian Writers

• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives 1890
• Most of the foundlings come from the East Side,
  where they are left by young mothers without
  wedding-ring or other name than their own to
  bestow upon the baby, returning from the island
  hospital to face an unpitying world with the
  evidence of their shame.

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Jack London, People of the Abyss 1903

• But at the best, it is a dull, animal happiness,
  the content of the full belly. The dominant note
  of their lives is materialistic. They are stupid
  and heavy, without imagination. The Abyss seems
  to exude a stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which
  wraps about them and deadens them. Religion
  passes them by. The Unseen holds for them neither
  terror nor delight. They are unaware of the
  Unseen and the full belly and the evening pipe,
  with their regular "arf an' arf," is all they
  demand, or dream of demanding, from existence.

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Questions

• In what ways does this film speak to (address)
  middle class anxieties, if at all?
• How does the film explain the behaviour of the
  youth? What is the source or cause of the
  behaviour?