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The rural agrarian ideal of Jefferson and Crevecoeur is shown for what it really is in the 1997 film Gummo. For those of you who have seen Harmony Korine’s first film, Kids (1995), his follow-up takes adolescent depravity to a whole new level.
Perhaps this new level was exactly what Korine was shooting for, in an effort to show that childhood hooliganism is not just a big city phenomenon. At least the kids in Kids appeared to have no serious screw-ups in their gene pools. Of course, there is always the possibility that the director is merely out to shock and disturb his audience. If that was the case, he most certainly lived up to the task.
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The movie begins with the nearly unintelligible murmuring of Jacob Sewell (The Road to Wellville) as Gummo and then moves to a nice shot of a dirty near-naked adolescent taking a leak off a highway overpass. Things go downhill from there. Featuring young transvestites, Ritalin-popping tennis star-wannabes, homosexual dwarves, prostitutes with down’s syndrome and an assortment of other oddities – there is no comparison on the market today for this kind of insanity on film.
The action takes place in the tornado-ravaged town of Xenia, Ohio (self-proclaimed "Bicycle Capital of the Midwest"). While perhaps the characters and landscape depicted do not represent the entirety of that “fair” state, from all other accounts these characteristics are definitely the norm.
Gummo’s profession is that of a cat-killer, and he shares his responsibilities with Tummler (Nick Sutton of Underground). Both engage in this activity to make a buck by selling the corpses to the local Chinese restaurant. Again, this depiction may not accurately represent all those currently in operation.
Shot in the familiar documentary style of Kids, this movie faced similar allegations of engaging in shock tactics and blatant “tardsploitation.” We found, however, that as members of the MTV generation, the material was all in all not nearly as shocking as, say, Jerry Falwell’s predictions that the Jewish Anti-Christ walks among us. And, in all honesty, while there were several scenes where mentally-challenged individuals are shown in a less than appealing light, this seems to be little more than an attempt of Korine’s to depict small town life as we all know it really is.
It ought to be notes here that while we were not overly shocked with the images presented in Gummo, this is not to say that there isn’t plenty of potentially offensive material. Nonetheless, no other film gets to the heart of what it is to be a kid in small town America as well as Gummo. Any who have a thirst for knowledge about this subject would be foolish to deprive themselves of the experience of a film that is at the same time both truly depraved and inspired.
