By Amanda Knox
 
When Chris mentioned this great film we should watch called “Spring Breakers,” I made a face. The title brought to mind an easy, lewd, slap-stick romantic-comedy, like “Bridesmaids” or “Wedding Crashers” except, instead of a dirtied-up wedding, it’d be a cleaned-up episode of “Girls Gone Wild.” Not a bad genre of film, seeing as films like that seem to entertain a lot more people than they bore, and find reiteration year after year. But certainly not my piece of cake.
 
But seeing as Chris and I had been pleasantly surprised by the ingenious meta-comedy of “Dave and Tucker Vs. Evil” just last week, I decided to trust Chris and give “Spring Breakers” a shot. Sure enough, it was a film that followed four young hotties clad in candy-colored bikinis hell-bent on partying hard, playing rough, and letting loose on a criminal rampage. But while this log-line describes the kind of film I typically HATE, “Spring Breakers” is now one of my favorite films EVER.
 
Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote an insightful review, observing that the film is less about “sun-scathed bacchanalia” than black-white identity politics and the “slippery slope of crime.” Brody was struck by how director Harmony Korine made his own film-version of Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro”—the four white girls and their underworld guide, a white drug dealer nicknamed Alien, take on stereotypically black “gangsta” personas, and at the climax of the film, when the girls shoot down a drug kingpin, a black light darkens their skin “in a cinematographic version of blackface.” Brody observes that the four girls were little more than liars—they lied to their parents, white-washing and sugar-coating the details of their trip in their calls back home, and they lied to themselves, because they had the privilege of ducking in and out of a Dionysian life of excess and crime “relatively unscathed.”
 
I mention this reading of “Spring Breakers” because, while insightful, it is not remotely how I experienced the film, which goes to show how brilliantly Korine interwove many complex ideas. I did not pick up on the racial aspect of the film so much as the gender aspect, and I couldn’t disagree more with Brody’s take on Faith, Cotty, Brit and Candy (the girls have names, albeit obnoxious ones). Indeed, I would argue that it was above all their complex and highly-personal journey that made the film singularly brilliant.
 
“Spring Breakers” is like “Alice in Wonderland.” The girls commit a transgression (Alice abandoned her reading and pursued the White Rabbit; Cotty, Brit and Candy commit a robbery), and as a result, find themselves in a dream-like fantasy world. At first sight, the fantasy world is wonderful. In Wonderland, Alice can alter her dimensions by eating cakes, talk to animals, and encounter mythical beasts. At spring break in St. Petersburg, FL, Faith, Cotty, Brit and Candy can do whatever they want—snort, smoke and drink to excess, party with countless other revelers, flaunt their sexuality, even wield weapons and commit violent crimes.
 
But the wonders of Wonderland are frivolous, lawless, dangerous nonsense. And the wonders of spring break, under Korine’s astute lens, are grotesque. He lingers uncomfortably long on waggling breasts, bong shots, and gunshot wounds. Revelers writhe, regurgitate beer all over themselves, and dissolve into a pulpy, drug-induced haze. The crimes are bloody. The scenes blurr together and the dialogue loops.
 
But where C.S. Lewis draws a clear line between the real world and Wonderland, Korine layers the absurdity of spring break on top of Faith, Cotty, Brit and Candy’s reality. Every step along their fantastical journey is simply a step too far, and it makes watching “Spring Breakers” all the more mesmerizing and uncomfortable because, for all its psychopathic un-believability, it remains relatable.
 
Let me back up. Watching “Spring Breakers” I felt awestruck and squeamish because of how the unrecognizable fantasy elements were interwoven with the recognizable portrayal of young females. I still have same-sex friendships that are so emotionally and physically intimate (cuddling, etc.) that one might think they flirt with homosexuality. I remember being cornered by older men who tried to intimidate and sweet talk me out of my boundaries. I remember flaunting my sexuality at frat parties (and I wasn’t alone; there’s a whole industry for sexy Halloween costumes), and in so doing, attempting to invert my fear of being preyed upon. I remember thinking I needed to get out of my hometown and my comfort zone in order to find myself.
 
I remember singing and dancing along to Britney Spears, having memorized every word and gesture, even as I recognized the song’s message of self-objectification and superficiality all along. That strained, fragile ideology was the model of my adolescence. It was also the model of Faith, Cotty, Brit and Candy’s adolescence, and Korine created a dream-like Wonderland for them to fully embody that ideology, perfectly encapsulated in this scene. The girls are a haunting piece of art—all too real and unreal—wearing their pink unicorn face masks, posing as Matisse’s dancers, aiming shotguns into people’s faces. As Brit says, “Just pretend it’s a video game. Like you’re in a fucking movie.”