1 2 3 4 5 6 Introduction

by SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT

No Carries, no Samanthas, no Charlottes, no Mirandas

My skin is tan, my hair fine or Bonnie (The Craft); Carrie, Miranda, My hips invite you, my mouth like wine Charlotte, or Samantha Sex( and the Whose little girl am I? Anyone who has money to buy City); Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, or What do they call me? My name is Sweet Thing Jessa (Girls); Spencer, Emily, Hannah, or My name is Sweet Thing Aria (Pretty Little Liars). Enlightenment never tires —Nina Simone, “Four Women” of the quirkily individuated quartet. We want to believe in this matrix. We hope to feel that making different choices—what to do with our bodies, our hair—will free IN MOST WORLDS, there are four kinds us and set us apart. In fact, it is having differ- of girls. Depending when and where and ent choices that makes one girl different from what in the West you’re watching, you can the next. In (my) reality, most babes have choose with whom to ID. You can be: Meg, such like-minded like-feathered besties that Jo, Beth, or Amy (Little Women); Dorothy, no cab driver, looking in the rear view mirror, Sophia, Rose, or Blanche (Golden Girls); can tell any real differences between us. Stacey, Kristy, Mary Anne, or Claudia (The —directed by Harmony Babysitter’s Club); Sarah, Nancy, Rochelle, Korine and starring as

7 Brit, as Candy, Rachel Ko- acters, which also include the .gif-ready, Riff- rine as Cotty, as Faith—is a Raff-inspired Alien () and his story not of a girl group, but of a gang. Take inscrutable rival (), are ciphers the “all for one, one for all” motto ofFoxfire , you cannot erase. You can only draw mean- make it all for money, and bang, Korine’s ings. The meanings, mostly, are not comfort- fifth film implodes a century of fabulist four- able. They’re not even that fun. Still, it’s hard somes. All four girls wear Starburst-hued bi- to blame any interpretation on the director, kinis, drive Vespas, drink beer. Three of them Korine being a rad anti-ideologue who hasn’t want the same thing, i.e. penis. Only the su- read a book in a decade. per-Christian, semi-naive Faith stands apart, Instead we turn to our own desires. Break- and is—not coincidentally—the first to fall ers fires blanks at us; we fill them in. The un- apart. When just two girls are left, we can’t individualism of Korine’s foursome is per- tell them apart. haps exactly what allows us to have unique, This is one of the many strange accuracies wide-ranging perspectives on their world. Or of Spring Breakers. Already the most written- perhaps it’s his world, or it’s ours. about cultural product of 2013, it’s a movie Roll with us, all of us, as we remember seemingly made to beg the subtext. Its char- Spring Breakers. n

8 9 Bikini, Kill

by AYESHA A. SIDDIQI

Don’t hate the slayer, hate the game

HARMONY KORINE’S CAMERA Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Spring Break crooks one finger at your tongue, beckon- in Florida, is judged by how many pairs of tits ing you to follow it along the bodies of its are exposed. Nothing else adequately proves four stars. Its opening scenes feature both you’re having a good time than baring your guys and girls dancing and drinking in pure chest in ecstatic investment in the moment. abandon on a hyper saturated Florida beach, Female nudity is an accessory du fete. It sig- but linger on the (mostly white) girls. Their nals celebration for no other sake than cel- breasts, slick with Bud-spray, move in time to ebration: As holiday décor goes, boobs don’t . The flat planes of their bellies tan in signify anything beyond “wooo!” A bodily the sun, while their mouths grip long popsi- integrity compromised by the public’s sense cles (oral fixation is a recurring motif). Later, of entitlement to it is one of the more notori- the camera closes in on its protagonists and ous aspects of patriarchy. And the bodies of the curves of their thighs, their bra cups. Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith—seen almost The movie operates on a standard tenet of exclusively in bikinis—are also on display. our culture: girl-flesh as measure of fun. The But as James Franco’s Alien observes, these success of a party, whether Carnival in Brazil, girls are special. They’re powerful in spite of

