When Keeping it Real goes Wrong

In celebration of Black History Month, I like to expand my horizons - watch black cinema and culture and see the myriad of contributions that have been made to our society (not that we don't see that enough every day, we now have a federally-imposed month to remind us). Gone are the days of Amos and Andy, Li'l Black Sambo, and the 70's Blaxploitation era of Super Fly and Shaft. Instead there is today's cleaned-up, politically correct BET and Oprah to off-set these traditional stereotypes, but I like to go for more of the underground film producer - one who likes to keep it as real as possible, and as a result I give to you ROCK STARS - the documentary of crack cocaine users in New Jersey. It is funny and shameless at the same time. Just like Bumfights, you have people who are willing to degrade themselves for the camera, although not through the use of violence. You see these crack heads light up and tweak at the same time, and then do the "crack head bend" looking for the same piece of rock that they've already smoked. The film producer interviews about 4 or 5 people total and has them hold toy guitars while they're speaking, in an obvious exploitation theme. One woman claims to have had 9 kids, but 3 of them died since she was too busy trying to get her next fix. Some guy is missing the fingers on one of his hands and only has a thumb that he uses to hold his crack pipe. Another woman claims that some thugs beat her in the cooch with a hammer. When asked as to how this whole affliction entered the ghetto, they blame "whitey" each and every time, even though they score from their neighbors down the street. I don't know about you, but last time I checked, the Colombian drug cartels that ship this crap into our nation were predominantly hispanic, but I could be completely off on this one! What's sad (or depending on how you look at it, humorous) is that these drug addicts all think that some how their problems will magically disappear one day, and that some great supernatural hand will deliver them like Moses and the Jews from Egypt. Never once do any of them say "I'm gonna get help and stay clean". If there is any take home message they all agree on, is that not to get started on drugs, with their hollow lives as being quite possibly the best example as a result.

While there is an honest attempt to bring to mainstream media the problem that drug addiction has on the streets, the whole thing smacks of someone trying to get rich off of another person's affliction. It's shameless capitalism at it's worst, only because the whole thing was poorly put together. Anthony Quinn, the producer, can take some lessons from those assholes who made the Bumfights series if he ever wants to make a sequel to this otherwise complete waste of film by using "Bling-Bling" the crack-head for some comic relief and by taking more of a Jerry Springer approach to it.