Gummo (1997)
German culture has a unique fascination with people deemed "asozial". This term, which an english speaker might assume would roughly translate to "antisocial" is actually used in a very different context. It's used in much the same way someone in english might use the word "deviant" or, in harsher terms, perhaps even "degenerate". "Undesirable" also somewhat approximates its meaning. It has been, and is, used as a descriptor for people considered low class. While it predates that time period, in the Third Reich people considered "asozial" had been incarcerated and killed, alongside with other equally arbitrary, but at least more easily defined, minority groups. According to Wikipedia, considered "asozial" were "Felons, drunks, prostitutes and juvenile delinquents" as well as "the homeless", "welfare recipients" "vagabonds" and "lower class families with a high number of children", all of which had to be removed from a healthy society, according to eugenicists of the time.
That said, after the Third Reich had fallen and eugenicism had been thoroughly discredited, the term "asozial" managed to handily outlive it. In West Germany, in East Germany (Where it had mostly been redefined to describe people who refused to attend work) and all the way into united Germany, as we know it now. As a matter of fact, the 00's saw the rise of a cultural phenomenon widely called "Assi TV". Assi being sort of a diminuitive form of "asozial". It was, more or less, a german flavoured offshot of the general rise of reality television all over the western world. Those consisted of alleged insights into the lives of (very explicitly lower class) people that were presented in sort of a dramatized documentary style, yet thoroughly scripted, staged and performed by amateur actors, yet still sold to their audiences as authentic footage from real households.
Put in the bluntest of terms, those television series were putting on what I can, perhaps insensitively, only describe as "proletarian minstrel shows" where lower class germans were depicted as dim, inarticulate, frequently obese, unhygienic, uneducated, emotionally unhinged, sexually deviant and generally boorish and buffoonish for the amusement of a middle class audience. To provide some additional context, these formats came to dominate the noon to afternoon programming of private german television stations in the aftermath of a series of neoliberal welfare reforms forcing a new degree of harsh austerity on people in long term unemployment. Long story short, the german government and the german media worked together to create an environment that would firmly cement the stereotype of the "asozial" person in the minds of a new generation. For many people my age, those faux-reality television programs acted as the background score to their daily homework . Seared into my brain is a scene where a man was depicted eating spaghetti from the naked body of his corpulent wife. I think he had a mullet.
And those who've seen the movie will know how this brings us to Harmony Korine's 1997 cult classic Gummo. As specific to Germany as the term "asozial" or "Assi" is, it is somewhat related to the american archetype of "white trash" only... well, without the explicitly racial part and the sort of rural/provincial connotation.
Listen, I swear I'm going somewhere with this.
Harmony Korine's filmography has an almost singular fascination with american "White Trash" culture. Between Kids, Ken Park, Gummo, Spring Breakers and Trash Humpers, Korine makes movies about burnouts, deadbeats, wastoids and bottom feeders. And... well, I have mixed feelings about that. As there is a part of me that sees way too much of the classist, anti-proletarian and neo-fascist propaganda us german 90's and 00's kids were raised on in his movies. Frankly, I still find Spring Breakers unwatchable. There is definitely an exploitative, sensationalist and, yes, often nonchalantly hostile note to the way his movies frame the day to day live of the unemployed, uneducated and unfortunate as some type of surreal absurdism. I know that Korine comes from very much the same Millieu his films depict and that he was struggling with drug addiction for a long time, so I'm not doubting that there is a degree of authenticity to his depictions of squalor and decay, but , like, also, I feel like he has a tendency to be kind of a shithead about it. He may have grown up among these peoples, but I feel like he looks down on them more often than not.
That said, Gummo is probably his formative work, and interestingly enough, unlike many of his later works, I feel like there is actually a degree of sympathy, maybe even compassion, for its characters. Gummo depicts a series of absurd vignettes from the town of Xenia, Ohio. Xenia, we are told in the beginning, was hit by a tornado a few years before the beginning of the movie. An incident from which the community never quite recovered, leaving it in a state of squalor, neglect and general despair.
