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Running Head: THE COMMODIFICATION OF BLACK AUTHENTICITY
Rize:
The commodification of blackness in David LaChapelle’s Rize
Kathleen M. Kuehn
PhD Candidate
Pennsylvania State University
College of Communications
115 Carnegie, University Park, PA 16802
(520) 245-3927 (phone)
kmk395@psu.edu
Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Dr. Jeanne Hall for all of her wisdom and
feedback on this research.
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Rize:
The commodification of blackness in David LaChapelle’s Rize
Abstract
In 2005 fashion photographer and music video director David LaChapelle released his first
feature-length documentary, Rize, which documents the lives of black youth in inner-city Los
Angeles youth who created the urban dance subculture of “clowning” and “krumping.” While
critics hailed the film as visually and emotionally spectacular, this paper argues that the film
treads a fine line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation of black authenticity
and culture. By presenting some of the ethical choices and challenges LaChapelle faced in his representation of the Other, this paper presents a critical reading of his decisions that bury
hegemonic codes of oppression below the surface of an otherwise seemingly emancipatory
narrative. Only through a close textual analysis does LaChapelle reveal himself as an arbiter of
black urban street culture. Further, he also utilizes a number of highly structured formal codes to
create a problematic spectacle of the black dancing body that overly sexualizes in a way that
invokes hook’s (1992) notion of “eating the Other.” This paper concludes by criticizing
LaChapelle’s tendency towards black appropriation and his failure to politicize the social and
economic structures responsible for the systemic oppression facing his documentary’s subjects.
Key Words: Representation, documentary, black authenticity, identity, clowning, krumping,
performance, appropriation, commodification, race, ethics
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In 2005, fashion photographer David LaChapelle released Rize, a feature-length
documentary about the inner-city Los Angeles dance movements of “clowning” and “krumping.”
The prestige-press lauded Rize as “a celebration” (Scott, 2005), a spectacular “visual miracle”
and “unexpected knockout” (Travers, 2005). Many popular film critics praised Rize for revealing
“another side” of South Central L.A., where young people use the art of dance to “rise” out of
their social hardships. Most commonly, the film received accolades for its uplifting message. A
review in the Washington Post, for example, wrote: “That in disenfranchised communities beset
by multiple blights of poverty, drugs and gang violence, there have always been stubborn, heroic
artistic responses. This is simply one of the most dramatic and one of the most inspiring”
(Harrington, 2005, p. WE37). In qualifying their admiration, critics commonly referred to the
story as a “feel-good” movie about “hope sprouting where there should be none (Burr, 2005,
para 1).” Clowning and krumping were repeatedly treated as “salvational subcultures”
(Harrington, p. WE37) that have “provided young African-Americans - most stranded in the war
zones of South Central - a path away from the guns'n'poses of the area's self-styled gangstas and
drug lords” (Brunson, 2005).
The director, LaChapelle, is an internationally renowned photographer noted for his
high-fashion celebrity photographs taken on surreal, extra-ordinary sets; thus, the film as a visual
phenomenon is no surprise. His artwork typically plays with themes of excess, aesthetically
conveyed by a spectacular use of color and camp. LaChapelle’s fantastic, vivid and bizarre
aesthetics are identifiable traits that run across his multi-media vita of music videos,
advertisements, fashion and fine art photography. Regarding his auteur status LaChapelle states,
“My pictures are entertainment, an escape from the world we live in today. I never deal with
death and violence; they're too everyday” (“High Fashion Fantasies, 1998, p. 54). Applying this
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statement to Rize poses a number of questions regarding the ethical and social responsibilities of
a documentarian; one such question might ask: How does LaChapelle reconcile his own logic
within a film made about the gritty, tough streets of South Central, where death and violence for
many of the area’s constituents is an “everyday” phenomena?