10 AYESHA A. SIDDIQI sex not because of it. In a rare departure from gle allusion is made to the possibility of that movie violence against women, the injury violence. Ignoring rape culture could have Cotty sustains is gender-neutral; Alien digs been naïve, but in the Skittle-lit world of the the bullet out of her arm as he would for a movie it was a power move. By not acknowl- man. Faith, the religious ingénue of the four, edging the threat of their surroundings, they bristles at Alien’s attention to her pretty face, situate themselves as the threat. Refreshingly, then buses home solo rather than tolerate a their bodies aren’t a vulnerability. The girls’ minute more on his terms. When the girls indifference to their nakedness, more than ride through town on scooters in just bikinis, their consciousness of it, keeps the film from they are simply in spring break’s uniform. being merely pornographic. When they hang out in a gas station parking They wear their sexuality like their candy lot at night in bikinis, or when Cotty writhes necklaces and stuffed-animal backpacks, and strips teasingly on the floor at a kegger, with a casual wryness. Even before spring they are challenging space by denying its break, sexuality is a grenade tossed blithely threat. back and forth. Grinning to Brit, Candy pan- These girls not only demand public space tomimes giving a blowjob in class. In the while (almost) naked—they own it. In dorm hallways, the four sing “I am getting so scenes that echo theaters of masculinity and hot I wanna take my clothes off” in breathy its accompanying sexual violence, not a sin- staccato. They mime taking sloppy bites from

11 BIKINI, KILL between each other’s legs. They arch them- lated in tandem. selves upside down between the hallway The gender-flipped fellatio gratifies be- walls—fully framed by their space, pushing cause it follows a first act dedicated to the against its boundaries. But within the film’s male gazey ogling often found between a starkly black/white race politics, the four male filmmaker and beautiful, barely clothed, leads’ bodies are distinguished from the young actresses. The camera sticks to their black female bodies that perform for men. bodies so unabashedly we notice not only Black strippers decorate the background smooth youth, but also ourselves staring at it. of Alien and Archie’s (Gucci Mane) confron- This double consciousness turns itself back tation. Thick black women undulate naked onto us when Alien submits to Brit and Can- on top of Archie, representing his power— dy’s gun penises—when that gaze, the same not the women’s. Their presence is at the be- lasciviousness Alien employed, is mocked hest of the men, and their silent acquiescence for how blind it was to the girls’ true selves. leaves them mute props. When Brit and As Britt and Candy’s giggling play turns into Candy rush Archie’s mansion—massacring a steel-nerve demand that he get on his knees every black male in sight—those same wom- there is a moment when, with their guns in en crouch fearfully in the shower where they his mouth, Alien seems to see these girls for had been rubbing each other as Archie di- the first time. His fear and trepidation dis- rected from his bath. If Spring Breakers show- solve into enthusiasm. He sucks hard, invit- cases the thrill of reclaiming patriarchy’s sex- ing both their guns deeper into his mouth ualization, then it’s an agency extended only eager to please. Alien recognizes Britt and to white girls. In contrast to Archie’s rule over Candy’s authority without resenting it. Brit the black women around them, Alien simply and Candy don’t just exercise power, they re- serves to reflect the four leads’ electric force. ceive grateful subjects. All hail the new femi- He posts their bail but his paternalism dies nist world order—spring break forever y’all. in Candy and Brit’s orbit. Spring Breakers ob- Whether walking around at night with sesses over juxtapositions, none more salient skin exposed or demanding authority while than the one between the girls’ bodies and in that same state of undress, the girls dele- the sound of guns cocking. A theme Candy gitimize patriarchal privilege. Korine’s band especially relishes in. Her hand regularly pos- of heroines saunters in front of the camera es as a gun, shooting at her friends, at herself. but give its gaze as much control over them Candy, Brit, and Alien have a swimming- as they give Alien. pool threesome, but the two girls share an That is how a film staring four young intimacy independent from him. They touch women in bikinis subverts the trope of fe- each other constantly, affectionately, and in male bodies as sites of experience for others. one of the most satisfying scenes I have ever Spring Breakers pumps you with a full erec- experienced in a theater, have their guns fel- tion only to laugh at your boner later.. n

