If you grew up male (as I did) you probably think of your hair as just a part of your head, for which you occasionally employ scissors and a comb to keep it under control and out of the way. At the same time, you were probably vaguely aware that matters hair-related might be a bit more complicated for the fairer half of humanity. Something has to take them that long in the bathroom. But you probably didn’t give it much thought.
Chris Rock has just given it some thought. In “Good Hair”, the acclaimed actor and comedian, now making his debut as a documentary filmmaker, invites his audience into the glittering, pulsating, nine-billion-dollar industry that is black women’s hair. “Good Hair” takes its audience to the beauty schools where stylists are trained, to the salons of Beverly Hills where stars are groomed, to the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show and Battle where the most revered names in black hair ply their craft in front of judges and a vast, seething crowd.
Just how high the competition’s standards are can be illustrated by a comment by one of its judges, explaining why the losing contestant’s acrobatics failed to impress: “Well, she was hanging upside-down. That’s been done too many times before. We need something new”. Actors and activists, men and women of letters, and ordinary people are all interviewed by Mr. Rock with humanity and compassion.
More than anything else, that’s what makes “Good Hair” such fun. Too often, documentaries – especially ones intended to be humorous – are presented as exposes of the unseen and unsightly. We watch them, and we laugh, but we’re still left feeling a bit uneasy knowing how embarrassed all the people in the film must have felt once they saw how foolish they looked. Not so in “Good Hair”.
Questions posed to people are not shockingly audacious, and comments made about people are never cattily irreverent. Everyone interviewed by Mr. Rock is allowed to shine with his own wit and her own charm. Watching them, you never squirm in your seat, thinking “oh, if they could only see themselves …” You only think what warm, vibrant people they are, and how very likable. This, of course, reflects as well on Chris Rock the person as it does on Chris Rock the filmmaker.
“Good Hair” is full of good moments. A particularly effective one is when the camera cuts from an aluminum can that has been disintegrated by being placed in a chemical “relaxant”, to that same chemical being applied in generous dollops to a little girl’s head. When Mr. Rock asks the child why she’s getting her hair relaxed, she smiles indulgently at the strange man’s silly question, and says, “Because you’re supposed to”. Indeed, that’s what we are told by Hollywood starlet and housewife alike throughout the film. It doesn’t matter how chemically corrosive this stuff is, that’s how I want my hair to look. It’s supposed to look that way.
Now this, to me, all seems a trifle excessive. After all, you can’t imagine a man doing something so elaborate and dangerous to himself just to conform to society’s expectations of how he’s “supposed” to look. Well, I suppose we men do put razor-sharp blades to our necks every morning. But it’s not as if it makes us bleed … that much. Usually.
Never mind.