Welcome to all new edition to my blog post. This is a new series where every now and then we will review different types of films/movies. To start off the series, we will be looking at the film “Rize” by David Lachapelle. This film is about building a sense of community, and a sense of belongingness. It is about creating laughter, releasing anger and just having fun at the same time. I bet when many of us try to picture this community, the majority of us would not picture a community in the heart of South-Central Los Angeles.
One of the first connection to South Central Los Angeles for the general public would be, drugs, gangs and violence. But, deep inside the community, there is a man trying to change the future for people who live in South Central. He might be a hero to many of these kids, but to the kids he is just a clown. This man goes by the name of Tommy the Clown. Tommy the Clown was once in these children shoes, where it is extremely easy to go down the wrong path. Tommy, in his, past was a drug dealer, and ended up going to jail where he started to realize he needed to change his life. Tommy as a result decided to create his own gang, the clown gang.
As a clown in South Central, he ended up building a reputation as a funny and interactive clown who loved to street dance. This type of dancing was called “clowning”. Through the years, everyone wanted Tommy the Clown at their birthday party. Besides being at birthday parties, Tommy allowed “clowning” to expanded into different groups of clowns, where you dance. By allowing there to be different groups, tommy gave other people a purpose, by letting everyone know who they are; they were ultimately getting the respect they always wanted without having to join a violent gang.
Many of these “clowns” came up from a rough upbringing, from being shot from their own dad, to another dad committing suicide, to having to save your mom by going to a crack house to get your mom out of there. These types of pasts create so much anger inside of you. Clowning and krumping is a perfect way to channel that anger and let it out through dancing.
This all may seem weird to us but Dragon (a clown within the community) made a solid point stating that “in better communities, you have ballet, performing art schools, jazz, all the prestigious art schools that you can go to. But in our communities, we don’t have that. Music always helps people, and when you hear music you want to dance, so that’s what we do. In these communities, these dances are a way of bringing people together”. Having said all that I started to realize that the hardest thing for these individuals is life outside of clowning still cannot be ignored. Friends are still getting shot for no reason, and drugs are still present in their neighborhood. Clowning offers them to cope with this life, which makes this film such an interesting watch and one that I will remember for a very long time. I encourage you all to give it a chance.
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