12 13 Booty Camp

by ELIZABETH GREENWOOD

A former KIDS kid laments bad girl banality

I WAS ONCE a 12-year-old aspiring juve- lipliner from CVS in the pocket of my JNCO nile delinquent in a rust belt New England jeans. The scared-straight lesson of HIV and town, and the movie KIDS was my Talmud. wasted potential was lost on me. KIDS was a A lone NC-17 VHS circulated between latch- thrilling and deranged escape. key households, and my miscreant friends But 18 years later, Korine is depriving the and I dissected, studied, and memorized the aspiring juvenile delinquents of America a ringer tees, blunt rolling, and gruff sex talk of similarly misguided affectation withSpring the impossibly exotic Manhattan creatures Breakers. But it’s not Korine’s fault. Kids who with rabbinical fervor. We were KIDS schol- have grown up with the world wide web and ars. ’s screenplay inspired Snapchatting their naughty bits to one an- me to seek out turnstiles to hop (and places other will find this film familiar. The tragedy with turnstiles, in general), insouciant hook- is not the bumping, the grinding, the tits and ups to boast of, and pools in which to skinny ass, the bikinis and handcuffs, the caricatures dip. In my pubescent reality, I mostly just de- of hip hop thuggery, the girls gone bad. The fected from homeroom, huffed my friend’s tragedy of this film is that it’s boring. Teens, asthma inhaler, and spirited Wet n’ Wild rather than being introduced to novel trou-

14 ELizABETH Greenwood ble-making, will simply recognize the famil- iar: Grand Theft Auto-style ballistics, booty shorts, and threesomes ripped from Jersey Shore. Disney princesses flaunting their mid- dle-finger attitudes, just as Lindsay Lohan has done for a decade. In KIDS, Larry Clark cast unknowns Rosa- rio Dawson and Chloë Sevigny for maximum verisimilitude of downtown-and-dirty New York. Korine does the inverse, plonking teen idols Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez into the roles of blowjob-simulating, pelvis- thrusting, coke-snorting lubricious harlots. The contrast is meant to be shocking, but it’s just one of the ham-fisted and wholly banal juxtapositions throughout the film: A girl calling grandma to say what an amazing time she’s having over montages of beer funnel de- bauchery, the innocent white kid beach party fun cut into the menacing black strip club, the girls ballerina twirling to a Britney ballad in balaclavas. These contrasts don’t make one clutch one’s pearls, or voyeuristically get off on being offended. The dualisms are too ob- vious. One craves an asthma inhaler to huff. A bright-ish part of the film is James Franco’s -inspired rapper Alien. Franco’s southern drawl sounds like Forrest that must have occurred from so many hours Gump with a mouthful of bologna, and his spent in cheap swimwear; the madness that reprise of “Sprayng Brayke” repeats like a descended upon the editing room after the chilidog belch. What I would have loved to thousandth voiceover of “Sprang Brayke, have seen, however, was the Hearts of Dark- betches!” ness-style documentary of the story behind In other words, something earthy and Spring Breakers: The song lyric boot camp naughty for pert scoundrels to emulate, rath- the young extras endured to memorize and er than a bizarre fantasy from the green glow chant Alien’s rap lyrics; the shame they surely of Internet porn. In other words, something n felt when they kept messing up; the chafing to give the kids some inspiration.

15 16 The Real Beach Lives of Miami

by CORD JEFFERSON

A young boy’s depraved journey into the heart of heterosexuality

IN MY FRESHMAN year at a small, cen- verdant, sleepy fastness, its population di- turies-old university on the East Coast, I had verse with WASPs and lacrosse players from either the good fortune or the good sense to every state on the Eastern seaboard. So it befriend a German pothead I’ll call Burke. took no thought whatsoever to reply in the Burke was a diligent student who later trans- affirmative when he invited me and several ferred to the London School of Economics, of our mutual friends to have spring break but that year, when out of class, he was all in Miami, where his parents owned a condo id. He smoked weed nearly constantly, and in South Beach. Though I’d never been to cheated on his girlfriend back in Hamburg Florida, at the age of 19, sun and models and only a little less. His laugh reached regis- Cubans and nightclubs all seemed necessary ters so high it resembled a pig’s squeal, and antidotes to the doldrums I’d developed as a his English was imperfect, so sometimes he callow, spoiled kid who thought himself far would say things like, “My favorite movie is above the commonness of college. The Mattress, with Keanu Reeves.” “What are we going to do down there?” I Being around Burke was interesting and asked Burke a few nights before we left. My fun even within the confines of our college’s right knee bounced with anticipation.

