Good Hair is a 2009 American comedy documentary film produced by
Chris Rock Productions and
HBO Films, starring and narrated by
comedian Chris Rock. Premiering at the
Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2009,
Good Hair was released to select theaters in the
United States by
Roadside Attractions on October 9, 2009, opening across the country on October 23. The film focuses on
African American women's hair, including the styling industry surrounding it, the acceptable look of African American women's hair in society, and the effects of both upon
African American culture.
Rock intended for the film to uphold a sense of seriousness, yet at the same time remain humorous. as they discuss their own experiences with their hair, and how black hair is perceived in the black community.
Lawsuit from Regina Kimbell
On October 5, 2009,
documentary filmmaker Regina Kimbell filed a lawsuit in a
Los Angeles court against Chris Rock Productions, HBO Films, and
Good Hair's American and international distributors. Kimbell charges that Rock's film is an illegal
infringement of her similarly themed documentary
, which she says she screened for Rock in 2007. While Kimbell sought an injunction against the wide release of
Good Hair, a federal judge allowed Rock's film to be released as scheduled.
Themes
The main focus in the film is the extreme lengths that black women are willing to go through in order to look a certain way. A common ideology in the African American culture is that the straighter the hair, the prettier the woman. On the contrary, a woman wearing her hair naturally (with no chemical processing) is viewed as unkempt or unprofessional. Black women are willing to spend thousands of dollars on their hair, even if they cannot afford to do so.
An example of this is seen in when examining the economy during the end of March 2009 when the unemployment rate doubled for married couples with children under the age of eighteen (Crawford, 6). During this time, white middle class women were observed trying to save money by frequenting salons less and purchasing home dye kits. In a study of one thousand women who visited hair salons to dye their hair, 15% claimed to purchase home dye-kits instead. There was also a report of a 20% increase in sales of Root Touch-Up by Clairol. These are the type of products marketed for white women (Crawford, 7). Black women during the same period, however, were observed to be less affected by the falling economy. One possible reason for this could be because salons have a different role for African-American women than white women. They serve as a support system that enables the women a sense of normalcy in the poorer times (Crawford, 9). Society also creates a strong bond between a black woman’s identity and her hair.
Identity
In
Good Hair, Rock explains how a black woman’s hair can affect her daily activity (avoiding activities that may cause her hair to get wet and ruining her weave), wallets (weaves can cost thousands of dollars), and sex lives (men are forced to accept a "hands-off” policy). Rock explains that because a black woman’s hair is such an investment, men are often not allowed to touch it during sex. Rock says, "...You are conditioned not to even go there. When I was a dating guy, I dated women from different races. Anytime I was with an Asian or a Puerto Rican girl or a white girl, my hands would constantly be in their hair. Like my hands were thirsty.” The type of hairstyle that a black woman has can sometimes act as a predictor of what she is willing to do (
The Oprah Winfrey Show).
Hair plays a very complex role for black women. Paulette Caldwell, a law professor writes, "I want to know my hair again, to own it, to delight in it again, to recall my earliest mirrored reflection when there was no beginning and I first knew that the person who laughed at me and cried with me and stuck out her tongue at me was me. I want to know my hair again, the way I knew it before I knew that my hair is me, before I lost the right to me, before I knew that the burden of beauty – or lack of it – for an entire race of people could be tied up with my hair and me” (Crawford, 9). Caldwell illustrates how her identity has become dependent on her hair and how she yearns to separate the two in order to once again have her own identity, one in which hair does not play a role. Because of how strongly society connects a black woman’s hair to her identity, it is understandable why black hair care has developed into a 9 billion dollar business.
Black women being defined by their hair is not a new concept in media. In Simi Bedford’s Yoruba Girl Dancing, Remi is a young girl who has beautiful hair that is well cared for. However, when Remi must go to England for boarding school, her grandmother wants her to cut off her hair because the Europeans won’t know what to do with it. Because Remi’s hair is cut off, part of her identity gets striped from her when the Europeans cannot tell whether Remi is a boy or a girl (Crawford, 9).