There is a lot to unpack when it comes to Gummo. Lacking anything that could be considered a plot, we follow various characters undergoing various experiences in this environment. A pair of teenagers go around the town hunting stray cats cats whose population has been exploding in recent years. Getting some money for them from the local grocer who sells them to... a chinese restaurant. You get why I called Korine a shithead now, don't you? At one point they use the money they get from it to hire a local prostitute, who is shown to have some mental disability. There are three girls, one of them notably played by a then unknown Chloe Sevigny who have their own experiences going on. They put tape on their breasts because tearing is off is supposed to make their nipples look fuller. They almost get molested by a sleazy reporter later on. There are some odd interviews with various side characters, some of the relaying stories of sexual abuse by their parents, some of them just telling banal anecdotes from their lives. There is a mute kid with a rabbit ear hat and he pisses down a bridge onto a highway at one point and...
You know what, let's do this differently. There is not much of a point in talking about what happens in Gummo. A lot of things do, and describing them all won't give you a better idea of the movie. Gummo is a mood piece about the decay of small town America. What being forgotten and neglected and treated as "trash" does to a community and the people in it. It's not that these people take any pleasure in living in filth, it's just that there's no place left to get clean. Many of the individual vignettes and anecdotes that Gummo shows seem like they are based on, oftentimes probably barely exaggerated, experiences from Korine's own life. Xenia, Ohio is a place where all hope has been abandoned and all that's left for people to enjoy are drugs, alcohol, sex and petty animal cruelty. The explicit nature of how all of those are depicted has some undeniably voyeuristic undertones. Korine is obviously well aware that the world he's laying bare comes off as bizarre and will invite repulsion more than compassion. It's some of the more outwardly surreal and cartoonish touches that in my opinion detract from the movies legitimacy as a insightful look into the american wasteland.
That said, Gummo does have more defensible and even likeable qualities than everything I told you about it so far might suggest. What comes occasionally through is sort of a tenderness that makes clear that Korine might have more than just disdain for the people he's showing. Between all the ennui and the petty violence and vandalism that seem commonplace in Xenia, Ohio there are moments when we get small moments of compassion, existential musings and emotional nuances that show, quite clearly, that despite their circumstances some of these people have a rich inner life, and they are suffering. As many of Xenia's residents have completely numbed themselves with booze, with drugs or simply with nihilistic ambivalence, some of them actually engage with the bleakness of their situation.
Gummo is hardly a call for righteous class struggle, but neither is it shameless poorsploitation. Gummo's view on American poverty certainly puts the absurdity of abject poverty front and center, but in the end it makes clear that the viewer is supposed to engage, even empathize with it, rather than just sneer and laugh at it. Honestly, it's about as earnest and sympathethic Korine has ever gotten and likely will ever get. Which is to say, there's still plenty of his jackassery to be found in it. Don't watch this if you're uncomfortable with depictions of animal cruelty, sexual abuse, child abuse, elder abuse, all manners of dirt and filth you can possibly imagine... basically, don't watch this unless you have a pretty thick skin, is what I'm saying. It's very much one of those performatively nihilistic, grungy nineties 90's sleazoid movies. It has a very eclectic soundtrack too, which ranges fom some pretty hardcore punk and metal to 50's ballads from the likes of Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly that are utilized in a way that's almost begging to be recognized as "lynchian".
The thing is though, unlike with a lot of Korine's later movies I think there is at least something there. It's a pretty hard to recommend the movie, although it does have its qualities. It's well shot and gets some beautifully authentic performances out of what were to a large part nonprofessional actors. Between all the shock value it never feels like a movie that has no agenda beyond grossing out its audience or making them point and laugh. It doesn't feel like it's meant to inspire contempt for its characters, though it does certainly go out of its way to provoke alienation. But behind everything, I feel there is a fleeting sadness about living in a society that's looking down on people for living under the circumstances it bestowed upon them. I don't like Harmony Korine very much. I don't think I ever will like him. But if there is a movie that shows a side to him other than that of an edgy, pretentious hipster kid it's probably Gummo. Kinda makes me wonder whether he could do a half decent job directing when (not if) the world feels like there needs to be a movie about Chris Chan. Gummo shows that's he's at least not entirely disinterested in the humanity of those that society deems "asozial" and it's more than I've come to expect.
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