Salina Art Center

Chris Rock has been called the funniest man in America by Time magazine, and his biting, brutally honest, sometimes angry, but empathetic style of comedy has invited comparisons to Richard Pryor and George Carlin, comedians who often used stand-up to deliver some bitter or politically incorrect truths about race, class, youth, and popular culture. Rock’s profane, perplexed persona—he seems honestly baffled by the foolishness and hypocrisy he uncovers—has been popularized on a series of hit HBO specials, appearances in cult films such as Dogma, and through the autobiographical television show Everybody Hates Chris. Rock is particularly fearless about African-American culture and how blacks relate to whites and to one other. So it makes sense that Rock bravely tackles a touchy issue that controversial filmmaker Spike Lee first introduced to “mainstream” America back in 1988 in his feature School Daze. The issue is “good hair”—specifically, the obsessive interest with “good hair” within parts of the female African-American community, and the surrounding sub-culture that has developed to feed, support, and profit from that interest. “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?” asked Rock’s young daughter one day—she wanted to have her hair artificially straightened like her friends and classmates had done theirs. That simple question prompted Rock to make a documentary that takes audiences of any race on an enlightening, humorous journey not just into African-American attitudes and interests, but into the differences between how men and women perceive “beauty” and what physical appearance means to them. Though treated with a light touch, there is a serious underlying theme to the film: there are women who undergo expensive, dangerous, and painful hair treatments that deform their hair’s natural look, to achieve a paradigm of beauty created outside their own race. But it’s too easy to dismiss the hair craze as simply a sub-conscious attempt to “look white.” As Rock discovers, hair style is a form of empowerment, a way of gaining ownership of something, of expressing one’s self, of carving out a personal identity with the “material” one was born with. Rock gets laughs, but not at the expense of the interview subjects, which include celebrities such as poet Maya Angelou, actresses Nia Long and Raven-Symone, and hip-hop duo Salt-n-Pepa. Through Rock’s incredulous eyes—no one does incredulous quite as well as Rock—we see the tortuous process which many African-American women willingly undergo to obtain their ideal look: chemicals that burn the scalp (and face and lungs), extensions that utilize hair purchased from destitute women from other countries, and the use of instruments that don’t make hair “behave” so much as “beg for mercy.”  Rock visits the various hair trends of the 20th century, noting the popularity of “natural” style Afros and dreadlocks in the 1960’s and ‘70’s (when “Black is Beautiful” was a pervasive slogan), and he looks at how those looks have been assimilated into today’s culture as esoteric “fashion” rather the political statement they once were.  Rock’s narration is often cutting (pardon the pun) and his interview style is friendly and engaging—we sense that he is extracting truths that others would never get—and he’s respectful of those who are caught up in the hair mania. But as Rock shows us, “black hair” is an industry worth billions of dollars, generating not only its own unique products but strange spectacles like kitschy, Las Vegas-worthy hairdressing competitions where hair styling is less important than how much flair the hairdresser shows while styling his subjects. Good Hair is a highly entertaining, funny, and un-condescending look at how, for many Americans, hair has become theater: glitzy, showy, expressive, outrageous—but beneath the braggadocio, a little sad and troubled.