Harmony Korine: the Great American Director
Harmony Korine is one of contemporary American cinema's most mysterious and polarizing figures. Korine emerged at the mere age of 19 by writing the script for Larry Clarke’s cult classic masterpiece Kids (1995), which later allowed him to do his first directorial effort, the attention-grabbing Gummo (1997). Since 1997, Korine has been challenging the limits and boundaries of cinema, both narratively, aesthetically and sometimes ethically. His works have often been described as dreamlike, poetic and provocative, depicting the nihilistic side of Americana and humanity in general. In this essay, Korine’s general style and his take on Americana will be examined throughout three different works from three distinct eras of his life: the homemade-looking, hyperrealistic overview of a small town, Gummo (1997), the transgressive neon pink nightmare, Spring Breakers (2012), and finally, the digital, anticinema nihilistic odyssey Baby Invasion (2024).
In Gummo, Korine paints this documentary-like scene of a tornado-struck small town in Ohio, using a cast of mostly non-actors and handheld cinematography. In Spring Breakers, Korine examines the transgressive youth, American excess and the “American dream” while showing a big shift in style using bright, neon imagery and upping the scale with a higher budget. Finally, in Baby Invasion, Korine completely detaches from reality by making an absurd piece of media that blurs the line between film and digital art using many different technological tools. These completely different films all share the foundation based on Korine’s fascination with contemporary culture, morals and nihilism, beauty in ugliness and chaos, modern America and finally, rejecting the tropes of cinema.
Gummo: Societal decay and fighting against the narrative
Gummo is about life after a town-wrecking tornado in the suburban town of Xenia, Ohio. The film focuses more on aesthetics and atmosphere rather than the loose narrative. It is a film almost in skit form. Instead of a structure or any character development, the film is a collection of vignettes, dialogues and images. This lack of narrative is not only a breach of cinematic norms but is also a representation of the societal breach of Xenia. Although critics bashed it, master filmmaker Werner Herzog loved the film, even collaborating with Korine in future projects.
The sight of a piece of bacon taped to the wall as a boy eats spaghetti in a dirty bathtub, kids killing and selling cats to butchers for their earnings and bodybuilding, ex-Mormon, parent murdering skinheads are just some of what the viewer is exposed to in Gummo. “No conceivable competition will match the sourness, cynicism and pretension of Mr. Korine's debut feature.” Janet Maslin says in the introduction of her review for the New York Times. The reason why critics hated Gummo with a passion when it was first released was especially for its nihilistic nature. The reason behind this film’s nihilism lies in Korine’s desire to show memorable and sometimes metaphoric scenes from the ignored portions of America. It is also important to note that there are almost no parents in the film, as it follows different cases of neglected youth. These characters do not have anyone or anything to look up to. The caring adult figures are not the only constructs lacking in the world of Gummo, as there is no place for religion, education or society either. The characters represent the forgotten and the ignored.
“If an actor is a crack smoker, let him go out between takes, smoke crack, and then come back and throw his refrigerator out the window,” Korine told Mike Kelley for Filmmaker Magazine in 1997. Korine further supports this desire by giving his non-professional actors freedom and using people he occasionally finds in the streets, such as the potty-mouthed children who harass Bunny Boy. He complements all of the above with the use of handheld shots, low-quality home video equipment, still images, slow motion and occasional steady cam to heighten the atmosphere and to put the viewer through the psyche of the directionless people of Xenia.
Korine’s style and approach are even more evident with his book A Crack-Up at the Race Riots (1998) and the screenplay of Kids (1995), where nothing is about the bigger picture and everything is about the absurd, disturbing now. Although Kids has a narrative, the way the screenplay flows does not make it feel like a tight narrative, but rather vignettes from a random day, while his book does not even have a narrative, where each piece is shorter than two pages and relies heavily on visualization. Korine’s goal is never to tell a story. It was to show the audience a disturbing world, focusing more on the atmosphere. Gummo shows the rottenness of America by deconstructing social constructs and “the American dream” while also deconstructing the norms of cinema.
Flash forward two feature films and a long hiatus and the audience gets the neon nightmare Spring Breakers, which Korine describes as “A Britney Spears music video directed by Gaspar Noé.”. Disguised as a flashy, young adult film about rebellion, freedom and partying, Korine exposes extremism, consumerism, nihilism and again, “the American dream”. This time not in a subtle, low-quality Gummo way, but in its own dreamy, flashy way that, in reality, lies on the same bleakness of Gummo.
The film tells the story of four university student girls (played by ex-Disney stars) who rob a diner to be able to afford partying in St. Petersburg, Florida, for spring break. In St. Petersburg, after an altercation with the police, the girls end up imprisoned, only to be bailed out by Alien, a local rapper and “trapper” who introduces them to the world of drug dealing and violence. The hypnotic cinematography by Benoit Debie, who is famous for working with Gaspar Noé, the voice-overs, the trancey, loopy editing and the violent montages of the film give it a dreamlike atmosphere. Although the film has a “plot”, again, unlike traditional crime cinema, there is no feeling of climax or satisfaction, the film gets lost in its rhythm.
