DIRECTOR EDUCATED ON THE STREETS OF HOUSTON
Joseph Kahn learned about street culture the hard way, a kid from Jersey Village lugging expensive video equipment through some Fifth Ward streets, helping rappers achieve their music video dreams.
“I got made fun of like crazy, you have to imagine what it’s like to take a little nerd like me and thrown in with, like, a bunch of black gangsters and stuff like that, they’re going to rip the (stuff) out of me, and they did for months and years,” says Kahn, who got his start directing videos for Houston hip-hop groups like the Geto Boys and 5th Ward Boyz.
These days, he has a different clientele, as he’s become Taylor Swift’s go-to music video director. His latest spot for her, “Ready for It,” has more than 53 million views on YouTube since being released in late October.
But while Kahn is on the minds of pop stars — he’s also done recent videos for Imagine Dragons, Shakira and Maroon 5 — he never forgot those early days of hip-hop street lessons. Those experiences have informed his latest movie, “Bodied,” a battle-rap satire produced by the world’s most famous former battle rapper, Eminem, who also is on Kahn’s list of music video clients.
“Bodied,” which will have its Houston premiere Thursday night at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, is a rousing paean to contemporary battle rap. But the movie is more than just Battle Rap 101 for the uninitiated, it’s a treatise on free speech and cultural appropriation in a time when those phrases seem to be the subtext of every other thinkpiece posted on the internet.
“Ultimately, I didn’t just want to make a movie about battle rap,” Kahn says during a phone call from his California home. “I think battle rap is an interesting art form I definitely want to push forward, and it’s definitely about battle rap, but I also wanted to make a movie about speech and the way we talk, and how we offend people and how we don’t offend, and concepts of free speech versus censorship.”
“Bodied” is built around the defunct Bay Area battle-rap league Grind Time and the free speech ideals that define a campus like UC Berkeley, which is facing its own battle against the alt-right and the history of political activism. The story follows a seemingly nerdy white college kid who wants to step into that battle rap sphere, and all the cultural intersections and education that follow.
“I’m very conscious that the story is about a white guy going into battle rap, which obviously has its own connotations, it’s a white guy going into a black art form,” Kahn says about the Berkeley student turned rap-battle champ named Adam, played by Canadian actor Calum Worthy.
Kahn didn’t want him to be the Hollywood cliché of a white outsider coming into a realm and dominating all the black characters, or for this film to become a black and white perspective.
“There is a really great battle rapper that is not black or white, and that’s Dizaster, he’s Arabic. He’s a very controversial figure in the scene, everybody hates him, and everybody loves him. Battle rap is such a weird place that if you’re a hero, you’re also a villain at the same time because of the nature of the warfare that you wage.”
Kahn called Dizaster an appropriate antagonist, but the director is a bit of a button pusher on the race issue himself. His Twitter feed is filled with missives such as, “I know white people. I have seen their ways for many years.” He occasionally shoots verbal arrows at the alt-right and President Donald Trump.
Kahn says his film, which he calls a satire, came from his love of black comedians and delves into society’s growing sensitivity to equality and racial awareness. “Things that black comedians did back in the day, they could never get away with now,” Kahn says, referencing Eddie Murphy’s raw jokes about homosexuality. “Because everybody is getting rights, people are more conscious about not offending each other.”
But, he says, not wanting to offend and violate people’s rights rubs against the art of battle rapping.
“If you look at battle rap and humor, there’s still this sort of confrontation and honesty,” Khan says. “‘Bodied’ has two worlds, one is the super high social-conscious world, which extends from the initial black struggle, but on the flipside, it’s gotten so methodical and so collegiate that it almost gets displaced from reality. And there’s another side where you know that race jokes and every other type of joke that’s possible still exists in the hood and still exists in urban culture.”
Kahn’s not worried if his movie or his Twitter antics offend you. He knows it’s not for everyone, and just like in battle rap, he’s just trying to stay relevant and stay on top. ‘BODIED’ • When: 9 p.m. Thursday, the screening includes a Q&A with rapper and Rice University lecturer Bun B Where: Rice University Media Center, 2030 University Blvd. • Tickets: $12; houstoncinemaartsfestival.org