Spring Breakers in Tampa Bay: Glorying in the Pirates' Beautiful Wreck

This piece was originally commissioned to run in the online version of Creative Loafing Tampa.  It was apparently declined - all I know is that it never ran.  Maybe why it wasn't wanted will be more clear to you than to me (I have yet to get an explanation from the editor).

People in Tampa Bay have been fretting about director Harmony Korine’s new movie, Spring Breakers, understandably perturbed by a film set in their hometown that is, if the previews are any indication, a serving of debauchery with a side of carnage.  I moved to Tampa Bay in August of 2011, bringing a completely clean slate.  I had never even been to Florida, but I was offered a job, and so I came.  As an outsider who has now seen the length and breadth of the Bay, and who has now seen Spring Breakers, I think the film gets Tampa Bay right.  Not mainly in the hedonism, the crime, or the murder, though I know there are plenty of those around here.  As anyone familiar with Harmony Korine must have known (his last film was titled Trash Humpers, and that title is just as literal as this one), Spring Breakers is not the simple exploitation movie it’s being billed as.  It’s an uncomfortable meditation that captures a feeling unique to Tampa Bay.  It shows a truth that’s difficult, but that should be treasured.

Much of what I found when I came to Tampa Bay reminded me of my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas: brutal heat, tatty public facilities, and a sprawling highway system and six-lane surface roads that marked it as a driving town.  There were differences, too – from St. Pete to Temple Terrace, the poverty was more in-your-face than at home, with panhandlers on every intersection and condemned homes around every corner.  Those unlucky enough not to own a car raced, Frogger-style, across those wide roads, infants in tow, praying for their lives.  Groups of men lounged aimlessly in the green spaces of grocery store parking lots.

Also different from home, though, was the multi-species parade of brighter things mixed right in with that abrasive reality.  There were the professionals that occasionally ventured from South Tampa, sometimes classy and more often delightfully cartoonish.  There were the hipsters, legion with their tattoos and mustaches, in bars across the street from by-the-hour motels.  In October of 2011, there were anarchists in the streets.  There were hand-painted signs for jerk chicken and oxtails.  There was a creative class throwing together shoestring and tape and getting things done.  There were the mangroves and vines stretching through suburban backyards like Father Knows Best got transplanted to Borneo.  There were the nonprofits and activists striving to make things better.  There were lizards sunning themselves on sidewalks, scattering with each step.

Spring Breakers’ story of hedonism and bad endings is just a superficial detail, part of the trappings that let this slow, smallish art film pass as a big deal party-caper flick (Amazingly, it cracked the Billboard Top 10 this weekend, but given broadly negative reactions from misled audiences, watch for it to drop like a rock). The movie’s soul, ironically, is on its surface.  Korine’s focus is on the feeling he hangs on his inconsequential plot, a hallucinatory strangeness fleshed it out with garish colors, ethereal voice overs, blunted melodies, slow pans, and harsh lighting.  The vibe is lonesome and desperate, like it’s all a frantic display of confidence by someone whose soul is crumbling.  It’s a feeling Korine said he found in Tampa Bay as nowhere else in Florida – darkness and light, in struggle, in flux.

That’s not something any sane tourism board would put on bus signs, but that doesn’t make it less true, or less valuable.  Tampa Bay is a place of decadence, desperation, and degradation, but also of possibility and excitement and change – and all for the same reasons.  Think of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.  People lived in fear of being mugged or killed, but there was CBGBs and Keith Haring and Studio 54. Then Disney bought out Times Square and shut down the porn theaters.  Within what must have seemed like months, New York – the New York we dream of, the New York of Taxi Driver and Manhattan and Wild Style – was gone.

Spring Breakers is about the desire to change, and to escape, about how even when that desire gets pushed too far, it can still be beautiful.  Like New York in the 1970s, Tampa Bay is a royal mess because nobody owns it, and nobody controls it, because right now, nobody wants to.  It’s a place of both risk and freedom, where it’s easy to try something and the costs for failure (and here the film doesn’t get it quite right . . .) are low.  It’s a city being made before our eyes, a city whose future, unlike those of so many older cities, has yet to be written.

