Rize

Rochelle Siemienowicz reviews the movie Rize:

Down in the slums of Los Angeles, there is a new dance movement transforming the lives of underprivileged kids. It's called 'krumping' and it's so fast and athletic that the makers of this film have to tell us that the footage hasn't been sped up. The dancers move as if possessed, both by the spirits of their African ancestors and a furious rage at their powerlessness - Rodney King is often invoked. Instead of joining gangs, they paint their faces like clowns and engage in non-violent competitive dance-offs with rival troupes.

Made by music video director and Vanity Fair photographer David LaChappelle, Rize is sometimes unfocussed and sloppy, seemingly unsure of whether it wants to glorify or objectively observe what it finds. Nevertheless, it's full of pummelling energy and arresting visuals as it traces the roots of krumping back to an ex-jailbird called Tommy the Clown, who first combined hip hop music and dance with children's birthday parties. Today, more than 100 groups practise this 'ghetto-ballet'. Their pride and courage is inspiring (and, honestly, a little scary), and you only hope that they'll find a way to move their politics beyond their beautiful, gyrating bodies.

Siemienowicz, Rochelle (2005), 'Rize', The Big Issue, No. 241, 07-22 Nov 2005, p.36

Emphasis Mine

What Dr. Siemienowicz did not mention was the racism behind the origin of the dance: this was promoted as something that black people could do that white people couldn't. This gave the dancers a sense of false pride. They have fully absorbed the racist propaganda of a Capitalist society. Malcolm X has been forgotten. The only mention of Dr. King was on the closing credits from his I have a dream speech:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Towards the end of the film, a white youth and an Asian youth are shown participating in the dance, and being accepted by the black dancers.

Thoughout the film, the dancers comment that they are oppressed or discriminated against, but they do not move beyond that. When they do not try to understand the oppression or discrimination, they are accepting it as part of their life. It is just another part of their lives as is drugs and the gangs. Forty years have erased the memories of the marches and the speeches of the Civil Rights era. The dancers are angry without having any way of understanding the source of that anger. They use dance to drain that anger out.

One problem with black liberation (whatever its manifestation - marches, dance, music) is that it attracts poor whites, Asians, and Hispanics. But with this aggregation of non-blacks, the blacks feel overwhelmed. The problems of the blacks are big enough without all these other poor people tagging along. Blacks want to solve the problems of blacks not everyone else's. The blacks then try to exclude the others by saying that they should solve their own problems.

With this exclusion, the politics of blacks do not develop beyond racism. This attitude entrenches racism further by dividing people into races. Instead, the blacks should welcome the others in their struggle and expand their struggle to include all poor people as Malcolm X and Dr. King were starting to do before they were assassinated. The struggle is a class struggle of the poor against the rich. It is not black against white.