Spring Breakers is the only movie I have ever watched that made me want to take a hot shower, and thoroughly clean my being, just fifteen minutes into the film. I hold not even the slightest vestige of compassion for this film. Nevertheless, I took notes throughout the film so that I could explain and justify my opinions.
The movie is about four college girls who treat the concept of spring break like the end of the world. Even though they later talk about going back, it almost sounds like going back is a personal choice which is baffling. To me the movie seemed like a very twisted dystopia, where an extreme social and not environmental condition, is about wipe out our intellectual existence. After unnecessarily stretched monotonous shots of drinking, drugs, sex and nudity, the girls land up in prison. They are rescued by James Franco, the sleaziest character I have ever watched. The scene in which he tries to convince Selena Gomez to stay, and touches her face, her hair and lips and then his own, made my skin crawl, and was the most disturbing scene is this movie that was a violently unpleasant and revolting drudgery throughout.
If the director was trying to create a commentary on today’s culture he was unsuccessful because any narrative he was trying to get out to us, was overpowered by his attempts to shock the crowd. There were long parts in the movies that can be labelled things like. “Tanned White People Appropriate Culture That Is Not Their Own”, or “Tanned White People Drinking, Smoking and Collectively jumping in a room”. The film had everything that boils my blood, cultural appropriation, representation of races that are not white in a negative role, or possessing flat, single dimensional personalities, and a paper thin singular take on the lifestyle of our generation. Not only does the film vastly exaggerate the party culture of our generation but the very fact that it claims to represent the entire generation through its imagery is problematic, shallow and quite frankly insulting. Selena Gomez, does not represent what the director seems to think is the one fourth part of our generation with a slight conscience.
Regardless, there are a few elements of the movie that i found interesting.
CONTRASTS:
The narrative in Selena Gomez’s voice, that is played with the objectionable party scenes, when she talks to her grandma and exhaults the place. She actually sounds like she believes that her idea of spring break is the truth, even as the video clearly shows a stark contrast to her words. Its interesting that she sees the world so differently. Is it because she ants it to be that way so desperately? Is she aware that she is fooling herself? or is drugs and sex just her idea of magic?
visual contrasts created through juxtaposition of scenes like Selena Gomez with her church group while her best friends make plans about having oral sex over spring break.
THE PACE, and COLOURS IN THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE FILM (ONLY IN THE BEGINNING):
The very beginning of the film sees a host of travelling shots where the camera doesn’t stop moving throughout the shot, or the focus or subject of the shot is not dead centre and the camera doesn’t not stay on it throughout the shot. I also liked how certain series of shots were tinted heavily, with each succeeding brief short in a different colour. Shots that were tinted or travelling were long, while once hat indicated normalcy through colour, dialogue, or scene were just a few seconds long. This rapid succession of heavily edited shots created a build up and gave a sense of impending doom.
The only relatable part of the movie was when the girls start singing Britney Spear’s Hit Me Baby One More Time, which is a song I have sung out loud with different friends in different countries, but even that sense of relatability is lost, when they start turning the song into some kinda of overly sexualized tribal chant.
POP CULTURE REFERENCES:
- Girls in Bikinis
- Red solo cups
- kegs and keg stands
- parties in the sun at the beach
- Pop music, electronic dance music, rap music
- topless girls
- actions and gestures heavily laden with scarcely masked sexual subtext
- Bumper Stickers (Alien’s car reads BALLR)
- Britney Spears
- References to the American Dream
- Consumerism (As Aliens lists everything he owns- shorts, shirts,shoes,bed, bath oil, perfumes, guns, and other weapons inspired by Asian martial arts )
Personally, I did not like this movie and I don’t think it deserves a place in the MOMA. It failed to reach a resolution in its bid to shock.
