Failed Review: Fear of a Black Hat
Nov. 29th, 2025 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
genderjumperAlso from Letterboxd, a review that became more hole that rabbit. I'm going to revise the one I posted and put the original here. For, IDK, posterity?
Warning: this one gets more existential than most people will care for:
What a wild ride. I've had it bookmarked in the back of my mind since 1993, but to finally see it 30+ years on means also seeing it through the lens of everything that came after, and from there how it positioned itself relative to what came before.
According to Rusty Cundieff, the film was shopped around for a year-and-a-half before going into production, and according to Wikipedia the completed film sat around for another year-and-a-half before receiving distribution. So without even knowing how long production took, we know it took over three years for ideas to reach audiences. And those three years happen to include some of the most transformative in the music industry, including the entire rise and fall of some of the acts parodied in Fear of a Black Hat: the three biggest albums for M.C. Hammer, the breakup of The Fat Boys, the rise and fall of Cross Colors (whose -- OOPS! -- prominent product placement in the film are way more 1992 than 1994). and that brief but transformative solo career by Dr. Dre before he became almost exclusively a producer and elder statesman. So this is a film of a very particular time whose audience had all moved on by the time it came out. This is probably best evinced by Ice Froggy Frog, which appears to have been recorded and the music video filmed for the 1994 release and is built around Snoop Dogg's solo debut from late 1993; not only does the song not meaningfully appear in the film, but the music video is shot in the 1993 gangsta flannel and faded film of the Snoop original. There's nothing about Tupac -- good or bad -- or East Coast Rap at all. This film is a time capsule that didn't get buried in time.
I also can't help thinking about what has happened to the characters from the film in light of their real-world counterparts. Eazy-E died of AIDS less than a year after the film's ultimate release (David Cole of C+C Music Factory died around the same time and possibly of the same illness). LL Cool J pivoted to television and has played a cop more times than he ever rapped in a studio. Ice Cube did the same, first comedy, then action, then family fare, earning enough good will to produce his own earnest 2015 depiction of the same era. Queen Latifah detoured as a throwback chanteuse alongside her acting career and also became a TV cop. Dr. Dre's been more of a producer, entrepreneur, and elder statesman for decades.
What would Rusty Cundieff's satiric takes on these figures say about their trajectories? Or would they say anything at all? Because while most current accounts seem to place Fear of a Black Hat well above its contemporary, CB4, the laughs in this film don't really go anywhere. The best satires are making a point about where a bad idea will lead followed to an extreme. Most modern farces (or maybe I'm just thinking of the Wayans tradition here) have a nihilistic undercurrent that dares you to treat anything reverentially. Fear of a Black Hat can't decide which one it wants to be, so beyond the sight gags and exaggerated violence there's no clear place to channel your ire.
I can see an impressionable young viewer even watching this and taking away the message that the music they like is bad and they're a bad person for liking it. Which is not to screech about protecting the children, but to have known many anxious folks who can't always tell the difference between playfulness and derision. And I'd almost wonder if Rusty Cundieff is one of them, except he seems perfectly comfortable in the uncertainty. Is he having fun riffing off this music (which he and his music team emulate exceptionally well, maybe even too well to laugh at) or is he trying to bring it down a peg? Is he saying they take themselves too seriously or that we take them too seriously?
If it's not that deep, is it even satire?
Anyway, come for the nostalgia and the excellent flow, stay for the industry clichés and one-liners; just don't expect any great ruminations about where any one rapper, one band, or one industry went wrong.
Wow, that was way too serious. I may have to delete this and start over tomorrow.
Warning: this one gets more existential than most people will care for:
What a wild ride. I've had it bookmarked in the back of my mind since 1993, but to finally see it 30+ years on means also seeing it through the lens of everything that came after, and from there how it positioned itself relative to what came before.
According to Rusty Cundieff, the film was shopped around for a year-and-a-half before going into production, and according to Wikipedia the completed film sat around for another year-and-a-half before receiving distribution. So without even knowing how long production took, we know it took over three years for ideas to reach audiences. And those three years happen to include some of the most transformative in the music industry, including the entire rise and fall of some of the acts parodied in Fear of a Black Hat: the three biggest albums for M.C. Hammer, the breakup of The Fat Boys, the rise and fall of Cross Colors (whose -- OOPS! -- prominent product placement in the film are way more 1992 than 1994). and that brief but transformative solo career by Dr. Dre before he became almost exclusively a producer and elder statesman. So this is a film of a very particular time whose audience had all moved on by the time it came out. This is probably best evinced by Ice Froggy Frog, which appears to have been recorded and the music video filmed for the 1994 release and is built around Snoop Dogg's solo debut from late 1993; not only does the song not meaningfully appear in the film, but the music video is shot in the 1993 gangsta flannel and faded film of the Snoop original. There's nothing about Tupac -- good or bad -- or East Coast Rap at all. This film is a time capsule that didn't get buried in time.
I also can't help thinking about what has happened to the characters from the film in light of their real-world counterparts. Eazy-E died of AIDS less than a year after the film's ultimate release (David Cole of C+C Music Factory died around the same time and possibly of the same illness). LL Cool J pivoted to television and has played a cop more times than he ever rapped in a studio. Ice Cube did the same, first comedy, then action, then family fare, earning enough good will to produce his own earnest 2015 depiction of the same era. Queen Latifah detoured as a throwback chanteuse alongside her acting career and also became a TV cop. Dr. Dre's been more of a producer, entrepreneur, and elder statesman for decades.
What would Rusty Cundieff's satiric takes on these figures say about their trajectories? Or would they say anything at all? Because while most current accounts seem to place Fear of a Black Hat well above its contemporary, CB4, the laughs in this film don't really go anywhere. The best satires are making a point about where a bad idea will lead followed to an extreme. Most modern farces (or maybe I'm just thinking of the Wayans tradition here) have a nihilistic undercurrent that dares you to treat anything reverentially. Fear of a Black Hat can't decide which one it wants to be, so beyond the sight gags and exaggerated violence there's no clear place to channel your ire.
I can see an impressionable young viewer even watching this and taking away the message that the music they like is bad and they're a bad person for liking it. Which is not to screech about protecting the children, but to have known many anxious folks who can't always tell the difference between playfulness and derision. And I'd almost wonder if Rusty Cundieff is one of them, except he seems perfectly comfortable in the uncertainty. Is he having fun riffing off this music (which he and his music team emulate exceptionally well, maybe even too well to laugh at) or is he trying to bring it down a peg? Is he saying they take themselves too seriously or that we take them too seriously?
If it's not that deep, is it even satire?
Anyway, come for the nostalgia and the excellent flow, stay for the industry clichés and one-liners; just don't expect any great ruminations about where any one rapper, one band, or one industry went wrong.
Wow, that was way too serious. I may have to delete this and start over tomorrow.
