"All aspects of culture possess a semiotic value, and the most taken-for-granted phenoma can function as signs: as elements in communication systems governmed by semantic rules and codes which are not themselves directly apprehended in experience. These signs are, then, as opaque as the social relations which produce them and which they re-present. In other words, there is an ideological dimension to every signification." -Hebdidge, p. 11
"Hegemony can only be maintained so long as the dominant classes 'succeed in framing all competing definitions within their range', so that subordinate groups are, if not controlled; then at least contained within an ideological space which does not seem at all 'ideological': which appears instead to be permanent and 'natural', to lie outside history, to be beyond particular interests." -Hebdidge, p. 16
Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair is a few years old now, but I just watched it for the first time last weekend. Rock examines the phenomenon in African-American culture known as 'good hair' - that is, hair that is long, straight, and silky and therefore extremely desirable. Because hair of this kind doesn't come naturally to most black women, they achieve it through a variety of means, usually either chemical alteration of their natural hair or the use of hair extensions, also known as weaves. Rock chronicles these practices with the posture of an outsider who is just learning about them for the first time.
The thesis of the film is that 'good hair' is, in essence, white hair. Somehow, over the last 30 to 40 years, the ideal of the white hair type became ideologically embedded in the black community and is now driving a multi-billion dollar industry which has made many a white executive rich (Rock discovers, though blacks own many neighborhood barbershops, that white Americans, Chinese, and Koreans control the lion's share of the chemical and hair extension industries). Rev. Al Sharpton, himself a poster child of hair relaxer (the chemical treatment commonly used for hair straightening) observes late in the movie that "We [African-Americans] wear our economic oppression on our heads."
Good Hair is extremely compelling for a number of reasons, and at times its a truly semiotic reading of hair. I thought it tied especially well to Hebdidge's conception of hegemony, because the good hair phenomenon, as Sharpton would likely agree, is an instantiation of the dominant white culture containing black culture within its 'idealogical space.' It is interesting to note too, in relation to Hebdidge, that a couple of black actresses interviewed in the film intentionally wear their hair naturally, in part as an act of defiance. In a fascinating turn, the 'natural' look becomes a subversive act while artificiality becomes naturalized (anytime you see a black celebrity with long hair, the film argues, you can be certain that it's a weave).
Just as a secondary observation, it's interesting how promotionally the film was labelled a 'comedy' (the trailer says, "the award-winning new comedy that Vanity Fair called 'hilarious.'") If I didn't know any better, I would say that something of the critical content of the film is being intentionally masked by labeling it in this way. Whether this is for better or for worse - better if it gets more people to see it, worse if it neuters the film's critical potency by framing it that way - I'm not sure.
