Stacey DeWolfe Methods in Film Studies January 5, 2004
Missing the Point: A Reception Study of Harmony Korine’s Gummo In his short career, American director Harmony Korine has divided critics and audiences with his approach to filmmaking in which controversial subjects are explored using a variety of media. As an enfant terrible, Korine is understood as both a “prodigious” (Fuller, Gerstel) and “precocious” (Hays, Gavin Smith) talent and an “obnoxious kid” (Munch)—a self-taught visionary with a “desire to redefine the art form” (Grealy) and a stupid adolescent (Maslin), who tries to “nauseate everyone in a desperate attempt to establish an identity” (Tatara). An analysis of the reception to Gummo, his directorial debut, becomes most interesting in what it reveals: not only in questions raised about Korine and the film, but about the practice of criticism in the face of a difficult and demanding work. The inclusion of comments drawn from pop cultural journals and internet message boards makes possible a meditation on how such factors as gender, age and social class may have influenced the reception to this film. Liberated from the constraints of a conventional narrative structure, Gummo is a collage of still photographs, consumer video, and 16mm and Super-8 film, which paints a tender portrait of the fragility of human existence in the blighted wasteland of mid-western America made literal by the physical and financial devastation of a tornado which swept through southern Ohio in the late 1970s. Set in the small town of Xenia, the film opens on a delicate boy dressed only in jockey shorts, white high-tops and pink bunny ears, as he wanders along a garbage-strewn overpass, spitting on the cars passing underneath. The image is accompanied by a whisper that introduces the film’s absurdist tone: “I saw a girl fly by and I looked up her skirt.” From here we are taken through a series of random character pieces that reveal the spiritual desolation of the town and its citizens. As most of the characters are children, their routines involve little more than hanging out, getting into trouble and getting high. What marks the segment of society represented in Gummo most poignantly is the violence which underscores every action. Gummo began its tour of festivals in the spring of 1997 and immediately divided writers, who were united only in terms of the passion with which they praised (or condemned) the film. Tom Lyons of Toronto’s Eye Weekly was one of the notable exceptions who took a moderate stance, noting Korine’s efforts, but judging the film “a failure.” Other critics were not so kind. In the influential New York press, Gummo found some of its most passionate detractors. David Denby of The New Yorker described the film as “beyond redemption,” but it was Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, who provided the most damning blow, declaring it the “worst film of the year.” 2 That several writers (Kraus, Morrison, Rosenbaum et al) have employed variations of the word “exploitation” in their reviews points to one of the central problems raised by the film, while at the same time, exposes the challenge of addressing this critical issue. On the film’s website, director Gus Van Sant introduces us to its “cast of cute and creepy southern high school parking lot legends,” who are defined by less sympathetic observers as “mental defectives” (Tatara) and “white trash freaks” (Hays). Even an ardent fan—Gavin Smith of Sight and Sound—categorizes the film as a “watermark of White Trash Chic,” an interpretation which Korine finds offensive and firmly denounces, saying that it was simply about “casting kids who I grew up with” (Kelley). In Film Threat, Ron Wells calls Korine the “Jerry Springer of this world,” but points out that unlike Springer, he “doesn’t judge his subjects [because] he can identify with them.” Susan Morrison of CineAction agrees, arguing that “for a film to be exploitive, the viewer would have to be consciously aware of being made to feel superior” and that in Gummo, this is “not the case.” It does, however, seem to be the case in some of responses. Korine’s most hostile critics are so consumed by loathing that their aversion to the project extends to the characters as well. Paul Tatara of CNN Online who likens Korine to “Jenny Jones with a distribution deal,” and who may hold the deepest grudge, exposes his own self- righteousness with claims that Gummo is redundant because “day-time talk shows have [already] given everybody ample opportunity to feel superior.” Yet Tatara and Maslin, while certainly the most aggressive, are not alone in their biases, and to an extent, their directness is less problematic than the distanced responses of more cowardly writers. A them-not-us mentality is present in many of the critiques, with one going so far as to say, “if this is hell, at least it’s not my hell” (Arthur, 79) and another suggesting that the story’s setting “might as well be Mars” (Cox). Perhaps the most useful conclusions are drawn by Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader who looks beyond whether or not the film is a work of exploitation, to ask why it might be “intriguing, disturbing or ethically questionable to […] look at people who seem more vulnerable than