As a result, Rize is the least insightful film about black culture since Rappin'. LaChapelle documents clownin' and krumpin' in South Central with all the sociopolitical nuance of a KFC commercial, to the point where you start getting the feeling that the black folk are pulling a reverse Spinal Tap on the clueless white Hollywood folk. The subject matter is certainly fertile, presenting a world where people escape their poverty by dressing up like clowns and going to battle with fierce dance moves. Now, I can see why the director would shy away from poking any fun at this subculture, and try to stay focused on the empowering aspects (a la Saturday Night Fever). But when LaChapelle cross-cuts footage of face painting and dancing in Watts with "tribal ritual" footage from a generalized "Africa," Rize crosses over from bombastic music video to flat-out minstrel show. It's one of a disturbing number of recent films where a well-intended liberal message somehow makes a film -less- decent and significantly more offensive. No ghetto-life cliché is excluded. Lachapelle trots out (and sorry, the quotes are utterly necessary) "Africa," "Watts," "rioting," "gang violence," "church," "spirituals" – does anyone, white, black, or otherwise, need to see this shit anymore to get an understanding of "life in the hood"? This is "the hood" as it exists in the collective mind of the Academy. It is such a broad gloss on so many race issues that LaChapelle seems specifically intent on evoking the audience's collective groan of guilt, as a means of giving his film weight and meaning. Yet he presents nothing like a critical or challenging point, merely flashes the footage at us like some kind of moral Rorschach test. Perhaps he was trying to reel in the suggestible Fahrenheit 9/11 crowd, who respond to this fake liberal BS, but to me, using black iconography as a means of emotional manipulation makes Rize as racist as any old "booga-booga" jungle movie you can name, if not more so. The ending, of course, crams in "Amazing Grace" and "Oh Happy Day," and just when I began to think "Well, at least he didn't cap it off with an MLK quote" … out popped the MLK quote. I mean, you can get the same education on black history by visiting one of those booths on Venice Beach where they have, like, Bob Marley mirrors and Malcolm X T-shirts. And to think, this was the same director who brought such incomparable intellectual rigor to his exploration of female pirates in the Gwen Stefani "Rich Girl" video!
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