17 CORD JEFFERSON

“Whatever we want,” he said, exhaling a drive to Fort Lauderdale and go to one of the gray ribbon of weed smoke. “You’ll see.” all-ages clubs we’d been told were lousy with college kids who’d come to Florida not to sip pints of Japanese ale over sushi, but to drink u blue shots out of plastic test tubes and kiss each other. Since sitting down to write this, I’ve tried The reality of Miami proved less neon, less Googling to remember which club we ended sexy, less everything than our fantasies. First- up at that next night. Alas, I can’t recall. I can ly, we didn’t do whatever we wanted. Several only remember three things: 1. It was huge, of us were underage and without fake IDs, filled with so many people it seemed more making getting into the glamorous, grown-up like a sports stadium, and the dance floor clubs on the shoreline impossible. Secondly, its field. 2. During the rising action of par- it turned out that South Beach was not a very ticular songs, most of which were techno or popular locale for college spring breakers. It some variation of techno, lights slowly low- was expensive, there were old people every- ered from the ceiling above the dance floor where, and in most restaurants it was even until they were dangling just overhead. At verboten to come in shirtless. the songs’ crescendos, the lights would move Rather than the all-out, 24-hour hedo- rapidly on a motorized track from one side of nism we’d imagined, most of our days were the room to the other, swirling around in an spent drinking a poorly mixed concoction of epileptic frenzy and casting angular shards of vodka, Sprite, and orange juice on the beach red and purple light onto the faces and hips of before stumbling back to the condo to drink the bodies below. And 3. It was the first time more and shoot fireworks off the balcony. I’d ever seen men interacting with women in We’d aim bottle rockets at the ocean, black a way that made me feel nervous. and twinkling in the moonlight, and watch Ladies in lingerie, hanging from trapezes them fly for a few seconds before exploding above a bar abutting the entrance, greeted me with a tiny, insignificantpop . upside-down. They dangled by the backs of I can’t remember whose idea it was, but it their knees looking bored while a club staffer doesn’t matter for our purposes here anyway. shot toilet paper at them with a glorified leaf It came to us while devouring boats of sashimi blower, the result of which was a sort of er- and nursing our sunburns with big glasses of ratic mummification. Atop another bar that cold Asahi: “Let’s, like, do a real spring break ran down the left wall of the cavernous space, place tomorrow night.” Everyone nodded his a woman was on her hands and knees with head in agreement. After three full days of her jeans around her ankles, exposing her relative calm in South Beach, we decided that thong. Her eyes were closed and she lurched the next night, our final night in Miami, we’d slowly back and forth with the beat of the

18 The Real Beach Lives of Miami music, like a human rock- experiences seemed con- ing horse. Beneath her sat a tractual: Women were paid, man on a barstool who was handsomely in some in- slowly plucking ice cubes stances, to perform in ways from his glass and rubbing that highlighted their sexu- them on her pussy and ass. ality. What happened to He was nonchalant about it, girls in that club on spring bearing the expression of a break, however—the inten- man signing a rent check or tional degradation, the beer deciding what he wanted for hurling—seemed far more lunch, and in front of him a sinister. half moon of young guys had gathered to stare. I’d already had enough u by the time the wet t-shirt contest came about, the beginning of which was in- It’s been years since I troduced by an emcee who last went on college spring enticed spectators to “come break, and I’ve since seen up front and smell the rot.” far worse things, equally Everyone in the club was misogynistic things, other invited to watch, but those women doing strange things willing to plunk down $100 were given a in nightclubs for money (at a burlesque show spray bottle and a front-row seat from which in New York once, I watched a lady squat un- to hose down the contestants, some of whom der a spotlight, urinate into a cup, and then were drunk enough they were having a hard drink the piss). But nothing has filled me time standing. When the spray-streams of with same kind of pit-of-the-stomach angst water failed to make the girls’ shirts trans- as I had that night in Fort Lauderdale—until lucent quickly enough, men threw beer and I saw Spring Breakers. whole glasses of water. Some guys reached Like a woman taking her clothes off on a out to grab the women. When one girl slipped stage, which looks like exploitation to some while trying to make way for another contes- and empowerment to others, Spring Break- tant, the emcee pointed at her and screamed, ers resembles different things depending on “Someone’s gonna be a sloppy fuck tonight!” who’s watching, and many have hated what The club broke out in peals of laughter. they saw. Some have deemed Harmony Ko- I had seen some porn before that night, rine’s Disneyfied pop poem a racist glorifica- and I’d been to a strip club. But both of those tion of drugs and crime. But the preeminent

