Spring Breakers

"This is the most spiritual place I've ever been." showing this movie to people is a very hard task, especially when watching it together because the movie revels in very sexually charged cinematography and hard to stomach dialogue that would make most people reduce the film to being low-brow or objectifying. at several points you might hear a line and think, "no one talks like that" and you'd be right, but if you look deeper into the characters of Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith you can see why their one-dimensional archetypes are inflated so hyperbolically. the formal subtextual elements i could talk about all day, like its commentary on youth culture, excess, and depravity all under the lens of privilege and class but everyone who loves the film already knows these things and if it were just for these elements i wouldn't hold it in such high regard to my person and have it be the film i believe represents me the most. but there's a deeper purely subjective ring from Harmony Korine's film that speaks to me on a personal level and breaks down my walls like no other piece of media does. i've seen the movie a million times and my heart continues to race and my eyes continue to well up at the Britney Spears scene. it's so much bigger than me and anything i've ever seen. it seems ironic from its surface level reveling in the male gaze-y view of young women but the deep-rooted characterization that i see under all of them make this film one that truly encapsulates my deep relationship with womanhood and what it means to me as a woman. through the contradicting lens at which they are presented, the four girls embody deeper feelings of freedom and the beauty of womanhood and girlhood in particular. the film is about the dangers of their idealized notions of party life and how beach youth culture only leads to destruction but it doesn't do so from a purely distanced and fervently opposing lens, either. it revels in it also and understands that there is human beauty and transcendence through maximalism and excess. neon lights engulf Cotty while blood pours down her arm and tears roll down her face. it's all so beautiful and to me shows the beauty of humanity and encapsulates the transgender experience in a way that leaves the wind knocked out of me. call me crazy, i don't care. it's more than just keg stands and shaking ass, but keg stands and shaking ass are both awesome so if it was i wouldn't hate it. i love you, Spring Breakers.