☆ Ideology and Cinema: the enduring politics of Harmony Korine’s films. ☆
Ideology in cinema is a system of ideas and ideals that form the basis of political theory. As a result of being a material product of the capitalist system, film is inherently an ideological product of this system. Thus, every film is political in as much as it is determined by the ideology which produces it. Comolli and Narboni define five categories of narrative film; they are (a) films that portray dominant ideology in both form and content, (b) films that resist in dominant ideology in content as well as form, (c) films that resist in form yet are not expressly political in content, (d) films that are political in content but are classic in form, and (e) films that at first seem to adopt dominant ideology but become self-contradictory to disrupt pure ideological functioning.
Controversial, creative, critically acclaimed film maker, Harmony Korine, has provoked, stunned, and captured audiences with his cinema. This essay will examine the ideologies portrayed in Korine’s films, looking specifically at and Gummo (1997) – a category B film and Spring Breakers (2012) – a category E film. Looking at the two films, I will examine Korine’s political messaging apparent in both. Gummo, lacking in a comprehensible and accessible narrative, fictionally documents the remnants and ruins of an American town devastated by a tornado. Gummo examines the depravity of society in an apocalyptic conception of American life. While Spring Breakers begins as a classic Hollywood college- girl chic-flick crude comedy, the film devolves into a fierce crime thriller and Korine explores glamourisation of the superficial and characters corrupted by American culture. Both films offer a dire impression of a future in a world of capitalism.
Gummo, Korine’s directorial debut, toys with line between reality and fantasy, falling into a category B film, due to its unapologetically resistant form. Intertwining film mediums and film style, Korine presents a world of pervasive decay. Devastated by a tornado, Gummo depicts a repulsive vision of a town populated only by society’s misfits and leftovers. Groups of unhinged teenagers and strange loners try to fill their empty lives, suffering from extreme cases of boredom – they kill cats, get high sniffing glue, have sex with a mentally handicapped girl, and force a grandmother to death after turning off her life support machine.
The town, like the film itself is void of structure, convention, and law, with individualism tearing any community – or coherent narrative – to shreds. The entire film is drenched in Death Metal music and manic, hand-held camerawork. Its cinematography wavers between being an exploitative freak show and a lucid, calm record of a confronting reality. A feature- length assemblage of scripted dialogue scenes, “candid” interviews, staged actualities, and stock footage, Gummo hovers on the edge between documentary and fiction – never securely opting to become either just as the line between the sacred and the profane has been obscured beyond recognition. Even the title itself – not the protagonist’s name, but a nod to Gummo Marx – ensures audiences begin the film in an undefined limbo between structure and anarchy. Each time that one would suspect Korine to prey on the audience’s sense of horror, menace and dread he defuses this facile spectacle. In this way, there is an odd kind of tenderness suffusing Gummo – a tenderness co-existing with all the grotesquery, madness and impoverishment that is shamelessly on display. Korine is less interested in shocking his audience than immersing them in a world that is actually quite banal and mundane.
Korine is enduringly political in his filmmaking. Tackling controversial and uncomfortable themes, Korine can disturb and repulse audiences unable or unwilling to reconcile with the rendering of a decaying American culture. Both Gummo and Spring Breakers plead with audiences to recognise themselves in the film, and comprehend the grotesque consumerist values of America, and its capitalist system. In Gummo the actions of the town’s residents seem to reflect America’s individualistic society – indeed individualism reigns supreme in this community. This narrative though only reflects what is considered normal today in America where individuals must constantly strike for personal gain in order to survive.
Feelings of anomie are prevalent in both films – in Gummo the lack of paternal figures, and warmth that family and community offers, gestate this isolation and coldness. Korine portrays children who never lost their innocence because they were denied it and, in fleeting moments of beauty, Korine humanises kids and people who display unsavoury behaviour. In this way, Korine examines the consequences of neglect. Indeed, Korine’s unsympathetic gaze dares audiences to be repulsed by the filth and impurity of a world fuelled by drugs, sex, murder, and capitalism. However, this understanding of the film would accept a narrative gained by exploitation of others. Although rearing a much uglier face in Gummo, Korine seems to be noting that individual goals and pursuits are the basis of the capitalist system that reigns so dominantly in the United States and many counties throughout the globe. Furthermore, through a cynical lens, at its base level, most human interaction is too fuelled by desire – for intimacy or for profit, either way, personal gain. Perhaps instead, Korine argues that these characters are not to be pitied but find comfort and joy in who they are, just as spectators themselves do. Korine, in predicting one’s sour judgment, is perhaps mocking his audience.
Spring Breakers, on the other hand, follows college girls Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Faith (Selena Gomez), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) on their spring-break trip. Short on money to afford the holiday, they rob a diner and, with the cash they steal, head down to Florida. Unfortunately, their party is cut short as the police find and arrest them for their crime. The girls are unexpectedly bailed out by a drug dealer named Alien (James Franco). Category E films at first sight belong within the dominant ideology but evolve to be ambiguous and contradict themselves. Spring Breakers indeed begins from a dominant ideological standpoint and develops to harbour a noticeable gap between the starting point and the end of the film. Spring Breakers is both political in form and content however these politics are not obvious from a superficial reading.
