Goodfellas and Hip Hop

I am a little surprised that this controversy still exists. It feels a little ’90s. A few months ago at the gym, I looked up at the monitor and saw 50 Cent on the Rachael Ray Show. A similar spectacle would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. When I was growing up, there was no way Snoop Dogg was getting a slot on Regis and Kathie Lee. In other words, rap music and hip hop, which long ago overtook rock and roll’s claim to rebellion, may have been softened somehow. No one takes Ice T seriously as a “cop killer” anymore, especially now that he plays a cop on TV. The President of the United States references Jay-Z in his speeches.

I was intrigued by Smith-Shomade’s qualified claims on how women have taken some varied and interesting roles in films like New Jack City, partly by still conforming to masculine ideals. Hip hop has often been scapegoated for perpetuating misogyny and homophobia. (Yes, much of hip hop is misogynistic and homophobic, but it was really odd to see Bill O’Reilly, of all people, bludgeoning the music for those very reasons, some years ago.) That makes the way Smith-Shomade sees ways in which the culture of gangsta cinema may provide a strange small step towards female redefinition more interesting.

I’m tip-toeing around this week’s question: “Is Hip-hop music and hip-hop films a reflection of urban atrocities or does it facilitate the behavior that many critique it for in the public sphere?” I would say that it does a little bit of both. It neutralizes for some a need to commit violence by providing a sharp verbal artistic outlet for a certain kind of aggression. It may also contribute to a culture that consistently degrades women. I think of an almost all-white film like “Goodfellas” which was an honest critique of a world of mafia sociopaths, while still showing all the reasons why a life in the mafia is so appealing. There’s a way in which we rock out to the violence in Goodfellas, to “Layla” and Donovan’s “Atlantis.” That push-pull experience may not be that far from the experience we may have with hip hop culture.