CUBS – Critical Reflection

CUBS is the story of a boy trying to get acceptance in a local gang that he wants to be part of, but with that there comes a price.

At the start we can see and assume that Harry Eden which plays the boy “Ben” in the short film is a caring person as his first thought is to give a friend his gloves when she says that she’s freezing. We don’t get a whole lot of insight into their relationship because its only supposed to be one piece of the puzzle to the story, but certainly there is something there as they have important eye contact multiple times throughout the short film.

There then comes a moment of relief as the gang “boss” approaches the court where Ben and some other children were staying. They all reacted by standing up in one big line as if he was some kind of king in the city or neighbourhood. After “picking” the person that was allowed to come to the gang meeting Ben stopped the boss that was going away to object to his decision. I had a feeling this was a desperate move by Ben as he really wants to be in the gang.

The story the continues at the gang meeting where all the gang members hunt a fox with cricket bats and guns. They chase a fox into a corner where Ben is put in the situation of having to kill the fox as proof of bravery. After the fox gets away one-time Ben has a desperate moment again and decides to try and catch the fox again. This time the fox cub can’t get away and Ben is requested to “finish” it. He hesitates and takes a long time to do it as he isn’t actually the kind of boy to be doing this. I think he is actually very human inside but eventually under the peer pressure he shoots the fox.

He isn’t proud at all of the killing and we don’t really see happiness from his side about being in the gang now. This raises the big question why he would want to go to the meeting at all and put himself through that. What does he get out of it? As we don’t get much insight to this part of the story it is the short films’ purpose to make the audience think about why he did what he did. He might have been in a pressure situation where someone expects him to do all this and he is scared to object this decision. Society and especially kids at a young age experience this a lot. Many are kind caring people and understand that it’s never right to hurt anything. It might be stereotypical but often times these types of kids aren’t the mentally strongest and don’t defend their own beliefs so they can easily get dragged into activities of this kind without them doing anything about it because they`re scared what will happen to them. On the other hand, in this situation it is very plausible that Ben has always been an outsider with not many friends and he now wants to change that at any price. But here again the trigger is society not accepting people as they are and excluding them from everything because interests are not shared.

All in all I liked the short film as it portraits an important general problem in the life of many people. This critical reflection task was helpful because it made me really think about the short film and the meaning/purpose of it and now I feel that i understand it.