Kool Aid & Nunchuks
Spring Breakers may suffer from the high-expectations problem. I tried to temper my excitement going in, but with new pictures of nubile girls in bikinis and slow-motion trailer footage of James Franco with an AK going around the internet every day, it was hard. I so much love the idea that the guy from Kids partnered up with Dicknose Franco to film an over-the-top teeny-bopper panty party of exploited former Mouseketeers that I don’t know that the actual movie could ever hope to live up to it.
The first thing you should know going in is that Spring Breakers is not a movie that progresses much past the initial idea. You know how they repeat “Spring Breeeak” about 15 times in the trailer? The movie is exactly like that, just… more. I didn’t count, but I’d estimate they repeat “Spring Break” about 250 times. To be fair, it sounds really cool the way James Franco says it. Spriiiiing breaaaaak. Spring breeeak, y’all. Spring break fa evaaa. Point being, it’s not a movie you should go into looking for character development. It’s an extended visual joke, a partly satirical celebration of shallowness, materialism, and decadence. It feels more like a visual art installation adapted to a feature rather than a feature in its own right. It can feel like Harmony Korine stuffing newspapers into a feature hat so it’ll fit on Spring Breakers‘ little head, and at times you really notice the newspaper. The characters repeat the same things over and over. The editor must have worn the plastic shell off the button for “gun cocking sound effect.” And I’m pretty sure Spring Breakers breaks the South Park movie’s record for most uses of the word “f*ck.” As I heard someone say on the way out of the theater, “I felt like I was trapped in a music video I didn’t want to be in.”
About 40 minutes in, I was just about fed up with the editing, the repetition – both of shots and of dialog – the lack of real people or personalities… fed up with the stuff that was obviously filler. I was ready to write the whole thing off. But I stuck with it a few more minutes, and was rewarded with the kind of transcendent moment you hope to find in any work. My friend Joe Sinclitico does a comedy bit about Tupac’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” about how his favorite moment in the song is the part where Tupac just drops all pretense of meter or rhyme and just starts telling everyone in the world to go f*ck themselves. There’s a moment like that in Spring Breakers, that moment when the appeal of a piece and the piece itself become one perfectly indistinguishable sphere. James Franco, teetering on the edge of breaking character completely, just starts talking about how awesome the set is. “Look! At my shit!” He’s got guns! He’s got drugs! He’s got Lamborghinis! LOOK! AT HIS SHIT! He’s got silver teeth! He’s got Scarface playing on a loop! ON A LOOP! He’s got a crazy bed frame, it’s like a work of art! He gets weirdly obsessed with his Kool Aid and his nun chuks.
For me, that moment redeemed the entire movie, which had worn out its welcome after the opening scenes. See, it’s a little hard to take when people talk about Spring Breakers as if it’s this withering critique of the shallowness of American culture, about Harmony Korine as if he’s created this brilliantly developed, finely-crafted allegory of moral decay (and people do talk about it like this, I was there). For one thing, it’s not really developed at all. Lovingly detailed, maybe, but not developed. But I’ve heard it said that obsession is the root of all comedy, and Harmony Korine is nothing if not a collection of weird obsessions. He doesn’t spend much time parsing or intellectualizing them before he spits them back out. There are many f*cks spoken but few given. That’s the beauty of it.
There’s a clip of Harmony Korine on David Letterman back in 1997 when he looked about 12, where he tells David Letterman that he’s working on a novel called A Crack Up at the Race Riots, about a race riot in Florida, where “all the Jews live in the trees, and MC Hammer leads a gang of the blacks against a gang of whites led by Vanilla Ice.” As much as it sounded like Harmony Korine just being provocative at the time, it’s not hard to draw parallels between this plot and the plot (“plot”) of Spring Breakers 16 years later, which sees James Franco as a composite of RiFF RAFF and Kevin Federline* butting heads with a rival gangster played by Gucci Mane. It’s like Korine hasn’t really developed this obsession since then, but the fact that it’s still so present and so powerful in his mind is compelling in its own right. That Harmony Korine doesn’t seem to reflect much on meaning or the psychological underpinnings of his own obsessions is both his greatest asset and biggest weakness.
The main obsession mined in Spring Breakers is frat culture, rap culture, and coed pseudo porn. The movie opens with slow-motion fake tits getting shot with beer and water, leading into a shot of four buff frat dudes holding beer cans as their dicks, “pissing” beer onto eager, arch-backed topless women sitting in front of them in the prone. As Korine turns his eye to his stars, he never tries to disguise the lingering close-ups of their labial mounds, faintly visible beneath their ribbon-thin layer of neoprene, making expressly clear what so much faux-chaste youth programming denies but so obviously fetishizes. That those stars are former Disney Channel babes and a beard brigade of Bieber and Efron exes is just Smirnoff icing on the jizz cake.
