White Saviors: The Micro And The Macro

Ryan Gosling's "Seb" meets John Legend's "Rockit"-era Herbie Hancock as jazz convert Emma Stone looks on.

The largely buoyant movie La La Land was enjoyable enough that I wasn't compelled to go all Jazz Police on it, as I was for writer-director Damien Chazelle's prior effort, the ridiculous Whiplash. But this disinclination is not shared by many in The Discourse, as my friend Tom Carson addresses here, and others address elsewhere that I'm too lazy to search and link to. But a lot of the complaint I've come across really make me nostalgic for the days of "it's only a movie." 

To wit: Ryan Gosling's character Sebastian doesn't "save jazz" at the end of the movie. He opens a fucking club. This maybe HELPS save jazz, but does not save jazz in and of itself. But wait there's more, he's a White Man Who Saves Jazz. Having dispensed slightly with the notion that the mere opening of a club does not itself suffice to Save Jazz, well, it is simply a fact that lots of white folks, from Leo Gordon to those three wacky former schoolteachers who had a go at Sweet Basil (well do I remember one night in the early 90s when some German tourists talked loudly through a Jimmy Giuffre Trio set, thus killing jazz) have opened jazz clubs. But wait, Ryan Gosling as a white man should not be portraying a player of jazz at all, because cultural appropriation and all. Well. It's true that jazz is an African American creation, but it's also true that, much more so than with rhythm and blues or rock and roll, that whites, from Mezz Mezzrow to Bix Beiderbecke to the Boswell Sisters, were Present At Its Various Creations. It's kind of funny to read writers who wouldn't be able to make it through Side A of Monkey Pockie Boo get haughty about this. Not even Amiri Baraka was this doctrinaire; he didn't ask Roswell Rudd to leave the bandstand before getting up with the New York Art Quartet to read "Black Dada Nihilismus." 

This state of affairs becomes even more befuddling when one remembers the infamous Buzzfeed "What's The Deal With Jazz" listicle, in which all the visual examples of jazz practitioners were white people, the writer cannily saving her desire to puke at Miles Davis and Charles Mingus for her prose-only coda. 

In any event, as somebody once said to somebody else, "Lighten up. Smoke a joint." 

Some of my critical colleagues have been expressing dismay in social media that some prominent commentators have blinded themselves to Martin Scorsese's magnificent Silence on the grounds of "Meh, religion," or, more strongly put, "Religion sucks," or, "Both sides do it so why doesn't the movie show the depredations of the Catholic Church." This is unfortunate but I think actually more unavoidable than the La La Land nonsense. The La La Land detractors ridiculously blow up the movie's "chase your dreams" metaphors; the anti-Silence folks pick nits that are either non-existent or entirely beside the point, conveniently skirting the fact that this is an adaptation of a Japanese novel. My opinion on this may be suspect because I was raised Catholic but for me the specifics of the apostasy took second place to larger and even more moving themes. That is, I eventually intuited something beyond Catholicism versus the shogunate and vice-versa. Past faith, I felt Silence addressing issues of will, free will, and whether there really is such a thing as human freedom. The questions it presents, I thought, were more moving and unsettling for the cinematic form in which they were presented. If you're looking at it and going down a list of the things you think it should be showing you because of the cultural baggage you want it to carry (and I'm not saying that the movie is inconsiderate of that cultural baggage—it's not), then you're not going to get it, and too bad. 

A lot of people on my side of the fence insist that the concept of "virtue-signaling" is entirely reactionary but I'm not so sure.

Comments

[Matt B]

This is purely based on my observations of social media, but to me, it seems like the LA LA LAND naysayers tend to be the younger set. I read some of their objections and they just seem to want to point out that they know about Donen & Kelly, and Minnelli, and Demy, as if they're showing how well-schooled they are by rejecting Chazelle's movie and being resistant to its charms. On the other hand, I find most folks my age or older (let's say 40+) seem more likely to be taken with it. Go figure.

Of course, there's Richard Brody, and while I really enjoyed LA LA LAND, I did find much to admire in his negative review.

[Matt B]

I realize my comment is merely a tangent and not directly tied to what Glenn wrote, which just brought to mind other issues I've had with the LA LA LAND backlash.

[Jesse Crall]

I didn't even particularly like LA LA LAND but the critique Glenn highlights above is ridiculous...Of course, had Gosling's character SAVED INDIE ROCK by opening a coffee joint near UCLA, those same people would knock the movie for portraying "Shit White People Like" or something equally asinine. If a white guy digs jazz or hip hop, well, that's cultural appropriation. But if they ignore hip hop and jazz in favor of the CRYSTALLINE PRODUCTION of The Alan Parsons Project, they're perpetuating cultural segregation at the expense of black artists. See how that works?

[eddie mars attacks!]

It's easy to make up reasons to hate stuff, elevating yourself above a discourse that is not pure enough. So much easier than engaging with the material. Still it's just a movie. Frankly I think the Cosby show killed jazz.

[Jon K]

"On the other hand, I find most folks my age or older (let's say 40+) seem more likely to be taken with it. Go figure."

