Good Hair
Directed by Chris Rock
Runtime: 95 min.
Remember the terrible mockumentary Chris Rock made when he hosted the 2005 Oscars? It stereotyped black filmgoers as an action-movie mob for the supposedly provocative but simply inappropriate point that the Academy Awards were out-of-touch with the homies. Rock once again passes off his questionable humor as sociology in Good Hair. It’s a mockumentary by accident because Rock pretends to explore the cultural phenomenon of how black women truly feel about their hair. Yet he relentlessly falls back on easy jokes and juvenile asides that mock the subject.
In association with producer and opportunistic journalist Nelson George who used to turn out similar native-informant missives for the Village Voice during the early days of hip-hop, Rock takes a nappy approach to genuine black ideas on aesthetics, sexuality and hygiene. The issue of black hairstyles (especially for women) used to be a flashpoint of social revolution—especially during the 1960s and ’70s when the Afro hairstyle first appeared and Angela Davis, the FBI’s Most Wanted, became an icon of style and insurrection.
Rock bypasses this fascinating history in favor of the less risky but trivial ways that African Americans have embraced wigs and weaves, turning away from that moment of radical self-acceptance.
By focusing on the Annual Hair Battle Royale in Atlanta, Rock makes his subject silly. The Battle Royale isn’t reference to Ellison’s Invisible Man; its diversion borrows from Michael Moore’s ruin of the documentary into entertainment. Rock’s interview fragments canvas celebrities Salli Richardson, Lauren London, Melyssa Ford,Vanessa Bell Calloway even Maya Angelou and Ice-T, followed by the antics of competing Royale hairdressers who do as much clowning as styling.
Rock’s unfocussed method depersonalizes what should have been a deeply meaningful, if amusing, subject. Starting out with stills of his toddler daughters, Rock never brings the topic back home. Good Hair stays superficial.When Rock seeks out the source of wigs in Asia through the Tonsure ritual of head shaving in India, a wisecrack (“Money made in the temple is second only to the Vatican”) dampens mirth while raising skepticism. Facts about the black hair-care products industry (such companies as Dudley Products or Bronner Brothers, sponsors of the Battle Royale who specialize in dangerous Sodium Hydroxide hair relaxer) make no more impression than gossip that “Vivica A. Fox likes [to wear] Malaysian hair.”
Good Hair avoids complexity and never embraces the nap; it has the pedestrian prurient tone of an HBO documentary— which it literally is. Rock, who previously directed the forgettable comedies Think I Love My Wife and Head of State, has no sense of camp or showbiz—falling back on male bewilderment in a barbershop is useless. RuPaul communicated the essence of black hair aesthetics as cultural politics in his great music video “Back to My Roots.” Rock himself can’t even match Ice-T’s warning, “If a woman ain’t happy with herself, she’s gonna bring nothing but pain to everybody.”
anonymous