Category E holds as well that dominant form must be interrupted and the classical cinema framework to be denounced. In Spring Breakers, there is a constant dissonance between the narration and what is depicted on screen. The girls say aloud, lying to their parents, “I don't understand how it happened,” while images of ‘bud-light’ are intercut onscreen. This conflicts with society’s idea of femineity and thus the cinematic framework allows audiences to glimpse dominant ideology: family, pure womanhood, and home life, and then denounces this through the setting and activities of spring break. Spring Breakers furthermore offers well known Disney and child stars as its protagonists – Gomez, Hudgens, and Benson made their career from tween tv shows and films. The disconnect between the innocence of high school crushes to sex, drugs, and murder, fosters Korine’s deconstruction of dominant ideology. Furthermore, Gomez’s character, Faith, begins the narrative as the main protagonist and is the only possible character audiences can relate to due to her hesitant attitude to robbing a diner. Selena Gomez herself is arguably the most famous of the actresses too and so a recognisable and significant face for audiences. However, Faith, scared and anxious, simply leaves her friends, and therefore the film, halfway through – in this way, Spring Breakers offers audiences dominant cinematic structures and then sways the narrative’s course through obstacles and flouting of classic techniques.
Spring Breakers adopts a mode of narration told through the eyes of the protagonists – shallow Hollywood college girls. In this way, the film manufactures a subjective hyperreality to mirror the world the girls themselves live in. Shot almost like a music video – with slow motion shots, over saturated frames, and scenes that repeat themselves over and over again – Korine constructs a type of liquid narrative whereby fantasy rails against, and bleeds into, reality. Spring Breakers thus fits into the category of E films as there is indeed a noticeable gap between the beginning and end – Candy and Brit end the film murdering a large group of drug dealers while the film began as a party movie. Furthermore, the girls spend the majority of the film in their bikini and in this way the film is complicit to the male gaze and thus dominant ideology, however it also criticises this - the girls are the ones who prevail – not Alien or any of his posse. The women in the narrative are not simply passive visual pleasures but causal agents, deifying dominant ideology.
Spring Breakers, like Gummo, comprehends a perverted American dream. Korine’s directing constructs a biting critique of the American dream by ensuring what is portrayed – regardless of ethics and substance – never strays from looking appealing. Korine sheens the film in enchanting neon lights and fairy floss pink sunsets. The score too – with its hardcore beat drops and electric sensations – energises the consumerist, perfectionist, ‘Instagram-able’ culture he is satirising. Korine holds that the American Dream is more than living the dream, but maintaining validation through commodities, money, and ensuring others desire what you have. Alien proudly shows off his many things to Candy and Brit, painting a frightening picture of how deceitful the American dream can be. Korine argues that individuals crave to crave and be craved, desire to desire and be desired. Spring Breakers critiques the need to “share” and be “like”-able which instils a need for needing more. Korine thus presents a warped vision of the American dream. The film clearly condemns this glamorisation of the superficial by overtly over-glamorizing the superficial in question. Korine structures the narrative of the film as if it were a video game, with characters constantly crossing bridges literally in order to explore new worlds figuratively – leveling up the stakes and drama until the climax of the film which has Brit and Candy, dressed in pink balaclavas and neon green bikinis, run through a pool party, shooting down everyone in sight with a gun. The scene is shot from behind their heads and constructs a visual reminiscent to that of avatars running around in a violent video game and places the girls as heroes of their own story. After this mass murder, the girls’ reward is none other than a fancy car. The absolute dramatisation and fantasy of this sequence posits Korine’s film as a condemnation of a culture that rewards bad behaviour, and a value system devoid of any truth or substance.
Harmony Korine, in both these films, critiques and examines the decaying culture of America and the way in which this has manifested within the ‘American Dream.’ Korine’s debut Gummo shocked audiences with its deprivation and fractured storytelling, a film that, with each scene, offered a continuous steppingstone to an unknown destination or nowhere at all. Gummo exudes nihilistic energy and in doing so opts for a niche presentation of ideology – one that attacks dominant ideological assimilation in both form and content (a category B film). Gummo does not just expressly deal with political content, but attacks the dominant ideology by doing so, furthermore it breaks down the traditional filmic ways of presenting reality. As such, Korine’s political statement affronts audiences. Spring Breakers is affronting in another way – due to its beginning as a classical narrative, its divergence into chaos is all the more antagonising. Spring Breakers constantly denounces the cinematic framework it uses to tell its story (a category E film). Ultimately, regardless of form, Korine’s content is unapologetically political and his bleak outlook on America’s capitalist culture percolates into every frame of his films.
References:
Comolli, Jean-Luc and Jean Paul Narboni. 1969. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.” In Film Studies Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, Joanne Hollows and Peter Hutchings, 197-200. London: Oxford University Press.
Gummo. 1997. Directed by Harmony Korine. United States: Fine Line Features. Feature Film.
Spring Breakers. 2012. Directed by Harmony Korine. United States: A24, Warner Bros Pictures. Feature Film.