Spring Breakers (2012) Review

Or, do you feel abused yet?

You can watch the trailer here.

The verdict is in. This season's youths respond only to stroboscopic imagery, bright colours, discordant sound. Their life is a snapshot. Their emotions in colour. Their thoughts a one liner. Their image a selfie.

If you don't pick up any sarcasm there then you are at the wrong blog.

Here is the IMDB synopsis for you;

Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith have been best friends since grade school. They live together in a boring college dorm and are hungry for adventure. All they have to do is save enough money for spring break to get their shot at having some real fun. A serendipitous encounter with rapper "Alien" promises to provide the girls with all the thrill and excitement they could hope for. With the encouragement of their new friend, it soon becomes unclear how far the girls are willing to go to experience a spring break they will never forget.

I, like most people I think, always had a sense that Spring Breakers (2013) could go either way. (Originally this was the point where I broke into a huge rant about James Franco but for the sake of my and your sanity I’m trying to avoid it. Maybe a separate post!)

Now I'll be completely honest, I lost interest in the film about thirty minutes in and started doing something with my phone. Nothing interesting enough to remember, again like the first half an hour or so of this film.

From the off Spring Breakers was everything I expected it to be, which was mainly vapid and shallow. The editing was snappy in a way which was intended to create a discordant and syncopated narrative but just seemed pointless. Every scene was dark and over shadowed with garish coloured lighting to give it that Enter the Void (2009) for teenagers feel. It was that kind of aesthetic intended to look like a music video for the MTV generation. But I'm afraid the MTV generation are all grown up now Korine, and we like you cannot hold on to these tales of growing up dramatically forever.



For the most part, Spring Breakers was all clichéd style over substance, continuously and bizarrely narrated by Selena Gomez’s intolerably long letter to her Grandma. In said letter she states continuously that it's 'like another world down there' and they have 'grown so much';

Faith: Hi grandma. Having so much fun here. This place... is special. I am starting to think this is the most spiritful place I've ever been. I think we found ourselves here. We finally got to see some other parts of the world. We saw some beautiful things here. God, I can't believe how many new friends we made. Friends from all over the place. I mean everyone was so sweet here. So warm and friendly. It's way more than just having a good time. God, it's so nice to get a break from my auntie for a little while. We'll always remember this trip. I wanna go back again next year with you. Something so amazing, magical. Something so beautiful. Feels as if the world is perfect. Like it's never gonna end.

She also insists on continuously saying she wishes she brought her Grandma down with her. WTF? I feel we really should have met this Grandma character. An awkward tale about growing up too late, from the eyes of a 60 year old woman. Wouldn't surprise me if Korine is doing this well into his 60's. Do I feel a Spring Breakers 2 coming on?

I think when living on an island such as England it is always hard to contemplate how reaching the coast of your own country can be such an achievement. Still, even overlooking my islander bias, the fact the girl can treat getting drunk, taking drugs, and riding a scooter while prancing around in a bikini the whole time as a spiritual experience is just grating. She's supposed to be the sensible one, and she seems to go on less of a journey than any of her companions. This letter seems odd, her behaviour peculiar, and I could never work out her position in the film other than to be 'the good one.'

So yeah, the first half didn't go down particularly well. However, there was finally a weird tipping point where I literally dropped my phone mid what I was doing and paid attention. Now just to be clear, this wasn't because the moment was a ground breaking piece of film making, but rather that something finally promised to happen.

Here be the spoilers.

The scene in question comes after the girls have been bailed out of jail by rapper (and 'straight up G'), Alien for possession. They have been living with his crew and amongst his arsenal of cocaine and guns well into the summer and we are firmly of the belief that these poor misguided girls are firmly in his web. Though if you truly believed that, then I guess this film was a real mind blower for you huh?

As they dance about his bedroom, with Alien sat upon the bed and watching them lecherously, we feel this is the point where he will finally have his way with then. That is until they both pick up a gun. Then we feel Alien's time has come. These demonic psycho dolls are finally going to kill him and take his business as their own.

The girls both hold the guns to their crotch, shove the muzzles into Alien’s mouth, and tell him to 'suck their dicks'. For a while he looks scared. For a moment we think it's all over. Yet, then he grins and does as instructed and with gusto. This actually seems to be turning him on. These are 3 souls who truly understand each other. These are 3 people who won't let sex become a power game or gender roles become taboo. From that moment on they are soul mates.

Turns out this scene was completely improvised by the cast, who by the way were wonderful throughout the film. Seems like I got drawn in again.

Though this moment wasn't particularly ground-breaking (just a long time coming in a droll and tedious set up) it was the moment which underpinned all that I originally thought was interesting in the film. The roles of abuse. Who is the abused, and who the abuser? Who defines when someone is being abused? Is it the perpetrator, the victim, the populace or the media?

My conclusion is it is rarely ever the 'abused'.

This is where the casting becomes so intriguing, and I must admit it was the main thing that drew me to this film. It was an obvious and unsubtle ploy. Take the 'too cute' Disney Queens and let's see them 'go wild' at spring break. It was the casting equivalent of the countdown to Charlotte Church being legal for sex. (For the record, this wasn't done by The Sun newspaper, no matter what rumours and Charlotte Church herself want you to believe). I'm certainly not going to pretend to be a fan of Selena Gomez or Vanessa Hudgens, but their casting in a film about 'girls gone wild' obviously says something. Yet the casting of Franco as their spiritual and literal pimp says a lot more. (This is my second opportunity to go on a Franco rant. Look at my restraint!)

The Disney starlets don't seem to get the irony of their roles. The director plays them like a piper, just as Alien does. Through their desperation to evade their squeaky clean image they dance perfectly to his tune.I don't think they ever quite got what this film was about, but then don't think Korine ever did either.

