Nothing says Easter Sunday quite like SPRING BREAKERS. So with my entire family out of town, and
my pockets fortified with foil covered chocolate eggs, I drove to the theater
and purchased my ticket.
The week before, in a class where we are studying classic
three-act structure, one of my students said she’d seen the movie and thought
it was structureless. “No main character, it was stupid, it wandered….” Of
course, now I had to check it out.
Let me begin by saying that this was one of the most sexually
disturbing and violent films I’ve ever seen. So some of you might want to excuse yourselves right now.
Yeah, I knew you’d still be here.
I did, in fact, discover that the film IS classically
structured. And a perfect
example of how a shifting main character can work. Yes, there are whole stretches of sexually demeaning imagery
around women and voice over that endlessly repeats (authentically, for those of
you who have never endured the mind numbing repetitiveness of a teenaged
diary.) And yes, it’s skeevy, and
yes, I found myself embarrassed and mortified several times throughout. However, the film also left me deeply
exhilarated.
What the hell?
As the parent of two teenaged boys, there’s nothing more
frightening to me than young people who are depressed, nihilistic, and who
choose violent avenues to break out of their stupor. But while I expected this of the film, I did not expect it
to ultimately be movie about female empowerment.
The movie starts by focusing on a young religious college
student played by Selena Gomez.
She and her friends are bored, want to go to Florida for spring break,
but have no money. What’s a girl
to do?
Rob a crappy diner of course.
What follows is a debauched week of drinking and drugs
(hilariously described in voiceover by one of the girls as “magical”) and ends with
the girls being arrested. The
judge tells them they won’t be charged with narcotics use because no drugs were
found on their person (no s*** Sherlock, they’re wearing bikinis.) They have a
choice—they can either pay a fine or spend two days in the county jail.
Enter James Franco. Now, this is not your mother’s James
Franco—no PINEAPPLE EXPRESS stoner high jinks here. He plays a low life drug dealer with grilled teeth, skankily
cornrowed hair, who drives a Mustang with his street name, “Alien,” on the
license plate. He pays the girls’
bail and at this point, I’m wanting to shout, “Run Disney Princesses!”
Franco does a beautiful job, especially in a moment where he
tries to convince a scared Selena not to go home. But even using his considerable pimp tricks, he fails and
she leaves (adios main character number one!) Now Alien becomes the protagonist. He leads a fantastic sequence where he brags to the
girls about all of his possessions, and to prove his vulnerability to the
remaining three, sits at his rickety white piano in the backyard of his stucco tract
house and serenades them with a Britney Spears song.
If course, in a scene that is so INSANE I can’t even describe
it here, they all fall in love with each other.
This being classic three act structure, it all goes well for
awhile, then it all falls apart. One girl is shot in the arm, and leaves. Now there are only three.
And there’s a decision to be made.
Alien must kill the antagonist, a drug dealer who (of course)
was his mentor and best friend. Now
Korine is really mocking classic story structure. Really? We’re
going to have a big Scarface shoot out in St. Petersburg? When Alien hesitates, the girls call
him “scaredy pants,” and we begin to see just how big these tiny bikini bottoms
are starting to get.
In a crazy homage to James Bond and Charlie’s Angels, the
three cut across the water in a speedboat. Alien wearing a day glo yellow t-shirt, and the two girls in
matching bikinis and pink unicorn face masks.
As they charge the bad guy’s compound, Alien is shot dead (adios
protagonist number two!) But we
don’t linger. The girls continue
on, guns blazing, until they take down every henchman and shoot the bad guy in
his hot tub. He deserves to die,
by the way, because he’s wearing a necklace shaped like a giant ice cream cone.
On their way back to the boat, the girls kiss dead Alien. Remember ladies, it’s always important
in the story to thank your mentor.
And here’s where I’M LOVING IT. For the entire movie, we
have been bombarded with images of women as objects. Asses shaking in bikinis, bare breasts bobbing, beer bongs
spewing, and now we realize we’ve been tricked.
Selena wasn’t the main character, and neither was James
Franco.
The protagonist is ultimately young womanhood itself.
We don’t even remember the two remaining girls’ names. It doesn’t matter. They are blonde, indistinguishable.
Every Girl.
They look good in a bikini and still like unicorns. They’re
not gonna get raped or abused or subjugated (which is where our expectations
lead us.) Hell no. Every girl gets out of there
alive. And all the bad MEN die.
They really are Disney
heroines!
Yeah… SPRING BREAKERS embraces all the conventions of
objectification, but it also is a completely original take on female power.
It’s ironic, hilarious, and a film that’s willing to take
risks and mash up genres and themes in a way that’s disturbing and funny.
As I left the theater, I reached into my pocket and munched
on my last remaining foil covered egg. In a movie landscape that often serves up fossilized concepts
and tired cliches, finally, a movie that pushes the rock away and rises from
the dead.
Where else could I possibly want to spend my Easter Sunday?