While his statement can be read in a number of ways, this paper argues that LaChapelle’s
own artistic visions ultimately compromises his role as a social documentarian of inner-city
struggle. If documentarians “speak for the interests of others” (Nichols, 2001, p. 3) than a
number of ethical issues arise in the act of representing a community of which the storyteller is
not a part. Structures of power, for instance, are implicit to the re-presenter/re-presented
relationship and complicated by inherent social, cultural and economic differences of either party
(consciously or not). At the same time, it is possible that even highly reflexive modes of
filmmaking and film criticism are privy to an essentializing discourse that pre-determines a
filmmaker’s racial and class identity as inextricably at odds with the social actors he or she has
represented on film. This research is no exception. Thus, this paper makes no claim to whether or
not a white, wealthy, internationally-renowned popular artist is capable of bracketing his own
subjective identity to adequately depict the “objective reality” of a black inner-city subculture.
Instead, this research reveals through close textual analysis a number of highly structured formal
codes that situate LaChapelle within the film despite his physical absence. Further, these codes
offer insight to how the filmmaker views himself in relationship to not only the film’s social
actors, but black urban culture as well.
The tendency to romanticize black culture with “images of the black working class and
inner-city dwellers as somehow inoculated from the devastation of their surroundings” is
common in filmmaking (Johnson, 2003, p. 28). In Rize specifically, such images “reconstruct the
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weary, worn propaganda that misery breeds creativity (p. 28).” That LaChapelle relies on
cultural tropes and the black dancing body to advance his theme of uplift in black urban
communities is thus a conventional narrative strategy, despite its ideological problems. Through
formal, narrative and generic conventions of documentary, LaChapelle discursively constructs
clowning and krumping as legitimate and authentic sites of “black” subculture without ever
directly addressing the social and economic marginalization that enables the subculture’s
existence in the first place. While theories of the auteur might suggest LaChapelle’s literal
“glossing over” of life’s ugly details is typical of his aesthetic form and style, this criticism
charges the filmmaker with failing to consider the ethical responsibility documentarians have to
their participants. In this case, LaChapelle fails to challenge the hegemonic structures that
continuously reproduce the need for escape; instead, he glamorizes urban subculture as a
fascinating, visually appealing set of coping strategies left open to mainstream appropriation.
Representing the Other
Dyer (2002) reminds us that all representations are presentations, and are therefore
ideologically significant. The significance of representation is often revealed in the way people
view themselves, their place in society, who they are capable of becoming, and what others
expect them to be like (hooks, 1992). Thus, representations/re-presentations and the ideologies
they perpetuate have real consequences for real people “not just in the way they are treated….but
in terms of the way representations delimit and enable what people can be in any given society”
(Dyer, p. 3). It is no wonder, then, that the relationship between the re-presenters and the represented is almost always contentious. hooks, quoting filmmaker Pratibha Paramar,
acknowledges the profundity of the representation/self-perception quagmire:
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Images play a crucial role in defining and controlling the political and social power to
which both individuals and marginalized groups have access. The deeply ideological
nature of imagery determines not only how other people think about us but how we think
about ourselves. (p. 5)
Images of marginalized people created by the dominant social class have historically
perpetuated stereotypical assumptions and cultural tropes (hooks, 1992; Fay, 1994; Dyer, 2002).
For hooks, the consistent exploitation of the primitive “Other” in popular films is a reflection of
values sustained by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Film is central to the analysis of
representation, she argues, because “more than any other media experience [film] determines
how blackness and black people are seen and how other groups will respond to us based on their
relation to these constructed and consumed images” (p. 5). She argues that critiques of
contemporary black representations in film must be situated against the long history of white
European ideology that exoticized black people as hypersexual, primitive beings. Gottschild
(2003) similarly contends that white culture has historically regarded the non-white body –
especially the black dancing body – as a site where conflicting emotions manifest.
Simultaneously viewed as both fascinating and repulsive, the black body is thus equally desired
and repelled.
The lure of the black body “is the combination of pleasure and danger” (hooks, 1992, p.
26) in popular culture especially; blackness is mimicked and appropriated, yet continuously
punished through institutionalized forms of racism (Ferber, 2007). Artists like Elvis Presley and
George Balanchine’s appropriation of black music and dance have long been considered “the
reigning soul and spirit in American culture” without ever crediting African-Americans for their
contribution. In response to this historical tendency Gottschild (2003, p. 5) asks, “Why was it
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that the white world loved the culture but despised its creators – loved black dance but
oppressed/repressed the black dancer, the black dancing body?” Although she acknowledges that
African Americans have made significant advances in mainstream culture, Gottschild maintains
that “the black body has, through dance, sports, fashion, and everyday lifestyle, become the last
word in white desirability” (p. 7). For hooks, this desirability is problematic because it tends to
occur in situations where whites consume the Other as a means by which they can leave behind
their innocence to enter a world of “experience” that the non-white body provides. The
transcending experience promised by this process promotes the cultural assumption that black
culture is inherently more “authentic” than white culture.
