Caution: This post contains spoilers to the movie La La Land.
The following blog post was written by Amanda Joy, an Asian woman (probably Asian-American):
Her blog post explains why she did not like the movie La La Land. I am an Asian-American male, and I liked La La Land. I am writing this in order to discuss the reasons that I disagree with her. To make it clear, I have been frustrated all my life at the lack of Asian-Americans, particularly Asian-American males, in popular culture and media in America. I do desire more representation of minorities in cinema, but this is the wrong movie to criticize in my opinion.
1) Joy wrote, "I guess something about [La La Land] just screamed 'seen it before.' . . . It tells a love story. One we’ve seen before." Joy wrote that she is also a Broadway geek.
I lived in New York City for 5 years and have seen more Broadway shows in that time (due to my fiancee being a Broadway publicist) than the large majority of people in America, and I have never seen a musical or movie quite like La La Land before. The idea of making love stories is not new, so the argument that it is a love story we have seen before is a poor one, but one thing that can set your love story apart is how you tell it. That is a subtle but extremely important difference. In fact, I agree with Joy's statement that the plot of La La Land is not that unique; however, how Chazelle tells the story of La La Land is magical, enchanting, and thrilling in my opinion. It was a really fun movie to see in the theater for me (especially with my fiancee). Furthermore, great art is produced by making the ordinary extraordinary. Exceptional poets can write great poems about something as ordinary as a red wheelbarrow if it is executed properly, and La La Land had near-perfect execution. Joy even wrote that La La Land is "a solid movie" and "objectively well-structured, well-shot, and well-acted."
2) Joy wrote that having a Black male lead would make the movie more interesting: "What if Emma Stone’s character were a woman of colour? How would that change her journey to stardom?"
This is exactly the type of thinking that a novice writer would have if he or she was trying to make a story more interesting. The race of a character might be more important if it was integral to the plot. Racial conflict is not integral to La La Land's plot. Racial tension would unnecessarily complicate the plot and be a pointless distraction in Chazelle's (director) overall vision. Race is such a big, complicated topic that it would, by necessity, usually dominate any film in which it is a major theme. La La Land is not about race. If Mia's journey to stardom was complicated by race, this would be a completely different movie--not the La La Land that Chazelle envisioned. Replacing the lead actor (Gosling) with John Legend while keeping the same plot does not make the movie more compelling artistically. Replacing the lead actress (Stone) with a Black actress and changing the plot would corrupt the vision the director originally had in mind and create another different story entirely.
Joy wrote, "The jazz band itself is only a prop meant to enhance a white story- their 'retro blackness' is a sign of how cool and down-to-earth Gosling’s character must be. But the [jazz] band’s struggle, culture, and voice is completely erased from the narrative." The driving force of La La Land's plot is not about the struggles of a jazz band's rise to fame and fortune. You would have to make another movie entirely to explain the jazz band's backstory. Any backstory on the jazz band whatsoever would've distracted from the main plot line.
3) Joy wrote, "I simply found it impossible to ignore the racial politics at play in La La Land."
There are no racial politics in La La Land. Joy is upset because there is a lack of racial politics in the film. The problem is that the film is not supposed to be primarily about race. Some have argued that Sebastian (a White person) trying to tell Keith (a Black person) about how to save Jazz music is racially insensitive or backwards. This is one of the biggest complaints about the movie, racially speaking. Let's not forget that at one point in history, white, suburban teenagers consumed 80 percent of all hip-hop music (http://harvardpolitics.com/books-arts/politics-race-rap/). Without an audience, an art form cannot survive. Why does the burden of keeping Jazz alive rest on the shoulders of Black Americans and Black Americans alone? Why can't a person like Sebastian help resuscitate Jazz and keep it from dying? Why can't a character like Keith be misguided and blinded by the chase of fame and money?
In my opinion, the issue of interracial dating would be less taboo if we made it more ordinary. If the director had replaced Ryan Gosling with John Legend and kept everything else about the film the same, that would have advanced racial politics in America tremendously in my opinion. The fact that racial politics would have been kept out of the movie despite there being an interracial couple on screen would have been groundbreaking. Keep in mind, once again, that replacing Gosling with Legend would not have made La La Land a better work of art in and of itself.
4) Joy wrote, "But here is where my frustration with the film lies. [Stone and Gosling] did decent jobs. . . . two people who bounced through basic tap choreography, and lacked all expression in their vocal performances."
This may simply be a difference of taste, but I liked the fact that Stone and Gosling were not the best singers or dancers in the world. It made them seem more ordinary, and in the film they are just a couple of nobodies with big dreams trying to make it big in show business. For me, it made the film seem more believable. Frankly, if Gosling had the skills of Fred Astaire it would have been off-putting for me. With 100% certainty, there are actresses and actors on Broadway right now who can blow Stone and Gosling out of the water with their singing and dancing skills, but Stone and Gosling were well-rounded (with their singing, dancing, and acting) and likable and that is not easy to pull off.
5) Joy wrote, "What does La La Land do except glorify a bygone era and transplant it into the 21st century, in a weird fulfillment of every alt-right wet dream. It tells a love story. One we’ve seen before, with archetypes we’ve seen before, in a setting we’ve seen before. And it does nothing to challenge our view of society, in a time when we really need to be questioning ourselves."
There is never an opportune time to question ourselves, in my opinion. "Right now" is always a good time to question ourselves as a society. La La Land may not be a socially revolutionary or politically world-changing movie like Philadelphia or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but changing the world has never been a requirement to make a work of art. This took me a long, long, long time to realize as an artist myself (I am an English, Creative Writing major). The only rule in art, if there are truly any rules, is to make a quality work of art. If it counts for anything, I have no desire to see Philadelphia or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (again), but I would see La La Land again in a heartbeat, especially on a 4K 75-inch television with good speakers (maybe one day). La La Land is inspiring in its own ways artistically, and I was enraptured by it. "I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world," Tupac said. La La Land has as good of a chance to change the world as other great films that came before it or will come after it.