Tolkien in the Hood: The Sub-Creators of Rize
by Dr. Marc T. Newman
July 8, 2005
(AgapePress) - When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about sub-creators, he was referring to some writers' ability to create a believable fictional world -- a fairy tale. He argued that since humans are created in the image of a Creator, it is not surprising that we should make things as well. And while God created ex nihilo -- out of nothing -- we create out of the raw materials we are given. But what happens when the raw materials one has to work with are pain, murder, poverty, and oppression? While George MacDonald wove from hardship fairy tales such as At The Back of the North Wind, the same elements provide the backdrop for the sub-creators that are the subject of David LaChapelle's documentary film, Rize -- the clowners and crumpers electrifying the South Central Los Angeles street dance scene. LaChapelle transports the audience to a world few of them would ever see otherwise.Clowning (and its offshoot, crumping) is a fast-moving, aggressive, and athletic dance style that started on the streets of South Central as a response to the riots and devastation following the Rodney King trial. The real-life star of Rize, Tommy the Clown, is the patriarch of the clowning dance culture and self-described former bad guy -- once embroiled in violence and drugs. He explains that there were only two outcomes for people like him: prison or death. Tommy was sent to prison, and while there he asked God for a second chance. He got out, turned his life around, and began to perform as a clown for children's parties. Eventually his style of entertaining attracted followers, and Tommy is credited by many with saving their lives. As constructed by LaChapelle, the outworking of the dance movement in Rize bears some resemblance to Tolkien's assessment of fairy tales -- born out of a desire to create fantasy, a sense of recovery, a means of escape, and the desire for consolation in the midst of despair.
MovieMinistry.com's analysis continues below
Publication of this analysis does not constitute endorsement of the film.
Warning: MPAA has given this movie a PG-13 rating for suggestive content, drug references, language, and brief nudity.
Fantasy
The purpose of fantasy is the creation of a secondary world in the place of our primary world. It would be hard to argue with the idea that acting the clown on the hard streets of South Central is anything other than fantasy. Tommy the Clown describes it as performing -- just being a good dancer is not enough. While he is at a children's party he creates an alternative reality -- an enchanted state. People, including many you would not suspect, are drawn into the dream. Smiles appear on children's faces
Reflecting all parts of the crumping movement, LaChapelle demonstrates that the fantasies created are not always good. Some of the women (and even a few of the men) perform "stripper dance" moves. (This, along with some vulgar language, earns Rize its PG-13 rating.) Though clothed, the dances are highly suggestive. But these too evoke a kind of fantasy -- the same bad fantasy that lures men to the seedier parts of town. Some dancers justify the moves as harmless, but I doubt by the looks on their faces that even they believe it.
But the key fantasy that all the crumping and clowning evoke is empowerment. By expressing themselves these dancers are rejecting their primary world of gangs, drugs, and death, and hoping for respect that comes from achievement. As one dancer laments -- in many cities there are schools for ballet and tap, but where they live they have to make do with what they have. And by that she means they will have to make it for themselves, because it is not coming from anywhere else.
Recovery
The second goal of fairy tales that appears in Rize is recovery. "Recovery," Tolkien wrote, "is a regaining, a regaining of a clear view ... seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them." Many people look at urban slums and ghettos with jaded eyes -- including their own inhabitants. One of the dancers laments that the streets are so depressing that for some there is "nothing for them to do but be bad ... if it's around you 24/7 all day, eventually you're gonna get a feeling for it." Another dancer, Lil C, tells the story of his father's suicide, other parents are in jail, former gang bangers, or simply absent. Both viewers and many inhabitants see what is -- but fail to see what was, or what could be. Few viewers would see anything that they would recognize as home.
