Some people are on the warpath about Harmony Korine's new branded short film "Snowballs," backing Native American-inspired fall clothing from fashion line Proenza Schouler. Adjectives used to describe the clip include "racist," "disturbing" and "bizarre." And that's just the first sentence of a write-up on Forbes.com In the film, two white-masked, war-bonneted, helium-voiced girls wander around the economically depressed Southwest singing lines like, "Oh man, we are trouble. We love trouble … We dance on raindrops. We are God's children." There are teepees, trailers and a potbellied guy whose fingertips burst into flames like candles. "It's my birthday," he explains. That's pretty much it. Personally, I don't think it's offensive, or even pretentious—or much of anything. It's just some crazy shit the director made because he could, a faux-Lynchian freak show lacking the creepy artistry and underlying menace of the master. "Snowballs" plays as phony as Korine's more overtly brand-boosting commercial for Indian conglomerate Mahindra, and it treads the same thematic ground as "Act ad Fool," his 2010 short for Proenza, but with less originality. It's almost a Korine self-parody, harnessing his trademark techniques with no function behind the form. Over on Style.com, Korine says "Snowballs" was inspired by a man he knew who "kept a gun in the freezer, and breathed through a machine at night," and whom he once saw "turn into a goat and run around the living room." Well, OK. That explains it.