19 CORD JEFFERSON critique seems to be that the film is sexist. arguably even worse). It’s not funny because BuzzFeed’s Kate Aurthur wrote, “I had a pit it’s true; it’s horribly dark and difficult to in my stomach as I watched Spring Breakers watch because it’s true. … I was afraid the entire time one of the girls Spring Breakers puts on blast the bizarre would get raped.” In her Guardian review, and ugly rituals of college spring break, a fre- Heather Long even posits that Spring Break- quently stupid event that outlets like MTV, ers contributes to America’s deep and intrac- which has covered spring breaks religiously table rape culture. “It’s a film that tells young since 1986, have diligently and gleefully at- women that the ‘time of their life’ is getting tempted to make into a rite of passage for drunk and exposing themselves to guys,” American children. If anyone is complicit in Long writes. “And we wonder why we have the rape culture of spring break, it’s not Har- problems with rape culture.” mony Korine; it’s the collection of corpo- I’m going to venture a guess that Heather rate brands—along with MTV, there is Girls Long has never been on spring break in Fort Gone Wild, Corona, Captain Morgan’s, Jose Lauderdale or Key West or Cancun or any of Cuervo, Señor Frog’s, etc.—making millions the other places American college students by convincing students that you’re not really throng in mid-March in order to get de- a college kid until you’ve chugged a grain- bauched. If she had, perhaps she would know alcohol daiquiri out of a plastic novelty cup that to accuse Spring Breakers of propagating and screamed, “WHOOOOOOOOOOO!” rape culture is tantamount to accusing Pla- at a drunk girl flashing her breasts. toon of propagating war. I fell for that sham, and it ended up with Indeed, the opening scene of the film de- me driving away from a shitty Fort Lauder- picts close-up, slow-motion shots of women dale nightclub feeling anxious and a bit sad. in various states of undress, women arching “I got the worst blowjob of my life in the their backs on the ground underneath men bathroom at that place,” said Burke as we dumping beer on their faces, women getting pulled off. Two months later we would leave groped, women getting the foam from beer school for the summer and I would never see bongs shot across their bare breasts. Later, him again. amid numerous shots of women’s barely cov- If Spring Breakers scared you—if it offend- ered butts, James Franco’s character, Alien, ed you by exposing you to crass assholes, and shouts to a crowd of adoring fans that life is if there were moments in it in which you were about just two things: bikinis and big boo- certain you were about to witness a sexual ties. It’s grotesque, though not because of the assault—then good. Spring break is an aw- nudity or innuendo. Rather, it’s grotesque ful morass of young men chugging alcohol, because it’s so obviously a recreation of be- plying young women with more alcohol, and havior that goes on at college spring breaks then goading those women into doing reck- across America all the time (what I saw was less things. That should scare you.n

20 21 High as Finance

by JOSHUA CLOVER and SHANE BOYLE

All this coke and no credit card in sight

THUS SHOULD OUR travels have been: Break. serious, dubstepped. It seems for a suspended It does not come. We are on the far side of moment that Spring Breakers purposes only a trench that separates us irrevocably from to be the cinematic realization of a musical that era. Harmony Korine’s lurid spectacle is genre, a voyage to the holy land presented a cautionary tale about something far more in increasingly swift cuts, repeated units ar- terrifying, a horror the film sets loose well ranged with precise variations unto the point before the story proper begins. of panic, dissolving into semi-lucid drift and Spring Breakers unfolds in a world without just as suddenly summoning a euphoric credit cards. This remarkable lack is the film’s wobble. We wait and wait for the film to piv- premise, one that allows it to glimpse a future ot toward the cautionary tales it so much re- that awaits those without access to fictitious sembles, wherein a colloquy of underdressed capital. teens find themselves drunk, high, and sexed- Four college coeds dream of trading their up, and the die-off begins. We wait, in short, rote lecture halls and cinderblock dorms— for the drop which will replace Girls Gone is this a for-profit university?—for the de- Wild with the 80s slasher Welcome to Spring bauchery of Florida spring break. Standing

