How the Line Between Sordid Realism and Sensationalized Drama is Blurred in Gummo

Gummo (1992) displays the sordid realism of living in dirt-poor middle America using outrageous scenes of disturbed weirdness. The line is blurred between exaggerated acts of violence, sex, and drug use with a very realistic commentary on life in poverty. Harmony Korine includes a cornucopia of realistic themes to balance out the sensationalism of socially accepted stray-cat killers. Those themes include hunger, a lack of hygiene, exploitation, and physical violence. While it is hard to believe that two kids (and one competitor) would spend their time making extra cash from killing cats, it is easily believable to watch three girls happily paint each other’s dirty toes. That believability is what Korine plays around with in Gummo.

An example of Korine’s commentary on the sordid reality of poverty is when Tummler and Solomon discuss food while bagging up a dead cat. Tummler asks Solomon if his mom ever feeds him to which he replies, “She makes me toast.” The idea of a mother who has given up caring for her child is heartbreakingly real, and for the first time, we feel sympathy for our protagonist. The sympathy is quickly squandered as the boys deliver the bagged cats to a grocery store manager who weighs the cats and pays them in another scene of sensationalism.

During a night of drinking and playing games, Solomon’s family is holding an arm-wrestling competition in their kitchen. The largest man in the room is put up against someone with dwarfism to which the large man loses. This sends him into a spiral of rage, he flips the table and destroys it, ripping each leg off one by one. After the situation is diffused, the whole group begins destroying a chair, one man even pretending to wrestle the chair. It’s hard to believe that a whole group would disregard any care for their bodies, their furniture, or their kitchen walls when destroying the furniture. Korine here is showing the violence that occurs in households; the large man ripped apart a table after one arm-wrestling competition, he would do a lot worse if he felt inclined. Domestic violence is frequent in communities where people more commonly have substance abuse problems.

Throughout the film, we explore a poor community recently devastated by a tornado, in Xenia, Ohio. Almost every house or yard we enter is a junkyard of trash, clothing, half-empty cans of ravioli, and of course, the occasional dead cat. In one of the final sequences of the film, we watch Solomon scrub himself in a bathtub filled with dark green water. The tub is peeling from the flaking walls painted with grime and rust. He dips his head under and begins spitting water like a fountain. It feels as though Solomon lives here by himself, unable to understand how poor his conditions are, but he doesn’t live alone. We watch his mom navigate through an unbelievably messy maze of old clothes, trash, and other junk piled throughout their house to deliver him a plate of spaghetti and a glass of milk. Behind the sensationally disgusting bathtub, we have a very sad, and very real-world scene of a mother who (probably) still loves her son but has given up on everything else.

Gummo examines an almost post-apocalyptic community that has given up on morality after a devastating tornado. The lines are excellently twisted and blurred between the sordid reality of life in Xenia, Ohio, and sensational displays of ultra-violence, and grunge.