Visually, the film has nothing to do with Korine’s previous work, which was smaller in scale and more subtle. Spring Breakers has its world scored by dubstep and trap music while the audience gets intoxicated with the use of slow motion and its neon colour palette. Korine reflects on American extremism, contemporary culture and consumerism by combining excessive violence and hedonism, creating parallels between the two.
A standout in the film is when the girls all surround Alien with a piano outside of a mansion by the sea as he sings and plays Everytime by Britney Spears. The girls join the singing while they dance around holding guns and smoking “blunts”, wearing pink balaclavas and bikinis. The scene fades into a montage of Alien and the girls wreaking havoc, robbing and shooting people with the music still playing in the background. Although the scene is very transgressive and nihilistic, it is shot in a dreamlike and beautiful manner, supported by the neon bright lights, slow motion, pop music and shiny sexualized clothing. This is again Korine’s take on “the American dream” and American excess as it shows how American modern culture creates spectacles out of hedonism, violence and sexualization.
Just like the rest of his work, Korine abstains from further explaining anything the viewer sees on the screen without any moral implications. Characters are not characters in these films, they are just tools to represent certain parts of certain cultures. There is no argument of “good and evil” there is just the current moment. These two opposite films are two examples of how Harmony Korine reflects on America, as the main aspect both films share is the bleakness behind an intoxicating atmosphere.
Although thematically different, Korine’s work always stays true to its roots in terms of ideology and (lack of) structure. Gummo and Spring Breakers both represent America’s outcasts while seeming to be at opposite ends of a spectrum. This was all until 2023, when Korine founded the company EDGLRD, a multimedia company that spreads its works through video games, film, the skate scene, music, design, and technology. His projects AGGRODR1FT and Baby Invasion proved to Korine’s audience that the neon world of Spring Breakers was just in the middle of the spectrum as he dives into post-cinema in these works.
“THIS IS NOT A MOVIE... THIS IS NOT A GAME… THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE. THERE IS NO MORE REAL LIFE. THERE IS JUST NOW” is what hundreds of confused audiences see through the POV of a baby-faced home invader. His latest, Baby Invasion, is his most abstract work yet, where the film is from the POV of home invaders in baby masks, security cameras or a mysterious figure’s POV. The film utilizes AI and video game engines to heighten the chaos while there is no dialogue, no narrative and almost no human faces. The film is a post-cinema project that Harmony Korine sees more as an “experience” as he makes a film completely detached from any construct or reality.
The film generally got very weak reviews from the audience and critics due to its overly absurd and experimental tendencies. Although it is the most abstract of Korine’s works, if the audience is familiar with Korine’s work, they can still spot his foundation behind the hyper-juvenile, chronically online world of Baby Invasion. One might argue this is the most nihilistic of his works, as the film is constantly accompanied by a Twitch-style, pre-written “live chat” which consists of people cheering for and making jokes about the home invasions and violence they witness. Showing a violent world in a childlike and colourful way is not a first for Korine, but he has never shown this as absurdly and grotesquely as Baby Invasion.
As per usual, Americana also plays a role in the feature, as the home invaders party in lavish Miami mansions they invade and the sight of the desensitized people of the “live chat” are all nods to American excess and even current politics where people follow a trend of growing more and more desensitized to gun violence. Although this new EDGLRD era of his is more detached from reality, it is even more focused on creating an experience and fully letting go of a narrative. Behind every layer of absurdity, which the audience might think is stupid, there are still pictures of America, its outcasts, and its dark side. If Gummo is a society falling apart and if Spring Breakers is indulgence in that broken society, then Baby Invasion is full abandonment of that society.
Korine’s cinema is based on exploring the same topic through different lenses. Whether it is the raw, forgotten and rotten suburbia of Gummo, the youthful, neon madness of Spring Breakers or the hyper-nihilistic, digital absurdity of Baby Invasion all are tools for Korine to push the boundaries of cinema, experiment and question his roots and ethics. None of his aforementioned work gives the audience any sort of satisfaction, comfort or resolution. Unsure of its ideology, the films only present these worlds to the audience.
All of Korine’s cinematic characteristics make him paint absurd, rotten, lost and immoral pictures of a broken America. Rejecting the norms socially and cinematically, Korine has made his place in the industry as a provocateur, being loved and hated by a large number of filmgoers.
Undoubtedly, he is true to himself and his works, as he shows the same patterns in other fields, such as his EDGLRD graphics-coated chaotic, transgressive music video One Second (2024) for Bladee and Yung Lean or his deconstructed, narrativeless, sarcastic novel A Crack-Up at the Race Riots. These works share the same postmodern anarchy as Korine’s feature-length works. As mentioned before, Harmony Korine is never there to tell a story, he is there to deconstruct, reject, experiment, observe and most importantly, surround the audience with what is most important for him: the moment, the experience, not the narrative, not even the meaning behind it.