It’s funny, genuflecting film festival folk treat Harmony Korine as this brilliant craftsman, like Hitchcock, when for me he’s always seemed more like the Jackass guys, ready and willing to chug horse semen for our entertainment, a true performance artist. I find myself wanting to simultaneously praise his work while denying its deeper meaning.
GRADE: B+
*Per the Q & A, “Alien” was supposedly based on a Florida rapper character called Dangerous.
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This sounds like it was just as brutal as Kids but in a much different way.
Nothing is as brutal as Kids. That remains the only movie I’ve ever watched that literally made me nauseous.
Ken Park was pretty brutal.
Ken Park has been sitting in the “saved” section of my Netflix longer than anything else there.
Watch Thirteen. It’s like kids but makes you never want to have a daughter or see Holly Hunter naked.
Kids is Reefer Madness, only with sex instead of weed. I mean I thought it was totally brutal and awesome when I was 15, but looking back on it it’s really kind of puritanical and reactionary. It could just as well been an educational film financed by Mormons or something, if it weren’t for the nudity and swearing.
Isn’t the word “Internet” capitalized?
Yes. Thank you for helping spread the word.
According to the MS Word style guide created in the mid-90s, yes. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’d be like capitalizing “Television” or “Radio.”
That wasn’t sarcastic. I seriously want people to get on that. On another grammatical tip, the tagline for “Tyler Perry’s Temptation” is “Seduction is the devil’s playground.” No part of that previous sentence makes sense (including the part I wrote).
Vince: the explanation is that *an* internet (lower case) refers to any closed system of connected computers (or words to that effect–somehow it’s different from a what we generally call a network) but *the* Internet is the thing we all use that has all the porn on it. Like, the MIT computer guys probably have their own internet, which, now that I think about it, probably has hella porn on it too.
There’s no such thing as “an” internet. There’s one Internet. What MIT, or any other business’ internal network, is an intranet.
I see what you’re saying, but we don’t differentiate between “a radio” and “the Radio” either.
Because there isn’t a “The Radio.” There’s FM, AM and SiriusXM.
Shouldn’t “labial mounds” be capitalized? Them mounds look proper.
@Michelanvalo – In that same vein, there isn’t a “The Internet.” There’s Google, Uproxx…you get it.
We say, “I’m going to turn on the radio (the technology/device) and listen to the radio (a nebulous word referring to content transmitted over radio),” the same way we say, “I’m going to connect to the internet/Internet (the technology/device) and browse the internet (a nebulous word referring to content transmitted over the internet/Internet).”
The convention of capitalization has more to do with the relative newness of the technology, and tends to refer specifically to that technology. The capitalization will likely begin to disappear–and has–as knowledge of that technology becomes commonplace. The capitalization of “Internet” starts to feel nonsensical when phrases like, “There are a lot assholes on the internet,” become an acceptable, and perhaps preferred, way of saying, “There are a lot of assholes using the Internet.”
I just looked it up again and the definition I found for internet is “Any set of networks interconnected with routers. The Internet is the biggest example of an internet.” Of course, you can take that definition with a grain of salt, since I found it on the Internet. Consensus still says to capitalize the word, regardless of whether it seems outdated to do so. Re: other anachronisms, see. e.g., the Pope.
Yes, that should have been “see, e.g.” Don’t even.
The lack of an edit button is the worst.
I definitely understand the desire to capitalize “Internet” when referring to “the biggest example of an internet.” It is, after-all, the proper name we have given to that internet. I think it gets more complicated when we start using “the Internet” to refer to content on the Internet, or the community of people who use the Internet, i.e. “The internet–the collection of people who use the Internet–was buzzing yesterday.” In that example, a lower case really feels more appropriate, as we are no longer literally referring to the specific network of computers.
The problem would be standardizing that, and actually believing people would take the time to distinguish between the two. Since the most common usage of the word “internet” at this point seems to be referring to the content/community, I would think the lowercase would eventually win out. But I don’t know shit.
@Helen Hunt and her Magical Cunt
That this thread just cruised right over your comment was criminal. +so many 1′s.
such a cool conversation!
whether or not you capitalize the i in internet is a 100% style preference. whatever choice an author goes with is worth giving exactly zero fucks about. please lets get back to the labial mounds of this disney princesses why dont we???
As an English “teacher” (I’m not so sure I teach so much as I flail about in front of kids all day) my two cents is “Internet.”
I’ve never seen “Kids” but I have to think that seeing someone chug horse semen is just as brutal.
I would much rather see someone down a gallon of horse jizz than ever watch Kids again.
Back on topic: while I usually look at picks of hot chix and think about where I’d like to put m’dong, the banner photo always makes me want to go knuckle deep. I have many facets!
