Hip Hop on Film

Performance Culture, Urban Space, and Genre Transformation in the 1980s

Kimberley Monteyne

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781628469035
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica cinematográficas

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. Hip Hop on Film reclaims and reexamines productions such as Breakin' (1984), Beat Street (1984), and Krush Groove (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style (1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner-city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s. Breakdancing, a central element of hip hop musicals, is also reconsidered. It gained widespread acclaim at the same time that these films entered the theaters, but the nation's newly discovered dance form was embattled—caught between a multitude of institutional entities such as the ballet academy, advertising culture, and dance publications that vied to control its meaning, particularly in relation to delineations of gender. As street-trained breakers were enticed to join the world of professional ballet, this newly forged relationship was recast by dance promoters as a way to invigorate and "remasculinize" European dance, while young women simultaneously critiqued conventional masculinities through an appropriation of breakdance. These multiple and volatile histories influenced the first wave of hip hop films, and even structured the sleeper hit Flashdance (1983). This forgotten, ignored, and maligned cinema is not only an important aspect of hip hop history, but is also central to the histories of teen film, the postclassical musical, and even institutional dance. Kimberley Monteyne places these films within the wider context of their cultural antecedents and reconsiders the genre's influence.

1

The Case for the Hip Hop Musical

Between 1983 and 1985 no fewer than nine hip hop-oriented musical films were released in the United States, including Wild Style, Beat Street, Body Rock, Breakin’, Breakin’ 2, Breakin’ Through, Rappin’, Krush Groove, and Delivery Boys. Although they have been all but forgotten in most historical discussions concerning the development of the musical genre, many aspects of these films are, in fact, overwhelmingly consistent with the thematic contours and narrative structures of the classical-era musical, a form that emerged in the late 1920s. The American musical film genre includes “star” vehicles like The Jazz Singer (1927), which established an enduring backstage narrative, all-black cast folk musicals, such as Hearts in Dixie, and Top Hat and Swing Time (1936), eloquent romantic comedies in which heterosexual union is central to both the film’s plot and musical numbers. Hip hop musicals emerged in the aftermath of significant challenges to the genre that have been loosely gathered by historians under the banner of the postclassical musical. These films renewed some classical-era generic elements, while directly challenging others as they navigated contemporary urban settings, social anxieties, and political struggle through the conventional iconography of Hollywood musical cinema. This chapter has four main concerns: to demonstrate the diverse ideological, thematic, and stylistic aspects of the hip hop musical; to show how the hip hop musical directly engaged with aspects of the classical musical film genre; to reveal the extent to which the racialized history of urban transformation impinged upon the representation of community and social action in the film narratives; and to reconstruct a history of the postclassical musical that includes a space for this initial hip hop-oriented cinema.

All hip hop musicals deal with themes of urban space, race, youth culture, and performance, but I do not want to suggest that this is an ideologically coherent group of films. Hip hop musical cinema offers diverse criticisms and celebrations of American social values, while adopting myriad positions regarding approaches to communal activism and the individual’s path towards success through music and dance performance.¹ Not only were these films significantly varied in terms of the degree to which hip hop functions as a progressive and political performance strategy, but their production histories ranged from independent art cinema to exploitation fare. The entire corpus of the hip hop musical thus represents an array of ideological positions, and within particular texts themselves we find multiple social and political attitudes. These films might be understood to “reflect” the social and political currents of their historical moment, yet they do so in ways that are contradictory, ambiguous, and potentially even liberating for various members of historically oppressed groups within the United States, such as women and people of color. What is so apparent in examining the entire corpus of hip hop cinema is, in fact, the differences between films in terms of their social and political elements (or lack thereof), filming techniques, and actual presentation of hip hop culture through the cinematic lens.

Crucially, these films also rely on the various facets of hip hop culture to structure the cinematic text in different ways. For the purpose of this discussion, I have organized the corpus into two categories: the true hip hop musical and the surface hip hop musical. The first category—the true hip hop musical—which includes Wild Style, Beat Street, Rappin’, and Krush Groove, utilizes the interrelated set of cultural and social practices within hip hop as the organizing principle of the film. They also feature identifiable inner city locales, offer sympathetic portraits of the community inhabitants, and all but Krush Groove make a point of revealing the poverty of ghetto life. These films also show how the collective neighborhood body comes together in unconventional ways through the various facets of hip hop culture, while stressing the democratic nature of this process whereby everyone participates in music and dance performance.