22 JOSHUA CLOVER and SHANE BOYLE between them and their escape is a short- the-world-ends hedonism on which floats age of ready cash. Lacking alternatives like the endless array of healthy white bodies, no- Mastercards, they solve their liquidity crisis tably female bodies charged with standing for by knocking over a local fried chicken joint. that freedom beyond reason that character- Most jarring in these opening moments is izes the “new economy,” exploitation always not the violence of the robbery, but the obvi- elsewhere. Jeune fille indeed. On the other, ously incredible possibility that four college that place of actual toil, grime, and danger students in the United States lack access to where our coed protagonists must venture to easy credit. After all, what is a student today get hard currency once the cash and Smirnoff without the potential for indebtedness? run dry: the real economy, played here by To note the absurdity of the film’s premise employees and criminals, who turn out over is to recognize Spring Breakers’ world with- and over again to be lacking in either six- out credit cards as a dreamworld. Told from packs or camera-ready boobs. Also? They’re the perspective of finance capital, this dream mostly black. It is a strange movie that casts quickly reveals itself to be less paradise than Gucci Mane as production itself. nightmare. Spring Breakers is a cautionary Gucci, as Arch the drug lord, has his other tale of what would happen to the subjects of in his childhood friend, the rapper/thug as- finance capital were student debt to become pirant Alien played by James Franco, whose impossible. profound whiteness allows him to pass from Once we take up these categories, the film’s one world to the other. He raps, he burbles fantasia comes clear. On one side, the world Britney ballads. He slangs product, hangs of fictitious capital, played by “spring break” with the breakers. But this is an unsustainable itself: money for nothing and your body- double life, as we will discover, in a way that shots for free, the unmoored utopia of until- is at once racialized and economic. From his grillz to his home décor, he is a racial poseur. But he is as well a one- man crisis of overpro- duction, a mad agglomeration of commodi- ties unable to find outlet. “Look at all my shit” he cries over and over again flaunting his collection of burners, body sprays, and bricks of dope, desperate to play this off as triumph and not catastrophe. Rather it is Candy, Brit, Faith, and Cotty who succeed in crossing from one world to the other and safely back again. The latter two do so only partially; they retreat before the climax, one with a cross, one with a bul-

23 HIGH AS FINANCE let. Their reason: a preference that the shirt- to note that the sequence repeats to capture less strangers groping them be white rather events once from the perspective of fictitious than so obviously other. They favor the inti- capital, once from the position of the real macies of spring break’s whitewashed pool- economy. side parties, not the working class pool halls There’s something right here: the way that of St. Pete. When insolvency strikes again— finance’s coldly erotic dream of money mint- this time brought on by cops and possession ed from pure desire must always rest uneasily charges—the real economy gets too real. on the brutalities and immiserations of the The two who complete the final sally across real economy; that the world is structured the line and back are the pair who performed to preserve this fantasy of autonomy for its the armed act that sets Breakers in motion: beneficiaries; that when the fantasy collaps- a sequence which will be shown a second es, it is revealed not simply as illusion but as time, to clarify the film’s duplicity. When the dependent on racialized violence. It is the robbery initially unfolds, the exterior track- nature of crisis to disclose this; it is the mo- ing shot conceals the dirty work underway; ment when the fatal entanglement of the two it unfolds with choreographed irreality. In a orders is revealed, precisely as they fall out of liquor store parking lot following their arrival joint. to spring break, Candy and Brit recount the It is hard to know, then, what to make of events in all their amped-up ferocity. “You the film’s conclusion, wherein the white girls’ really did that?” Faith asks, wishing to have expropriation of a black man is replayed remained oblivious to the source of the cash with higher stakes all around. We could say funding her Florida respite. it is Django’s finale dialed up a notch, at once On second showing, we find ourselves in- more absurd and more historically accurate. side the business, closer to the perspective Or perhaps it is as if, having cloaked them- of customers and employees. We discover selves in the most powerful media iconog- further that the girls single out a black man raphy of the global white female—Snooki quietly eating a plate of fried chicken. This and J-Woww’s DTF sweatpants, Pussy Riot’s startling detail reveals the racialization that masks—they have become masters of the undergirds the film’s real economy and fu- universe. els the spring breakers’ gangsta film-inspired Well, better them than Gordan Gekko or fantasies. The film asks us, somewhat banally, Lloyd Blankfein; we should trust a woman in to understand the girls as products of simula- a pink unicorn balaclava a lot more than we tion: “Act like it’s a movie,” Candy and Brit do those dudes. But we know too that fiction tell each other right before beginning their can never do away with the real, and that the masquerade of Menace II Society. And, “just bubble they ride into the sunrise will burst pretend it’s a fucking video game.” But this is again, and that the money has to come from a symptom of a symptom. It would be clearer somewhere, and what then? n

