An argument for watching impenetrable, arty movies

The other night, after I finished watching Harmony Korine's film, Julien Donkey-Boy, Jon and I had a conversation in which we both recollected how much we'd initially hated Kids, the movie Korine wrote on which his whole reputation was built. When this film was released umpteen celebrities (including, if I recall correctly, Madonna) weighed in, acclaiming it as a raw and realistic depiction of high school life in America. It was 1995. Both Jon and I would have been seniors in high school, ourselves. I remember thinking that that film was so far removed from MY high school experience that I couldn't imagine how it was anything other than an alarmist swamp of teenage debauchery.

The film tells the story of Telly, a delinquent brat who runs the streets of NYC, getting stoned and fucking virgins. Oh, and little does he know, but he's HIV positive and therefore, he's gaily spreading late 20th Century plague and pestilence with nary an eye to the consequences. He infects Chloe Sevigny, in her introductory role, and then moves onto a little, skinny, barely post-pubescent Rosario Dawson. And the whole thing culminates in a rape scene involving Telly's friend Caspar and some anonymous catatonic girl in the midst of a post-party conflagration. Yes, this film is depressing as all get-out but it was absolutely seminal as a representation of mid-90s American arthouse cinema.

So, in 1995, I was 18. My existence had, heretofore, been a strange mixture of exposure and shelter. My high school experience had been wholly devoid of both drugs and sex. I mean, I knew a few girls were having sex and I knew a few girls were into weed-- but the general culture at my somewhat schmancy private all-girls' school was that those sorts of activities were a little trashy and those who partook were subject to derision. But somehow, I'd never really felt as though the rougher parts of life had been kept from me. I don't know if it's because I'd debate politics with my dad over dinner or because I intuitively felt that people were always doing self-destructive things all around me, but I never encountered the shock that some of my friends did when they learned that life wasn't so idyllic as one might presume from behind Harpeth Hall's lion gate. But I also remember thinking, if Kids is so "realistic," is it my life, then, that's the fantasy? In other words, I felt very unrepresented in this film that was supposed to be the most accurate representation, to date, of the youth of my generation-- the slackers, the stoners, the fuck-ups and the disease-ridden. I thought the movie got it wrong and I felt alienated from it and therefore, I hated it.

So many years later, after having expanded my frame of reference with regard to how arty movies operate, I think I have a little bit better perspective on what Korine was doing, what he continues to do, and why these sorts of films-- the ones that are misanthropic and uncomfortable to the core-- are worth watching. I still think Kids is an alarmist representation of teen life in America. But I also recognize that it DOES represent the experiences of SOME kids in America. Doubtlessly, my childhood and adolescence were privileged in a way that I could never have understood now in the same way that I do now. And Korine has no interest in telling the stories of the middle class. He's a troubadour of the disenfranchised and the marginalized-- and my 18-year-old self had a lot less patience with such ne'er-do-wells. He's confrontational in his style, as well. He wants his audience to squirm-- not unlike Damon Packard does. Though, I should say here that I find Korine's films watchable, as they are suffused with an extremely understated empathy and lack so many of Packard's sophomoric gags (and gagging).

Julien Donkey-Boy isn't really any more enjoyable to watch than Kids is. It's just barely narrative and the film quality is so grainy that you can hardly tell what's going on in parts. The blurb on my NetFlix envelope says that the main character, Julien is "schizophrenic" but it seems more likely to me that he's autistic or mentally handicapped in some other way. He lives with his pregnant sister, his little brother who wrestles with garbage cans, and his father who slurps cough syrup and wears a gas mask. They are a family of minimal means and no real aspirations to evade their poverty by way of anybody's American Dream. Sooner or later, we learn that Julien is actually the father of his sister's baby... and when the kid is born still, he steals the fetal corpse, runs home, and squirrels it away in his bed. If the implication of incest doesn't give you the willies, surely the image of a retarded kid curled up in bed with a dead baby will. Oh, and that's the final scene, by the way. Uplifting, it's not.

So what's Korine's point, here? Why produce art that relentlessly skeeves out an audience? And furthermore, why become an audience willing to be skeeved out? I could make an argument about how we spoiled middle-class babies NEED to be subjected to the miseries of the have-nots-- to give us perspective, to inspire our empathy. But that argument, in and of itself, reeks of a superiority with which I'm just not comfortable. But Korine must know that the down-and-out people he describes in his films are not his audience. The simple reality is that people of minimal education and low economic status do not watch ooky, sad, artsy films. So I return to the notion that Korine is making the films so as to challenge my desire (and that of people like me) to look away, to flinch, when faced with stories of derangement and marginalization.

I personally find that experience valuable. And I also find value in engaging with other peoples' artistic obsessions, even if they have little in common with my own. There aren't a whole lot of people puttering around within these little crevices of human experience and because Korine is compulsively scavenging through the scapes of poverty and insanity-- and using the characteristic voyeuristic and low-tech methods of Dogme 95 (the film almost reads as though it's composed of film scraps you found in a dumpster somewhere in the heartlands)-- I'm interested in his work. It's not for everyone. And ever since I saw Reflections of Evil, I'm feeling a little more receptive to moods of the things I consume than I usually am. So, I've felt sad ever since I pulled the thing out of my DVD player. This movie made me want to be hugged.

But ultimately, I feel like people make art so that other people will see it. I may as well be that audience. As may anyone else who cares to go looking. So, we watch weird art movies because they exist. They may move us; we may think they're crap. But they're out there, interesting little experiments or self-indulgent outpourings, either way. And they only exist so long as their audience does. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if we can accept the concept of art for art's sake, why not also embrace the concept of audience for the sake of being audience? The art exists, so why not watch it for its own sake, rather than with an eye to some sort of personal reward? If I approach a film hoping to be affected, rather than entertained, my But ultimately, I feel like people make art so that other people will see it. I may as well be that audience. As may anyone else who cares to go looking. So, we watch weird art movies because they exist. They may move us; we may think they're crap. But they're out there, interesting little experiments or self-indulgent outpourings, either way. And they only exist so long as their audience does. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if we can accept the concept of art for art's sake, why not also embrace the concept of audience for the sake of being audience? The art exists, so why not watch it for its own sake, rather than with an eye to some sort of personal reward? If I approach a film hoping to be affected, rather than entertained, my perspective expands. And this, I like.