professional actors.” Only four members of the Gummo cast are recognizable—the rest having been culled from the Nashville neighborhood where the film was shot and Korine’s gaggle of childhood cohorts—and there is something about the presence of amateurs that disturbs many viewers. For the most part these people, who are defined by their physical and/or mental malformations, are playing themselves. Some see this as a misuse of documentary techniques designed to “yield the maximum sensationalism or grotesqueness,” (Gavin Smith) but Rosenbaum disagrees, arguing that in turning “a camera on people for reasons besides their acting ability or attractiveness [… Korine] demands that his viewers think seriously about what it means to watch people on film” and acknowledge that document and fiction are “always overlapping.” 3 That he embraces the questions raised by Gummo rather than forcing his opinions on the reader aligns Rosenbaum with writers who are perhaps younger and less experienced with the study of cinema, but enthusiastic in their desire for challenging work. Jamie Christley, in filmwritten.com, asks questions that are meant to be pondered, rather than answered: “Where do the actors end and where does reality begin? And what are we to make of scenes that are unrehearsed […] next to scenes that are clearly fabrications?” Fergus Grealy of Senses of Cinema quotes Christley in his defense of Korine as one of “the thinking viewer’s great directors.” This willingness to be an engaged viewer is echoed in many of the comments posted on the IMDB, in which the film is celebrated because one can “watch it again and again and get something different every time” (Shearing). These chat room participants may not possess the skills to express their thoughts as elegantly as Rosenbaum, but their responses reveal a shared approach that is motivated by what could be interpreted as a tolerant curiosity: wondering if it is better to laugh at someone, thereby treating them as human, or ignore them (misterreid), thus putting forth a challenge to all viewers by asking them to question their own expectations when dealing with a film that is based on “destitute, racist, drug-addicted people living in a small, small town” (moviekid84). That these characters abound in Gummo, with its “total disregard for Adult America,” (Kraus) results in a widening of the generation gap between Korine and many of his critics who seem to have trouble finding meaning in his random assemblage of vulgar images. According to Gus Van Sant, Gummo was “made by a young person speaking to young people,” yet the film’s reception has not been entirely governed by age. The lack of a coherent narrative structure is a pivotal issue for most of the writers cited here, and this “shattering of filmic time and space” (Feaster) is mentioned over and over as they struggle to get a handle on the film. As though uncertain as to where they should begin, the majority of articles introduce the tornado as a means of entering into the review, but there are divergent opinions as to the significance of this event. In some cases, writers go looking for a back story to create a context for what is to come (Haughton, Russell Smith), while others (Arthur, Kirkland) identify it as a metaphor for the “deracinated condition of the protagonists, and a guiding trope for the film’s internal organization” (Arthur). A third group see the tornado only as an “obvious, but ultimately meaningless device” (Newman) that “never manages to become poetically trenchant” (Maslin). What is key is the fact that the writers are incapable of freeing themselves from the tradition of classical narrative, with its inherent emphasis on logical and causal progressions. The film’s title is another source of distraction made worse by Korine’s ambivalence toward it. At the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, Korine stated that he had “named the film as if he were naming a child,” (Morrison) a response that frustrates many writers, both in its confrontational and pretentious tone, as well as in its refusal to link Gummo to a central protagonist “whose point of view 4 gives the audience cues about how to perceive the other people in the movie” (Rosenbaum). What becomes amusing is the determination with which many writers (Potter, Newman, Gavin Smith) seek an understanding of this title, discovering what they perceive to be an obvious signifier—that Gummo refers to Gummo Marx—but seeming not to realize that they have been led astray by a master prankster. This foolhardy search is made evident by the chat rooms, where the connection to the Marx Brothers is eventually determined to be true, a conclusion that does little to resolve anyone’s bewilderment. As these anecdotes make clear, the media has a love-hate relationship with Korine, one that never keeps it from feeding into the myth, obsessing over the intimate and unseemly details of his personal life and recalling the seemingly endless escapades of this wunderkind, who can be articulate and at the same time behave like a “Ritalin-deprived brat,” (Pride) and whose 23-year-old “aesthetics are crucial to understanding a work that displays all the characteristics of a first film[:] persona […] and self indulgent” (Levy). Korine’s