In Larry Clark's Kids: The Role Of Women In Hollywood

For centuries, the role of the females in film has been stagnant. Women have been given roles assigned through patriarchal systems to influence others and themselves to stay quiet and compliant to male needs. Roles designed for women included weak man-needing woman, loving mother, malicious mistress, sex-crazed floozy or not even in the frame at all. The Hollywood system was and still is a male-run system, without change until recent years (although not much change overall). The academy voters still consist of seventy-six percent men and women tend to only occupy seven precent of working directors in Hollywood. Female roles have developed, however, from strict compliant characters to more empowering pieces of history. A few roles, though, have

Jennie is a young girl in the film, primarily disadvantaged by the men in her life who lead her down paths of sex, drugs and rape. She searches the streets for Telly while disregarding her own needs and that of her friends in order to inform the naive girls that Telly is seducing about his infection. But, being a young woman in New York City and part of a specific sect of degenerates and misfits, she searches alone, without help from passerbys or any of Telly’s messed up friends. Her tenacity to help the girls Telly is seducing despite her lesser resources proves that she is strong, yet because of her current situation and the eventual outcome of the film, she leans on men to help her throw her voice into the world. It is because of this that Jennie falls under the weak woman stereotype in the film, constantly relying on the men in her life to help her out of her current situation and those girls who are about to become sick with

The main character is Max, a lowlife television station manager who discovers a hyper-sexualized masochistic show called Videodrome that leads him on a path of conspiracies and technological dreams. The character Nicki, played beautifully by Deborah Harry, is a psychologist who Max begins dating and who is perplexed and simultaneously arroused by Videodrome. Nicki is a sadomasochistic woman who commands attention with both her looks and her words. She takes control of Max, convincing him that Videodrome is for the people while she herself wants to become a character on the violent program. Nicki manipulates well, but she herself becomes a victim of her own sadistic tendencies. Her relationship with Max becomes a one-sided manipulative festival of sex and hallucinations, and Max begins to wonder if Nicki is real or part of Videodrome’s twisted