willhines.net

Eliza and I saw the documentary “Rize” yesterday which reports on the culture of a type of street dancing in south Los Angeles called “Krumpin.” Part of the story is that krumpin’ rose out of a culture of “clown gangs” in which groups of young black kids would paint clown makeup on their faces and dance and sing — for entertainment or for competition. The clown gangs seemed like a positive and reassuring alternative to gangs for its members. It’s a happy story, and was truly inspiring and compelling.

On the other hand, they’re DRESSED AS CLOWNS. Even though it wasn’t the primary focus of the movie, I was stunned to see how surreal it was to watch groups of 10-15 year olds proudly wandering around the streets together dressed in clown outfits. It seemed like a Harlan Ellison science fiction movie. “In the future, society divided into the Morlocks, the Runners and the Clowns. Goddamned war that brought us to this strange place, where we have to buy water and make food from our old video games.”

It almost looked like the clown gangs were unintentional parodies of old minsterel shows — but it was black men in whiteface rather than vice versa. Blackface shows were a racist and condescending institution, yes? So why would a group of black kids — suffering through poverty — paint their faces and dance to entertain? I’m probably overthinking it, and I feel so unconfident in my understanding of racism that I don’t even feel like I’m allowed to write about minsterel shows, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it while watching the clown gangs. I remember reading once how Bob Gibson, the dominant pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the late 60s and 70s had been a Harlem Globetrotter before he played baseball but quit because he resented clowning around. But these kids were proud, strong and happy — so clearly they weren’t bothered by whatever I was noticing.

At one point, I expected the entire documentary to be a hoax. Like at the end there’d be an announcement “By the way, teenagers in south central Los Angeles don’t dress up as clowns and hang out together. You BELIEVED us? You must be racist, white boy, to believe that life in the poor section of a big city is so different from yours that they’d dress up as clowns in the manner portrayed in this movie. Man, Will Hines, you are a naive fool.”

The probably non-existent paralell with blackface shows was an incidental part. Probably the main part of the movie which I loved was watching the birth of a subculture — how these kids have a true group mind with each other, and establish unspoken rules of code, culture and style. You can’t define Krumping, but you know it when you see it. And the movie seemed to capture it without over-labeling it to the point where it becomes sterile. Very cool.