PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—Tackling the hot-button issue of teens and sexuality, Breaking Glass Pictures is releasing a film that puts into question the effectiveness of abstinence-only education among modern-day American youth.
Producer Alan Siritzky presents the controversial Sex and the USA, a film that takes the guise of an amateur documentary, leaving viewers wondering where reality ends and fiction begins. This blurring of genres, which persists through the entire film, exposes the potential for deception that resides in new media.
Unlike the characters in earlier coming-of-age films like Kids and Thirteen, the high school students in Sex and the USA must navigate their way through online media channels that present conflicting ideologies and mask the real-world consequences of online interaction. The film’s home video recordings are laced with webcam footage, YouTube videos, and social media pages, creating an aesthetic that’s as hyperkinetic as the connected lifestyles of today’s American teenager.
Tying it all together is the voice of Audrey, a girl who sounds both intrigued and shell-shocked by her peers’ behavior.
Director Jan Wellman overloads the audience with information, leaving us just as disoriented as the film’s hapless characters. In the end, we’re left questioning whether an education rooted in religious ideology can truly help young adults connect the dots between what they learn at school and what they’re told by popular media.
As Audrey laments toward the film’s end, “The only clear thing to me now is how much better it would have been if someone had just actually talked to us.“
In a media landscape that’s increasingly populated with differing authoritarian voices, a film like Sex and the USA, which aims for a realistic look at teenage disillusionment, seems all the more necessary.
The movie will be released on DVD on July 27.
