‘Spring Breakers’ A Morality Tale That Objectifies Women?

Spring Breakers has primarily been advertising itself as a showcase of Disney girls gone bad. Some how in the midst of this a morality tale is squashed in. But is this morality tale just cover for a movie that objectifies women?

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Springer Breaker’s morality tale primarily centers around the character played by Selena Gomez:

“Selena Gomez’s Faith is the most developed character, aside from Alien. Gomez has a lot of layers to play around with as she embodies a girl who wants to escape church camp, but isn’t entirely ready to push the envelope to pure insanity like her crazy friends. Gomez really shows up for the film, and is surprisingly believable as the conflicted girl trapped in a spring break vacation gone wrong.”

The basic idea is that four girlfriends are saving up for spring break in St. Petersburg, Florida. Faith complains, “I’m so tired of seeing the same things every day. I’m tired of driving past the same depressing houses every day.” Faith is going through a spiritual journey, but she finds that fulfillment does not come from diving head first into evil. The pastor she speaks to quotes 1 Corinthians 10:13, saying, “But when you are tempted, you will also be given a way out.”

The trouble starts when the other three girls don’t tell Faith that they rob a restaurant to fund the trip. They all get arrested, bailed out by drug dealer Alien for “free,” but the catch is that they’re all drawn into a world of drugs and violence. The morality tale is summarized in Faith’s complaint, “This is not fun. This not what it’s supposed to be.”

As a whole, Spring Breakers could be called a critique of our culture’s intoxication with sex, consumption and excess, largely at the expense of women. Director Harmony Korine originally envisioned Spring Breakers as “girls on a beach in bikinis robbing fat tourists,” so perhaps it’s with no surprise the morality tale is a thin gloss thrown over a gruesome canvas.

The objectification of women starts just 30 seconds into the movie, beginning with a montage of topless women on the beach. If you were to cut all of the footage together there’s about 20 minutes of uncensored nudity. From an artistic perspective, the subject matter needs to be shown in order to be discussed, but this film seems to revel in it, rather than just pointing the finger. So is Spring Breakers debasing the young Disney actresses even while supposedly making a statement about the exploitation of women?

Perhaps that’s why Selena Gomez is warning her young fans to not go see Spring Breakers. It’s not exactly comforting that James Franco’s grandmother recommends the movie in this fashion: “Lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots of girls, and my grandson!”

Do you think that Spring Breakers objectifies women?