[With one
son in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just a
concept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to some
weekend reflections on being a college Dad!]
On more
and less destructive pop culture stereotypes.
I’m not
gonna pretend that 1983’s Spring Break was any
kind of groundbreaking cinematic achievement, or even that I had heard of it
prior to researching this week’s series. The sex comedy, produced and directed
by Friday the 13th (1980)
co-creator and director Sean Cunningham, seems from the clips and reviews I’ve
seen (and as always feel free to correct me in comments, although I’m not
anticipating a lot of Spring Break
defenders here) to be a pretty formulaic, unimaginative, and uninteresting
depiction of various Spring Break and college stereotypes, from sexy women in
wet t-shirt contests to nerdy college guys looking to get drunk and score with
those women to straight-laced parents seeking to prevent their kids from taking
part in the hedonistic festivities. But the thing with stereotypes, even (or
perhaps especially) the lazier varieties of them, is that they can tell us a
good bit about their cultural and social contexts—and so it is with the
stereotypes that seem to drive the plot of Spring
Break.
The film’s
more overtly limiting and thus destructive stereotypes seem to be (I know I
keep using that phrase, but I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to pretend
otherwise!) those related to gender and sex. The most blatant are the
depictions of young women, which from what I can tell fall into two and only
two categories: the vast majority of them (indeed, all but one), who are
nameless and identity-less characters defined only by their sex appeal and the
protagonists’ attempts to score with them; and the one more individualized
young woman, Susie (model
Jayne Modean), whom nerdy protagonist Nelson (David Knell) meets at a wet
t-shirt contest, nearly has sex with during that first encounter, and then
eventually (like, a day later) does have sex with. But while male characters
like Nelson seem to be a good bit more fleshed-out (pun very much intended),
they are likewise defined in quite thoroughly stereotypical ways, presented as
driven by their basest desires (for women, for booze, for hedonism) in ultimately
quite unoriginal and unattractive ways.
While
those pursuits provide the protagonists’ and film’s initial motivations, the
central plotline is actually driven by different and more interesting stereotypes
around class, wealth, and power. Nelson’s step-father, Ernest (Donald Symington), is a
wealthy asshole running for political office, and in the course of the film he
pursues Nelson to Florida (worried that his step-son will embarrass his
campaign) and befriends a local wealthy asshole (Richard Shull’s Eddie) who is
trying to strong-arm his way into purchasing the hotel where the kids are
staying. Together the two wealthy assholes conspire to bribe a building
inspector to shut down the hotel (killing both of those birds with one wealthy
asshole stone), but the kids, with the help of an army of fellow partying
college students armed only with beer and whipped cream, get the better of
Ernest and Eddie; their machinations are revealed, Nelson’s Mom decides to
divorce Ernest, and the little guys triumph in the end. Sticking it to the Man
isn’t exactly a revolutionary premise for an 80s comedy, but these themes of
political and financial corruption are at least far more compelling and
important than wet t-shirt contests.
Next
Spring Break film tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?
