Bodies Bodies Bodies
I fear the day that today’s 5- 12-year olds today look at me the way I see the beard waxed, cat loving, ice pumpkin latte fuelled millennials. I’m worried I don’t know what it will be that they find as repulsive as the Harry potter merchandise or skinny jeans that make me shudder. It will be easy for them to look at Bodies Bodies Bodies and do this. While watching I thought it was a great – really funny and satirical with characters that initially look like caricatures of whining Gen Z internet dwellers. But the film goes on and they become more human – their constant buzz words and lack of empathy are linked as consequences of growing up in a social media dominated world. So I feel confused about it. Does Bodies give us parody or a genuine Gen Z artefact?
Gen Z has the new monopoly on internet trends and they’re definitely the new target audience it seems when films constantly and painfully reference tiktok and groupchats. I don’t think I have yet read a review of Bodies Bodies Bodies without the words Gen Z nestled in there. “Gen Z and then there were fewer, Gen Z satirical slash movie, Gen Z’s answer to scream.” It lends itself to this with every other word being ‘vibe’ or ‘trigger’ and the aforementioned obsession with a tiktok trend that is out of date (obviously). It felt like a microcosm of the social middle earth online spaces often feel like- populated by the battlegrounds of twitter, Instagram’s pond of self-obsession and the chaos of Tiktok.
And there are loads of examples of this recently. Bodies bodies bodies falls into a rapidly emergingly category of independent films / TV shows focussing on late teens or people in their early twenties doing things that their mum would disapprove of. Most prominent is the sensationalised (in all aspects) Euphoria which sees it’s 16- 18 year old suburban characters take/deal narcotics, hospitalise each other after assault and do a bunch of other bad stuff. But I always get the impression that behind these productions is a 40 year old writer / director trying to seem a bit cooler then they are or mock something they feel too old to understand.
The director of Bodies is 46, the story it is based on written by a 40-year-old writer, so your instant reaction is that it is a bit of a piss take. The characters are tough to relate to, especially the super-rich Pete Davidson. They berate and torture each other despite being best friends and their priorities are unusual and comedic. Rachel Shennot is upset, but ultimately unphased when her boyfriend pummelled to death with a blunt object in front of her, and again when her best friend dies. Yet she has a meltdown when Jordan says her podcast is bad. Similarly, on her deathbed of broken piano and glass, Jordan doesn’t choose conventional last words such as ‘help me’ or tell my mother.. I love her’ but instead opts for the haunting ‘check.. her.. phone!!” I also liked the symbolic climax as Sophie and B scramble between themselves for a phone and/or a gun, they both go for the phone. Deep man.
But it is also these sequences that, while exaggerated, show the films sympathy for these characters. They appear completely detached from what matters. The things that makes them feel isolated from us – their constant use of buzz words and slang, their genuine upset at small things, the needs to berate their friends, and unusual priorities - are not treated in a way that makes them feel unlikeable (however hard to believe). Usually a long shot or a close up would emphasise someone’s meanness, a character would be isolated or dehumanised. Bodies humanises them, each character is given (possibly excluding Pete) the time to know them. The berator’s insecurities, no matter how weird, are often brought to light moments after saying something hurtful.
They just aren’t sure how to communicate and the film doesn’t see them as dicks but more just products of their generation (that’s Gen Z). In fact it is this failure to communicate that lead to the film’s disastrous events.
Their humanisation and genuine struggle to communicate is funny and looked on with sympathy, I think. We might be watching from an older sister’s perspective, desperate to say where they keep going wrong, where they just need to slow down and talk it through, but are unable to do so through the screen.
While there are satirical streaks, if viewed as a criticism of rich or spoiled youngsters, as a slightly viral NY Times article tried to argue, you would be missing a lot of the point. With a condescending tone: ‘This film is not special, and like its shallow characters, it is persistently unaware of its own inanity… this could be a scathing satire’ but is ‘so intent on serving cool kid apathy that it serves up a whole lot of nothing.’ At no point does this feel scathing or critical, it cares too much for the characters.