American Honey is The American Nightmare

I’m going to deep dive into why I love this movie, but if you’re not interested in my opinions just take a look at Shia LaBeouf’s hairstyle from this amazing flick and know that you get this for 2 hours and 43 minutes. Nuff said.

How this movie ended up being a box office flop (1.8m box office vs. 3.5m budget) with that dude sporting that hairstyle makes absolutely no sense to me. Hair and makeup, wardrobe depts for American Honey. Kudos to you guys. That is the sexiest sleazeball I’ve ever seen and if you stop reading now to flip over to Netflix to get you some more of that braid, I totally get it. I don’t care if my read rate drops significantly on this post due to the immediate need. I get it. You need more eyebrow ring. You need more spiritual necklace. You need more (post?)-pubescent stubble and you need it right fucking now. Go. Indulge. Enjoy. Let Shia release you.

For the one or two of you still with me, let us get down to it. The opening scene sets the tone for the lead character’s situation and pretty much the entire movie. Sasha Lane plays Star, a presumed teenager in a shitty situation. How shitty? Well, the movie opens with Star and two orphan children in a dumpster searching for food. This process is colloquially called Dumpster Diving and it’s something that Sarah and I will likely be introducing to the kids soon. Anyhow, Star fills a satchel with a few items that seem only half-rotten while a young boy wrestles with a raw chicken as liquids ooze out of the warming plastic wrapped carcass. He holds the chicken to his chest. It drops back to the dumpster bottom. Star reaches over and stuffs it into her satchel. Once the “shopping” is done they head out onto the freeway to hitchhike their way back home.

As an aside, I’d like to formally introduce the conspiracy theory that the auto industry teamed up with news outlets to kill the activity of hitchhiking. I’ll do another blog post about it once I “research” the topic a little more, but it only makes sense that a process so communal would be killed off by the industry that benefits most from it’s destruction. More on this later.

So Star and team don’t manage a ride home but they do manage to get mooned and flicked off by a group of rowdy teenagers passing in a van. She watches the van pull into the type of local value department store that typically goes into the gaping hole of a space that used to be an underperforming Wal-Mart before it was an underperforming Kmart. It was long a writeoff until the execs got their bonuses and cut bait on the town as a whole. The leave a wake of a massive concrete and steel which can really only be used for its original purpose of housing cheap crap. There must be some inverse relationship of rich people property values increasing as poor people property values decrease as a result of an abandoned mega-store. No? Maybe? Who cares?

Star is intrigued by this rebellious group so she leaves the two toddlers in the parking lot and follows the motley crew into the sad store. The following scene sets the pace for the film. Rhianna’s We Found Love is just gearing up on the store’s speaker system that was originally designed for some type of Mood Media soundtrack. The speakers aren’t designed to play this song but the climax is coming and the group of ruffians are fucking feeling it. Star and Jake (Shia’s character) lock eyes. The sexual chemistry is immediate. Jake’s feeling the eye fucking. Jake’s feeling the beat. Jake’s climbing onto the cash register. Jake’s fist pumping because that is exactly what you do when the chorus hits in that song. You put your face to the sky, hold up your hand and pump that goddamned thing like you’re trying to beat the shit out of a metaphorical sky that’s falling on you. Star is in love.

Fortunately for Star, Jake drops his cracked cellphone as the group is being kicked out of the store. Star picks it up and rushes out to the parking lot to return it. Flirting. Shia really kills this scene. He’s overly confident. He flexes. He knows she wants to get to know the braided ponytail and he’s showing it. He works his machismo to perfection and leaves her with a breadcrumb. She can have a job selling magazines if she meets them the next morning in the motel parking lot. Job interview in the value store parking lot. First day of work in the motel parking lot. This is where most promising careers start off. Most importantly, he offers her a way out.

And holy shit, does she ever need it. Following finding love in a very hopeless place, Star heads back to reality which appears to be some type of abusive boyfriend/father figure. There’s more raw chicken handling which was tough for me to witness, maybe even a little tougher than the molesting that Star experiences from this boyfriend/foster father???

But Star is focused. She sees an out and plans her escape. She packs a bag, gathers the kids and as soon as “dad” has drunk himself to sleep she takes the kids and bolts. Personally, I’m afraid of a lot of things. Right now, it’s bears. Tomorrow it might be bacteria. The next day it might be bears again. But one thing that is consistent is my fear of rural honky tonk bars. The types of bars that you go into and immediately know that everyone knows each other and no one knows you. You walk in and everyone turns to look at you and no one, including the bartender, really wants to say “hi”. There are two guys in the bar that have shot at each other with guns because they hate each other so much. They are actively hating each other until the second you walk through the door. Once you walk in, you are their new enemy and they are now on a team against you. That type of place scares me and that is exactly the place that Star takes the two kids to to do a drop off with Mom.

We’re about 20 minutes into the movie. I’m already so jacked up about it. One of the things that I love is that the director, Andrea Arnold, leaves so much open for interpretation. So many questions are left unanswered. Who are these kids? Who’s the dad/boyfriend? Why is she watching these kids? Why is she okay leaving them at a honky tonk bar that scares half-grown men? How the hell did she get into this situation? She doesn’t really answer these questions or many other questions that come up and I like that the questions are unanswered. The movie feels like you’re eavesdropping on a trainwreck of civilization. It’s a hangout movie but you’re hanging out with the most unpredictable set of people you’ve ever been around.