Early in the film, a dancer comments, "If you're drowning, you grab for a board." The road to escaping the oppression of ghetto life is found, for these young people, in dance. They recover by painting on a mask -- a barrier between themselves and the world -- so they can focus inward and let the dance emerge. LaChapelle intercuts the dancing with archival footage of tribal African dances, creating a (sometimes strained) link with a simpler, but more empowered past. Though none of the dancers draw this parallel, it is clear that they are trying to recover what has been lost -- dignity, achievement, safety, and community.
Escape
The third goal of fairy tales, Tolkien explained, is escape. While some view escape as a negative goal, Tolkien says nonsense, "Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or, if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prisons-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it." When bad circumstances are pervasive, it is not hard to see why people would be looking for a way out.
LaChapelle depicts life in South Central as teeming with death. A 13-year-old dancer is killed in a senseless drive-by shooting. Crips and Bloods, notorious Los Angeles gangs, are incessantly at war. Parents are desperate for their children to join clowning dance troops in the hope that doing so will enable them to escape death. A discount casket shop opens next to Tommy the Clown's studio.
The fierceness of the dance, the expressions of raw athletic power, the mimicry of the King beating, are ways to escape and deny. After coordinating a competition designed to lift the spirits of his community, Tommy the Clown returns to find that his home has been burglarized and he is wiped out. His friend tells him that there is a mansion waiting for him, and perhaps this was a sign that he was not moving out quickly enough. Tommy takes this to heart, put his make-up back on, and escapes back into his positive world of clowning.
Consolation
Little of the fairy tale makes sense, Tolkien noted, if it does not come to a happy ending -- what Tolkien coined the eucatastrophe. Tolkien, however, says that a happy ending does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe -- bad endings. "Sorrow and failure" he wrote, are often precursors to final joy. All good fairy stories look toward final victory, which Tolkien argues finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Gospel of Christ.
Tommy the Clown is the model of perseverance in the film. He takes many of the kids in his neighborhood under his wing, disciplining and mentoring them. He starts a clowning school. Even in the midst of defeat, he keeps going -- hoping for something better down the road.
Tight Eyes "adopts" a young boy, nicknaming him Little Tight Eyes and teaches him to dance. When the boy gets into trouble at school, and it is revealed that his father may be trying to introduce him to gang life, Tight Eyes puts himself on the line as the boy's friend and protector. Tight Eyes praises the young man, and pleasure -- for the first time in the film -- lights up the boy's eyes.
But it is the dancer known as Dragon who seeks true eucatastrophe. The film shows him active in his neighborhood church, and he encourages others, like crumper Miss Prissy, to return -- to give their lives to God. In one of the late scenes in the film, both are dancing in the sanctuary -- recovering some movement from early gospel choirs and incorporating it into their own crumping movements. Miss Prissy, crumping hard-core on the streets, infuses her church dance with ballet. The mood is reverential. The scene ends with people praying.
Documentaries, Fairy Tales, and the Reach of the Gospel
Documentaries are supposed to be stories about real life -- about as far from fantasy as you can get. But LaChapelle structures his film more like a fairy tale -- imaginative, creative people who make something out of very little seek to recover a lost sense of safety and community by escaping deadly circumstances and searching for hope and consolation. The pattern of fairy tales is the pattern of human experience. What we latch onto as children we live out in life.
That said, it would be simple to see in a film like Rize another world -- certainly one far removed from the experience of most of the folks at the upscale independent theater in San Diego where I viewed this film. It would be a shame if Christians sat through a movie like Rize and only thought "well, WE don't dance like THAT" and saw the inhabitants of South Central as aliens. While the pattern of Rize is the pattern of the fairy tale, it is also the pattern of the Gospel. Movies like Rize raise awareness that areas deemed hopeless by many are filled with hopeful people. Christians are called upon by God to be hope-bringers. LaChapelle's film demonstrates that among these imaginative sub-creators are some who are answering that call -- with a vengeance.
Marc T. Newman, PhD (marc@movieministry.com) is the president of MovieMinistry.com -- an organization that provides sermon and teaching illustrations from popular film, and helps the Church use movies to reach out to others and connect with people.
