Spring Breakers, Indie Sleaze, and the Exploitation Film

I am so excited to say that, since we're coming up on its 10 year anniversary, my next video is going to be on Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers! This movie was so formative for me - this was the era of Pussy Riot politics, indie sleaze, and bad Soundcloud rap - all of which I had fully immersed myself in. I remember attempting to see the film in theatres and getting turned away, for the first time in my life, due to its R rating. Yet I managed to find it online, and was completely swayed. 

I want to use this video as an opportunity to explore the Indie Sleaze aesthetic, and the double edged sword it offered to women back in the early 2010s. Spring Breakers toes that very dangerous line in girlhood between sexual agency and exploitation. It adopts the indie sleaze aesthetic so popular at the time and thus, on top of its gratuitous nudity and violence, cemented itself as the last great exploitation film to reach a wide audience. 

The film came amidst the beginning of a short sexual revolution - a pre-Me Too time where the slut walk era and “choice feminism” took precedence. I was coming of age right around this time, and heavily inspired to go out and be as crazy and “free” as I wished. It was a transition time where feigning total control over my sexuality as the girls in this film are doing was the coolest thing I could do. But, as it did for myself many girls I knew in real life, the film quickly tips over into danger. 

We were at the tail end of the “corrupted Disney girl” era (see: Miley’s VMA pole performance) where we saw our idols take their "sexual agency" by the reigns, but at the same time there were men seizing this sexed up aesthetic and exploiting it for their own pleasure (see: Terry Richardson, Robin Thicke). So the ultimate question for this video is this: is Korine committing the Terry Richardson/Robin Thicke crime of “hipster sexism” with his indie sleaze visuals? Or is Spring Breakers more subversive than that? Is it a comment on this culture? Is there a line between revolution and provocation, or can neither exist without the other? Let's find out! 

Would love to know what you think about this, please feel free to comment down below!