Good Hair

Again, another non-ethnographic film. Good Hair is more of a "social documentary" than anything else. I'm including Good Hair in my blog specifically because of my experience, academically, in the subject matter. I have had the privilege of having a professor for both my undergraduate and my graduate experience whose dissertation and subsequent first book were on the topic of African-American hair. She is one of the most inspiring women I know, and I am compelled to review the film for the sake of my gratitude to her for her wisdom, her guidance, and of course, her friendship. Although I am not African-American, I do feel like the years in her presence have priviliged me somewhat in having an opinion on the film.

Bluntly, I think the filmmaker, Chris Rock, had good intentions on making this film. Right from the outset, he recalls the story of his little daughter asking him one day, "Daddy, why don't I have "good hair?" Compelling, sentimental and even heartbreaking as this moment must have been for a father, Chris Rock, the comedian, opens his film about a very controversial topic clearly outlining his good intentions. Unfortunately, as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with them...

Now, it is not as bad as all that. One must keep in mind the filmmaker is a comedian, not a social scientist, and thus cannot be held accountable for the often times severe crises of representation going on throughout the documentary. The main point of the film is correct; the notion that "black" textured hair is "bad" and that "white" textured hair is "good," basically enforcing a hegemonic ideal of beauty. However, the concept is problematized in a self-deprecating, almost stereotypically self-fulfilling prophetic way. What should be an eye-opening confrontation of the facts, tends to be more of a display of the wackiness of "Black" hair shows, and an exploitation of Black hair product consumers, not by "white people" but by the few African American run Black hair care businesses.

For me, the most brilliant part of the film is when Rock asks people about "relaxer," the hair product that turns "bad hair" to "good hair." He sardonically points out that although the term denotes the "relaxing" of the hair itself, the connotation could really be read as a social lubricant, to, "make white people relax" when confronted with difference. This critique into the constructs of the everyday language used to describe Black hair is what most closely resembles a critical analysis in the significance of the "social" part of the documentary. It is along this linguistic theme, as displayed in the film's title, that the investigation of this "study" most closely resembles the culturally responsible work of my professor, "My overarching goals for this book were to present situated and 'lived' accounts of the role of hair and language in the formation of Black women's identities... I likewise sought to illuminate how, when, and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences and how it is they work out, either by themselves or with others, when exactly 'hair is just hair' and, alternatively, 'hair is not just hair' " (Jacobs-Huey 129). My advice to Rock would be to have read Jacobs-Huey's book, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care before setting out to represent the counter-hegemonic goals of Good Hair.

A good test would have been, as I believe comedian Dave Chappelle is utterly aware of, when dealing with race, are you seeking to get an audience to laugh with, or at your subjects/research participants?

cheers

Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care. Oxford University Press.

Good Hair (Jeff Stilson 2009)