Similarities

Both ‘Kidulthood’ and ‘Clockwork Orange’ are films that represent youths in a bad way. ‘Kidulthood’ is a much more recent film than ‘Clockwork Orange’ and we see a slight difference in the way the characters dress and the representation of society is slightly different but the films have many similarities.

The youths are seen using violence in both films as a way of getting their opinions across and getting their own way. In ‘Kidulthood’ the gang bully other people by using mental and physical violence. They also influence other people to use physical violence as they see it as a way of keeping their high place in the school ground hierarchy. This is similar to ‘Clockwork Orange’ as they too use violence but they don’t do it for the social hierarchy, they do it to be rebellious and break the rules that adults set.

In ‘Kidulthood’ we see disrespect for adults when a teacher approaches one of the gang and he takes no notice of what the teacher tells him to do. This shows us how the younger people of this area have control over the adults because they are seen as this frightening gang from the violence they use. This is also not what the audience expect to see as naturally you are meant to respect your elders. We definitely see this in ‘Clockwork Orange’ too as the boys are tricking their parents into thinking that they are going to school and working when actually they are getting up to no good. When the boys burgle the couple’s house we see this as another sign of disrespect as they are ruining what the couple have worked for and are extremely vulgar and disrespectful when they rape the woman.

This is another aspect that both directors decided to focus on, how the youths talk continuously about sex. In ‘Clockwork Orange’ there is a lot of desperation seen in having a romance and they seem to rape women at every opportunity they get. However in ‘Kidulthood’ it is all about who has slept with who and it is seen as a huge embarrassment if you don’t know the latest. In both films they make sure that sex is seen as one of the main priorities of the gangs.

Even though there is a big gap between when the two films were released they still both give this bad image of youths by using shocking and inappropriate actions.