"Good Hair"

-written and produced by chris rock
2009
It would be hard to overstate how much hope i had for this film. A documentary about the things black women do to their hair, prompted by chris' young daughter coming up to him and asking "daddy, why don't i have good hair?" In the world of straightening (and now weaves), black women have been horribly torturing themselves inside and out for many generations, striving to live up to a barbie doll world...but the time has long since passed when this problem can be blamed solely on the mass media images we're sold every day. Malcolm x was railing against this problem in the sixties, correctly identifying it as nothing less than racial self-hatred. It's about trying to be white, and every intelligent person in the world has long been waiting for black women to love themselves as much as we do. But if anything, the problem only gets worse. Black girls learn at an early age to devalue themselves. Many mothers start straightening their daughters' hair at the age of five, or younger.
So my hopes were sky-high. This film had enormous potential as a trigger for sanity...something hip, funny, and scathing from one of the world's most beloved comedians. And the movie is occasionally brilliant. Chris shows the health risks and searing pain involved in exposing a human being to sodium hydroxide, the chemical in "relaxers". He serves up the staggering impracticality - how straightened women must avoid water, and weaved women may NOT BE TOUCHED, even in the most intimate circumstances. He exposes the conflicted attitudes in the black community, plus the staggering economic burden black women choose for themselves (and the fact that most of that money goes right into white or asian hands). He provides a global view of black women's willful servitude, and indian women's compulsory servitude. But ultimately, chris backs off from taking any strong stand. He could have made a film that changed people's lives, but it's like his HBO bosses told him not to offend anyone - especially housewives in Iowa. He interviews maya angelou, and DOESN'T ask the hard, obvious question - WHY would she start straightening at the age of seventy, when she had seemingly spent a lifetime making the racially proud choice? He similarly soft-serves al sharpton. I love that he interviews a black actress who keeps it natural, but an untouched afro would have been a better choice than coils. There's a brilliant group talk in a barbershop in which chris gets one man to admit that some black men prefer white women because they can have more intense physical intimacy. He finishes the film with a half-hour segment covering the most famous annual black hair show, but it's wasted time. A far better (and funnier) choice would have been to stage a mock game show, in which four black women (one straightened, one weave, one afro, and one bald) would be seated on the stage, facing away, in booths where they cannot see or hear each other. The contestants then have to choose which head they want to run their fingers through. Any contestant who picks the weave triggers alarm bells and a klaxon shouting "DON'T TOUCH, DON'T TOUCH, DON'T TOUCH", and is expelled from the show immediately.
"Good Hair" - a good movie that should have been great.
Postscript: A friend tells me that there may finally be a growing movement of young black women rejecting the straightened/weave world. Is it possible i was too hard on this film? In either case, hallelujah brothers and sisters.