Conforming
In the documentary, Chris Rock raises the question of why black women go through such lengths when it comes to their hair. He makes viewers ponder if the reason for this is because black women want to look whiter. Rock is quoted as saying, “I knew women wanted to be beautiful, but I didn’t know the lengths they would go to, the time they would spend – and not complain about it. In fact, they appear to look forward to it” (Puente).
In “Good Hair and Bad Hair: What this seems to say about us,” Gordon Allport expresses his idea that groups who are oppressed internalize the ideologies of their oppressors. When it comes to the concept of what is defined as good hair and bad hair, he believes this is a representation of African Americans internalizing the concept from their oppressors, the slave masters. President Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that there were two physical characteristics that separated whites and blacks, this was their skin tone and hair texture (Davis, 2). By having the idea that the natural African American hair needs to be straightened in order to be considered beautiful, Allport believes this represents the African Americans expressing their internalized ideologies of their oppressors.
Weaves
In the black hair business, the most profitable portion is the sale and maintenance of
weaves. Women can expect to invest six to eight hours in the salon getting their hair braided into sections and then having tracks of hair attached onto the braids. After women get their weave, they regularly come back into the salon for
hair washing,
conditioning, and tightening. In the documentary, Rock learned that some women will spend upwards to $1000 for a weave and if they cannot afford it, they can put it on layaway.
The most desirable hair for weaves come from India. Much of this hair comes from a hair shaving process that is part a tonsuring ceremony performed at the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple. Over 10 million people shave their heads because they believe that hair is a vanity and they give it up as a self-sacrificing act to the Hindu Gods. The hair collected from the temple is then sold around the world (The Oprah Winfrey Show).
Relaxers
Sometimes referred to as “creamy crack,” the hair relaxer is another integral product in black hair care. Women of other ethnicities usually use a perm as a way to curl their hair, but the opposite is true for black women who perm their hair to get it straight. Sodium hydroxide is the active ingredient in relaxers and it is strong enough to burn through a soda can if left in the solution for long enough, or a woman’s hair. This is why Rock pleads for parents to stop exposing their young children to relaxers. He argues that they shouldn’t have to worry about their hair until at least their teenage years (
The Oprah Winfrey Show).
White people dealing with black hair
Jason Griggers, a white hairstylist in the film, believes that
Good Hair has helped to break barriers between whites and blacks and helped to spark dialog. When he started the competition, there were very few white people, but he says that it is much more integrated now. Griggers has been embraced in the black community as somebody who can work wonders on black hair.
However, in Hairtage: Women Writing Race in Children’s Literature, Dianne Johnson questions whether white people truly understand the concept of “good hair” and the meaning behind it. A scandal broke out when Ruth Sherman, a white schoolteacher in Brooklyn, shared the story Nappy Hair with her predominately black elementary school students. Many people were outraged by the cover of the book in which there was a caricature of a young black girl with a big Afro. This image combined with the usually negative term “nappy” upset the nearby residence enough that they wanted Sherman removed from the school. However, many of the students' parents supported Sherman (Johnson, 343).
Natural hair viewed as undesirable
Natural African American hair has been viewed as undesirable for over one hundred years . In
Hairtage: Women Writing Race in Children’s Literature, Dianne Johnson shares an advertisement from “The Gift of the Good Fairy” in the early 1900s that reads, “Once upon a time there lived a Good Fairy whose daily thoughts were of pretty little boys and girls and of beautiful women and handsome men and of how she might make beautiful those unfortunate ones whom nature had not given long, wavy hair and a smooth, lovely complexion” (Johnson, 338). This was an advertisement for
Madam C.J. Walker’s hair products that were targeted towards black women. The advertisement depicts any hair that isn’t wavy and smooth as undesirable and something that the Good fairy has to fix. Over a hundred years later, black women still value straight hair.
African American hair that has not been treated with chemicals can be referred to as nappy, a negative connotation for their hair. This type of hair is looked down upon even within the African American communities. The term originates from a time when natural, coarse hair was considered ugly and undesirable.