However, when authenticity is associated with black culture it is almost always a classbased conception that implies “a certain kind of primitive and anti-intellectualism” (Johnson,
2003, p. 23). The false notion that “ghetto life is the site of uncompromised authentic blackness”
(p. 29) contributes to the discursive tendency to
…foreground the racialized authenticating process of blackness as stemming from nature
and the body. According to Stuart Hall, this discourse reflects ‘the place prepared for
black cultural expression in the hierarchy of creativity generated with the body and
whites with the mind.’ (p. 194)
Thus, relegating black culture to bodily expression creates a false object/subject dichotomy that
disenfranchises African Americans and further hinders their ability to transcend deeply
embedded racist ideologies and structures. It is the inner-city, therefore, that comes to define
black culture. The culture industries’ appropriation of black culture further suggests that in order
to overcome cultural and economic oppression, “you’ve got to use your ghetto experience as
your American Express Card.” (Johnson quoting Hemphill, p. 27).
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LaChapelle and black culture
LaChapelle establishes his relationship to black culture in Rize before the story begins.
The film opens with a production credit to Lions Gate, perhaps to suggest (however ironic) that
the forthcoming story lies outside the white, mainstream studio economy.1 The second shot cuts
to black; a can of spray paint rattles in the background. An invisible hand spells out, “Cinema
LaChapelle,” in graffiti across the screen while the sound of a helicopter approaches in the
distance. When finished the can drops to the ground as the man can be heard laughing
mischievously as he runs away from the scene.
Being that the art of “tagging” in urban street culture is usually regarded as a selfcongratulatory symbol of recognition, the graffiti artist in this case is likely LaChapelle himself.
The act of tagging reclaims private property as public space and thereby connotates new
ownership of the space upon which the tag has been painted (Erlich & Erlich, 2006). Few would
dispute the well-known associations between graffiti, urban youth, and hip-hop culture (although
graffiti pre-dates hip-hop by over a decade) so the use of graffiti to signify Rize’s cultural context
falls close to cliché. However, LaChapelle’s decision to tag the opening sequence with his own
name rather that the film’s title, for instance, signifies something more compelling than just the
story’s cultural setting. It implicitly signifies LaChapelle’s fascination not only with urban street
culture and his desire to be a part of it, but as claim over a piece of this culture for himself.
LaChapelle’s decision to claim a space for himself within black culture and to move the
private into the public – before the film even begins – creates a number of questionable
associations similar to those pointed out by Bailey (1988) in his reading of the film Something
Wild. In Something Wild, Bailey notes the way director Jonathan Demme opens the film by
This reading of the opening credits is largely influenced by Cameron Bailey’s textual analysis of the film
Something Wild, in which he argues the mark of the exotic Other begins with the presence of the Orion studio logo.
See Bailey, C. (1988). Nigger/lover: The thin sheen of race in ‘Something Wild.’ Screen, 29, 28-40. p. 25.
1
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superimposing his directing credit over the image of a black man carrying a boom box. For
Bailey, the title of “director” contains associations of mastery and ownership and placing the text
“directed by” over the random black actor (who has no other role in the film) “establishes a
relationship to the black subject of nearly clinical fetishism” (p. 25). Instead, he argues, the shot
“does not so much identify Demme with black culture as betray his intended dominance over it”
(p. 34). While this paper does not contend that LaChapelle “intended” to dominate black culture
with his own film (although it is one possible reading), his appropriation of tagging calls his
motivations into question. How can viewers trust LaChapelle’s forthcoming representation of a
relatively unknown black subculture when he has already situated himself within it?
