Directed by John Singleton
Written by John Singleton
Starring Tyrese Gibson, Taraji P. Henson, Omar Gooding, Ving Rhames
USA, 2001
There is not one scene in Baby Boy in which we see interracial communication, and that’s important, or at least it should be; Singleton’s South Central is a tragic child of segregation, one stuck in a time warp of oppression. But the director doesn’t get under the skin of the possible ramifications or of the implied self-infliction. Critic Armond White referred to Angie Stone’s “Brotha” music video to explain Ali, and in the same clip – an propagandist adulation of black men; the relative opposite of Baby Boy – we see segregation also, save for one fleeting moment in which a black doctor is seen with a multiracial group of coworkers, signifying his worth and success. The trend of extreme race-centrism meaning empowerment is discouraging; particularly in music, there is a sense of racial exclusion as street credibility, even though the audiences of what we call “black music” are becoming more diverse. Perhaps unrelated is one of the most humorous and astonishing errors I’ve seen, which is the VH1 music video show “Soul” that features hardly anything but black pop and dance artists who have no connection to the titular genre (this may be less offensive than Michael Mann’s lazy, insulting use of classic soul music in Ali to fill the gaping emotional holes in his movie).
Singleton, who starts the film off like he wants to make a sociopolitical statement, doesn’t take a stand on whether he thinks this is helpful or harmful; actually, he’s vague throughout, switching from the failed initial theme of Society-As-Villain to his newly discovered individualism. In Boyz N the Hood, the emotional thrust was that it was the System that was doing the oppressing, that was holding back these ghetto children from leading good lives. In Higher Learning, it was some natural post-adolescent inner longing to conform to the ideas of those who make you feel you belong. In Baby Boy, Jody’s just a loser. There aren’t any strong, concrete references to pop culture’s influence on the black man. There are only his petty excuses.
In this way, the film shares more in common with Catcher in the Rye and this year’s fabulous Ghost World than it does with the comfortable politics of Stanley Kramer. Singleton doesn’t have much to say about the state of the black man, nor does he capture the laziness and hopelessness of baby boys on the brink of adulthood. What creates this stigma of being a black man in America? Singleton finds one poignant comparison when he sticks a huge poster of Tupac (whom he worked with on Poetic Justice) on Jody’s wall; like the poet-thug rap icon who stares down at Jody like a guardian angel, our antihero struggles between his love for his girlfriend and baby’s mama (Taraji P. Henson) and his habit of getting sex from the strippers and hoes. There’s also an undercurrent of violence because, if he slaps his girl, he’ll be continuing the misogynist black man stereotype he hates and wants to shield his own single mother (A.J. Johnson) from. Singleton makes a complex assertion that everyday occurrences and accidents that span all races can be misconstrued to shape these stereotypes. But what is he saying when, later on in the film, Jody plans to go kill a few kids who beat him up, as if he were possessed? We wonder if Jody will eventually be shot to death like his not-so-perfect role model. The Tupac symbolism is too easy, though; just as Baby Boy is not the definitive statement on the issue or on African American popular art, Tupac cannot and is too conveniently made a spokesperson for the black male image of the ‘90s.
As in other Singleton films, Baby Boy is worth seeing mainly for its actors. Remember when he brought our attention to Angela Bassett, who remains a consistently compelling presence on the screen today (despite her disappointing choice in roles)? In Tyrese Gibson and Taraji P. Henson, he has found two more wonderful talents. I would not have guessed that Tyrese, formerly a model and singer, had any artistic ability whatsoever, judging from his embarrassingly tedious R&B fare, but here he shows surprising depth. The greater find is Henson, who has irresistible comic timing. Her role is less complex, but she makes it even more profound a statement than the character of Jody. Just as Rosalind Russell did in His Girl Friday, Henson turns lovers’ bickering into sexual tension and, like Russell, she revels in the freedom of her role. But she does something else too; her character becomes the woman in every song the young Aretha Franklin sang, but Jody’s girlfriend can’t quite pull off the façade of the strong black female, the one pop culture effortlessly pushes. The cracks show; she’s the woman demanding “Respect,” but she’s also the one who moaned, “There ain’t no way for me to love you,” and the one who proclaimed, “I’m a fool for you, baby!” Henson’s shtick is borrowed, but she adds the emotional uncertainty.
Otherwise, the film is a long series of uninteresting arguments about Jody’s childishness, and Singleton matches the redundancy with nothing much to say. He seems practically indifferent. Maybe he really is jaded, like so much of the American audience; maybe he is sick of the racial issues he seems so eager to tackle at first. Baby Boy explains its monotony if viewed as an expression of apathy, a point-of-view still being born.
By Andrew Chan [JANUARY 26, 2002]