July 29, 2007
Hairspray Posted by Alexander Burns at 10:20 PM EST I went to see Hairspray last night, and I can’t remember the last time I left a movie feeling so good. I’ve never seen the show or the original movie, so I can’t say how this version compares. In terms of film criticism, I think A. O. Scott hits it right on the nose. “‘Hairspray’ is fundamentally a story about being young,” Scott writes, “about the triumph of youth culture, about the optimistic, possibly dated belief that the future will improve on the present—and its heart is very much with its teenage heroes and the fresh-faced actors who play them.” In celebrating the ebullience of young people, however, the film doesn’t fall into the predictable story line of a teen comedy. This movie isn’t Can’t Hardly Wait. Hairspray is a refreshingly unjaded celebration of the 1960s, highlighting the most uplifting, liberating aspects of that decade rather than its overplayed excesses. Changing fashions, newly popular kinds of music and dancing, and civil rights activism are woven together in a bright, upbeat story without a bit of meanness in it. It’s easy to condemn the 1950s as soulless, stifled, and segregated—as easy as it is to hate the ’60s for being chaotic and libertine. Hairspray doesn’t do this, and so it avoids turning into a heavy-handed, self-important work of politics. Even the bad guys in this movie—I use the word “guys” loosely, as Michelle Pfeiffer is the villain—are objects of cartoonish satire rather than real disdain. You’d have to be awfully humorless to take issue with the film’s portrayal of history. An additional charm of the movie is its positive portrayal of television. In Hairspray, television in general, and The Corny Collins Show in particular, is an instrument of social inclusiveness. It’s there, under the supervision of a good-hearted host with a sparkling smile, that black people, white people, fat people, and thin people come together to have fun. In the background, there is the specter of a dour-looking network executive. For the purposes of Hairspray’s main characters, this man might as well not exist. There’s something silly about the supreme importance of television in the film; obviously, integrating The Corny Collins Show is not an achievement like integrating Little Rock Central High School. But the movie’s makers know this, and that’s not a statement they’re trying to make. In our own time, when the networks’ idea of a good show is a nasty British music producer trashing ordinary people on live TV, Hairspray’s version of television has more than a little appeal.
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