When Disney star Selena Gomez was asked what was special about Spring Breakers, she said “It’s real.” She meant that Harmony Korine used non-actors, researched spring break in person, and encouraged them to embrace authenticity (he reassured them that their bodies, on display throughout the film, were meant to be a little soft in the middle, these weren’t actresses with personal trainers, but college girls who drank beer and ate fast food). Cason Sharpe’s piece on Spring Breakers notes that the film is compelling because of the way it breaks down the public personas of major stars on a backdrop of genuine partiers, rappers, and cops that populate St. Petersburg, Florida.
Of course, films can feel real, they can also feel like reality, or even worse, like a perfect form which your own life perpetually fails to match. We want the total freedom that we ascribe to childhood, but summers as a kid meant hours in the backseat listening to your parents’ radio shows or toiling at a degrading summer job. In the gulf between what you expect and what you get is summer in your 20s, the year of Spring Breakers was also the year of Summertime Sadness, Lana Del Rey’s only song to ever chart, which we played off of our phones in taxi cabs and parking lots.
Although the girls profess to love money, what Spring Breakers ultimately imagines is a world where money doesn’t matter, a world without the pursuit of it. No jobs, no credit cards, no mortgage; money is acquired by guns when needed. The girls drive off into the sunset in a sunset-coloured convertible, twinning in yellow bikinis, turned indistinguishable, whittled down to their essential parts: limbs, lawlessness, liminality, subsisting, to echo Cason, on vibes alone.
Vibes abound in our summer issue: contemplating waterfalls, eating in movie theatres, sinking back into your hometown or into a teenage fantasy, dipping into pools of mood on YouTube, or diving deep into content both extreme and ambient. The pieces in this issue are even more far out on the fringes than we usually roam as if the urge towards critique were itself taking the summer off, taking a swim, going for a walk, enjoying the view.
This year, Spring Breakers celebrates its 10th anniversary, which might be difficult to accept for those of us who were college-aged then, and who now watch the reckless teens on Euphoria before taking melatonin, turning on a meditation app, and getting to sleep before midnight.
But spring break spirit persists, if not in my own life, at least in the films I love: the low-brow transcendence of Southland Tales, the teenage bank-robbers in First Name Carmen, and in Rohmer’s The Green Ray, which also placed its protagonist among real vacationers, marooned on her towel in a sea of tourists. Maybe we stopped idolizing Harmony Korine’s “pure pop sociopaths”, but we started posting stills from Rohmer’s breezy, but no less aestheticized, summer visions: Pauline’s sexual education at the beach is as unreal in its refinement and maturity than the spring breakers are in their excesses.
And if I’m honest, no matter how old I get, I still stay up too late, eat junk food, and feel an adolescent, abstract sadness whenever the days get hotter. One that pushes girls out of their dorms, to maybe catch a bus to Florida for a shot at the best summer ever. ☀️
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine
When Disney star Selena Gomez was asked what was special about Spring Breakers, she said “It’s real.” She meant that Harmony Korine used non-actors, researched spring break in person, and encouraged them to embrace authenticity (he reassured them that their bodies, on display throughout the film, were meant to be a little soft in the middle, these weren’t actresses with personal trainers, but college girls who drank beer and ate fast food). Cason Sharpe’s piece on Spring Breakers notes that the film is compelling because of the way it breaks down the public personas of major stars on a backdrop of genuine partiers, rappers, and cops that populate St. Petersburg, Florida.
Of course, films can feel real, they can also feel like reality, or even worse, like a perfect form which your own life perpetually fails to match. We want the total freedom that we ascribe to childhood, but summers as a kid meant hours in the backseat listening to your parents’ radio shows or toiling at a degrading summer job. In the gulf between what you expect and what you get is summer in your 20s, the year of Spring Breakers was also the year of Summertime Sadness, Lana Del Rey’s only song to ever chart, which we played off of our phones in taxi cabs and parking lots.
Although the girls profess to love money, what Spring Breakers ultimately imagines is a world where money doesn’t matter, a world without the pursuit of it. No jobs, no credit cards, no mortgage; money is acquired by guns when needed. The girls drive off into the sunset in a sunset-coloured convertible, twinning in yellow bikinis, turned indistinguishable, whittled down to their essential parts: limbs, lawlessness, liminality, subsisting, to echo Cason, on vibes alone.
Vibes abound in our summer issue: contemplating waterfalls, eating in movie theatres, sinking back into your hometown or into a teenage fantasy, dipping into pools of mood on YouTube, or diving deep into content both extreme and ambient. The pieces in this issue are even more far out on the fringes than we usually roam as if the urge towards critique were itself taking the summer off, taking a swim, going for a walk, enjoying the view.
This year, Spring Breakers celebrates its 10th anniversary, which might be difficult to accept for those of us who were college-aged then, and who now watch the reckless teens on Euphoria before taking melatonin, turning on a meditation app, and getting to sleep before midnight.
But spring break spirit persists, if not in my own life, at least in the films I love: the low-brow transcendence of Southland Tales, the teenage bank-robbers in First Name Carmen, and in Rohmer’s The Green Ray, which also placed its protagonist among real vacationers, marooned on her towel in a sea of tourists. Maybe we stopped idolizing Harmony Korine’s “pure pop sociopaths”, but we started posting stills from Rohmer’s breezy, but no less aestheticized, summer visions: Pauline’s sexual education at the beach is as unreal in its refinement and maturity than the spring breakers are in their excesses.
And if I’m honest, no matter how old I get, I still stay up too late, eat junk food, and feel an adolescent, abstract sadness whenever the days get hotter. One that pushes girls out of their dorms, to maybe catch a bus to Florida for a shot at the best summer ever. ☀️
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine