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i saw spring breakers in theaters with my grandmother. she sat through the whole thing and all she said was, “I don’t understand why you take me to things you know I won’t like.”

i remember reading a review of spring breakers that said the camera rolled around the women like a giant tongue and TO THIS DAY i still think of that review it was so accurate

I love how your voiceover makes 2013 sound like an ancient society centuries away from us, rather than the living memory of a big portion of people on the Internet today.

The whole shift from the indie sleaze era to a Me Too era reminds me of Ke$ha's life and how things took a turn for the worse when previously, her life and music were carefree, fun, and wild.

I’m Black, so my mom was not about to let me go to spring break in Florida in college. Everything I know about it is through movies and like…news stories about missing college students. The same goes for Indie Sleaze. I was in High School/early college during the Indie Sleaze period and missed a lot of it due in part to my age and the fact that it tends to alienate women who aren’t white.

I remember seeing this in theaters and by the 10th time Franco lazily says “sprang breeeaaak” my audience had had enough. When it ended, people chuckled in a “wtf” kinda way. 10/10 experience.

I vividly remember renting this movie from Redbox in high school and watching it as a double feature with The Bling Ring.

i feel like there's something to be said about the specific roles that selena and vanessa play and their reputations within and outside of disney - at this point i don't know if you mention vanessa's ex leaking pictures of her (or that she was made to apologize for taking them, in spite of them only getting out because someone she'd trusted betrayed her) and the reputation she gained from that, but by the time the movie had come out she was already a bit moved on from disney/had that following her, while selena did not, and selena is cast to be the good girl of the group where vanessa's character is one of the main instigators of the things they end up doing (as i recall, it's been a while since i've given the movie a proper rewatch). korine's wife's character is also sent home before she gets involved in the big trouble at the end that results in alien's death.

I feel like neon demon has that “people either really love it or hate it” where the movie is just mostly aesthetics but it’s so alluring to watch. It needs to be reevaluated like this one

A movie that I am sure you know about called "Perfect Blue" perfectly talks about a point you touched on about a corrupt team of men behind good girls' sexier images. Watching it was eye opening for me about this movie and even stuff like Miley Cyrus' rebellious "acting" out, and even the ire directed ay Taylor Swift for not posing nude.

The main thing i remember from this movie is alien saying "spraaaanggbreaaaakk" w his shark teeth and me and my friends HOWLING with laughter. I dont think ive ever laughed that hard again.

While I get that former Disney stars desperately want to break their contracts, I hate how they have to be sexualized to be considered "mature." It feels weird to me that the only way a woman can feel "empowered" is through their sexuality. It says a lot about the industry. I've always considered empowerment to be a personal journey and it's different for everybody and it's not always about sex. For me, my own personal empowerment would be wearing reproduced vintage clothes that update and elevate my personal style and make me feel good and confident without having any sexual components. It could also be singing... Being empowered is doing what makes YOU feel great and not something you feel you need to do to prove to somebody else that you're grown

Tumblr was insane during the spring break era . I see so many things about revival of that “2010-2013/2014” era. And I don’t think it can ever be revived because of what made it at that time imo… was largely a), social media was in its beginning stages, IG/Tumblr/FB, b) Tumblr will never be and hold that influence of the 2010 era it’s just so different now. That time was a time, and I had a lot of fun then but I don’t think there should be a revival. I want society to get out of this nostalgia era I feel like we have been in for the last 3ish years..

Amazing to know that even 2013 has a demographic that yearns for it and perceives it as the good times. In a way it's even humbling.

im not the biggest fan of the film but one thing that i loved was vanessa hudgens. her performance has always stuck with me and i do think her performance fits the overall tone of american greed/american dream

Watching the movie now knowing what we know about James Franco's sexual misconducts doesn't feel the same

When you talk about the mindset of this "era", there was a news story from 2010 that came to mind. A recent college grad at Duke University decided, as a joke, to make a powerpoint presentation about the various guys she slept with while a student at Duke. It was meant as a private joke, but soon the whole thing went viral and she was subjected to public shaming while everybody wringed their hands about these poor boys being "associated" with her, especially the guys who weren't rated favorably by her. It was like she being both leered at because she openly talked about her sexual exploits, yet jeered at because she was supposed to be a good girl from a good family at a good college and good girls don't do that. They especially aren't supposed to question the virality of admired Duke athletes, hence why she was dragged through the mud by the media as a "lesson." The whole thing is gross in retrospect (and I'm horrified because there's at least one encounter that she described herself as being black out drunk for) and I hope she's happy, wherever she is.

It’s interesting how Black men seem to fit in and be accepted into this “aesthetic” so much more than black women. It must say a lot about exploitation.

The moment were you say that with the sexual liberation of women during this era, men were low-key waiting and lurking because it would get easier for them to have access sexually to women, I couldn't help but ask myself : Did we at this exact point in culture witnessed the birth and democratization of infamous the "hookup culture" ? And are we at this very moment now in 2022, witnessing its decline?

The whole Spring Break concept is fascinating, something I don't think we would ever have in the UK or Europe in general

idk if it has to do with me being more culturally distant towards the US, but when I saw the movie two years back, the second half of it felt like an obvious desillusion with excess to me. I got this strong feeling of staying at a party for too long, and having to painfully perceive what is actually happening around me, and that the excess fun and carelessness is spiraling into unsafe escapism. I still dont understand how anyone could really "enjoy" this movie, it made me feel really stupid for partying in my "college years"

I had just turned 19 when the movie came out, and already familiar with Korine's (and Larry Clark, Gregg Araki, etc) work. So it wasn't really shocking to me. But it was truly something to watch other people, along with the media, lose their shit over seeing Selena Gomez in a bikini lol.

The way you organize and execute your videos truly inspires me. I take notes every time i watch for my podcast. Thank you for your QUALITY content✨

The early publicity campaign for Spring Breakers was one of the most legendary bits of IRL trolling of all time. Me and everybody I know who went to see it on its inital run saw portions of the audience walk out.

I used to watch spring breakers every spring break when I was a teenager. I always labeled it a “bad” movie but if it was really that bad then I wouldn’t have watched it 2 more times lol. My fascination definitely is because of the outrageousness but I really enjoy all the moral questions you pose that underline these spectacle movies. I think your videos have helped me form my own questions while watching films and I will be keeping a sharp eye on my guilty pleasures and all the meaning they encapsulate.

In 2016 I went to Mad Decent Block Party (an EDM festival) and dropped mollie; I was so excited to participate in this open arena of doing whatever the fuck you wanted. As soon as the mollie hit me though I started having a panic attack because I began to pay more attention to those around me and I could literally feel the predatory intent of so many of the men there. Not to say all men into EDM are predators, but in that indie sleaze scene like you mention in the video it is easy to hide that MO behind the idea free sexual liberation of women around that time. I think if indie sleaze does come back and make its way into the zietgiest again we need to remember that the freedom to let go also comes with the inevitable underside of unsafety. With this new outlook you've given Spring Breakers though I might actually give it a watch, been avoiding it since it's release lol

I haven't watched this video yet but I've seen the film several times and I love it because for me it expertly crafts a narrative about disposability in pursuit of hedonistic material wealth. Each girl and hanger on, like Alien, is discarded in turn as if the gestalt consciousness of American greed - the American Dream - which finally rests in the last two girls at the end reinvents itself and sloughs the dead skin of common sense, guilt, fear, morality, and in Alien's case, subordination. He wishes to consume and own the gestalt and is in the end killed by his overreach. In essence the girls do not represent people but an idea of unabashed greed. The friends are disposable, the facilitator is disposable, the weak offering of spring break is disposable. The final entity has a taste of the big time and nothing will stop its pursuit of material pleasures. The flesh, the beautiful lights and textures, are all accessories, jewels on a great big lumbering beast of unsatiated materialism. The film becomes a criticism of the culture it uses to illustrate its point. It is titillation that strips away the pretense until what we have at the end is the core of the American Dream - wealth at the expense of everything.

I have a damn bachelor’s in communications and finally, thanks to you and Sping Breakers, I understand the medium is the message. I've been trying to wrap my head around this concept for 5 years!

Great analysis. Not sure we’re actually in a post-Covid era though. I see the nihilistic response right now as a way to not accept that it’s still very much a Covid era.

Spring Breakers walked, so that Euphoria could run 😅

I actually had a professor in college who taught an exploitation film class that put Spring Breakers on it towards the end of the semester calling it “the last real exploitation film”.

Indie sleaze fundamentally changed who i am as a person and i’m very much envious of everyone who missed out on it the first go around

So this is where Bojack Horseman got those characters from..lol

as fitting as it is, gucci mane's role in this film never fails to catch me off-guard

When I think indie sleaze I think 2006-2009. When I think the “spring breaker aesthetic” I think 2010-2013. Idk it’s compartmentalized in my head like that. Then, 2014-2016 era of king Kylie era/IG baddie aesthetic😂

I knew what I was REALLY walking into when I watched Spring Breakers. I had seen Gummo and Kids, and I had spent years watching Gregg Araki's movies. Inie weirdness is something I was very familiar with. Still not a fan of Gummo though. I like how you mentioned exploitation cinema is basically made up of other genres like horror, erotic films, youth culture etc. Everyone owes Roger Corman something haha

YES A SPRINGBREAKERS VIDEO. I saw your Neon-noir video and thought "hmm no mention of spring-breakers :(" Took a chance and clicked on your channel and saw this as the trailer. I was inundated with happiness that there's others out there recognizing just how amazing this film was. I've seen the film maybe...20-ish times now. Every time I watch it I re-realize just how great the editing and cinematography is. The fluid narrative is so well done in that the story remains a cohesive story where we can easily discern what events happen in an order through time, but in terms of "at what time" the scenes occur there's no real sense of time, and no real objective state in which we know that a conversation is happening. In addition to the editing, the cinematography is just an explosion of colors that are really very unique to this movie. It's really hard to find movies that have this amount of color range in them and I'd say on a technical level it is a genuine neon-noir film. Every shot/frame is in some sense a perfect still image in motion. The plot also resonated with me because of how layered one could interpret it. There was your basic surface layer, it's plot and characters...then you had the meta/satirical layer and it's exploitation...then you have the allegorical layer (involving religion and the allegory to Alien being the devil etc...) and finally the overall thematic layer and how the film delivers it's themes as a whole. Like Korine states in his interview, I saw the movie as an exploration of "the surfaces"...how everything has a surface layer, but beneath that surface there's more...and sometimes those things are good, some are bad...sometimes they are both good and bad or neither. The partying in some sense felt good. I've had parties like this and they were great (and so one can feel nostalgia watching these parts of the movie)...at the same time there's that underbelly, and there's an awareness of the fact that drugs do come from somewhere at these parties and that is not fake it is real... and the hypocrisy of the interplay between white culture and black culture is another deeper surfaces to explore. Which surface you stumble on depends on who you are...and what perspective you see the movie from, and thus these different surfaces will manifest to you as a viewer in different orders. Cheers,

Amazing video AS ALWAYS. I definitely think that post-covid liberation and freedom is the #1 reason that indie sleaze is coming back. Also, a lot of the adolescents who are teens now have begun romanticizing this era, partially because they aren’t seeing the ugly that those who grew up in it saw, I’m sure.

I love your mention of Britney Spears because she is ALL over this movie. It almost feels like some revenge fantasy dream britney could have. One of the characters is literally named brit

One of the things that kind of blew my mind about this movie was, i totally thought Alien was gonna be a guy who drops the rapper act because the girls got to intense even for him. And was super surprised when it didn't go that route.

Honestly we have to also acknowledge how young his wife is. I think I would never give him credit here.

Awesome. Your channel continues to produce some of the best film and cultural essays going. In any format. Wow. Really good episode. I saw Spring Breakers at a campus cinema when it first released. I remember how much I couldn’t stop laughing and smiling when I came out of that movie. It seemed punk. Or like a punk satire. I dunno. It’s been a while. Sounds like I should check it out again.

Finally bought my fancy plush bed and just wanted to say thanks for the coupon and all the hours of slow sluggish work you've gotten me through. I hope your cat is nice to you and only occasionally steals your lunch. :)

I love Spring Breakers. I can't quite put my finger on it. Just seeing it all unfold IRL here in FL, you run into these types at gas stations at 2am. It took those types and cranked it up. (Great job on the vid!)

Much needed analysis and for most out there, it still seems today. Thanks a lot. Brilliant work.

Love your point on the movie being a modern exploitation film. I've thought this too for years and it was really satisfying hearing you articulate it!

Yes! New video. I love your analysis, Broey!

I unironically love this film.

Video actually starts at 3:15.

Maybe it was your reading of it, but "And then Ellie Goulding's Lights plays" struck me very, very funny

Indie sleez is just grunge/heroin chic, colored neon.

I went to see this movie with a group of friends. It is the only time where I have ever walked out of a theater.

Honestly I think the return of indie sleaze aesthetic and mindset low-key scares me, beacuse it's really all artiface. There is legitimate danger in the attitude of risking safety in the name of indie sleaze's definition freedom, there is danger in nihilism. Also, I think how indie sleaze defines what that looks like and who's allowed to participate in it has, as you mention, notable exclusivity and specifically components- wild raves, skinny whiteness, appropriation of black culture, money, status, ect

FINALLY A MOVIE IVE WATCHED THANK U

so glad i get to watch this before they take it down again

Wow, thank you for making sense of that movie. I watched it for the first time recently and honestly bounced right off, but it makes so much more sense to know the intentions and context around that...

i remember seeing the cover of it on redbox as a kid growing up and when those photos were released, it was like still shocking bc I did grow up with HSM still having an older sister who loved Disney and obviously WOWP. I recently watched springbreakers (over springbreak lol) and I LOVED it. I feel like I would've enjoyed it if I was old enough at the time. I would say ahead it's def ahead of it's time.

Excellent video. Thank you for your analysis. Spring Breakers came out right at the brink of a certain time, and although our society (thankfully) moved forward, a fair argument could be made that movies skirt through anything remotely offensive. Trash is trash, it has a place.

The movie was slow in the way that it felt like a memory like you were right there with him

Always a great watch! Thank you for your work, can’t wait to discuss with my fiancée later

maia. this is so good. thank you!!!

I really do love your content (it's thoughtful and critical). Have you ever considered adding short form movie reviews? It doesn't have to be for blockbusters or even consistently scheduled. However, I'd love to know what current / upcoming movies (if any) pique your interest / would be recommended by you. Keep doing you.

It came out the same time as Her, which was at the complete opposite side of the Indie Sleaze spectrum. Her was quintessential, syrupy, brand-name indie while Her was indie trash

New Broey let’s go!!

I've never watched the movie as it just didn't appeal for the exploitation aspects but I've thoroughly enjoyed your take on it. It does concern me a lot that people are saying we're in a post covid world, we're not, its the highest killer here in NZ, sure people may like to say we are, but it's not the case

Your content is always incredible, love it

Love your videos so much!!

It’s only right that I drop everything I’m doing when there’s a new Broey vid

I saw Spring Breakers on some sorta of psychedelic at my local bargain theater when it came out and I don't remember much. Maybe time to re-visit. Thanks for reminding me it existed.

Really great and nuanced!! Also love how you filmed your clips against a white backdrop yourself

Second spring breakers analysis video in a short period of time, interesting

That’s so interesting because I also remember this time where everyone said 2016 was the last great year for them … and I genuinely felt like that was such a universal feeling

one of my fav movies

spring breakers is just….boring. i was a selena gomez fan when i was younger that’s why i watched it back in 2013, it wasn’t because the movie attracted me or whatever it was solely because i was a young girl who wanted to support their favorite celebrity, i think i lied about liking it lol but i gave it a chance recently as an adult and i was like- um… i’m bored when is it gonna end?? then i went to read reviews and i was like? am i dumb? is this movie too complex for me? because they were all positive.

Nice lamp.

Great video on a great movie!

you know, i was sick of video essay channels until i found yours haha

This was an e-mail to a friend after seeing the film in the movie theater on original release. I stand by it: 4/1/13 First things first, I went and saw Spring Breakers. Your friend made a point that there was a lot of slow motion and that wasn't a bad thing. The slow motion served a function. It was initially erotic and gratuitously so. It created a sexually charged atmosphere. It also created a dream-like function for the fairy tale aspect of the presentation. But intertwined was also (and more eventually able to convey) a boredom and emptiness of living the plot, in a sort of mimesis with the characters of the plot, which in fairy tale form is scant and instructive. You could call it an Antonioni angle where enjoyment is the antithesis of the effect within the concept of the movie... which somehow behaves as an enjoyment in the intrigue and decipherment of the structure of the presentation. It is a slow, odd, and interesting movie with a great soundtrack and nothing to deter my respect for Ashley Benson. I recommend it, but I wish to leave the subject with a quote from Alien, played by James Franco, "Look at my shi-it!"

Love this video!

really enjoyed the analysis of this movie as I always just remember it for being controversial and something I was too young to see, so I never did. As someone who was growing up during this era, it feels very strange and almost disconnecting to think about it in retrospect

she’s back :’)

Yo Broey you the goat forreal

the description of Indie sleaze around 14:00 reminds me a bit of the feeling of Nan Goldin's work from the 80's and 90's

im so happy i found ur channel

This essay is so perfectly niche I love it

Such a great video, I love your channel. This movie is so bleak, it was a surprisingly tough watch.

wake up babe, new broey deschanel just dropped

I remember watching this when I was 12 bc I was a fan of Selena lol, then I watched it again when I was 19 and love it.

Great job putting the credits at the beginning of the video.

excellent video !

It's the Broester!! Yaaay!! Lmiao. 💜

It's weird seeing people talk about the early 2010s as if they weren't yesterday, christ I feel old

I love the breakdown of this time period through the lens of this movie. There seemed to be a reaction toward the end of the Bush era in the U.S. from a sober patriotism to nihilistic consumerism that seemed to have happened without much examination when it took place (at least as far as I was aware). This period definitely deserves more scrutiny as it is such a liminal space between the early post 9/11 world sobriety and our current more radicalized worldviews.

learning that james franco is a certified creep makes liking this film so painful // rewatching this film such a painful experience ૮꒰ྀི;⸝⸝⸝⸝;꒱ྀིა

20:28 I don't think it's so black and white... Just because they're expressing sexuality doesn't mean they're in control of it. They could be people pleasing compulsively or self sabotage/SH-ing, or something else through the destructive behaviors of spring break parties. Idk that sentence about " they appear to be in control of their sexuality" really made me 🤔 bc u can't tell someone's motivation from the outside... especially if the girl is not aware she's coping from a place of low self esteem.

Gummo was weird. and seeing it pop up in this video gave me goosebumps.

The embodiment of sleaze!

Yo this episode was so good wtf

Funny to have a what feels like 20minute intro leading into an ad read xD