I was originally hired for a two-year job here in Tampa, but I’ve decided to stay and see what happens.  I think Harmony Korine would understand.

An Open Letter to Occupy Tampa, its Members, Allies, and Supporters (and to other Occupies in Crisis).

Note: I now blog at Blownhorizonz.com.  It's much prettier to look at, and more focused on fun stuff like weird fiction, extreme music, and awesome art.  Also check out my Tumblr at blownhorizonz.tumblr.com.

Last Thursday, I was invited to answer some questions about income inequality and Occupy for a continuing education course at a progressive church in north Tampa.  I was really amazed to find that this group of a dozen people in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties were eager to hear more about Occupy.  I told them about the movement’s drive to get the money out of politics, and to return to people a sense of the democratic process.  A frail-seeming woman in a wheelchair quipped, “If only you’d been around for Reagan.”  But then a man with a snow-white beard spoke up: “Everything you’re saying sounds wonderful – but why am I not hearing more about it?”

That’s when I noticed he was on the verge of tears.  He knew that he was witnessing a great moment of possibility, but he sensed that it was slipping away.

He was right.

Occupy has opened a window through which we can see a new world.  It comes after decades of neoliberalism in which looking for new possibilities, much less working towards them, has seemed futile.  By bringing together and giving voice to people committed to living in that new world, it has shifted the political culture of what is still the richest and most powerful country in the world.  It has shown its potential, and the need for it is obvious.  As that supportive but dispirited man said in all sincerity, “Without you, we’re lost.”

Hearing just how much faith – or at least, how much hope – these people were pinning on Occupy was a wakeup call for me.  We still have a lot to do, and we have massive untapped resources with which to work – silent allies, waiting to be activated.

Of course, returning to the reality of Occupy Tampa was another sort of wakeup call.  Because we’re on the verge, in Tampa as in many places across the country, of losing all of this possibility.  Of losing everything we’ve worked for.  Those of us who have been proud to be associated with Occupy Tampa are now at risk of being associated, for the rest of our lives, with disappointment, failure, maybe even catastrophe.  While the air is still full of possibility, on the ground, we are at a crisis.

Many – in fact, most – of the energized and purposeful individuals who showed up for the early days of Occupy Tampa are no longer active participants.  As those activists have trickled away, the space that has been shared to us by one of our great outside allies has come to be mainly of non-activists, where there are regular outbursts of violence, hate speech, drug abuse, and even active sabotage of political projects.  It is only a matter of time before this stew of instability explodes and forever tarnishes the name of Occupy Tampa.

In order to address these issues of fracture and decline, I’m encouraging all past and present allies of Occupy Tampa to make the effort to come out to our General Assembly this Saturday, April 28^th, at 7:30pm, following our discussion of May Day planning.  There, we need to address two key issues – first, how to maintain cohesion even as affinity groups of Occupy Tampa pursue independent projects, and second, how to deal with individuals whose actions threaten the work of our organization from within.

As the great movement thinker Cindy Millstein has emphasized again and again over the last six months, this moment is fleeting.  The sense of possibility that came with Occupy may disappear at any moment – remember what happened when 9/11 put a sharp end to the anti-globalization movement?  We must seize this moment while it lasts.  But a major part of seizing this moment is making it last – working to carry forward the initial burst of energy that brought us together.  If you ever considered yourself a member or sympathizer of Occupy Tampa, you are needed NOW to make sure the moment does not simply pass.

I want to frame the discussion that we will have on Saturday.  A few related issues and dynamics have gotten us where we are now.  At bottom, all are negative downsides of the unique and exciting aspects of Occupy’s initial structure – particularly, the way it invited everyone to participate in the process of changing the world.