The word that comes to the forefront of my mind when I watch this documentary is INTENSE. What's happening in the documentary is maybe the penultimate intense situation. There's no overt violence (unless you can construe verbal assault as a form of violence), there's no blood shed or particularly frightening scenes. Just lots of intensity. Which makes this extremely enjoyable. When I watched Scarred Straight on a little known channel called Moviepix back in the mid nineties or so, I was probably more than a little scared myself. Watching it again recently, I immediately felt that there was something so stirring and powerfully convincing about those convict orators, the strange and brutal world of prison life shooting through their lips like a shank delivered in an underhanded thrust to the face. It is fascinating the venom they let pour from their mouths to the teenage criminals before them, seemingly showing nothing but contempt for the kids, yet all along doing it with the aim of actually deterring these kids from the jagged path they have begun to tread on. I'm reminded of the horrors of prison life, especially the gang rapesa form of cruel and unusual punishment that should not be tolerated in an evolved, modern society. But yet, what will there be to prevent these kids from harming others if not for that powerful deterrent. It's a disgusting and disturbing thought, but it does make you think, and it's the kind of necessarily upsetting thoughts that surface when watching this movie. The convicts duty is too make these kids think twice, and their vitriolic, yet elegant and almost poetic, threats of rape, beatings, and murder is unfortunately more effective than what a high school guidance counselor can provide.
A central flaw to Scarred Straight though is that it didn't have female convicts relating the experience of female prisons to the three girls in the mostly male company. Yet it doesn't seem to really matter to the girls; they look more terrified than most of the boys (even though some of the boys have tears welling up in their eyes during the session)and one of the male convicts did mention a particularly horrific account of physical and sexual assault in a female prison. But it still would have been interesting to have an actual female convict to talk just as aggressive and as crude to the girls (I wonder if they did this for the 1999 Scarred Straight?).
It is such a delight to see the kids reactions after it was over. They all seem to have been breathing sighs of relief that they were out of there. Most of them actually did become straightwhether the program was actually the chief inspiration for that is unknown. But it does have a powerful effect on the viewer (especically when in the right frame of mind), a strange and rare kind of entertaining film that really doesn't do much to entertain. And there are some funny things the cons say. I don't think it's unacceptable to have an occasional laugh at these criminal wordsmiths as we sit in the comfort of our living spaces, knowing that we aren't locked in that room with them yelling in our faces about vengeful vendettas, eye gouging, nose biting, and ds sliding into you.