I've only seen it once, but I really felt the ebullient opening scene/number made promises that the rest of the film didn't (couldn't?) keep. I wanted more of the joyous, fun opening scene and felt as if its what it promised viewers, but it didn't deliver it. The melancholy ultimately offered was not lacking in redeeming qualities, but I felt the arc of the film suffered as a result of the big opener.

[Jon K]

Oh, and I saw that as someone 40+.

[Jon K]

Saw=say...

[Andrew]

The white saviour take on both films is clearly wrong, but I thought there was something about the casting of peripheral characters in La La Land that smelled of opportunism. I'm reminded of a short scene in The Notebook in which Ryan Gosling is introduced in wide shot, tap dancing next to a nameless, faceless, poor, black boy; the image is meant to contrast Gosling's "authentic" poorness against the snobbishness of Rachel McAdams' world. The Notebook is so nonsubtle and exploitive in general that the opportunism of trotting out a nameless, faceless black boy to lend Gosling "authenticity" is unmistakable, but I thought I got a whiff of a similar opportunism in La La Land when Gosling mingles with the older black couple on the bridge, or when he celebrates the black jazz musicians in the scene where he "mansplains" (as per R. Brody) jazz to Emma Stone. It's like, black performers are hired and put on screen to lend a certain credibility to the white lead... anyway, just a "whiff," and I'll admit that half of it might be that it's Ryan Gosling again and I couldn't help thinking of that egregious scene in The Notebook.

Anyway, I thought La La Land was fine, but I'm wondering if we'll ever again get a big, Hollywood musical that employs actors who can actually sing and dance. Also, is it just me or was the mixing of the opening number really odd? The lyrics were so low compared to the instruments that I could barely make out the words. Was it just my theater? The whole thing felt a little "off" to me.

[lazarus]

Isn't "mansplaining" when a man talks down/condescends to a woman who already understands what he's going on about? Stone's character admitted she knew very little about the genre, and Gosling was excited to tell her more about it. He was impassioned, not being a jerk about it.

The more interesting part of this debate is the usage of the John Legend character, who has a brief conversation with Gosling about the future of jazz/how to keep it alive, claiming that it needs to be able to mutate and breathe, but is then revealed as a total sellout playing cheesy pop that has very little to do with jazz. And I think that's where a lot of people have a problem. The white guy is the keeper of the flame while the black guy is only interested in getting paid.

I don't agree with this reductive interpretation, but it's out there.

[Andrew]

I was quoting Brody's use of the word "mansplain;" I think it's a dumb word personally, and I dunno if the people who love to use it realize they're alienating a ton of people to their cause.

I did think it was funny that the only talented performer in the film (Legend) is portrayed as the idiot who we're supposed to hate because he doesn't "get" music like Gosling, while Gosling's giving the most awkward musical performance since DDL in "Nine." But I agree that a racialized reading of their relationship is not interesting or helpful.

[Tim R]

Eh, just like I felt the film held Seb with some degree of skepticism, I think it also gave Legend the room to have a point, that his truth was absolutely true for him.

He advocates for his POV pretty eloquently, is then shown putting on a great show with a really good pop song, and never hurts/ betrays/ lies to anyone. He's a good and supportive friend.

The subtlety is actually appealing to me, because the conflict there isn't the accuracy/ purity of Legend's POV specifically, but more simply that it isn't what Seb wants to do with his life and he's wasting his time not chasing his dream--the film is about the virtues of romanticism, and touring with that band for Seb is the antithesis of a romantic view of experience for him.

[George]

"On the other hand, I find most folks my age or older (let's say 40+) seem more likely to be taken with it."

I saw LA LA LAND yesterday. Nobody in the audience looked younger than 50. Glad someone's making movies for my age group!

I don't regard it as a great movie. But it's good enough.

[Michael Gebert]

"Eh, just like I felt the film held Seb with some degree of skepticism, I think it also gave Legend the room to have a point, that his truth was absolutely true for him."

Yeah, I feel like all that's an ironic joke that flies over the head of the audience, apparently. Seb is all about this fantasy of classic jazz in his head, he meets an actual black person who doesn't share it at all and lets him know it's out of date, he finds success and he wants to go back to Mia and say "Hey, I've matured enough to sell out my youthful dreams so we can actually make money and have an adult life with a house and kids," and she rejects him at that point, kind of, and then goes on to her own adult life, and they run into each other... which means she runs into the version of him that she turned away from, and sees what could have been between them. Which, however, doesn't actually happen in the realistic plot of the movie.

So basically, those are their implanted memories, and he's a replicant.

[Shawn Stone]

I liked the movie. I thought Chazelle did MGM better than he did Demy. I liked the John Legend "sell-out" tune. I felt I was supposed to feel bad for not hating it. I thought most of the score was good, but that opening number was Legrand-lite and not so great. And Glenn's comment that Chazelle makes it look hard was dead-on, except for that delightful MGM ending.

[George]

The movie it reminded me of most was Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Especially the ending. And the basic situation -- doomed romance between jazz musician (De Niro's sax man, Gosling's keyboardist) and vocal performer (Minnelli's singer, Stone's actress).

[mark s.]

Has the world forgotten about Woody's charming and amusingly graceless musical fantasy "Everyone Says I Love You' with Edward Norton's Chaplinesque 'Limelight' dance? Or Bogdanovich's 'At Long Last Love'? I prefer both of these "flops" to 'La La Land'