perverted adventures include: forcing crew members to work in unsanitary conditions, finding cast members on the Sally Jessy Raphael Show, threatening to stab an audience member who objected to his treatment of the mentally disabled (Hays), dressing up in a cowboy costume for a public appearance (Battaglia), and provoking people to beat him up (Grealy). There are also numerous references to an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman,” during which Korine appeared disheveled and unwashed and said: “bacon is my aesthetic.” One of the most amusing articles is by Charles Taylor of Salon who responds to this myth- building with a tongue-in-cheek piece that imagines Korine in 2030, having been deserted by his most ardent fans, and asking himself: “What—if I can be so presumptuous—was I thinking?” But despite the sarcasm in the content, what is most evident in Taylor’s writing is his affection for Korine. And he is not alone. Korine’s fans are a profoundly loyal group who will defend his reputation against the slander and derision of his detractors. Crossing gender, age, education and social class, they’re a varied assortment of types: from the rap-loving teenage boys who think the films are “sick,”i to female film students who are drawn to the beauty of Gummo’s images; from scholars and festival directors, both male and female, who continue to program his work, to the elite of independent filmmaking. So how does a writer come to terms with a film like Gummo? A crucial component of the critical process are the conclusions drawn regarding the film’s overall merits, and the determination of whether there is sufficient quality to warrant the reader’s expenditure of time and money. From this perspective, the reception of Gummo reveals salient truths about the practice of criticism, and the techniques used to deal with such a contested and formidable work. What is most pronounced in the amassed texts is the fear of being misunderstood – an emotion that is felt as resolutely by the kids in the chat room as it is by the tenured critics of the mainstream press. There is a timidity to many of the reviews that is 5 informative, writers tread hesitantly around their epilogues as though waiting for others to make the first pronouncement, or imply their position by separating themselves from the critics who stormed out of press screenings (Gerstel, Hays). Others chide their contemporaries for being cowed by hipsters who claim that “those who don’t like Korine’s work lack the intellectual strength to understand it,” (Cox) and for allowing their anxiety about appearing prudish or square to influence their critical stance. In the responses of those who get it, there is a clarity to the words used. Message board fans describe the film with simple terms such as “unique and sad and funny” (Casey) that reflect a more direct emotional response than the showy, self-conscious descriptions used by critics. These professional fans speak of Gummo in terms of its “strange beauty” (Anderson) and its use of a “new film grammar,” (Fuller) and are drawn, rather than repelled, to that which is “so distasteful that it becomes compelling” (Gerstel). They are also united in their ability to accept the film for what it is: a random assortment of images “devoid of any meaning but semiotically intense” (Gerstel). Concurrently, adjectives such as pretentious, pointless and annoying litter reviews that are critical of Korine’s disregard for the “normal conventions of what makes a movie […] enjoyable,” (Cox) while others dismiss the film as “idiotic” and offensive—but only because it’s such a waste of time” (Null). The issue of time wasted is the primary complaint for those who dislike the film, and circles back to the question raised by the handful of critics who demand to know what Korine is trying to prove. In a final warning to Korine himself, Paul Tatara cautions, “If you were standing in front of me, I’d be tempted to kick your bony ass… until you apologized to me for wasting 88 minutes of my time.” But for the fan-boys (and girls), there are no such complaints to be made, and no understanding of how writers like Tatara have so clearly missed the point – that the film offers an affirmation, “that even amid the endless spectacle of cruelty and horror… life can offer some isolated, poetic moments of weird beauty” (Potter). Their reviews often end with the inclusion of favorite scenes, such as the “oddly involving” (Putnam) one in which a young boy named Solomonii sits in a bathtub full of filthy water eating spaghetti and chocolate, while his mother washes his hair. In the background, a piece of bacon is taped to the wall. Collectively admired, this is one example of a moment that has sparked “devotion” in his fans, made all the more remarkable by Korine’s declaration that “all I want to see is bacon taped to walls” (Blake).
6 Works Cited
Anderson, Jeffrey. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Combustible Cinema. 9 Nov. 2003.
Arthur, Paul. “Tom and Huck go to Hell.” Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Film Comment 33 (1997): 79-80.
Battaglia, Andy. “Family pictures - Gummo moviemaker Harmony Korine is not independent film's bastard child after all.” 28 Sept. 1999. Salon. 3 Nov. 2003.
