Short Term 12: Analysis

Short term 12 is a film that’s revolved around foster parents taking care of deranged and “under-privileged” children in an effort to make them have a better life than the past experiences that they’ve had through living with their own biological parents. The film was directed and written by Destin Daniel Cretton, released in 2013. From the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the first scene where two of the protagonists who are a couple alongside another co-worker are telling the new temporary carer a story about a child who attempted to escape, reassuring him how easy it is to look after the kids but then suddenly amidst the conversation they are gripped with the frightening reality as soon as one of the kids, Sammy, tries to escape the residential facility screaming as if he was in agony. This completely changes the mood of the scene from when they were joking around with laughter. From this point on, this is a common trend that occurs within the majority of the scenes in the film; where happiness abruptly turns into chaos. As evidence this can be compared to scenes such as when everyone is outside playing a game of baseball while everyone is enjoying themselves, suddenly Luis makes a harsh remark about Marcus’ mother which is the impetus to changing the mood which leads to the assault on Luis being attacked with the baseball bat.

Themes in this film are depravity, loss and hope.These themes are thoroughly explored through situations that are presented to us in the film with the intention to provide the audience with a view on what some less fortunate children are going through and how they are always overlooked by the media which links in to how these characters feel forgotten by society and forced to live like this, the only hope existing within these kids is the hope of getting out and living a normal life. This is emphasized through Marcus’s character development through the scene where Mason comes into his room to give him company creating a beat on the drum kit for Marcus when he raps. Marcus raps about how much he’s suffered throughout his childhood and expresses himself through lyrics about how he hasn’t been able to live a normal life. The close up shot of his face while he says this is there in order to let the audience understand his facial expressions to let us know how he feels.

The residential facility that the kids live in certainly resembles a prison; typically, prisons are associated with criminal behavior and symbolize having no freedom at all which relates to the facility where the kids are being cared for. This gives a negative impression and representation on kids who live like this in the real world, people from the audience who have since seen this film would now realize the living conditions that most kids who live in foster care have to face However although this would make the audience realize the circumstances that they live in, this also leaves behind a negative ideology that society has which in turn doesn’t help the fact that these unfortunate kids are shunned by the majority of society’s ignorant ideology as a whole. To support this statement, an example shown right from the beginning of the film where Grace is pumping her water gun telling Nate that he’s only there just to keep them in a “safe environment” before aiming the gun at them in an attempt to wake them up. This performance shares a tremendous amount of similarities to a prison guard informing a new recruit about his duties before going to each cellar to wake up each individual prisoner. Many other aspects of this film relates to a prison lifestyle, such as the story of one kid who was found dead in the bushes after escaping (links to prisoners being shot for attempting escape), the shaving of Marcus’ head resembles the routine prisoners have to undertake of getting their hair cut trimmed, the siren that’s alarmed once someone escapes and lastly the close up shot of the rehabilitation room’s rectangular window gives us the impression that a prison guard is looking through. The community meetings in Short Term 12 widely resemble rehab patients seeking help and ex-convicts seeking redemption.

The character ‘Nate’ who plays the role of a student taking a year off school to gain first-hand experience dealing with kids who are forced into a residential facility is a significant character in this film, not for the sake of entertaining the audience through his mistakes, but there as a means to show how different we are to the kids living there and to display how ‘normal’ ordinary people such as ourselves fail to understand how the less fortunate experience growing up. Through the performance of this character, the audience can understand how unprepared Nate is and how he doesn’t really care that much for their sense of wellbeing through use of derogatory terms and actions, calling them underprivileged and rushing to use hand sanitizer on his face after wiping the saliva spat on him by a kid implying that they’re dirty; ultimately treating them as if they’re a disease to society through his actions. Essentially Nate is there to show how people from middle class fortunate families would react from being around a household such as this.

Jayden represents who Grace once was and what position she was in which is why Grace can really understand her feelings that explains as to what lengths she will go to try and