Selena Gomez is Innocent

I went to see a movie yesterday that I am not quite sure about... you may have heard of it: Spring Breakers?  It's got Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson, all of whom have shows/movies that I love.  This movie, however, was very different from their previous work.  There have been all kinds of hype about it being controversial and Selena was telling her young fans NOT to see it.  People in our generation seem to be very sensitive and easily upset these days, so I was thinking, "oh, it can't be that bad... Selena Gomez is in it for goodness sake!"  But my, oh my, was I wrong!  Selena Gomez was in it, alright, but she played the only "good" girl.  Because this is a family friendly site, I will spare you the gory details, but the very first thing you see is a heck of a lot of nudity.  I was expecting nudity... I guess just not in that nature.  On top of the nudity, there was hardcore drug use, alcohol consumption, violence, and much more that I can't talk about without being crude.  The whole movie was obscene and part of me wished I had never seen it, but the other part of me really gets a message.  I don't know if it's the message that was intended, but I definitely took something from it.  Although what I was seeing made me cringe, I feel that that is exactly the right reaction to this film.  What's being portrayed on screen is awful stuff that no human should feel right about it, but the fact is that some people do.  The concerning thing is that many young people are numb to this sort of obscenity, and will therefore get a different message than I did.  I think that the amount of violence, substance abuse, and sex that is seen by young people every day has eliminated the shock value.  Shock inhibits fear and fear keeps us from doing dangerous, stupid things.  When these actions become common and are perceived as normal, people can't recognize the consequences.

While the subject matter is controversial, I do recognize the art of the film as well.  But what message is it supposed to send?  If what I took from it is what the artist intended, then I feel like they made a mistake.  If the film was supposed to discourage youths from turning to a life of crime, then they should have taken a different approach.  The way this film plays out doesn’t make the message clear enough.  The only way to make the lifestyles portrayed unattractive would be to scare people from it, but as I said before, people have become numb, which makes me think that this film is sort of redundant.  Most likely young people will just be encouraged by the movie.  If that was the actual intention, then we’re all doomed.  No one should encourage the impressionable to turn to lives of crime.  So what kind of world do we live in?  One where the good prevail or one where we encourage people to live frivolously and violently?  I would suggest discouraging your children from seeing this movie and talking to them about it.  I am lucky enough to have had parents who talked to me about things like sex and drugs, so I went into this movie already knowing about the things being shown.  If I hadn’t been educated, I might have come out of it with a different perception.  Don’t let that happen to your kids.