Discrimination
A black woman’s hair can also represent
discrimination within the work world where certain hairstyles are prohibited. These are the hairstyles that have historically been worn by black women, such as
braids. In “Rogers v. American Airlines,” the court ruled in favor of the American Airline and allowed them to ban women wearing their hair in a braided fashion (Crawford, 10).
Interviews with celebrities
Throughout the documentary, many celebrities are featured such as
Nia Long,
Ice-T,
Raven-Symoné, Dr.
Maya Angelou,
Salt-n-Pepa,
Eve,
Tracie Thoms, and Reverend
Al Sharpton. They provide their own insights on “good hair” as well as their own personal stories in dealing with black hair. In addition to celebrity interviews, Rock also enters Santa Monica High School, hair salons and barbershops, and hair dealers to gain more insight from black teenagers, and men and women.
One of the interview subjects in Good Hair was actress Nia Long. She says, “There’s always this sort of pressure within the black community like, if you have good hair, you’re prettier or better than the brown-skinned girl that wears the Afro or the dreads or the natural hairstyle.” The question in the documentary that Rock brings up is the reasoning behind this. He questions why what is considered “beauty” is what doesn’t come naturally to African-American women. They are forced to endure sometimes-painful hair treatments in order to achieve this definition of beauty. If the treatments, such as hair relaxers, are done improperly, they can actually cause hair loss or burns on the scalp.
Rock also interview the Reverend Al Sharpton in the documentary. Sharpton says, “We wear our economic oppression on our heads.” He is referring to the fact that the multibillion-dollar hair business has shifted from African-American manufacturers to Asian manufacturers. Even though these products are targeted towards black consumers, Asians are the ones who are making the money from the products (Catsoulis).
Oprah
Rock has been featured on
Oprah twice for his work with
Good Hair. The first time Rock was there to promote the film and the second time he was there to discuss the reactions after the film’s release. During his second appearance, a roundtable of black women was gathered to discuss hair and self-esteem. Mikki Taylor, beauty and cover editor for
Essence magazine, believes that it is a good thing that the subject is being talked about, but notes that the term “good hair” is no longer relevant to many young black women today. She believes that what is considered “good hair” is now what is considered healthy hair. She questions, “When will our hair cease to be political? Every other group of women can do what they want with their hair, and it’s not seen as making a statement. We’re over that, and we wish everyone else would be over it, too.” Ayana Byrd, an editor for
Glamour magazine, says, “The point is not to say hair is good or bad, it’s to say that once we work through the history behind our hair, we can get to a place where it can just be hair.” (Puente)
Criticism
The film exposes the pressures that African American women feel to conform to the mainstream definition of beauty. Some people were upset with the documentary exposing the extreme lengths that black women go through to obtain the “perfect” hairstyle. Chris-Tia Donaldson, a Chicago lawyer says, “You’re putting all of our business in the street. Why are you pulling the curtain back?” (Puente). She believes the documentary does not dig further into the root of the problem by saying, “The deeper issue continues to be glossed over, which is why do minority women in America feel so much pressure to conform to a mainstream standard of beauty that is hard to attain?” She believes that the documentary only touches on a superficial level of the problem while ignoring all other minorities who try to alter their appearance in striving for the mainstream definition of beauty.
One example that Donaldson may be referring to is that Rock doesn’t address how Chinese men wore their hair in a certain way because it was what was considered the norm. In Johnson’s Hairtage: Women Writing Race in Children’s Literature, she describes how a long ponytail was sometimes worn by Chinese men simply for aesthetic reasons (Johnson, 341). Many critics feel that Rock’s documentary is very one sided and only introduces the idea of “good hair” and doesn’t examine all of its layers. It merely focuses on African Americans who, according to Johnson, want their hair to be similar to those in power, the white people (Johnson, 341).
Other critics say that Rock didn’t go far enough to provide context for the hair choices of women. One side argues that Rock ignores the on-going movement by black women to “go natural” and not conform to the European straight hair style, but Rock has no mention of this in the film. On the other hand, supporters of the film believe it is groundbreaking and argue that it is some of Rock’s best work.