Once Star ditches the kids, I had mixed feelings of guilt and relief for her character. Did she do the best she could for the kids? Probably not. Did she do the best she could for herself? Definitely. Get out. Go far. As far as you can. I mean, they weren’t her kids…

So Star and Jake meet up in the morning and she begins training in the fine arts of door-to-door magazine sales. It’s a tricky business and Star is too honest for Jake’s treacherous tactics but their love blooms and they live happily ever after. Oh but not so fast. From every angle, this little troupe of debaucherous salespeople look like a cult. They have an established mission; make money at all costs. They have conforming behaviors; sex, drugs, booze, exhibition, cheezy club music, intoxicating nihilism. They have rituals and traditions; the lowest grossing sales people step into the ring, fight club style. The better looking men are “message therapists” for the ruthless leader. Oh and the leader, Krystal, is a master manipulator adept at getting a group of misfits to solicit thousands of dollars across the rich and poor interstate towns of America. As an aspiring cult leader, I was taking plenty of notes.

Soon we realize that our beloved Jake is actually just a pawn recruiter for Krystal. Star isn’t his first love. Probably not his second, third or thirtieth. How could you, Ponytail? Alas, they fight through the complexity of the cult magazine selling establishment to find love in that hopeless place, but their romance is only the plot and not the message in this case.

The real message of the movie lies behind the situations that Star puts herself in and seamlessly survives. Her behavior is reckless. She gets into trucks at rest stops to sell magazines. She hops into a convertible full of aging ranchers w/ a case of Buds because she’s fighting with Jake. She commits to selling her sexual services to an oil rig worker for a thousand bucks. This all after she joins a cult of magazine subscription salespeople. The discomfort that Andrea Arnold creates is visceral. I was talking to the TV, which Sarah hates.

“Don’t get in that truck, girl!”

“She can’t hear you.”

“Oh my gawd. She got in. He’s gonna tie her up. What is she thinking?”

“Please stop.”

The entire movie is filled with discomfort that never pays off. The viewer is filled with fear. The character has nothing to lose. She doesn’t fear shit. She just acts to survive. Her survival is dependent on money and she does what she has to do to make money. It’s scary to watch someone function without fear because we’ve been instilled with fear both by the director and by our external influencers, media, etc.

I don’t know exactly what the director wanted to communicate but what I took was an overwhelming feeling of dread that never paid off. It was my dread watching someone try to survive in an environment designed to make it very hard for them to do so. The environment instills the fear even when there’s nothing to worry about. She sells the magazine to the trucker and they talk about their families. The oil rigger doesn’t even touch her and she gets the 1k. She gets a bunch of cash from the ranchers and Shia steals their car leading to some hot car passion in a corn field (where all car passion should occur). Star accomplishes something that not many people have the courage to accomplish. She ventures head on into the oppressive environment that has been set up for her to fail and shrugs off every obstacle. She works within a greedy, fear-laden situation and thrives (as much as you can thrive given the circumstances).

So if the American Dream is freedom and opportunity for all, then the American Nightmare is what is shown in American Honey. It’s what happens once a small group of people obtain a tremendous amount of power and go into protection mode. They benefit by scaring and confusing us into inaction. They benefit by turning us against one another. They benefit from making us fear change. How much easier is it for them to keep power when we only trust individuals that validate our existing opinions? What happens when we fear hitchhiking? We work harder and longer for them. We buy the car from them. We don’t stop for the person that needs a ride. Conspiracy started and we’re even falling into the ‘us vs. them’ trap.

The American Nightmare is fear and dread. When I’m afraid I’ll do anything you tell me to do. If a bear pops out and I look at you and say “what do we do?” and you say “charge it or it’s gonna charge you” I’m probably going to charge it and I’m probably going to die. If I’m in the suburbs and Fox News tells me that the cities are overwhelmed with violence from left-wing terrorist organizations I’ll believe them and I’ll be afraid of that. If CNN tells me that Trump is a racist and everyone that voted for him is also a racist, I believe it even though it’s not true. And it scares me into listening to them more. This movie shows that even in the most vulnerable situations, Star didn’t act with fear and she ended up being okay. The bad doesn’t happen as much as the good does but the good doesn’t get ratings. The good doesn’t scare the shit out of us into listening more and more and more to the folks with power. The good definitely doesn’t happen if we’re too scared to do anything other than what the more and more integrated advertisements tell us to do.

With unapologetic pursuit of wealth (aka Free Market Capitalism), you inevitably end up with one group of people benefiting from the oppression of another group of people. Go to a low-income neighborhood and look at the businesses in the commercial areas and stripmalls. There are more check cashing / tax companies than restaurants. How is it possible that a business exists that provides the service of cashing checks with ridiculously high rates? It’s possible because there’s not a public service for cashing checks out there that charges no fee. It’s not a technology problem. There is a feedback loop that exists that involves lobbyists dictating policy that make it hard for people to trade a check for cash. Trade a check for cash. Are you fucking kidding me? Google answers almost any question for “free” but people can’t get the cash that they earned for a tough week of work without some rich fucker taking a cut. This isn’t just unethical. It’s unbelievable.

Are you a free market type person that thinks check cashing is okay and maybe the people using the service should just be smarter with their financial decisions? Are you also a Christian? Sorry if you answered “yes” to both of those questions. I’m not a Christian but I’d be willing to say a few prayers for you to make sure you don’t choke on your hypocrisy.

Check cashing is oppression and it’s only one example. How many other businesses exist that are designed to take advantage of someone else’s tough situation? How do we find solutions that aren’t designed for profit but for humanity? How do we stop allowing the scoundrels into our elected officials offices that design these shitty circumstances which only benefit the rich and powerful?

How do we avoid letting the American Dream of some turn into the American Nightmare for many?

This movie is fantastic. I love it. And props to the director, who is from the UK, for maybe showing us a side of the US that we’ve been unwilling to look at for a long time.

GO WATCH IT! FEEL DEPRESSED! FEEL INSPIRED!

Power to the people. I love you all. If you made it to this point, I’m amazed and I really appreciate you caring enough to read.

Chris