Pumpkin: Raising One's Consciousness, Sorority Style

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I loved Pumpkin! Does that make me bad? After all, directors Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder have given us a dark comedy regarding a blonde, upper-middle-class sorority sister named Carolyn McDuffie (Christina Ricci) who develops a crush for...nay, falls in love with...nay, engages in sexual intercourse with (!) the developmentally disabled Pumpkin Romanoff (Hank Harris). Isn't this movie in bad taste? Should I not feel disturbed (dirty) at witnessing such an odd romantic pair?

Well, if Abrams and Broder endeavored simply to make a voyeuristic film, then yes, I would feel obliged to generate at least a smidgen of disgust. However, are the directors really aiming just to paint a disturbing, yet satirical, portrait of how Americans interact with the developmentally disabled? Or, are they wrestling with deeper issues?

Contrary to the title's suggestion, this movie is not about Pumpkin Romanoff; it is about Carolyn McDuffie and her attempts at introspective awareness and social consciousness. Living an ostensibly "perfect" life (upper-middle-class Pasadena background, conventional good looks, uber-jock boyfriend), McDuffie is initially appalled that her sorority has chosen to work with developmentally disabled athletes for its "public service" (which is merely an effort to gain points towards the Sorority of the Year award). She is disgusted not only with the prospect of working with the disabled, but she does not even want to allow said population on campus!

Later, however, as she works with her "client," she begins to sense his "inner beauty" and soon looks forward to their training sessions. Since Pumpkin doesn't have any "real" aspirations to worry about—he's not going to make a lot of money, he's not going to become a superstar athlete, and he doesn't have any social circle to impress—he can be honest in his feelings and motivations. It turns out that those feelings and motivations are based on his love(?!) for Carolyn, and he trains even harder so as to impress her.

As she draws closer to Pumpkin, Carolyn becomes estranged from both her old relationships and what they represent: money, status, superficial "community." While she becomes alarmed at falling in love with Pumpkin and developing an "unnatural" relationship, she also realizes that the perfect life that she had constructed was also "unnatural" and maybe even destructive.

Simply put, Carolyn recognizes that her old life was merely a series of mediators that obscured and even blocked the raw, unmediated experience for which she now yearns. Family, money, and status served to create a life that ducked "true" experience, higher consciousness, the "it" that language cannot convey.

At this point, some of you who have seen this movie will roll your eyes, shake your heads, and wonder how I could have missed the cynicism, the mean-spirited humor of this film. Pumpkin, you will argue, does not teach anything; rather, it critiques, mocks, and leaves us feeling mildly squeamish. To a certain extent, such analysis is correct. However, Pumpkin is not a completely nihilistic satire of adolescence and young adulthood a la Election (another good film that deserves its own review). Abrams and Broder do more than make us squirm: they challenge us to rethink our notions of the "other" (forgive the cliche) and of social reality itself (or at least how we manifest that reality).

The final scene of Pumpkin is perhaps the most disturbing. Don't worry: I won't ruin it for you. Suffice it to say that it bears a striking resemblance to The Graduate's conclusion: melancholic and doubtful. Does Carolyn make the right decision? Or, will her unconventional relationship prove disastrous? Were her peers right all along: should she have just followed the road most traveled?

While Abrams and Broder leave us with a little dose of reality at the end, I would find it hard to believe that they wanted to gut their film's positive messages. Despite her many mistakes, Carolyn is a better person for trying to look at the world from both a more honest and a more compassionate perspective. She is a better person for seeking a life of pure, unmediated experience. And you thought the Greek System produced nothing of value!