Audience’s opinion of the documentary also varies. Some believe that the film is a great look into African-American culture while others are angry saying that it portrays black women as foolish and make them out to be laughingstock. Regardless of critic and audience opinion about the film, Rock, for the most part, is praised for at the very least bringing the subject into mainstream view. Many just wish that there was more context in the film.
Senior writer for Entertainment Weekly, Alynda Wheat, is one of the people who give Rock credit for bringing attention to the subject, but refutes the idea that a woman who chooses to go to the hair salon has racial identity issues and want to be white. Wheat argues, “I have absolutely no desire to be white, and no one I know sits down in a stylist’s chair because they want to be white. If you’re going to educated people about something, it should be representative of a larger whole than just some actresses or one crazy shop where a weave costs $1,000.” In response to this, Rock states that he isn’t attacking black women for their hair choices, but rather the only thing he has a problem with is putting toxic relaxers on a toddler’s hair. He believes that all hair is good hair. Rock doesn’t believe that the documentary is exposing any secrets since all the products that are featured in the film can be found at any drug store. Likewise, anybody can walk down the street and take a look into a beauty salon and see the same hair practices being performed. Nothing is being done behind closed doors.
In the film, critics such as Zorianna Kit also believe that another weak part of was the Bronner Bros. hair battle which was said to be a spectacle to watch, but is ultimately uninteresting and had little merit being in the film.
Response to criticism
Rock’s response to critics who believed his film was one-sided and didn’t focus on black women who chose to wear their hair naturally was, “That would be like doing a story on ‘Hey, there’s no toxins in the water. Or, ‘Let’s do a story on people who didn’t get murdered yesterday.” Rock wanted to depict the extreme lengths that black women go through in order to obtain “good hair,” not the lack of extreme lengths that black women go through. Actress Raven Symone comes to Rock’s defense by saying, “This movie is not about the ‘natural’ part about hair. It’s the fact that we put in fake hair to make it look natural.”
In response to the lack of more context in the film, Rock says, “My first intent is always to make people laugh, but at the same time, put a little Oprah in there. Put a little information in there... a little positivity. It’s not important what’s on top of your head – it’s important what’s inside of your head. That is the theme of the movie.” Rock expresses that his first job is to be a comedian, and if people are able to learn more from the film, then that’s great (The Oprah Winfrey Show).
Reception
Critical
The film has met with acclaim from critics.
Good Hair currently holds a 95% "certified fresh" rating on aggregate review website
Rotten Tomatoes based on 78 reviews, with an average score of 7.4/10. Another review aggregation website,
Metacritic, based on 100 reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average score of 72/100 based on 27 reviews.
Box office
Good Hair opened in limited release on October 9, 2009, becoming the fourteenth highest grossing film for the weekend of October 9–11, 2009 with $1,039,220 in 186 theaters with a $5,587 average. The film expanded to 466 theaters on October 23.
References
12. Kit, Zorianna.
Chris Rock's Good Hair: Something To Talk About Huffington Post: 10/11/09.
Bibliography
Catsoulis, Jeannette. "Good Hair (2009) October 9, 2009 Look but Don’t Touch: It’s All About the Hair." The New York Times. N.p., 09 Mar 2009. Web. 01 Feb 2011. .
“Chris Rock's Good Hair." The Oprah Winfrey Show. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Feb 2011. .
Crawford, Bridget. "The Currency of White Women's Hair in a Down Economy ." Social Science Research Network (2011): 1-17. Web. 05 Feb 2011. .
Davis, Patrick. "Good hair and bad hair: What this seems to say about us." bnet. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Feb 2011. .
Johnson, Dianne. "Hairtage: Women Writing Race in Children's Literature." Project Muse 28.2 (2009): 337-355. Web. 05 Feb 2011.
Kit, Zorianna. "Chris Rock's Good Hair Documentary: Something to Talk About." The Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Feb 2011. .
Puente, Maira. "Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' gets tangled up in controversy ." USA Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb 2011. .
External links
Category:2009 films
Category:American films
Category:English-language films
Category:2000s documentary films
Category:African American documentaries
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