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In Barbershop, Ice Cube plays Calvin Palmer,
the owner of an African-American barbershop in South Side
Chicago. In the profession more out of obligation to his dead
father (who owned the place originally) than out of any actual
desire to cut hair, Calvin’s feeling the tide of culture pass
him by as he carries on the same routine day after day. His
wife, Jennifer (Lewis), tries to convince him that
his barber shop is the culture that he wants to be
a part of, but Calvin is certain that there’s more out there
for him. He’s just not sure how to find it.
The core of Barbershop’s charm lies in the assertion,
as Jennifer insists, that hair-cutting is cultural pride in
microcosm. In Calvin’s neighborhood, his shop is a place where
black men can be black men, everyone’s on equal ground, and
no one’s going to break through that. Every day, African-American
men and boys pass through, getting their hair cut and shooting
the shit, connecting on that very basic level of human understanding.
As Barbershop sees it, a hair cut is a means of asserting
your identity, of making yourself how you want to be seen.
Hair isn’t a status symbol to these guys; it’s simply a sign
of being. And the barber is the artist who lets you feel that.
Black identity is what Barbershop is all about, in
fact. But instead of presenting the unified front that so
many films try to show when dealing with such material, the
movie gives a little insight into the generational gap that
frequently separates ideologies. As a bit of a surprise, though,
it’s the young’uns who speak for the impact of history, and
the old-timer barber, Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer,
aged quite badly a few decades and tricked up with Don King
hair), who attempts to diminish the effects of history’s most
famous civil rights figures. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther
King, Jr., Jesse Jackson—Eddie doesn’t let any of them
off. This has been a major source of controversy, as well,
with Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other African-American
leaders threatening a boycott on the film, but they’re really
missing the point. The things Eddie says about Parks (she
was just tired and sat down, with no noble intentions of making
a point) and King, Jr. (that he was promiscuous) are ostensibly
disrespectful, but they also serve to humanize these larger-than-life
figures, to make them regular people with regular flaws and
motives, and this reinforces the idea that anyone can make
a difference, no matter how visible they are or how well they
can lead. (What he says about Jackson, though, you can’t really
make a case for good intentions with; but it does reflect
the way many people, black and white, feel about the
man.) And the fact that the younger barbers are the ones defending
Parks and King, even having not experienced the history that
has made them who they are, speaks to the hopes of a society
that puts its future in the hands of its young people. If
these people can understand and appreciate what has been sacrificed
for them, then maybe everyone has a chance after all.
But while Barbershop does have a very positive social
message, it’s also a comedy, and it is in this capacity that
the film usually falls flat. What little plot there is involves
Calvin selling his shop to a loan shark and then desperately
trying to come up with the money to buy it back after the
shark jacks up the price. But it’s essentially a movie without
a plot, so the comedy really doesn’t wrap itself around any
steadfast concepts. This causes much of what’s supposed to
be funny to just end up being scattershot and a little pointless.
It also suffers from that tendency common to movies to rely
on the Funny Fatties to provide comic relief, and it grows
old fast. But, you know what? If it’s able to market itself
as a comedy, and then inspire a few unsuspecting people to
be more optimistic about race, then good for it. In emphasizing
the simplicity of identity, Barbershop does a service
to the audience: It tells them to be who they are.
—Cole Sowell
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