Gummo
by Harmony Korine
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Darby Dougherty, Jacob Reynolds, Jacob Sewell, Lara Tosh, Nick SuttonDirector: Harmony Korine
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Cinematographer: Jean-Yves Escoffier
Writer: Harmony Korine
Producer: Cary Woods
Producer: Robin O'Hara
Producer: Ruth Vitale
Producer: Scott Macaulay
Producer: Stephen Chin
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-03-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: N5236
Studio: New Line Home Video
Movie Reviews of Gummo
Movie Review: Everything Wes Blanderson wishes he could create...
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been many discussions about Gummo. The biggest point of these debates is the meaning of the film. Some brush it off as a collage of random imagery, sounds, scenes and character interactions. Others have miscategorized it as some type of mockumentary of Midwest/Southern lower income culture. However, the artistic factor of this movie reminds me of a Salvador Dali painting, where one can get lost in the details and miss the very explicit message being relayed. So what message or thesis is this film trying to deliver?
Simply, Gummo is about loss of control, how we react to this loss, and various mechanisms we use to cope with the loss or regain a sense of control. In a society in which all things are relative to man, elements are pretty much controllable. However, when an event happens that takes control and certainty away, many find themselves in disarray and shock. In this movie, Harmony explores how different characters are going to react to the loss of control and certainty. Some will survive, some will capitalize, some have seen it before, some will fantasize, some will be in denial, some will try to regain control, some with find something or someone else to control and some will mourn and reminisce.
First is the tornado. The tornado is an event, at the macro level, that takes control away from everyone. So in essence, everyone starts at ground zero. Now if the tornado represents the element that takes control away, then the bunny boy represents the "general response" to it as well as a symbol of false hope. The biggest clue of this theme is the scene where bunny boy is filmed on the overpass. The overpass/storm represents the controlling elements and bunny boy is the one that is being controlled and goes through the various stages of being incarcerated. Anyone who has taken a psychology or field biology class can recognize the behavior bunny boy exhibits, as if he was trapped. Harmony cleverly attaches the song, 'My little rooster' by Almeda Riddle to sonically wrap the scene as a element of reminiscing, remembering something that is familiar back to a time of "normalcy" where the norm was having control of your environment and your situation. Bunny boy is injected at various points through out the film when these reactions/responses take place.
The first scene of Tummler is when he is drowning a cat. It is very significant because the cat is killed in such a way that it minimizes physical trauma for (as we learn later) higher marketability of Tummler's "product".
The scene then cuts to Tummler making out with a girl that has a lump in her breast, which might be cancer. Again, like the tornado, the possible cancerous tumor is a symbol of something that is taking control away from us.
The scene with Dot and her sister/friend(s) illustrates their response to having control taken away from them by expressing their sexuality. Harmony brilliantly uses music to shade this scene of gaining back control with something that reminds us of youth and the eventual uncertainty of adulthood, where you have exceeded your past, but you are not yet at your future. This theme is enhanced with them bouncing on the beds and the contrast of age with Buddy Holly's song, "Everyday".
The skinheads scene illustrates frustration disguised as play. We think they are just horsing around but there is real frustration/anger in those punches. At this point of the film, I feel empathy for them because they are at an ambiguous point of progress if there is any in their eyes. The only metric they have to work with is pain and its magnitude.
We now learn Tummler's and Solomon's reason and response to the tornado is survival (killing and selling cats) and denial (sniffing glue). So far this response has worked well but they have a potential new source of control being taken away and that source is their new competitor, Jarrod Wigley.
The next scene is a classical discussion on race, when it is easy to blame another race for one's sorrows, when the real culprit is being unprepared for life's events.
The junkyard scene re-illustrates the response of frustration, anger and ignorance. Bunny boy plays along with the cowboy kids and ends up playing dead. What bunny boy does is give the cowboy kids a false and temporary sense of control. Thus, the situation is mitigated (for now) and really bunny boy is the one that has control because he controls the boys' expectations and delivers a false result. One can extrapolate this scene to the life-cycle of a politician.
The scene with Ellen and Eddie represents the response of moving on as usual and moving forward, but Eddie does not have full control due to ADD. This scene is the response of quantifying and formalizing the unknown, which takes away control. We now have a face for this particular source and regain some control and certainty of the situation.
The scene with Harmony is about grieving and the sense of loss as a response/reaction. This scene particular takes me back to the film "Easy Rider" where Peter Fonda's character is at a cemetery, crying in lap of a female statue. According to Dennis Hopper, this scene was about grieving for lost liberties and the statue represented "Lady Liberty" and Fonda was distressed about those losses.
Solomon and Tummler's tries to maintain survivability by confronting Jarrod Wigley, their main competitor only to realize that Jarrod is killing cats so he and his grandmother can survive (this escalates through out the film). We also learn that Jarrod, like Dot, tries to regain control via his sexuality.
This transitions to Cassidey being pimped out by Cole where he capitalizes on other people's misfortunes and insecurities.
As the film progresses, Solomon and Tummler are killing cats more harshly as the value of this behavior become less about economic trade and more of a psychological outlet. Harmony drops more hints with talks of suicide, depression, scape-goating others, etc.
The scene with Solomon and his mom compares and contrasts with the reaction of reminiscing of a better time to the reaction of surviving and utilizing what is left over from the destruction (Solomon using silverware for weights). Again, music is strategically used. Madonna's "Like a Prayer" compliments this scene very subtlety.
In he next scene, Tummler goes from survival mode to reminiscing with his dad and then takes a reprieve by having fun with friends and family only to witness that the other people's fun turns back to frustration, similar to the scene with the skinheads. For me, this is a very emotional pull because everyone is trying to make the best of a bad situation, but the situation is just too strong that it over takes the good.
The movie continues on with various scenes that retouches a lot of these subjects and leads us to a pivotal scene. We are now at the part where Dot and her sisters are looking for their cat, Foot Foot. They are tricked getting into some middle-aged man's car, who claims that he knows where their cat is. He establishes his credentials as an authority figure and then tries to molest the girls. The girls react in survival mode and fend off the pedophile. However, they are angry because the one thing they have control of, their sexuality, was almost taken away. So once again, the characters try to recoup some control only to lose it to something bigger than themselves.
We revisit the theme of capitalizing on people in a time of distress with the twins and the candy bar.
Now at the end, the girls make out with bunny boy (false hope) to regain a sense of control of their sexuality. This illustrates any given person in such dire straights, will unconditionally latch on to anything that gives them a sense of hope. They embrace it and make it an intimate part of their lives just to get back to a sense of certainty and control. Solomon and Tummler kill Foot Foot, the cat, not for business, but for the sake of asserting there sense of control and the satisfaction that comes with it. The human has now become the tornado and the cat has become the person. Thus, bunny boy appears holding the dead Foot Foot as a symbolic juxtaposition that brings up a question that has already been answered, "Is asserting unnecessary control the same as accepting false hope?" Unfortunately, the answer is, "yes".
The End
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"A Surrealist can create the work of an Abstractionist, but an Abstractionist cannot create the work of a Surrealist."
Summary of Gummo
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