| RATING: | 80% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
White culture, being insular, is always ripe for mockery - as proves to be the case here.
Smart parody of the British musical scene of the 1960s-80s with musical-instrument playing US actors offering realistic English accents and the correct English idiom to send-up popular music combos such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Animals.
Where this movie really scores lies in its depiction of what happens when Whites appropriate a Black musical form and then proceed to do it to death. Because they never invented the particular musical style, they do not really understand it and so do not know when to move on to the next big thing.
As this so-called rockumentary progresses (actually a mockumentary), we see a White Heavy Metal band on the way down, commercially, not only because their talent is markedly mediocre - and they refuse to accept this simple fact - but because they are out of date and lack the innovative ability to capture the changing zeitgeist.
But herein lies the problem with this movie. If it had really gone into why White popular culture is so lackluster it could have moved from being mere parody to becoming a brilliant satire. There is a wealth of colonialist comedy material for a White music form that steals from Black Americans, regurgitates it for White Americans - mostly by Brits - and then expresses a certain resentment at those Whites who make the most money from it; while the music’s originators move on to pastures new; making less money than those who copy them.
White popular music is shown here as more of a confidence trick on the public than a culture expressing itself with clarity because it has something to say. But this is rather a superficial look at a music group - and a culture - that refuses to grow up; remaining mired in endless cultural repetition and psychological immaturity.
No comments:
Post a Comment