The documentary’s closing credits provides a second example of where LaChapelle
situates himself within black culture. As the final sequence of the film concludes, a quote by
Martin Luther King Jr. appears on the screen: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise
up.” Immediately, the closing credits begin to the tune of Ghetto Gospel, a hip-hop collaboration
between rapper 2Pac Shakur and pop singer Elton John. The selection is uncomfortably literal in
its verbal and symbolic unity of a black urban gangster (i.e. 2Pac symbolizing the Rize dancers)
and a wealthy, gay white man (i.e. Elton John symbolizing David LaChapelle). 2 In other words,
the closing soundtrack directly situates LaChapelle within hip-hop culture by creating a marriage
between the white film director and his black subjects. It is as if he is awarding himself his own
“ghetto pass” into a culture in which he did not come from, nor necessarily belongs. Like the
opening graffiti sequence LaChapelle symbolically inserts himself into the film a second time to
further overstep the boundary of cultural appreciation into cultural appropriation.
In the song Ghetto Gospel, Elton John’s lyrics are the voice of God (“Those who wish to follow me / I welcome
with my hands”) who is responding to a man (2Pac) praying about the hardships of urban street life.
2
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Claiming the film this way reveals what hooks (1992) infamously regards is a result of
“imperialist nostalgia.”3 For hooks, imperialist nostalgia occurs when the dominant “reenacts or
reritualizes the colonizing journey as narrative fantasy of power and desire, of seduction by the
Other” (p. 25). LaChapelle is undoubtedly seduced by the Other throughout the filmmaking
process; not only has he openly stated his fascination with the inner-city dance movement he
documents in interviews, but he also makes it quite evident in the way the documentary’s use of
spectacle seduces the viewing audience as well.
White representation of the black Other in Rize formally begins after the production
credits with black-and-white newsreel footage from the 1965 Watts riots. A male news reporter
speaks over the montage of burning buildings and aerial views of Central L.A. about the
destruction done by fires and looters. The neighborhood looks like a “war-torn city” that civil
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. publicly vowed “from happening ever again, in Los Angeles
or elsewhere.” The reporter’s voiceover narration ends and gospel music begins, creating a
seamless fade into the next half of the sequence that depicts the aftermath of the more recent
1992 Rodney King riots. The juxtaposition of the news reporter’s claim about Dr. King’s
promise against the colored riot footage alludes rhetorically to the fact that civil rights leaders
have not kept their promises. As a new montage of burning buildings, cars and destruction fills
the screen, it includes a shot of African Americans cheering the damage. For a film that aims to
defy the ghetto stereotype, viewers are certainly introduced to the South Central neighborhood
with a limited and formulaic view of the community.
hooks defines “imperialist nostalgia” by quoting Renato Rosaldo as “...where people mourn the passing of what
they themselves have transformed,” or as “a process of yearning for what one has destroyed that is a form of
mystification” (p. 25). Her assessment and definition of the “dominant” also implicates heterosexuality. This
complicates the argument somewhat in that LaChapelle is openly gay.
3
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A second man’s voice enters the film over the footage of the King riots, stating, “This is
where we grew up. We were all just kids when this happened…” The scene then cuts to found
footage of four black women dancing in the street, performing a dramatization of police brutality
– three women hold one against a car and pretend to beat her with exaggerated kicks and
punches. As the camera pulls back in slow motion the woman being “beat up” breaks free; she
joins the others in a circle, dancing, just as the narrator states, “…but we managed to grow from
its ashes.” The seemingly improvisational dance scene, combined with the emotional cues of
gospel music and slow motion, quite movingly introduces the idea of performance as a cultural
response to oppression. Viewers are immediately sutured into the way racial inequality has been
absorbed into black performance culture specifically through dance, music and poetry. However,
this critical consciousness is suddenly disrupted when the camera pulls back from the dancers to
reveal a white man photographing the women in the street. Why is he there? And more
importantly, why are viewers of this film watching another white man film the same group of
black women? His inclusion in the frame is puzzling and lacks motivation outside its own
reflexivity. Does his presence in the frame symbolize the power relations inherent to the
voyeuristic act (and pleasure) of watching? Or is LaChapelle using this white photographer as
yet another symbol of himself?
