GHETTOPHYSICS 1/4 star
Samuel Goldwyn Films, Rated R
Using movies as a merchandising tool is certainly nothing new. The proliferation of product placement is the most blatant example, increasingly turning movie sets into subliminal supermarkets and department stores. But the peddling of ideas, more commonly known as propaganda, may be more insidiously intertwined with plots and characters, barely inseparable from the emotional impact of a story on those impressionable captive audiences out there.
Such seems to be the case with the documentary GhettoPhysics, a self-improvement guide linguistically adapted to appeal specifically to African Americans and situated somewhere between a get-rich-quick scheme, Sunday church sermonizing and a shrink’s office. The formula for self-actualization, in this instance, is unique and attention-grabbing, however borderline bizarre, with combo filmmakers/covert life coaches Will Arntz (What the Bleep Do We Know!?) and E. Raymond Brown not seeing the world in black and white, but rather dividing it up into pimps and hos.
Based on Brown’s man-up manual GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up! and possibly conceived as an infomercial for his life coaching enterprise, the film claims everyone on the planet is either a pimp—that is, the boss in charge—or the ho—the underling and/or victim. Brown, as GhettoPhysics narrator, makes no gender distinctions either way, so ladies, you can be a pimp too. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter whether you’re nice or nasty, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Hitler, you’re a pimp. And according to the filmmakers, everybody else is a ho conned into “dreaming somebody else’s dream.”
Sorry E. Raymond, since I’m the movie critic here, I get to be the pimp. So let me chime in before things get too out of hand. Showing up in a movie in a designer suit to connect to the inner city and peddle your product by condescendingly couching the sales pitch in Ebonics or what is more commonly referred to as street jive may be viewed as a tad insulting and simply dumbing down the demographic. Even if you’ve included genuine pimps and hos pontificating side-by-side with Cornel West and Norman Lear.
On a not-unrelated sidenote, GhettoPhysics is being promoted by The Visioneering Group, which is described as “A Transformational Marketing and Public Relations Firm Linking Spirit, Vision and Holistic Values with Compassionate Communication to Promote a Positive and Sustainable Future.”
Streamlining a life coach business across the class divide for a ghetto demographic and hawking self-esteem among the socially and economically disadvantaged may not be a bad thing. Unless there’s a hefty profit motive being pimped in the process of making a movie about somebody else’s dream.
