A Few More Thoughts on Hairspray

Not so much Hairspray specifically, but rather, I’m using it as a springboard to explore a broader idea. It’s a particular theme you see a lot in stories about race, one that largely keeps the narrative on the surface of the issue (a few Hairspray spoilers.)

As I said in my last post on Hairspray, Tracy’s whole thing is that she “just wants everyone to be able to dance together.” It’s what fuels her drive to integrate The Corny Collins Show, and despite the various stuff that goes down, she’s continually buoyed by the hope that, if people can just see Black and white kids dancing together on TV, they’ll get behind it. In the end, she helps make her dream a reality, and it works out just like she thinks it will. The phones at the studio light up with effusive praise, Penny’s mother comes around on Penny’s interracial relationship with Seaweed after seeing them on the show and realizing how happy they are together, and even Velma and Amber, the show’s villains, are pulled into the inclusive spirit of camaraderie.

It’s a real feel-good ending, a triumph of human capacity to get along, and I admitted last time that, after an intense week, it was nice to see such a “win.” However, that victory keeps the focus on individuals, when anyone who’s experienced or observed oppression knows how much of the fight is about systems. George Floyd’s murder wasn’t just about “the one bad apple cop” who killed him. It’s about the other three cops who didn’t intervene while he quietly, calmly murdered Floyd. It’s about the the previous officer-involved shootings he was in and not punished for. It’s about the list of complaints filed against him that didn’t result in disciplinary action. It’s about all the previous unarmed Black people murdered by police in that city, in that state, all across the U.S., with little to no consequence. It’s about the fact that even after the A.G. charged him with 2^nd-degree murder and the other three cops with aiding and abetting, he admitted that he’s not sure if he’ll be able to get a conviction. George Floyd wasn’t killed solely because Derek Chauvin is a racist, but because countless systems have been maintained for centuries to pave the way for “allowing” him to be killed.

That’s what stories of easily-won racial harmony miss out on. “We’d all get along if we just got to know each other!” is a tempting story, one that relies on innate human goodness and the power of simple connection, but 1) changing hearts and minds doesn’t often come so quickly and 2) even if it did, that’s only scratching the surface of the battle. Dismantling racist systems is a much bigger, much more complex fight that’s a lot harder to distill into a show or a movie with a triumphant ending. It’s why more honest stories about injustice often focus on one particular small battle within the larger war. In stories like Just Mercy and Selma, for example, no one “solves” racism. They’re more typically about one case, one march, and in the end, we get title cards about how, the day after that specific victory, they got up and continued the fights they’d devoted their lives to. To me, while a story like Hairspray can be a nice bit of escapism, stories that go for the deeper, harder battles with no easy resolution are often far more satisfying.