The film finally brings the audience to 2002 with the introduction of the film’s
protagonist Tommy Johnson (aka “Tommy the Clown), an ex-convict who traded in a life of
crime to become a “hip-hop dancing clown” for children’s birthday parties. A self-proclaimed
“ghetto celebrity,” Tommy wears a traditional clown suit, wig, and face-paint to his
performances to which he drives a bright green car. Interestingly, the film refrains from even
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suggesting a correlation of clowning to the early minstrel shows so formative in naturalizing the
black stereotypes that perpetuate culture even today. While LaChapelle includes a scene where a
group of youth “clown” for an old white couple (much to their delight), nothing is made of this
act within the context of the film.
Shortly after meeting Tommy Rize introduces krumping, a more aggressive form of
clowning characterized by warrior-like make-up and public dance battles that occur anywhere
(planned or unplanned) from local basketball courts, living rooms, and town halls. As the
documentary transitions to explain this shift, so does the film’s tone. The colorful visuals of the
clowns, balloons and birthday parties ends with a direct cut to a more aggressive form of hiphop; the dancers appear less coordinated and instead push, shove, mosh and thrash, often
jumping off or against objects, fences or each other. Interviews with dancers indicate that
krumping (or even the concept of “getting krump”) is a creative response to oppressive socioeconomic conditions, although this important point is hardly explored. However, the spectacle of
the black dancing body is depicted so fantastically in the turn to krumping that the conditions
spawning its origins remain largely unexamined.
The black dancing body as spectacle
LaChapelle utilizes a number of formal structures to maintain the spectacle of the film, of
which the black body is key. Throughout the entire film our senses are overblown by the loud
music, fast-paced dance, the performers, and the very concept of multi-generational hip-hop
dancing clowns. While the story and its participants could speak for itself, LaChapelle employs
few moments of verite; instead, he chooses to cross-cut interviews with live dance footage of
clown and krump sessions for an overwhelmingly visceral effect. While he does not fragment the
dancers in the flashy style common to his music videos, he also never lets any of their
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performances unveil in their entirety. Furthermore, LaChapelle uses hardly any diegetic sound in
these sequences. Even during interviews a manufactured soundtrack is placed over the dancers,
adding emphasis and drama to their words at times where none may be warranted. The music,
which LaChapelle had made specifically for the film, is excessively loud; it is difficult to tell in
most instances if the beats were made to match the dance footage, or if LaChapelle edited the
dance footage to the tempo of the music. While this often makes for a mind-blowing visual
effect, viewers have no way of knowing what the “real” energy in these scenes is like. In the
entire film there is not a single dance scene that LaChapelle has not aurally manipulated in some
way.
While the soundtrack may have been produced for copyright purposes, LaChapelle states
in an interview that he utilized many of his celebrity connections to license some of the songs
free of charge (LaChapelle, 2005). Regardless, this manufactured soundtrack problematizes the
goal of authenticity because at no moment are viewers allowed to hear inside a “real” clown or
krump session. What are the emotions really like on-scene? We do not know what the dancers
are saying or shouting to one another in the moment, or upon what type of discourse this
community of dance is based. There are certain moments throughout the film where both dancers
and onlookers standby saying and doing nothing; in other instances, they appear to emphatically
shout at the clown and krump crews. What is it really like? The issue again becomes one of
control; by replacing the diegetic sound for a structured, art-directed soundtrack, LaChapelle is
able to navigate the audiences’ emotions in any way he wants. In doing so, he simultaneously
controls the image of the black dancing body, since our understanding of that body (as a
representative of inner-city black culture) is partially predicated on how we are situated
physically and emotionally to the body’s performance. By manufacturing that portrayal, we are
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offered no point of reference for determining the accuracy of the representation and are thus left
with an understanding of krump culture as told not by the participants of that culture but through
the artistic lens of LaChapelle himself. This lends considerable power to the filmmaker over
these images, and gives him yet another way of providing the greater social, economic and
cultural context within which Rize takes place.
LaChapelle uses a number of other formal techniques to control representations of the
black body beyond sound. In his most glaring perpetuation of cultural tropes, LaChapelle
proposes that krumping is an inborn quality linking the black dancers to a tribal African past.
