Mark Reviews Movies: BODIED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 1, 2018

Although it seems as if this could be some routine tale, in which the unlikely success of an amateur is presented as a triumph, Bodied has much, much more on its mind. This story, of a white college student who stumbles into the world of west coast battle rap, isn't quite a reversal of the one in which an outsider makes good and sets himself on the path toward fame and fortune. It is, though, a funny and politically minded examination of such a tale.

Here, it's not a given that Adam (Calum Worthy), the aforementioned student, belongs in this world, simply because he can insult people in meter and rhyme. In theory, that's enough, especially since there have been a number of white rappers who started this way, found success, and crossed over into the popular culture (Eminem, the most prominent of such examples, served as a producer for the film). Alex Larsen's screenplay, though, is suspicious of the entire concept.

Adam is good at this, yes, but so are plenty of other characters here. Why is it Adam's success, if he keeps this up, that seems inevitable? Is it because he's the best? He might be. Is it because his story is so improbable—an aspiring academic who accidentally finds his way into battle rap? Everyone loves an underdog story.

Is he actually an underdog, though? He's an outsider, for sure, but only in this world. Everywhere else, perhaps, he's just a nerdy white kid, growing up in and becoming accustomed to a certain type of racial and class privilege. There's nothing particularly special about him, except that he can rap with men and women who have made this their way of life. In this world, he's an underdog. Put him anywhere else, though, and anyone would see that he's the furthest thing from an underdog.

The recognition of that fact gives this comedy a considerable amount of political and social tension, and more importantly, Larsen and director Joseph Kahn are willing to do more than simply to recognize it. They confront it.

Adam has a plan to write a graduate thesis about the various and dynamic uses of the N-word in battle rap. His plan involves interviewing Oakland rapper Behn Grymm (Jackie Long), who appreciates the young man's enthusiasm but also has obvious suspicions of Adam's topic. The kid likely isn't the first white guy who has talked to him about the word—who can use it and why. Behn suggests that there are less elaborate ways for a white person to get a "pass" for using the word. In what will become a constant refrain from him, Adam insists it isn't like that. He's not a racist, after all. That defense becomes just as common a refrain for him.

After battling a white upstart in the parking lot of a competition spot, Adam starts to get noticed. His thesis becomes less important as he starts competing in various locales and as the offers for appearances begin arriving on his phone. Adam becomes part of Behn's crew, which includes Che Corleone (Walter Perez) and Devine Write (Shoniqua Shandai). Meanwhile, his relationship with his ultra-liberal girlfriend Maya (Rory Uphold) becomes a non-stop political debate about his participation in a primarily African-American arena.

Here's the thing: The film doesn't look too kindly on Maya's perspective, either. There are multiple debates within the film, most of them taking place between Adam and other students at UC-Berkley, where it seems that everyone has an opinion about what is or should be considered racist, sexist, colonialist, misogynistic, and all sorts of other words to intelligently call someone a jerk. Then, there are the debates that such debates are inherently wrong, because the people participating in them at the university come from place of social privilege.

What's fascinating about the way the film handles this material is that there's simultaneously something right to be taken from these arguments and something absurd about them. There's a distinct disconnect between the students making the arguments and the people for whom they're arguing, just as there's a distinct difference between racism and the stereotypical jokes that often form the foundation of battle rap. Even within the sphere of the battles, though, there's only a slight distinction between Adam, who makes a bunch of jokes about a Korean-American rapper named Prospek (Dumbfoundead), and another white rapper in a later battle, who simply recites a bunch of stereotypes at Devine's expense. Prospek laughs after the battle, but still calls Adam a racist in Korean (Adam, who doesn't understand what's being said, thanks his opponent).

A lot of the film's humor comes from this inherent contradiction: Context matters and doesn't matter. Racism, sexism, and stereotypes about groups of people exist. They're ugly and cruel and damaging things, but to deny that they exist (as Adam tries to argue is the foundation for his worldview, despite what his battle tactics display) can be just as thoughtless. The film offers no answers (It attempts something like one when Prospek and Devine reverse roles in a battle during the too-lengthy climactic sequence, but by that point, Larsen seems to have given up on presenting his own thesis), but its constant back-and-forth is thought-provoking.

We don't expect answers from this story, anyway, and the ways in which Bodied tackles these subjects—racism, sexism, "political correctness," good intentions gone awry, privilege, etc.—head on are smart, funny, and worth examining. The film doesn't have a solution, but it is an entertaining and subversive conversation-starter.

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