24 25 Kids in the Haul

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

From Nazi Austria to late capitalist Florida, a list of the shit we list

I. Excerpt from Alien’s My Sheeyit mani- piece. My fuckin’ spaceship! U.S.S. Enter- festo: prise on this shit. I go to different planets on “This is the fuckin’ American dream. This this motherfucker! Me and my fuckin’ Frank- is my fuckin’ dream, y’all! lins here, we take off. TAKE OFF! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit! Look at my shit. Look at my shit! I got my I got … I got SHORTS! Every fuckin’ col- blue Kool-Aid. or. I got my fuckin’ NUN-CHUCKS.” I got designer T-shirts! Seconds later, Candy and Brit shove two I got gold bullets. Motherfuckin’ VAM- guns into Alien’s mouth. He blows them. Ta- pires. bles are turned, the girls are in control. But I got Scarface. On repeat. SCARFACE ON more importantly, flipping the prep school REPEAT. Constant, y’all! rich kid stereotype, so often employed in I got Escape! Calvin Klein Escape! Mix film to illustrate teenage malaise these Flor- it up with Calvin Klein Be. Smell nice? I ida spring breakers are not virgins who can’t SMELL NICE! drive. They are everything Sarah Michelle That ain’t a fuckin’ bed; that’s a fuckin’ art Geller’s Kathryn wished she could be. “God

26 DURGA CHEW-BOSE forbid I exude confidence and enjoy sex! Do Later, the crew films the Siegals at Christ- you think I relish the fact that I have to act mas ripping open presents. Jackie’s given Da- like Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I can be consid- vid two board games – Risk and Monopoly ered a lady? I’m the Marcia-fucking-Brady of – both regifts. the Upper East Side, and sometimes I want to kill myself.”

III. Ben Affleck as Michael Douglas as II. About that Starter Mansion Life: Gordon Gekko in Wall Street in Boiler Room: Halfway through the 2012 documentary, “Anybody who says money is the root of all The Queen of Versailles, about Florida billion- evil doesn’t fucking have any. They say mon- aire timeshare mogul, David Siegal, and his ey can’t buy happiness? Look at the fucking wife Jackie, and their eight kids, and 19 staff, smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby. You want and caboodle of white fluffy dogs, Jackie re- details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari, 355 Cabriolet. turns home to Binghamton, New York to What’s up? I have a ridiculous house in the visit family and childhood friends. Reflect- South Fork. I have every toy you could possi- ing on the Siegal family’s flashy and devastat- bly imagine. And best of all kids, I am liquid.” ingly gaudy life, one old neighbor comments “Well the American dream is raising way up above what you started with, and achieving something way beyond what anyone would dream that you would achieve.” And as one IV. $587,412.97 over 2 years AKA Buzz of Jackie’s high school friends adds, “Typical Bissinger’s Gucci addiction: middle class America was not going to make “I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy- her happy.” Happy is an especially off-putting five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather word when describing the mood in the Sie- pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, gal family – the documentary’s entire tone is ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather mournful. A garage of unused bicycles, a Fili- gloves. (…) As a stranger said after admiring pino nanny who hasn’t seen her own kids in my look in a Gucci burgundy jacquard velvet 19 years and who lives in what was originally jacket and a Burberry black patent leather one of the children’s backyard playhouses, trench, “You don’t give a fuck.”” and a dead lizard lying limp in its aquarium, Later, he goes on to catalog the brands starved to death. A house of stuff that teems he owns in alphabetical order. The list reads with neglect. like a nursery rhyme for Ri¢hie Ri¢h had it