This claim occurs early in the film as dancers explain the origin of krumping. In an interview
with the film’s primary dancers, a young man named Dragon states: “This is just as valid as your
ballet, as your waltz, as your tap-dance, except we didn’t have to go to school for this because it
was already implanted in us – from birth.” Following his statement, African tribal music begins
to play as live krumping footage is intercut with non-diegetic found footage of unspecified, darkskinned African warriors performing a ritual tribal dance. The scene cross-cuts between the
African warrior’s tribal dance and Dragon’s krumping for several minutes, creating an
associational montage of uncannily similar movements. Having just been informed by Dragon
that krumpers are “born” with their ability to dance this way, this association to the African
warrior invites the reader to understand the black body as possessing a genetic connection to
their primitive past. In fact, this scene offers a proof of that connection and we are asked to take
it literally. The associations do not end with the dance itself, however. Footage of krumpers
putting on their own face paint is intercut with the African natives putting on their own warrior
paint, further implying that black culture in American cannot ever be separated from its crosscontinental roots. To claim that krumpers can krump merely because they are black is an
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essentialist, dangerous connection that reinforces any number of culturally embedded myths and
stereotypes. Further, creating this link so early in the film imposes a myth that viewers then carry
throughout the remainder of the documentary.
Hewitt (2005) argues that the claim that dance is genetically or biologically inherited by
African Americans from their African ancestors is perhaps most problematic because it is made
through “cinematic images rather than semiotic analysis or historical context” (p. 346). Had
LaChapelle included any historical context, he would know that while modern “black” dance
may be influenced by certain Africanist movements, the concept of “African dance” is an
inherently racist misnomer. As Gottschild (2003, p. 7) points out:
The Sabar dance styles of Senegal are as different from the Watusi dances of Rwanda or
the Masai dances of Kenya as a Greek folk dance is from Russian ballet. European forms
[of dance] are not randomly grouped together in this way.
Gottschild also argues that “black dance” is a learned process, not genetically or biologically
inherited. While African and black forms of dance are traditionally characterized by their
polyphonic, polyrhythmic articulations, dance also differs region to region. Thus, to learn black
dance is to learn how to move the body democratically, to take a central energy and shift its
focus across different body parts at different times. The same claim can be applied to clowning
and krumping; it is not something that all black people can do merely because they are black.
Instead, dance is more realistically a learned, technical skill.
In fact, LaChapelle does not explain how his own racist logic applies to “Milk,” the
film’s sole Caucasian krumper, or “Rice Track,” the Asian-American clown group that are only
briefly introduced. In fact, a close examination of the live krump sessions actually reveal a more
racially and ethnically diverse crowd than formally presented in the documentary. Miss Prissy,
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the lead African American female dancer in the film, rhetorically emulates LaChapelle’s claim to
genetic predisposition best. Miss Prissy is consistently framed as a local krump star and
undoubtedly holds her own within a male-dominated subculture. In many ways, it is because of
this that her dancing abilities seem extra-ordinary in comparison to the other dancers. However,
LaChapelle makes almost no reference to her formal ballet training aside from a brief interview
from inside a dance studio. Otherwise, it is assumed throughout the film’s formal structure that
she – along with all the other dancers – is an untrained prodigy.4 Only in interviews outside the
film do we learn that Miss Prissy has been a classically trained, well-respected ballet dancer and
teacher in her neighborhood before LaChapelle filmed Rize (Brown, 2006). This point is made
not to diminish the accomplishments of Miss Prissy as a dancer but rather to demonstrate the
deceptive manner in which LaChapelle erroneously presents the spectacle of “black dance” as a
genetic trait exceptional to other cultural influences. For instance, the omission of moshing for
Hewitt (2005) “seems like a glaring exemption in light of the popularity of two rap/thrash bands:
The Insane Clown Posse – whose members wear clown makeup -- and Slipknot – whose
members also wear face paint and masks” (p. 348-349). In addition to moshing, she adds,
capoeira and break-dancing are two other possible cultural influences that remain unexplored.
