Raves on Race part 2: Review of "Rize"
This is a slightly edited version of a review I did for Amazon on the movie RIZE by David LaChapelle.
OK,I really have to disagree with some of the praise heaped upon RIZE.
Now, don't get me wrong. The parts of the movie that concentrated on the dancers were great. I particularly liked the way that Dragon, Lil C, Miss Prissy and Tommy the Klown got a bit of screen time to tell PARTS OF their stories.
The dancing itself was great too. No, make that totally awe-inspiring. I have no problem with that either.
My problems come from the way David LaChapelle treated his young black subjects.
Too often, we applaud ANY representations of black youth that are in ANY way positive. But the problem here is that LaChapelle repeats a common trope among white middle class culture vultures (and I use that word deliberately): he reduces young urban working class "minority" kids to spectacle and surface.
The only person in the film able to break through that framing was Marquisa Gardner (Miss Prissy) who was able to convey a much more nuanced picture of some of the challenges and glories of her life despite LaChapelle's trite underlining of the "life in the ghetto is hell" motif. Ms Gardner's humanity shines through because of her personal charisma and talent at talking to the camera, rather than any empathy or delicacy on LaChapelle's part.
LaChapelle also repeats the misleading and dangerous old saw that the "cool" way to succeed is to be join the entertainment industry. This is perhaps a highly-visible attitude amongst youngsters but it's a totally wasted opportunity to showcase a way of using dance as a way to rize in a more than simply metaphorical sense.
As a fashion photographer, LaChapelle has a long history of reducing black people to beautiful ornaments (like much of the work of Herb Ritts as another example). His photo shoots of Naomi Campbell in particular stand out as particularly mean-spirited examples (and I'm no big fan of Naomi's diva attitude, believe me).
As an anthropologist, I also have particular problems with the way he intercuts footage of Nuba wrestlers shot in the 1930s with shots of modern krumpers. On a very broad level, it is true that krumping (like ALL modern forms of African American dance) has commonalities with traditional dance forms found in Africa. But he gives us no sense of how this "dancing" is located in a particular context or culture. There's no sense of the importance of dance as an integral part of the way people prayed, honored the achievements of others, competed with others, made political statements and asserted their social status. Instead it's just presented as "savage dancing".
In a further irony. The Nuba footage actuallycomes from a movie made by the former Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. I have a vague memory of reading some of the account Riefenstahl wrote of making this movie, and being disturbed by the way she casually objectified the African men she was shooting. It's only a small jump from the way she revels in a nasty superficial kind of masculinity in the propaganda films she made for Hitler.
In the same way, RIZE often presents its LA subjects on _just_ the acceptable side of the same idea: "It's in their blood" seems a little too close to the idea that "Black people are just naturals for singing and daninge". This stupidity reduces the genuine skill and talent of the dancers to a matter of mere genetics. We don't need another reprise of Vince Sarich's tired racialist thinking.
In addition, this kind of simple-minded exoticism obscures the real stories behind the genesis and development of African American culture and the real complexity and richness of dance in both Africa and the New World. Just because kids from systematically segregated and historically anti-Black school systems aren't taught much about their history, that doesn't let privileged (and presumably educated) middle class film makers off the hook.
For more detailed and pointed criticism, visit the blog Rae's Spot. This sister has it right on point.
These days Black youth are being offered a great deal of money and a certain kind of temporary cultural prestige to become highly visible mannikins for a vicious and predatory consumer system that offers most of them almost nothing in return (beyond some jewelry and a few clothes). For more on this read Ta-Nehisi Coates's great stuff in Village Voice. When you reduce black culture to a music video, you do nothing to counteract that process. In fact, you're part of the problem.
Don't. Don't. Don't believe the hype.
OK,I really have to disagree with some of the praise heaped upon RIZE.
Now, don't get me wrong. The parts of the movie that concentrated on the dancers were great. I particularly liked the way that Dragon, Lil C, Miss Prissy and Tommy the Klown got a bit of screen time to tell PARTS OF their stories.
The dancing itself was great too. No, make that totally awe-inspiring. I have no problem with that either.
My problems come from the way David LaChapelle treated his young black subjects.
Too often, we applaud ANY representations of black youth that are in ANY way positive. But the problem here is that LaChapelle repeats a common trope among white middle class culture vultures (and I use that word deliberately): he reduces young urban working class "minority" kids to spectacle and surface.
The only person in the film able to break through that framing was Marquisa Gardner (Miss Prissy) who was able to convey a much more nuanced picture of some of the challenges and glories of her life despite LaChapelle's trite underlining of the "life in the ghetto is hell" motif. Ms Gardner's humanity shines through because of her personal charisma and talent at talking to the camera, rather than any empathy or delicacy on LaChapelle's part.
LaChapelle also repeats the misleading and dangerous old saw that the "cool" way to succeed is to be join the entertainment industry. This is perhaps a highly-visible attitude amongst youngsters but it's a totally wasted opportunity to showcase a way of using dance as a way to rize in a more than simply metaphorical sense.
As a fashion photographer, LaChapelle has a long history of reducing black people to beautiful ornaments (like much of the work of Herb Ritts as another example). His photo shoots of Naomi Campbell in particular stand out as particularly mean-spirited examples (and I'm no big fan of Naomi's diva attitude, believe me).
As an anthropologist, I also have particular problems with the way he intercuts footage of Nuba wrestlers shot in the 1930s with shots of modern krumpers. On a very broad level, it is true that krumping (like ALL modern forms of African American dance) has commonalities with traditional dance forms found in Africa. But he gives us no sense of how this "dancing" is located in a particular context or culture. There's no sense of the importance of dance as an integral part of the way people prayed, honored the achievements of others, competed with others, made political statements and asserted their social status. Instead it's just presented as "savage dancing".
In a further irony. The Nuba footage actuallycomes from a movie made by the former Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. I have a vague memory of reading some of the account Riefenstahl wrote of making this movie, and being disturbed by the way she casually objectified the African men she was shooting. It's only a small jump from the way she revels in a nasty superficial kind of masculinity in the propaganda films she made for Hitler.
In the same way, RIZE often presents its LA subjects on _just_ the acceptable side of the same idea: "It's in their blood" seems a little too close to the idea that "Black people are just naturals for singing and daninge". This stupidity reduces the genuine skill and talent of the dancers to a matter of mere genetics. We don't need another reprise of Vince Sarich's tired racialist thinking.
In addition, this kind of simple-minded exoticism obscures the real stories behind the genesis and development of African American culture and the real complexity and richness of dance in both Africa and the New World. Just because kids from systematically segregated and historically anti-Black school systems aren't taught much about their history, that doesn't let privileged (and presumably educated) middle class film makers off the hook.
For more detailed and pointed criticism, visit the blog Rae's Spot. This sister has it right on point.
These days Black youth are being offered a great deal of money and a certain kind of temporary cultural prestige to become highly visible mannikins for a vicious and predatory consumer system that offers most of them almost nothing in return (beyond some jewelry and a few clothes). For more on this read Ta-Nehisi Coates's great stuff in Village Voice. When you reduce black culture to a music video, you do nothing to counteract that process. In fact, you're part of the problem.
Don't. Don't. Don't believe the hype.