Fan Films

Some films are made for very specific audiences and if you aren't in that demographic then they can seem incomprehensible.  I found myself watching one such movie the other day:  Big Money Hustlas (2000).  This was made by and was a vehicle for white rap duo Insane Clown Posse and features not only them, but a number of other white rappers of the era.  Why am I putting so much emphasis on the 'white'?  Well, because the film, disconcertingly, styles itself as some kind of homage to the seventies 'Blaxploitation' genre.  Disconcertingly because, as the term implies, 'Blaxploitation' movies focused on showcasing black performers and film makers who had, hitherto, been sorely under represented in cinema.  Consequently, a 'Blaxploitation' styled movie featuring almost exclusively white performers, (whose day job was performing a genre of music also originated and mainly practiced by black artists), is more than a little jarring.  I'm not fond of either the term or the concept of 'cultural appropriation', but I can't help but feel that Big Money Hustlas is what its originators had in mind when they coined it.  I couldn't but think while watching it: 'isn't enough that these guys have tried to appropriate a piece of black culture in the form of rap, but now they are wandering around, trying to act and speak the way they think black people in seventies films do?  Why don't they just add insult to injury and wear black face?'  Actually, they almost do - with both 'Violent J' and 'Shaggy 2 Dope' sporting their trademark black and white clown make up throughout.

Look, I'm not saying that you have to be black to appreciate 'Blaxploitation' (I'm certainly a fan and I'm a middle aged white guy from the UK), but I do think that it helps to be black if you try to produce it - I mean, it isn't called 'Whitespolitation', is it?  Besides, there already exists a vast field of predominantly white exploitation films made in the seventies if you really want to produce a homage to this type of picture.  But Big Money Hustlas doesn't even do an especially good job of parodying 'Blaxploitation'.  Having a hero speaking in (bad) rhyme and characters brandishing lots of guns doesn't cut it - the genre was infinitely more varied than that.  Its inadequacies are highlighted by a cameo appearance from Rudy Ray Moore himself in the guise of Dolemite, (this was the only reason that I was watching the film and you have to wait until around three quarters of the film's length to see him) - in only a couple of scenes he shows how it should be done.  Of course, none of my criticisms matter - I'm not the target audience for this film.  Big Money Hustlas was made for the 'Juggalos', (as Insane Clown Posse's hardcore fans are known) and they loved it - they ensured that, when it was originally released (direct to video) it became a big success. Indeed, it spawned a western-themed prequel, Big Money Rustlas a few years down the line.  That's the thing about movies like this, made for a specific fan audience who will watch o rlisten to anything released by their idols, they are, n effect, exempt from conventional critical standards.  In this case, for instance, the 'Juggalos' are simply not going to care whether the film successfully parodies 'Blaxploitation' conventions, or not, let alone worry about the cultural issues it raises.  And why should they?  They are interested only in seeing Insane Clown Posse doing their stuff - just as Elvis fans, or Beatles fans, or even Cliff Richard fans, only went to see their films to watch their idols on the big screen and enjoy feature length exposure to them.