The sexualization of the black body in Rize
From the narrative alone there is nothing to suggest that krumping and clowning are
regarded as sexual dances; however, LaChapelle employs a number of formal techniques that
actually creates sexuality in order to aggrandize the film’s overall spectacle. According to Dyer
(2002), sexuality in media does not have to be explicit; it is often symbolized or eluded to
For instance, even though LaChapelle introduces viewers to Tommy the Clown’s “Clown Academy” early in the
film, no formal lessons between an instructor and students are ever shown on-screen. In this sense, the film assumes
that its students already attend the academy with a basic knowledge of how to dance and are instead using the school
as an alternative to gangs and a life of street crime. This reinforces the point that despite some formal training, all of
the film’s characters are naturally “able” to clown and krump.
4
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through the use of color, texture, objects, effects of light, and other aesthetics. In Rize,
LaChapelle manipulates mise-en-scene within the documentary as often as he possibly can and
when he does, the dynamics of the bodies within the frame change considerably. The most
identifiable of these moments are in staged scenes where LaChapelle has clearly instructed his
participants to dance in front of a carefully selected or constructed backdrop. It is also within
these sessions that the black dancing body is sexualized in a way that is almost totally absent
from the organic, verite performances in the film. For example, in one sequence a group of
dancers explain how the “stripper dance” has informed some of clowning’s signature moves.
From this interview LaChapelle edits together a montage of the film’s characters performing the
stripper dance which he cut to the beats of an appropriately-timed, non-diegetic hip-hop
soundtrack. Although the interviewees had just moments ago stated that neither clowning nor the
stripper dance is sexual, LaChapelle’s highly constructed montage leads us to believe otherwise.
One particular set of footage repeatedly interspersed throughout this sequence shows a group of
teenage girls with one young man sitting on a stained, vivid blue mattress in front of a dirty,
bright purple wall. The single young man is shirtless and the women dance in only a bra and
pants. The brightly muddled purple and blue tones are emblematic of LaChapelle’s other
artwork, giving way to the fact that this segment is highly controlled. As they dance, the women
and man writhe against the floor and thrust their backsides into the camera; their half-naked
bodies are glossy with sweat which is reflected by the highly-key lighting. The man and women
dance together in a fabricated ménage a trios, eventually cross-cutting to footage of “Lil’
Mama,” a six-year old girl who performs the stripper dance alone in front of a circle of teenagers
at Tommy’s Clown Academy. As she gyrates her hips she begins to lift up her shirt to expose her
stomach while expressing what can only be read as a mix of pleasure and pain (read: orgasm).
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She completes her dance by falling into a split, writhing up and down. The film immediately cuts
back to an interview clip with the same shirtless young man involved in the previous ménage a
trios scene. He speaks about the stripper dance from an armchair recliner, with the three women
seated around him in small chairs. We want to believe him when he explains with a straight-face
that there is nothing wrong with little girls doing the stripper dance: “They’re just out there
poppin’ and what’s wrong with poppin’?” Yet his construction within the frame as a pimp-like
figure surrounded by three young women renders his claims unreliable; further, there is no
counter-perspective from Lil’ Mama’s parents or Lil’ Mama herself to corroborate his
perspective. Instead, LaChapelle leaves the spectacle of the sexualized black body to speak for
itself.
Gottschild (2003) argues that the sexualization of dance is largely a reflection of the
“Protestant Christian underpinnings of mainstream white culture” that regards the “overt use of
the separate parts of the torso…as sexually suggestive” (p. 104). In black culture, she argues,
such movements are not considered sexual but rather a form of expressing the whole body
through dance. Gottschild contends that this is the very reason why black children are taught to
learn the latest forms of dance which would presumably include clowning, krumping and even
their original form of the stripper dance. “[Children] are not being trained by their elders to lead
a life of promiscuity, but to carry on a tradition of polycentric, polyrhythmic body fluency” (p.
104). Unfortunately, LaChapelle himself fails to make this distinction.
