So there’s this movie called “Gummo” and a lot of people don’t think very highly of it.
Upon release, the Chicago Tribune called the film “an unwatchable, pretentious freak show.” The New York Times canonized it as “the worst film of the year.”
A lot of people like it too, for the record — I’m one of those people — but the movie has been critically contentious (if we’re being generous) since 1997 and figuring out why isn’t much of a challenge.
Harmony Korine’s directorial debut “Gummo” is 89 minutes of mostly plotless vignettes and greasy windows into the lives of the bored residents of a tornado-ravaged Xenia, Ohio — a boondock wasteland whose bored citizens pass the time by wrestling chairs, sniffing glue and hunting stray cats.
The world of Xenia is one of violence, drugs, racism, homophobia, disability, mental illness, suicide, satanism, sexual violence, domestic abuse and animal cruelty. This is a film where a man sells sex from a disabled relative and children shoot BBs at an old woman’s toes. It is difficult to watch and difficult to talk about.
A sludgy metal soundtrack and a predilection for erratic, lo-fi camerawork places “Gummo” in a category mostly to itself, somewhere between a drama, a documentary and a teenager’s home video skate reel.
Its brazen disregard for doctrinal metrics of good filmmaking has generated a cult following for “Gummo” — intensely resonant to a small but sizable few and utterly repellant to basically everyone else.
Excluding some reverent testimonials, I’ve mostly heard “Gummo” referred to as gutter trash, the pointless ravings of a proto-edgelord with a fixation on the morbid and a disdain for basic decency.
I’m adding my reverent testimonial to the pile. “Gummo” is incredible.
It begins with a montage of tornado wreckage: razed houses, dead dogs, confederate truck decals. The cryptic title scrawled in blackletter provides no explanation. There isn’t one. There is just a wound, cut by bad luck and systemic apathy and left to fester out of sight. This place will probably die off some day, but in the meantime, there is glue to be huffed.
It’s a loose web of small half-stories stuck together with electrical tape and home footage — a stylized but deeply anthropological examination of people whose lives exist outside the purview of fulfilling Hollywood narratives.
I grew up in a forgotten, hollowed-out part of this country too. I grew up with kids who killed small animals for fun and hurled slurs with uncomfortable ease. Outside of some stylistic flourishes, nothing in “Gummo” is especially far-fetched. I will testify to that.
Perhaps that’s why the reviews cited prior strike me as far more cruel and condescending than the film itself. They drip with pointed disdain towards the cluttered houses and “freakish individuals” that populate the film. Their words, not mine.
The same Chicago Tribune writer who dubbed “Gummo” a freak show also described Xenia as being like “if the banjo-picking boy from ‘Deliverance’ somehow spawned an entire town.” The word of note here is “somehow.” It implies that a town like this can only exist as a hypothetical, an ugly fabrication from the troubled mind of a scandalous 23-year-old.
To say that “Gummo” is a pointless exercise in disturbance and sensationalism reads as a glaring admission of privilege. The subject matter is only unimaginable if one can’t imagine it as a reality. I’d hate to be the one to break the news.
Reductive, mean-spirited criticisms like these shine more light on their authors’ ignorance than they do the film and they fail to actually engage with potential critiques that hold real water.
“Gummo” is, to some extent, an exploitation film. There is an argument to be made that it is exploitative, or at least irresponsible. While I don’t agree, I think the concern is certainly well founded: The film employs real people with physical and mental disabilities. It is shot in people’s real dilapidated homes.
There’s an element of voyeurism to it that most filmmakers wouldn’t dare get near, but there is also a level of sincerity that most filmmakers would kill for.
Because ultimately, Korine’s audacious little film excavates some hard truths buried deep in the podunk tomb of rural America. There are people that this country has completely and utterly failed and there is sincere value to be found in depicting that authentically, warts and all.
In the careful details, it is evident to me that Korine comes from the people he is depicting and wields a deep empathy for them. There is a commitment to capturing the truth, but there is also a commitment to capturing humanity, void of condescension. Just as there is ugliness in Xenia, there is also beauty — sisters with sparkly painted toes, glue-sniffers with pretty handwriting, young boys skateboarding triumphantly with their arms outstretched and lifting homemade weights to Madonna.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t wrong ways to depict hard topics — there unequivocally are and they can be extremely damaging. Sensitive topics demand responsible handling and the murky boundaries of acceptability are easy to push.
But there is also value in media that pushes those boundaries. If works of art are clues about culture, then there is much to be learned from looking to the gutter, provided we investigate with care. Not all challenging films are as sensitive (or as good) as “Gummo,” but that doesn’t mean they are entirely unworthy of responsible curiosity.
It is important that we venture with care. I recognize that being able to find “Gummo” more resonant than traumatic is a privilege that not everyone can claim. Confronting challenging media can be vulnerable and while it’s certainly valuable, it is not an inherent obligation.
Most importantly, we must come prepared with compassion. Most films about hard topics attempt to correct for viewers’ empathetic deficits, but as is evident from some earlier mentioned reviews, sometimes films demand we come to the table with empathy of our own.
Gerrit Punt PO ’24 is from the southeastern corner of Montana. He’s never sniffed glue or killed any cats, for the record.
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