Eva Batalla-Mann | Valuable Delusions

Neon bathing suits, squirt guns filled with alcohol and white rappers named Alien. Sounds like spring break, right? Wrong. Movies like "Spring Breakers" (2012) perpetuate these expectations, inspiring confusion and chaos when pasty teenagers on spring break don't experience them. After several viewings of "Spring Breakers," my friends and I are still a little confused. It's a goldmine of one-liners and cringeworthy but can't-look-away moments. How could it not be with a cornrowed and thickly accented James Franco? But what is it exactly? Comedy? Satire? Horror? Nobody knows.
    After some consideration, my friends and I decided that we were not ready for winter to end and headed to Montreal for spring break (or "sprang break", as it is continually whispered over montages of Florida sunsets in the movie). We drove for miles, busting backseat dance moves, careful not to elbow each other while passing through lonely miles and miles of snow covered trees. When we reached the Canadian border they hardly looked at our passports, as opposed to when we were trying to get back into the U.S., the guard did everything short of doing a body cavity search.
    We crossed the border and in a second our lives turned upside down. We became mere shadows of our former selves. There was no "AT&T" service but instead an imposter called "Rogers". What was this sorcery? The signs were in some unknown foreign language and our GPS stopped working. I think just maybe we could have been a little bit more prepared. But just like the ladies of "Spring Breakers" did when they faced adversity (i.e. being arrested, corrupted by Alien, and one of them getting shot in the arm), we marched on. We also made sure to bring only our warmest neon bikinis.
    We finally arrived, exhausted and marveling at the beautiful city. In need of a break, we decided to check out the Canadian version of Netflix that the owner of the apartment assured us was much better than the American one - couldn't they have let us have this one thing? We immediately found "Spring Breakers" and were tickled at how "meta" it was.
    I once again found myself in a flurry of different emotions and confusion during this viewing. The previous week I had been at the apartment of some family friends; a young, hip, and tasteful couple living in Brooklyn with their young kids. I mentioned the movie (I'm hesitant to call it a film) at dinner and the husband of the couple exclaimed, "Oh wow isn't that movie amazing?!" I held my breath for a moment in order to discern whether he was joking or not. After a couple of seconds, I came to the conclusion that he wasn't joking - he actually believed it was a cinematic masterpiece.
    We had a great trip filled with long walks, excellent cappuccinos and lovely smiley French Canadian man helping us get our car into a tight and icy parking space. After a half hour of struggling, he had walked up and offered to help, tossing his cigarette aside. We figured he would either crash the car, steal the car, or park the car - luckily we decided to believe in the kindness and proficiency of strangers.
    Much like the viewing of "Spring Breakers," the experience of spring break itself has everything to do with attitude. There were points along the way where we could have thrown in the towel and like Selena Gomez's character, boarded an old luxury bus back home. But instead, we saw the squirt gun as half full, put on our pink ski masks and had a ball. And along with montages of blizzards and snow covered mountains these words were whispered: "Sprang break. Sprang break forevah".

Eva Batalla-Mann is a sophomore majoring in peace and justice studies and community health. She can be reached at Eva.Batalla_Mann@tufts.edu.