LaChapelle concludes his documentary with two highly-controlled dance sessions that
intercuts footage from verite krump sessions seen previously in the film. The title “RIZE”
appears in white text over a black screen to marks both the ending of the film and the opening
“title” of what is essentially the film’s music-video swan song. Although the controlled sets
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feature all of the dancers who starred in LaChapelle’s documentary it is as if they are appearing
as entirely different characters. On one of the sets, Miss Prissy is filmed aggressively tearing off
her shirt to reveal a white bra which seems oddly out of character. Miss Prissy, true to her name,
never displays an ounce of overt sexuality or appears scantily clad at any point in the film until
this moment. In the more provocative of the two closing sets, LaChapelle shoots the dancers
against a turquoise sky in very little clothing which Hewitt (2005) argues is “the most misplaced
scene” of the entire film (p. 350). Miss Prissy is shot a second time in just her bra from the waistup while the men are completely shirtless. Their bodies are greased so that they shine against the
lights and reveal the muscular definition of their arms and chests. Beads of water repel off of
their bodies and into the sky, described by Hewitt as “well-muscled, oiled torsos in writhing,
sweating, slow-motion glory” (p. 350). She also notes that the deep-perspective composition,
scenes of surreal urban decay, and the use of tropical colors in these carefully constructed scenes
“echo [LaChapelle’s] photographic style and the fantasy world of MTV sets” (p. 350). Her point
is precise; the concluding scene formally symbolizes how the real story in Rize ends – on the set
of MTV.5
Conclusion
Throughout the film, a number of dancers explicitly state that the phenomenon of
clowning and krumping is worth “more than jewelry” and “not [about] being a trend.” For
dancer Tight Eyez, his satisfaction with the krump scene partially rests on the fact that it lies
outside mainstream, MTV culture. At one point, Miss Prissy holds up her hands, shrugs her
shoulders and tells the camera, ‘this is reality.” Thus, having toiled through the painful narrative
of a community that invents a form of dance as a means of spiritual transcendence, viewers
5
After the film, several of the film’s main characters find jobs in the mainstream hip-hop music industry.
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arrive at a conclusion where a slice of black culture is commodified by the non-black figure
holding the power of representation. Speaking to this point, hooks (1992, p. 23) states:
When race and ethnicity become commodified as a resource for pleasure, the culture of
specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an
alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices
affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other.
This spectacle of the black body that LaChapelle appropriates in his “music video” ending serves
as a clear reminder of his failure to critically address the issues that so badly need addressing.
Having claimed his own space within black culture before the film begins, and then manipulating
the film’s aesthetics in such a way that the dancers are unable to speak for themselves,
LaChapelle’s film exemplifies what hooks argues is a “contemporary obsession” amongst white
artists to commodify blackness and appropriate the black image. She argues that if the non-black
people creating or re-presenting these images and critical narratives about blackness or black
people “do not interrogate their perspective, then they may simply recreate the imperial gaze –
the look that seeks to dominate, subjugate, and colonize” (p. 7).
LaChapelle’s decision to create and focus on visual spectacle also conveniently takes
white mainstream culture off the hook. As hooks (1992) notes, seeking an encounter with the
Other for whites is so appealing in part because it “does not require that one relinquish forever
one’s mainstream positionality” (p. 26). In this sense, whites are able to enter – and promptly
abandon – encounters with the Other without repercussion. The ability for whites to wash their
hands clean after consuming the Other is a condition to which LaChapelle and viewers of his
film are privy. A review of Rize in the New York Times’ (2005), in which the film’s dancers are
characterized as “self-organized tribes,” demonstrates this point well: “In addition to inventing a
Rize 21
new form of dancing, and a new competitive enterprise, they have found family, community and,
in more than a few cases, religious faith. What more could you want in a movie?” (Scott, para.
9). The problem of course, is that this is not just a “movie,” it is a story about real, living people.
While Rize is -- despite its short-comings -- an amazing and transformative work, to leave the
film without acknowledging the systemic, socio-economic problems that inner-city youth face
because of such ignorance, is problematic. LaChapelle crosses dangerous territory by leaving
viewers satisfied that as long as these kids “got krump,” they will be alright. Yet more likely,
their struggle is not so contrived. hooks ends her essay Eating the Other with the following
caveat about commodifying the Other: “The over-riding fear is that cultural, ethnic, and racial
differences will be continually commodified and offered up as new dishes to enhance the white
palate – that the Other will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten” (p. 39). Finding ways to negotiate
the fine line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation may be a difficult task, but
for filmmakers especially it must be one that begins with a highly self-reflexive treatment of a
privileged positionality in the subject/object relationship.
Works Cited
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http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=7641
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Scott, A.O. (2005 June, 26). The rise of the winner-take-all documentary. New York
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