Good Girls Go Bad: Selena Gomez and “Spring Breakers”

If you know anything about grungy, surrealist indie cinema, you know that Harmony Korine is the mastermind of the genre. Director and/or writer for highly controversial and flat-out bizarre films such as Kids and Gummo, Korine knows his way around brutal subject material and screenplays that leave a bitter taste in your mouth. How he got into the business of delightfully spoiling the Disney personas of young actresses, I’m not sure.

But this writer is not complaining.

Released nationally on March 15th, Spring Breakers is Korine’s latest project. Despite featuring music from Skrillex and big names including James Franco and Gucci Mane, the movie promises to be a mental, existential trip. This is no family-friendly movie, despite the presence of both Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens of Disney-related fame.

According to Rolling Stone, Spring Breakers isn’t just a clever ploy to catch child stars “growing up” and taking bong hits. It’s a statement. It’s Korine’s take on the crazy, messed-up, hedonistic world that is adolescence. And what else is Spring Break but a week of adolescence on speed? Spring Breakers is a sloppy ball of pop culture, social networking, and Britney Spears.

Enough stalling. Here’s a brief summary of the plot:

College girls Faith, Candy, Brit, and Cotty are close friends who share a dorm room and wish for excitement and pleasure instead of their boring school life. When the annual spring break begins, the four find themselves without the sufficient funds for a trip to Florida. To score quick money for their trip, the girls successfully rob a convenience store, soon journeying to the wild beaches. Unfortunately, though the girls party to their heart’s content, they are soon found and arrested on drug charges. Strangely, they are bailed out by hustling gangster, Alien, who takes the party animals under his wing and into the vast criminal world. As the suave and dangerous gangster seduces the young friends, it becomes unclear how far they will go to have an unforgettable spring break.

I will admit that I didn’t take the trailer seriously the first time I watched it. The “rated-R for strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use, and violence throughout” tag adjacent to Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens’ names made me snort. It all reminded me of the girls I know that transform into animals over Spring Break – the girls who crave the danger of acting beyond their age and above the law. Portraying this type of Spring Break-er, of course, was Korine’s goal.

While writing Spring Breakers, Korine explored one of the most intense sites for Spring Break chaos: Panama City Beach, Florida.

“I checked into my hotel, and it was like ground zero,” Korine said to Rolling Stone. “Kids f—ing in the hallways, everyone vomiting on you, blasting Taylor Swift all night – it was unbearable. I went to another hotel and the same thing happened.”

Korine wants to break out to the mainstream audience with Spring Breakers while maintaining his radical honesty. Also, many claim that Korine’s films lack morality, but what does that matter if he’s right? Any college girl that goes a little too hard over Break could end up getting busted, or meeting the wrong people, or mixing with a bad crowd. Maybe a desperate gal could end up robbing a bank? Who knows?

These are possibilities that Korine wants us to be aware of. For adults, the characters played by Gomez and Hudgens could be their daughters. For other college students, the characters could be their friends.

And Korine leaves nothing to the imagination. See this movie.