Blake, Kara. “In Perfect Harmony: A Love Letter to Harmony Korine.” Moving Picture Views. 5 (1999): Back page.
Casey. “kinda movie u watch twice” IMDB User Comments: Gummo. 8 Jul. 2003. Internet Movie Database. 8 Nov. 2003.
Christley, Jaime N. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 7 Sept. 2001. Filmwritten Magazine. 9 Nov. 2003.
Cox, Ana Marie. “JULIEN DONKEY-BOY: Critical vertigo, a homely Chloë Sevigny and one jabbering schizophrenic -- this all means something to director Harmony Korine.” 15 Oct. 1999. Salon. 3 Nov. 2003.
Feaster, Felicia. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Film Quarterly. 52: 2 (1998/99): 41-3.
Fuller, Graham. “Directing On The Edge Of Madness.” The New York Times. 12 Sept. 1999: 100-101.
Gerstel, Judy. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Toronto Star. 17 Oct. 1997: D-13.
Grealy, Fergus. “Great Directors: A Critical Database - Harmony Korine.” Apr. 2003. Senses of Cinema. 3 Nov. 2003.
Haughton, Elspeth. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Apollo Guide. 9 Nov. 2003.
Hays, Matthew. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Montreal Mirror. 12 Mar. 1998: 1-2
Kelley, Mike. “Showstoppers” 1 Sept. 1997. Filmmaker Magazine. 9 Nov. 2003.
Kirkland, Bruce. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Toronto Sun. 22 Oct. 1997
Kraus, Daniel. “The Kid’s Alright: Harmony Korine Strikes a Dissonant Chord with Grown-up America.” 16 Oct. 1999. Salon 3 Nov. 2003.
7 Late Night With David Letterman. CBS. 17 Oct. 1997.
Levy, Emanuel. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Variety. CCCLXVIII: 5 (Sept 8 1997): 80.
Lyons, Tom. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 4 Sept. 1997. Eye Weekly. 9 Nov. 2003.
Maslin, Janet. “Cats, Grandma and Other Disposables,” Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. New York Times. 17 Oct. 1997. misterreid. IMDB User Comments: Gummo. 29 Oct. 2003. Internet Movie Database. 8 Nov. 2003.
Morrison, Susan. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. CineAction. 45 (1998): 41-45. moviekid84. “Definitely Worth Seeing.” IMDB User Comments: Gummo. 2 Sept. 2003. Internet Movie Database. 8 Nov. 2003.
Munch, Ken. “The Kid's Alright by Daniel Kraus (10/16/99).” 22 Oct. 1999. Salon. 3 Nov. 2003.
Newman, Kim. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. May 1998. Empire Magazine. 107. November 9, 2003.
Potter, Alicia. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 26 Jan. 1998. Boston Phoenix. 9 Nov. 2003.
Pride, Ray. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 17 Nov. 1997. New City Chicago. 9 Nov. 2003.
Putnam, Dustin. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 1999. rec.arts.movies.reviews. 9 Nov. 2003 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie- 1080181/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=3&rid=822289
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 1997. Chicago Reader. 9 Nov. 2003.
Schwartz, Dennis. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 22 Aug. 1999. Ozus' World Movie Reviews. 9 Nov. 2003. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie- 1080181/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=1&rid=76939
Shearing, Dan. “Uniquely Compelling Film.” IMDB User Comments: Gummo. 18 Sept. 2001. Internet Movie Database. 8 Nov. 2003.
8 Smith, Gavin. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. Sight and Sound. 8: 4 (1998): 38-9.
Smith, Russell. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 1 Dec. 1997. Austin Chronicle. 9 Nov. 2003.
Tatara, Paul. “Proof that kids should not play with cameras.” 7 Nov. 1997. CNN Online. 9 Nov. 2003.
Taylor, Charles. “What -- If I Can Be So Presumptuous -- Was I Thinking?” 1 Oct. 1999. Salon. 3 Nov. 2003.
Van Sant, Gus. “Forward to Gummo.” 2003. Fine Line Features Official Gummo Website. 3 Nov. 2003.
Wells, Ron. Rev. of Gummo. dir. Harmony Korine. 4 May 1998. Film Threat. 9 Nov. 2003.