Films such as Wild Style, Beat Street, and Krush Groove were the product of filmmakers and producers who were personally invested in the lives of urban communities of color. For instance, Wild Style’s director, Charlie Ahearn, was a constant presence in the South Bronx community for years before the film was finally released. Wild Style chronicles the romance of two Latino South Bronx graffiti writers—Rose, who works with a crew that paints legal murals, and Raymond (Zoro), an “outlaw” writer who works alone “bombing” train cars at night. As Ahearn gathered material for this romantic and creative docudrama of the South Bronx community, he painted graffiti with its stars, went to clubs in the neighborhood, and enlisted local residents to appear in the film and work on its soundtrack and artistic production.² Moreover, as Ahearn sought to capture the emergence of hip hop culture in New York City on film, he became part of its artistic process and transformation. After the director photographed graffiti writers at work, club events, as well as other local happenings, he produced a series of slide shows that were projected at local venues, while MCs rapped over the unfolding narrative. Ahearn recalls this experience at a party space named The Ecstasy Garage:

I would bring two sheets and hang them on the wall behind the DJ and project slides that I was snapping in the yards and the clubs. I would edit them like a storyboard, adding some shots taken the week before at the Ecstasy. It was like projecting a rough version of the movie. Busy Bee would be on the mic. He’d see himself up huge on the screen and would get the crowd to yell, “Hey Busy Bee, ho!” One night Phase2, who was an originator of early subway art and was designing the most beautiful party flyers, brought some slides from the early ’70s of his incredible train pieces and of him posing in front of some of his bubble-style paintings. I popped them into the carousel and they became part “of the movie.”³

Hip hop is a collaborative form that privileges the integration of different artistic mediums, and Ahearn’s documentary imagery became part of an energetic, multimedia cultural performance that reinforced the collaborative, direct, and improvisational nature of hip hop culture.

Beat Street, a semi-independently produced film directed by Stan Lathan, features the exploits of two fictional South Bronx brothers, Kenny (Guy Davis) and Lee (Robert Taylor), who are heavily enmeshed within the hip hop culture of their community. The older brother, Kenny, embarks on a romantic affair with a wealthy Manhattan girl named Tracy (Rae Dawn Chong), while Lee, played by real-life breakdance prodigy Taylor, boogies his way into police custody. Lathan’s film also explored the subculture of graffiti writers, and even romanticized this practice through its depiction of Ramon (Jon Chardiet), a fictional Puerto Rican writer. Ramon, who dreams of tagging a pristine subway car, ultimately dies while attempting to apprehend Spit (Bill Anagnos), a rival writer who has been destroying his work throughout the film. Beat Street’s producer, Harry Belafonte, was not as directly involved in hip hop culture as Ahearn, but he was a committed civil rights activist and vocal critic of the Reagan administration.⁴ Belafonte also grew up in Harlem and dedicated his film to the people of the South Bronx.⁵ He undoubtedly had a political vision of hip hop as a revolutionary tool, and much has been made of his subsequent influence on Cuba’s burgeoning rap culture at the turn of the millennium.⁶

Krush Groove was directed by notable African American filmmaker Michael Schultz. He had previously made two important films about the black urban experience in the 1970s—Cooley High (1975) and the funk musical Car Wash (1976)—while also maintaining a steady presence in television directing. This hip hop musical was a fictionalized account of the life of record producer Russell Simmons (renamed Russell Walker in the film and played by Blair Underwood), his relationship with Run-D.M.C., Kurtis Blow, and other luminaries in the world of rap music, and the Def Jam record label. In the midst of money troubles, musical rivalries, disagreements, and familial strife a competition emerges between Walker and his brother Run (of Run-D.M.C.) for the affections of club performer Shelia E. The film was co-produced by Simmons, and as such he had some input into the narrative and casting. Krush Groove was released by Warner Bros. and made a respectable $11 million at the U.S. box office. While Schultz has worked on a wide variety of subjects, his output reveals a consistent interest in evoking a sympathetic and complex account of the African American experience, which is undoubtedly evident in this film.

Rappin’, directed by Joel Silberg, was an entry in the Cannon Group’s cycle of hip hop-oriented exploitation extravaganzas. It featured John Rappinhood (Mario Van Peebles)—an ex-con who returns to his inner city Pittsburgh community to protect it from nefarious real estate developers and rival thugs. While saving the Hill District from peril, Rappinhood also jump-starts his musical career and wins the affections of his longtime love interest Dixie (Tasia Valenza).

The second category of hip hop musical films—the surface hip hop musical—includes the two other films belonging to Cannon’s hip hop run, Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2, as well as Delivery Boys, Body Rock, and Breakin’ Through. These films make references to select aspects of hip hop culture and feature breakdancers or practitioners of “street dance” as central characters. What sets them apart from the true hip hop musical is the way in which the emphasis shifts from exposing the social conditions of inner city life to highlighting choreographed numbers and brightly costumed performers. These films relinquish (or at least reduce) the centrality of graffiti as a clandestine practice, rapping as a communal exercise, and the art of DJing in favor of utilizing the energy and visual interest to be found in breakdancing. The surface hip hop musical also evokes a far less specific image of the inner city ghetto, almost never featuring explicit images of recognizable urban locales.

Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2, along with Rappin’, were produced in a furious bid to exploit the news media’s intense interest in hip hop culture. Breakin’, released in May 1984, was the first and most financially successful mainstream breakdance-oriented feature film. The sequel followed with moderate success just a few months later. Historically, Thomas Doherty notes that the term exploitation was utilized by the motion picture industry at mid-century to refer to films that aimed to exploit a particular audience (usually teenagers), had a second-rate budget, and included “controversial, bizarre, or timely subject matter amenable to wild promotion.”⁷ Cannon has closely followed the model of early exploitation cinema and the company has profited from turning out cheaply made films structured around a variety of fads appealing to a youth demographic.⁸

Breakin’ was directed by Joel Silberg, while Sam Firstenberg made Breakin’ 2. In the first film, professionally trained upper-middle-class jazz dancer Kelly (Lucinda Dickey) teams up with “street dancers” Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba Doo” Quinones) and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers) to bring urban dance forms within the purview of institutional performance. The trio battles the resistant forces of academic dance culture as well as other “street dance” crews on their journey towards performance success. Breakin’ 2 reworked subject matter from its predecessor, such as interracial and cross class desire. However, it also explored broadly defined themes of urban gentrification and communal empowerment as the group organizes a fundraiser in order to prevent the destruction of Miracles, a neighborhood dance center. Even though breakdancing is referenced in the title of the Breakin’ series, it is always described as street dance within the films while rapping, graffiti writing, and DJing are either completely obliterated or relegated to peripheral roles. The breaker moves to center stage in these two productions, but the dancer’s tie to hip hop culture more generally is severed as a result of the films’ refusal to name either breakdancing or hip hop within the narrative. This dislocation between the practice of breakdancing and the other performance traditions of hip hop are characteristic of the surface hip hop musical.

Evidently, spectators found the initial glimpses of an emergent black and Latino folk culture exciting and pleasurable given that a film with relatively low production values such as Breakin’ became the eighteenth highest grossing film of the year.⁹ It returned over $38 million at the box office, edging out such productions as The Terminator and Clint Eastwood’s City Heat.¹⁰ That Breakin’ cracked the top twenty might astonish viewers today, but as Robert Sklar has noted, historically (between the 1930s and the 1970s) the yearly top earning pictures also tended to be films which garnered industry awards and praise, whereas during the 1980s there was no longer a correlation between the highest earners and perceptions and distinctions of “quality” within the film world itself.¹¹ Many hip hop musicals made a tidy profit but none repeated the financial success of Hollywood’s first attempt at exploiting the nation’s increasing interest in hip hop culture.

Body Rock was a New World Pictures release that featured soap opera star Lorenzo Lamas, who had recently emerged as a “heartthrob” on the primetime hit series Falcon Crest. In the film, Lamas portrays Chilly D, a poor unemployed New York youth who is part of a hip hop crew. His crew dances at the underground nightclub Rhythm Nation until Chilly is lured into the decadent world of wealthy patrons who install him as the MC at a swank new dance club. Chilly leaves his friends and would-be girlfriend from the old neighborhood. Next, he is divested of his newfound fame and fortune after rebuking the affections of his male patron. The posh club steals the name Body Rock and attempts to assemble a new group of performers under the same moniker. Angry at this turn of events, Chilly and his old gang get even by crashing the unveiling of the new Body Rock and taking over the show. Following its debut at Cannes, Body Rock was poorly received; it netted two Razzie nominations (for worst original song and worst actor), performed dismally at the box office, and director Marcelo Epstein was never to helm another feature film.

The made-for-Disney Channel film Breakin’ Through cleverly avoided any references to specific social problems while still loosely conforming to the structure of the hip hop musical. Like Breakin’ and several other films I discuss, Breakin’ Through staged an artistic “showdown” between the “legitimate” theatrical world and street dance. The film brings two performance spaces—the stage and the street—together through the genre conventions of the Hollywood musical. However, this generic twist does not contain any critical edge but rather defuses all of the radical possibilities inherent within hip hop musical cinema. With the exception of the opening sequence, the film alternates between two settings. In the first instance, we witness street dancers in tightly framed shots that reveal little of the surrounding urban environment. The rest of the film takes place in the rehearsal space of a theatrical dance company as they prepare for the opening of a new musical show. When a choreographer attempts to bring the breakdancers into the space of the theater, friction develops between the street crew, headed by an Italian youth named Ripsaw, and the rest of the professionally trained dancers in the production. A happy finale is achieved when the choreographer utilizes these tensions and appropriates them for the subject matter and formal arrangement of the final show. Thus, the class conflict inherent in the acrimonious relation between different dance traditions in the film is neutralized with the final scene. The film completely aestheticizes the “real” inequity and conflict that is at the heart of the true hip hop musical—the tension produced by the meeting of two different performance spaces or traditions, which signify two different socioeconomic populations. It also attempted to avoid the assoc...