27 KIDS IN THE HAUL starred Harry and Peter Brant instead of Ma- VII. PAIN & GAIN & GATSBY caulay Culkin. & THE GREEN LIGHT a) Known for his slow motion, low angle, 360 degree hero shots, Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain promises Mark Wahlberg and The Rock as 1990s Miami (Florida, again) per- V. Speaking of nursery rhymes, sorry sonal trainers, and that their Ameri- childhood. Maria’s My Favorite Sheeyit: can Dream “IS BIGGER THAN YOURS.” Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens b) Known for his hyper-romantic and hy- Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens perbolic style, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Brown paper packages tied up with strings Gatsby promises a scintillatingly void adap- These are a few of my favorite things tation of Fitzgerald’s American Dream meta- phor; The Green Light, likely not so “minute Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels and faraway.” n Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes Silver white winters that melt into springs These are a few of my favorite things

VI. SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!! “I will not rest until I have you holding a Coke, wearing your own shoe, playing a Sega game featuring you, while singing your own song in a new commercial, starring you, broadcast during the Superbowl, in a game that you are winning, and I will not sleep until that happens.” -- Jerry McGuire

28 29 Fort Slaughterdale

by ALEXANDER BENAIM

Korine holds our legs for cinema’s final keg stand

SPRING BREAKERS HAS put most critics cinema—making a movie whose value can’t in one of two moods: 1. “Thisisn’t critique,” be counted, whether by box-office draw or and 2. “Hurray.” The first of these responses topicality-to-tears ratio, seems far more sub- takes to task the 40-year-old Korine for not stantive a move than shouting “exploitation” giving the grownups a raw, yet judgmental, in an uncrowded theater. report on today’s youth. If Korine had given The second sort of response, to wit, “hur- us big booties and grand pianos and blood ray,” sees that Spring Breakers is a cartoon of in the name of critiquing the kids, this film the contemporary south, by a son of the con- would “matter.” Instead, Korine offers use- temporary south. AA-inflected Christianity less fantasy without apology. He finds beau- hangs with lawless, corporatized fun. White ty in or right near trashy death. At the same skin takes on geological tones and textures or time, his giggly perversity begs for a biparti- else turns orange, and black skin gets demon- san scolding. To many, the film is “uncritical,” ized. There is no defending this palette. But a term wielded by left-ish secular viewers the James Franco’s swerving accent, and the un- way “amoral” is by conservatives. reliable reality it implies, defang the film be- To me, however, in this age of American fore it bites. (Franco as “Alien” is one of the

30 ALEXANDER BENAIM boldest, slyest, best performances of the year tools the Internet doesn’t: A deep sense of the so far.) history of his form, for one, and studio mon- Spring Breakers wears its artifice, its status ey, for two. Korine is in admiring but gently as Korine’s inspired, ignorant fantasy on its competitive conversation with the Inter- sleeve. In doing so it asks that you consider net—and not the 2001 Internet but the 2012 not American History but Art History, after Internet. He knows the beach tableaus that ‘90s rap videos and Wong Kar Wai’s gangster bookend his film may well be bookmarked or films, and before all we see melts into Inter- Tumblr’d on your machines already, perhaps net as we see it. next to porn that looks alarmingly similar. The Internet was whereSpring Breakers Korine is not asking an audience, their lap- lived as a glorious preview and where it will tops resting warmly on their stomachs, to someday fade into an infinity of clips. In the choose between porn and film. But his enno- past few weeks it has been spliced into clip bling upward-swooning angles and golden- after clip after .gif, a fate for which it seems in- lit scenes let you know which side he’s on. tentionally ready. The Internet is very much This is the skilled debater who gives a self- on this film’s mind. aggrandizing paean to his opponent’s power. But Spring Breakers’ rich, syrupy According to Korine, Werner Herzog lighting, deftly disorienting cuts, once called him “the last soldier and traditionally famous in the army” of cinema. It stars let you know the seems he’s found his director has two battle. n

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