'Beautiful 3' holds a mirror up to nation's culture
<b>Mini-review: 'America the Beautiful 3: The Sexualization of Our Youth'</b>
Chicago filmmaker Darryl Roberts is fairly blunt about what he wants us to take away from his doc "America the Beautiful 3: The Sexualization of Our Youth."
1. Girls think they have only two options in relationships with boys: be desirable or be invisible.
2. Boys are being raised in an increasingly sexualized culture that embraces online pornography and makes conceptualizing healthy relationships with women extremely difficult, if not irrelevant.
"America" marks Roberts' third important and timely film exploring the impact that mass media and its imagery have on young, unsuspecting consumers and their inattentive, clueless parents.
The first film wrestled with our culture's obsession over achieving beauty. The second exposed the damage done by the culture's obsession with thinness.
This third chapter is one big messy documentary that seems to suffer from narrative ADD by frequently jumping from subject to subject. First it's about American children imitating the X-rated behavior of adults.
Then it's about Glen Ellyn teenager Cali Linstrom, who called the Abercrombie & Fitch empire on the carpet for exploiting youthful sex in its pervasive and persuasive ad campaigns. Then it's about rape statistics so alarming that they might convince responsible universities to disband frat houses. And then more.
It becomes apparent that Roberts views these seemingly different issues as tentacles from the same beast, and these are not remotely all of them.
Roberts includes the usual talking heads of authority to comment on how American parents haven't been vigilant in protecting their children.
Surprisingly, they blame President Ronald Reagan for starting us down the slippery slope when he deregulated the television industry, for the first time allowing corporations to target kids as a tasty slice of the demographic market pie.
Roberts is no self-centered Michael Moore. He comes off almost naive with his recollections of the more "innocent" time of his childhood during the pre-Internet age. That grants him some authenticity when he appears genuinely shocked by what he finds.
"America the Beautiful 3" offers neither easy answers nor substantial depth. But it accomplishes something few documentaries do. It holds a mirror up to the nation's culture. The reflection isn't pretty.
"America the Beautiful 3: The Sexualization of Our Youth" opens at the Logan Square Theatre, 2646 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. Not rated; recommended only for mature audiences. 101 minutes. ★ ★ ★