mozli Review of Good Hair

Good Hair (2009)

Aiming for profundity Chris Rock does a Michael Moore on a segment of Black culture

[10/10 · 22 May 2010]

Saw this a little over a week ago and it is still kicking around in my consciousness. Chris Rock has made a very strong critique about how black people live. Quite a bit of it is discomforting, dealing with the lengths black folk we'll go to achieve a certain beauty standard. The entire segment on chemical relaxers should make anyone think long and hard as to what that product does to the body and brain cells of young children. Chris Rock the documentarian is not the peer of Chris Rock the comedian and that comes through often in the bluntness and heavy-handedness of his presentation of the subject matter. The negative reviews I've encountered seem to try to deflect potential audiences from the truth that Mr. Rock is getting at. Some white people are going to be uncomfortable with this many will likely be bored. They may likely say that its a black folk issue but the more perceptive ones will realize that western culture beauty bias is at the root of this situation. The whole segment on hair weaving and extension which points at Central Asia and the Far East as gaining a powerful hold over black female hair culture is arresting. Interspersed throughout the film are Q&A's with Rock's Hollywood colleagues. Some blithely give answers that border on profound self-contempt and others get the point of question's secret agenda and attempt to deflect its full intent. Even Rev.Al Sharpton does this. The film comes to a close after the big Bonner Bros. expo. It acknowledges that because of black people's(particularly the female)traditional position in wester culture that that it has been a massive strain unlike their white female counterparts to feel good and beautiful in their own skin and hair. When that occurs so often those negative feelings spread because not only does misery loves company, misery will create company. I think Chris answered his daughter's question but it will be sometime before she's ready to accept it fully.