Hudgens, like a long line of young starlets who have come before her (especially Disney alumni) seems desperate to shake off her innocent young image. A lot of her film choices have been moving specifically to the sexualised side of female characterisation. Such as the comic book style, Japanese school girl outfit sporting Sucker Punch (2012) or grind house revival flick Machete Kills (2013). In addition there have been two separate occasions of personal naked photos of her 'accidentally' circulating around the internet in both 2007 and 2009 which did wonders to open her up to an older, more voyeuristic make audience. For the record, I don’t think the fact she had just recently turned 18 when the first photos leaked was a massive coincidence. The second lot also helped to boost her 20 rankings up the FHM 100 sexiest women list of 2009.

It's no coincidence then that Hudgens plays Candi, the more overtly sexual character. Gomez in contrast is famed for her clean girl image and spends the rest of her time being a bit of a humanitarian. She plays Faith, the religious one. I'll let you take what you want about the obvious use of character names. The other two girls I admit I didn't know so much about.

Ashley Benson's character seems to be the most violently psychotic, but Benson herself doesn't have the history of the other cast members. She is famed for a few US TV series that I'm not familiar with, single episode credits in many teen shows and a Bring It On sequel. However, the role was originally set to be played by Emma Roberts, another wholesome family film actress who is now famed for aggressive spats with boyfriends. She dropped out due to the threesome scene.

The final cast member Cotty is played by Rachel Korine, who happens to be the directors sister in law and probably the most pointless character. She seems to be there only to be the second 'chicky' to fly the coop, a weird transitional character between the perfect and the psychotic. Almost Korine's entire portfolio is Harmony Korine movies. Take from that what you will.

Seriously, if this gang of girls were the Spice Girls Korine would have called them Slutty Spice, Psycho Spice, Naive Spice and Virgin Spice.

It is pretty clear from the original intended casting that Korine wanted to take a group of these child stars and show exactly what they had become. So what does this say?

I think Hudgens is always going to be the most interesting case study in this, because it was her role as Garbiella in the High School Musical (2006) series which is probably the most iconic in this generation of Disney stars. She was clever but beautiful, she got to date Zac Efron on screen and in real life, she was the perfect little girl all the girls wanted to be.

So what would people say about Hudgens using her sexuality in this sense to shirk her clean girl image? Is she exploiting herself, is the director exploiting her, or is it us as viewers who encourage this behaviour? Is this of benefit to her. Is it worth the price? Is there really a price?

The term abuse is rife in the media when talking about young adults, especially young girls. They abuse their bodies with drugs, alcohol and anorexia. The media abuses them by creating false images of perfection and sexualising them. They abuse each other due to over exposure to extreme pornography. They are abused by everyone who wants to exploit then for their sexuality. They abuse their own bodies by exploiting themselves for others sexual gratification.

The only person who doesn't seen to feel abused, is the youths themselves. A lot of the time it's only when others tell them they're being abused that they start to feel dirty. It's like the more educated, holier than thou version of 'slut shaming'.

So who's the worst offender? The starlets who do such things when they are a role model to young girls. Or a society which forces these girls to behave as perfectly innocent children way into their adult lives?

These aren't little girls having a cute little rebellions phase. These are young women trying desperately to be taken seriously as adults and forge their own lives. One thing people seem to forget when these starlets grew up, is that their audience grows up too. Yet Disney stretches out their childhood into infinity with their relentless repeats. If you're going to force a woman to be a girl forever, at some point something will blow up.

Even if she wanted to, could Hudgens be taken seriously as an actress continuing to play this two dimensional, boring, perfect girl? No, and her career just wouldn't survive. The little girl who smiled all the time in High School Musical was the false character and all the more offensive. She was passive, pointless, and not real. She was a false image for young girls to aspire to, and its just as impossible as trying to sculpt your body into that of a pin up.

Miley Cyrus is such a fantastic example of all the above and to be honest I am madly intrigued by her current dissent. She is lectured constantly for over-sexualising herself. From her surreal and now infamous 'twerking' VMA performance with misoginist Robin Thicke in 2013, to her naked video for 'Wrecking Ball' and the subsequent spat with Sinead O'Connor. People are always hitting out at her for being overly sexual when she had been such a role model to young girls, but they seem to dismiss one thing. She may be sexual, but she isn't sexy.

I believe, although I don't believe Cyrus is doing so intentionally, that she is doing more against sexualisation of young women than any of these campaigners. Cyrus's sexuality is almost a performance in drag. It is overt, it is exaggerated, and it shows it for what it really is, unnatural and ugly. People aren't angry at her for what she is doing, but because what she is doing shows the ugliness in what we do to young women on an every day basis. People were happy to romanticise a cute, innocent little tween star. Yet when she shoves the idea of herself as a sexual being down their throats they became uncomfortable.

Slight tangent there but it pretty much sums up how I felt about Spring Breakers. I wanted it to be a vehicle to channel these kinds of questions, but it just wasn't. I saw these issues within it because I wanted to, but it was in no way because of any particularly good film making. It seems to be one of those films that delights in being ambiguous, making empty statements, and then hoping people read a million different things into it in their loose crusade for meaning. That way the director can sit back and pleasure himself in all the levels people have read into his empty statement.

Annoyingly, I want to watch it again, and although I think I will find more there on a second viewing (while paying more attention) I don't think my ultimate conclusion would change. It is empty. But as every good psuedo filmmaker knows and delights in, an empty vessel is quick to be filled by others.

Definitely watch it, just to see what you take from it. Just make sure you know they are your own thoughts, not the Director's.