Bad Hair: The True Meaning of the Movie (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers to say that I was excited to see Dear White People creator Justin Simien tackle black horror would be an understatement

And out of all the ideas he had to dip his foot in the genre, I’m kinda glad he did so with Bad Hair

/Despite it being set in Los Angeles in the late 80’s, its main message of what it means to be yourself in a world that requires you to be something different in order to survive is one that needs to be addressed even to this day./

Now considering how the movie is marketed, and -- let’s just be honest -- the lack of certain individuals knowledge of the importance of hair in black culture, some people might just write this film off as a B-horror film that plays into the stereotype of black folk not wanting their hair touched by curious white people

Or even worse; others seeing the “killer weave” angle as some form of pro-hotep propaganda

/And while, I admit, I was afraid that was the route the movie was gonna go in considering the first few scenes of adult Anna with her family, I was soon reminded of how Justin Simien approaches topics that us black folks Gen X and younger regularly and heavily relate to when it comes to properly balancing our uniqueness with our heritage./

I’d say that’s kinda what he accomplished in coming up with Elle Lorraine’s character of tender-headed Anna, a black woman struggling to make it in television in the turn of the decade.

/She can’t get the job she wants at other networks because at first she didn’t properly present herself to the standards of beauty set by modern society/

/And when the pro-black network she does work for gets gentrificated by the parent company that owns it, she makes the decision to conform to what they need her to be in order to survive and bask in the illusion that she’ll get what she wants, despite there being opportunity for her to properly achieve the same goals somewhere else in a way that may take more time, but will weigh less on her conscience considering who’s involved./

This angle kinda makes me relate to Anna all the more, considering that this is a Black Horror piece about identity. Because depending on the type of person you are, you either have been or ARE CURRENTLY Anna.

I’ve felt the pressure of having to compromise who I truly am in order to either fit in somewhere I thought would be better for me, to survive in a society -- in a system -- that SAYS things will be better for me if I depict myself a certain type of way, or both.

That’s why Coco from Justin Simien’s Dear White People is such a great character to analyze and reflect on, both in the movie and in the show.

/She is a representative of what it means to straddle that line and even cross it. All the while, it’s so hard to just write her off as a sell-out when you can clearly see the conflict going on within her regarding whether or not everything she’s done to get to this flimsy point of stability she’s achieved for herself is worth losing herself over./

What Simien does with Bad Hair in this regard is experiment with the idea of losing yourself as a black person in a society mainly built for the success of white folks.

This is already hard as a black man, but the pressures of presenting yourself a certain type of way as a black woman already take the cake in a world that already labels natural hairstyles, and even to certain extremes, the very EXISTENCE of black women as unprofessional.

/With the slave myth of the Moss Haired Girl -- the hive mind collective of witches that eventually control every woman that has Vergie’s weave sewn in their heads -- acting as the entity one would lose themselves to upon having to conform to said white societal norms over time, it helps paint a bigger picture of what it could mean if certain decisions are made merely from societal survival alone./

/Especially when it's revealed who’s behind the deadly cycle by the end of the movie./

But it’s like I stated before; Despite all of this context available, the translation to weaves, sew-ins and the like being used as a way of black women not seeing their true worth in the expression of their own sense of blackness via natural hair can definitely paint this horror film in a pretty hotep-ish light considering the narrative.

But the meaning behind Bad Hair isn’t just that you’ll lose yourself to the societal conformity of whiteness just by catering to their rules. It’s that being black and deciding to wear a weave or not shouldn’t matter, as long as you do it because YOU want to.

/Only when you give up your own control of what matters to you for the sake of conforming to what society says is acceptable will you TRULY begin to lose yourself/

Bad Hair may be blunt in the message it’s delivering with its narrative, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that people need to hear it.

And if there’s one thing Justin Simien is good at doing, it’s showing us that things should only be done because you want them to be done, and by doing them just for the sake of conformity because of how the world works, puts you at the risk of becoming someone else completely.

/And in the case of Bad Hair, by the time you realize that you’re changing for the worse, it might already be too late./

But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section below what YOU thought of Bad Hair if you’ve seen it.

Or if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, another film that plays around with the themes of losing oneself to societal norms, horror or otherwise.

Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.