Authenticity and the Hero’s Journey in Rick Famuyiwa’s DOPE
Recent black films can be separated into two distinct categories; historical dramas, (e.g. The Butler, 12 Years a Slave, Selma) or films focused on the structural disadvantages black people face (Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, The Blind Side, The Pursuit of Happyness). This is disappointing because while the number of critically acclaimed black movies rises, the kinds of stories that black people are able to portray are woefully limited.
While these figures are subject to change, for the most part, a film cannot succeed without somehow piquing the interest of white audiences. This is part of the economic reality of living in America — but it’s lazy economics. It’s the same kind of demographic work that said Obama couldn’t win unless he won the white male vote in 2012 (*laughing forever*). And yet, the only movies that seem to interest white audiences seem to fall into these two aforementioned categories.
For the first time since the golden era of 90s black television (RIP), black folk have the opportunity and resources to be active participants in the creation of black stories. That said, we still don’t have the freedom to write stories for ourselves. The pressure to capitalize on this attention to specific types of black narratives tends to outweigh the need to tell our own authentic, personal stories. Black experiences aren’t monolithic, and yet black movies are focused on these seemingly narrow slices of black culture.
As a black nerd in America watching movies made by black filmmakers, I am caught in a pickle. While these movies have characters that look like me, none of these stories have protagonists or subject matter that line up with my own experience.
This summer’s Dope is the great exception to this trend in movies. Rick Famuyiwa’s coming-of-age narrative focuses on 90s Hip-Hop nerd Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his friends Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) as they journey through the streets of Inglewood, California, attempting to sell three bricks of what can only be described as “super ecstasy.” Throughout their journey they encounter gang-bangers, corrupt businessmen, gun violence, and privileged white people.
While seemingly boilerplate in its setup, the movie is rife with references and homages to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. I know all the literary folk out there are sick to death of hearing about the Hero’s journey, so you’ll have to excuse my excitement as a black man watching a black movie authentically evoke what has prototypically been a white utilization of the form.
What gets me excited about Dope is that it scratches an itch I didn’t think any work of its kind could ever reach, in a way that is resonant and authentic to me. When push comes to shove, these are the only two criteria that matter to me in stories. I truly believe, much like Mr. Campbell does, that every story is a permutation of the same story. Even when subverting this extant structure, writers do so not in a vacuum but with the original monomyth in the deep recesses of their minds, as a sort of negative image.
For me, a story is resonant when the viewer is able to put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes and what is resonant about Dope comes from the empathy the screenwriter shows their protagonist, Malcolm. Specifically I was touched by their treatment of the struggle black nerds endure to fit into a society that doesn’t seem to be made for them. A struggle I very much relate to.
A story is authentic when its collective elements ring true. Authenticity takes hold when a story shares similitude with one’s own reality, or reveals a convincing new perspective on the world. For many viewers (white audiences) Dope will open their eyes to a more nuanced view of a world of blackness that historically has only existed only in parody.
Spoilers ahead:
On the surface, Dope seemingly plays into a lot of the stereotypes one would expect from a black movie. That said, Famuyiwa’s screenplay subverts the expected narrative while taking its cues from Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Framework. For instance, The threshold guardian, a character who typically heralds the Hero on their quest (think Obi-Wan Kenobi) in Dope is a drug dealer played by A$AP Rocky.
Zoe Kravitz’s character Nakia fulfills the role of the goddess. In the monomyth, the “meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.” Nakia’s budding relationship with Malcolm challenges the core or his identity, specifically the idea that his lack of similitude to “those other hood niggas” is the most important and defining thing about him. Ultimately she is attracted to him because of his nerdy qualities rather than despite them.
This relationship functions as a sort of ersatz side-quest. Whereas in other narratives the hero would be rewarded for slaying the dragon (selling the dope) with the affection of the princess (the drug dealer’s girlfriend), Dope takes care to not fall into sentimentality and in this way actually breaks away from Campbell’s model.
Though initially seen as a weakness and a crutch, Malcolm’s main strength is revealed to be that which sets him apart from the other denizens of the world — his nerd skills and his intelligence, which is contrasted with the rest of Inglewood’s rough street life — and (through clever uses of Bitcoin and viral marketing) is what allows him to eventually fulfill his goals.
While following and subverting the structure of the Hero’s Journey, Dope at the same time inverts expectations of black films. Hackneyed tropes like the single mother raising a child in the hood are dealt with delicately. Dope deals with the fact that there is a real and present danger for all inhabitants of their area in an almost glib way. Focusing less on the tragedy and more on the irony and humor of the circumstances. Malcolm has dreams of leaving his neighborhood and getting into Harvard, in a nod to the “disadvantaged youth escapes the hood” narrative that we see in movies like the Blind Side and Finding Forrester, but pursues this dream without the White Savior™ to help lift him up out of his situation.
The main narrative thrust in Dope is Malcolm’s transition not from nerdy black kid from the hood into an erudite Harvard attendee, but that of an insecure marginalized youth that comes to terms with his upbringing, expectations from others and expectations of himself. It is this narrative thrust that is most meaningful to me. For the first time I see my authentic self in a movie.
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