The unlike­ly pre­science of Spring Breakers

Spring Break­ers crash-land­ed onto a con­fused world. In 2013, Girls Gone Wild had just gone bank­rupt, the malig­nant force of Don­ald Trump was still sev­er­al years away, and Tik­Tok was not yet even a fig­ment of anyone’s imag­i­na­tion (though its pre­de­ces­sor, Vine, had just launched at the begin­ning of the year). In com­ment­ing on the past decade of bub­blegum pop, Dis­ney Chan­nel stars and Tum­blr aes­thet­ics, the film pre-empt­ed the fol­low­ing decade of the voyeurism of social media, cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion and moral pan­ic around sexuality.

Har­mo­ny Korine has always sought to prod and pro­voke, often suc­ceed­ing to the detri­ment of his films. His break­out was the script for Lar­ry Clarke’s Kids, lam­bast­ed for its scenes of hard drug use and statu­to­ry rape. With his ear­ly work, he was an artist laser focused on the fall of the Amer­i­can empire, as Gen­er­a­tion X immo­lat­ed the sense of order their par­ents stood for and forced an audi­ence to reck­on with young peo­ple left with noth­ing but their own sense of vio­lence and nihilism.

On the face of it, Spring Break­ers is Korine’s piv­ot to the main­stream, like the kind of film Gas­par Noe would make if he want­ed to make it in Amer­i­ca. Four poor col­lege girls want to go on a trip to Flori­da for spring break, but are broke so turn to crime to fund their escapades. In the process they meet a ter­ri­ble rap­per and suc­cess­ful drug deal­er called Alien (James Fran­co) and are dragged deep­er into increas­ing­ly more vio­lent crimes. It’s a tale as old as time, but it had not yet been told by Har­mo­ny Korine.

Spring Break­ers boasts two Dis­ney teen sen­sa­tions in Sele­na Gomez and Vanes­sa Hud­gens, as well as Ash­ley Ben­son, star of pop­u­lar teen dra­ma Pret­ty Lit­tle Liars, and Korine’s own wife Rachel. The film allowed Gomez and Hud­gens to tran­si­tion square­ly away from the kid-friend­ly careers they had built up to that point, but their cast­ing was glee­ful­ly provoca­tive – ​‘Come and see the girls from the Dis­ney Chan­nel in biki­nis!’ was essen­tial­ly the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy for the movie.

Korine wrote the script for Spring Break­ers while observ­ing an actu­al spring break in Pana­ma City and all the car­nage that entails. Through­out the film, there are mon­tages of real life debauch­ery (often sound­tracked to the war­bling dub­step of Skrillex) – of alco­hol fly­ing every­where, bod­ies grind­ing as one, sug­ges­tive scenes of women suck­ing on ice lol­lies – they’re scenes that blur fan­ta­sy with real­i­ty and make the open­ing 15 min­utes of Baby­lon look like a Women’s Insti­tute meet­ing. Korine grew up too poor and uncool to know a lus­cious spring break out­side of MTV and instead imag­ines it as a vul­gar orgy of sex, drugs and alco­hol by way of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

It’s also what makes him an astute observ­er of America’s edges. The four girls at the cen­tre of the sto­ry are not Kar­dashi­ans. They can’t fly to Cabo on a pri­vate jet and buy bot­tles of Ace of Spades by the crate. The only way they can enjoy spring break is via the old­est of Amer­i­can tra­di­tions – by tak­ing what they want. A rob­bery of a din­er sound­tracked to Nic­ki Minaj fol­lows, and from there the girls mould spring break into what they want it to be. Vio­lence becomes their agency, espe­cial­ly as they fall into the St Peters­burg under­world Alien pre­sides over.

Franco’s rap­per-cum-drug deal­er is key to all of Spring Break­ers, a grotes­query of car­i­ca­ture and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion (before that phrase was part of the pop­u­lar lex­i­con). He’s a swag­ger­ing, rap­ping assault on the sens­es with an air of David Kore­sh if he dressed like Paul Wall. The char­ac­ter is a not entire­ly suc­cess­ful attempt at inter­ro­gat­ing the sys­temic racism that is webbed in pop cul­ture and soci­ety – he speaks exclu­sive­ly in African-Amer­i­can slang, dress­es like an exag­ger­at­ed car­toon of an ear­ly 00’s rap­per and has his hair braid­ed in corn­rows, a style cre­at­ed by Black peo­ple for afro hair.

Alien ref­er­ences his love of Scar­face on sev­er­al occa­sions – he keeps that shit on repeat, he tells us – but it’s telling that he nev­er express­es his grat­i­tude to the Black cul­ture he has co-opt­ed and exploit­ed. That his last act is to plan and exe­cute a mas­sacre on his rival Big Arch (played by Guc­ci Mane) and his exclu­sive­ly Black gang is just a ham­mer blow reminder of a world – cul­tur­al and oth­er­wise – built on Black erasure.

The most icon­ic and pre­scient scene in Spring Break­ers involves – to quote Alien – an angel if there ever was one, Miss Brit­ney Spears. The use of her bal­lad Every­time was undoubt­ed­ly iron­ic, even if Korine under­stands the influ­ence Spears had over a whole gen­er­a­tion of women who grew up lis­ten­ing to her music.

“Play some­thing fuck­ing inspir­ing,” the girls tell Alien as he sits at a beach­front white piano – he plays the song as his trio twirl in uni­son wear­ing match­ing pink bal­a­clavas and sweat­pants, and the scene morphs into per­haps the most influ­en­tial mon­tage scene since Rocky, with chore­o­graphed danc­ing, slow-mo scenes of armed rob­bery and James Fran­co singing. It’s emp­ty yet gor­geous­ly hyp­not­ic, which sum­maris­es the film as a whole – Korine wants peo­ple to look, and it doesn’t mat­ter if those view­ing it are repulsed or ecsta­t­ic, so long as they’re watching.

In the decade since its release, Spring Break­ers has become a tem­plate. While the film hard­ly broke the box-office, it was very prof­itable and one of the most talked about movies of the year online, with more cul­tur­al clout than its suc­cess­ful con­tem­po­raries such as Grav­i­ty, Amer­i­can Hus­tle and even 12 Years a Slave. A24’s sub­se­quent busi­ness mod­el seems to be based on this very film, which was only the third they had released at the time: low bud­get, prof­itable returns, lots of buzz, and keep the mar­ket­ing train rum­bling all year long.

With its Insta­gram-friend­ly colour palette, snap­py Tik­Tok sen­si­bil­i­ty and a video game approach to vio­lence, Spring Break­ers served as a prophet­ic win­dow into the nar­cis­sism of the 2020s which would devel­op with the pro­gres­sion of social media. Even today, pic­tures appear on social media annu­al­ly of young women dressed in pink bal­a­clavas and lit­tle else in Hal­loween trib­ute to Can­dy, Brit and Cotty.

They’ve become semi-iron­ic heroes and in our age of aus­ter­i­ty, social media dom­i­nance and ​“vibes” as an anti­dote to the depress­ing real­i­ty of the world, who can be sur­prised? Korine’s film might be vac­u­ous, but at least it’s hon­est. ​“Look at my shit!” implores Alien to the girls as he shows off his mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions, the prof­it of his appro­pri­a­tion and dev­as­ta­tion. Even 10 years on, it’s impos­si­ble to not look at Spring Break­ers with sim­i­lar awe and unease.