March 11, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Spring Breakers

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On thefine, fraught line between challenging and exploiting the objectification offemale celebrities.

Firstthings first: despite their very similar titles, SpringBreakers (2012) is a much more complex, ambitious, and thoughtful filmthan yesterday’s subject, Spring Break(1983). Yes, indie , who wrote and directed the film, has said ininterviews that he wanted to make it in part to make up for his own missedSpring Break experiences (he was apparently too busy skateboarding to ventureto sunnier climes), so Spring Breakerscould be said to reflect the same hedonistic goals as the earlier film. But ashas been evident since the controversial and groundbreaking film Kids (1995), his first writing credit, Korine isultimately more interested in deconstructing than in celebrating such youthfuldesires and pursuits, and Spring Breakers,an unremittingly bleak and violent film which he’s referredto as a “beach noir,” is no exception.

None ofthat is what led the media coverage of SpringBreakers, however. The consistent focus was the fact that two of its fourfemale leads were SelenaGomez and Vanessa Hudgens, known at the time as squeaky-clean teenicons (Gomez mostly from a pop music career that had begun on Barney & Friends and Hudgens mostly from the HighSchool Musical films) who in the film give far grittier and moresexualized performances than they ever had before. That was also relativelytrue for a third lead, Ashley Benson, although her role on the TV show Pretty Little Liars had beena bit darker than Gomez’s and Hudgens’ prior work; the fourth lead, Rachel Korine, isHarmony Korine’s wife and so had been part of his films for some time already. Betweenspending a good bit of the film in bikinis, taking part in numerous scenesfeaturing sexualsituations and drug use, and eventually killing quite a few characters in a violent climax, thesepreviously and famously Disney-fied actresses thoroughly challenge that image,a reversal that understandably drew a great deal of attention.

While I’msure Harmony Korine would say that he cast these actresses due to their talents(and their performances are excellent across the board, to be clear), it seemsclear to me that he also did so (at least in part) because he knew thecontroversy over their image revisions would draw more attention and coverageto the film. Which is fine up to a point; but since those revisions againrequire the actresses to do things like wear skimpy outfits for nearly all ofthe film, it does feel possible to argue that Korine is both exploiting theircelebrity and objectifying them in the process. In her review ofthe film for The Guardian, critic Heather Long advanced that analysis,arguing that it “reinforces rape culture” and “turns young women into sexobjects.” But Rolling Stone’s JoshEells argued the opposite position, claiming that the film features “akind of girl-power camaraderie that could almost be called feminist," partof Korine’s career-long goal of doing “the most radical work, but putting itout in the most commercial way to infiltrate the mainstream.” A complex dualitywhich, to be honest, is really at the heart of the whole concept of SpringBreak in the 21st century.

NextSpring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?