I’m inspired
Cool story bro. I recently wrote a song about the insidious “gangsta” culture eroding the traditional Inuit way of life. I call it “Rap Nanuks”.
(Chorus)
Rap Nanuks catchin’ mad haddocks wif da strengf of there phat hooks
(Verse)
I’m a bad rap Nanuk where da snow falls like static
When I see a caribou I creep up and I attack it
We be dammin’ and crammin’ rivers wif king and sockeye salmon
Got antelope in my scope and a harpoon in my boat
We rock satellite phones and bling made of whale bones
This Rap Nanuk atones for da meat he brings home
We deep into it, gangsta Inuits
We pack heat and seal meat and all kinds of shit
Sled dawgs gunnin’ it, bitches be lovin’ it
My hos is rubbin’ noses cuz I’m such a pimp
Representin’ Tanana, top of America
New swag, dew rags, fur bandana-nas
Frozen banana-nas, igloo cabana-nas
Throwin’ harpoons like Joe Montana-na
Yo, mad Respek (sled)Dog.
…also, shouldn’t there be a line about “phat stax of seal bats” or something?
“Smirnoff icing on the jizz cake”. Amazing.
The whole sentence, “That those stars are former Disney Channel babes and a beard brigade of Bieber and Efron exes is just Smirnoff icing on the jizz cake” is one of the greatest things written by any contemporary film critic.
I read that three times it made me so happy. You do words good, Vince!
Ha ha “It was hard.”
Just can’t seem to separate Selena’s rockin’ body from her Toddlers and Tiaras face.
The King’s Justice, Ser Ilyn Payne, could do that for you.
Each time you mention Crackup it sounds like you don’t think that it’s a real book.
Even if it exists, it’s not.
The only spelling error here is misspelling Dangeruss.
*Swoon*
This review caused me to discover that Wikipedia has an whole page about movies where the work “Fuck” is said the most. you can sort it by total number or by times per minute:
[en.wikipedia.org]
That’s a list of some damn fine films. The more fucks you give, the better your movie will be. Had no idea Summer of Sam had so many…
Spring Breakers:Cinema::Joe Camel:Tobacco
Internet be damned, the real tragedy in all this is that prior to about 2 days ago, I thought Harmony Korine was one of the non-Disney-Channel bikini girls. I’ll just assume that dogs walk people and you can wear pants as a shirt, too, because my whole world doesn’t make any damned sense any more…
Also, this was a very fun read. Tip of the hat, Mancini
b+? crap now I have to watch this
Saw this in TIFF and I almost walked out after hearing “sprrriiiiiiinnnnnnggggg breeeeaaaaaak” for the 17th time.
is it possible james franco has introduced “wigger-face” to the world?
I dont know but he reminded me why all wiggers be systematically killed.
Man, I was pissed when you guys stuffed me into that bottom locker, but [takes a deep long sniff] all is forgiven.
I think I’ll wait for the CleanFlix version, thank you very much.
The hype for this movie is quite strange. I can’t tell if bloggers are legitimately excited to see this masterclass of filmmaking or if they just think it’s a joke and want to be in on it.
this
“Smirnoff icing on the jizz cake.”
Goddamn, thank you for that.
I was as excited for this as anyone, but everything in your review indicates a D+ more than a B+. So the whole movie is absolute shit except for one scene where James Franco is extra ridiculous?
The thing with “Hit ‘Em Up” is that the beat goes hard and Pac goes hard throughout the whole thing. The only weak part (in my opinion) is when his “lil homies” get on the mic. Here it sounds like the movie is consistently insufferable.
For the record, I was as excited for this movie as a straight early-20s male could possibly be.
but thats cause you east coast niggas aren’t even on his level, so he has to let em finish you up
fun fact: all the dictators the Outlawz named themselves after are dead or dying
So any carpet munching?
Nowhere is the meanigless errantry of the postmodern condition more apparent than in Mr. Korine’s film. As you mention Vince, it’s not something that progresses much past the initial idea. Also, the idea that Korine’s film is a representation of his “obsessions” and the fact that that they are not “intellectualized” at all.
If there is is something to be said about the film it is that it is a kaleidoscope of frat culture and moral depravity that wants to say something about the present without really saying anything at all. There is no attempt to articulate the totality of anything: the story, the characters or the social relations that produce and inform this type of cultural meandering. Korine, and his muff induced stupor, are adrift in the sea of postmodern insignificance, without any sense of the metanarrative that produced it and the worthlessness that it perpetuates. So here’s to more of the same: loving the titties, camel toes and guns while our doom generation and culture stagnates and becomes even less aware of itself.
Only six days til caturday!
Harmony Korine is a dude?