GORDON GEKKO SAYS 'GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN''

It is easy to dismiss the 2005 Curtis Jackson film vehicle as another value-less part of the money-generating automaton that 50 Cent became (if he was ever anything else). However, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’ might deserve a very prompt re-assessment in light of current events.

Apart from defying most of the basic rules of good cinema and storytelling in general, it does offer some sort of reflection of popular culture in the last ten years and therefore some of the ideas that have gained currency in society as a whole, not least the self-centred short sightedness of personal greed and unrestrained capitalism.

With reports of the current financial crisis being rammed down our throats on a daily basis there have been calls for a new Gordon Gekko, the Michael Douglas character from Oliver Stone’s eighties classic Wall Street. This has even resulted in the news that a Wall Street sequel is lined up so we can all utter the phrase “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” in a disparaging contemporary way at these bastard bankers and politicians. However, we seem to have missed the fact that a film that better summed up these times has already been made. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was Wall Street 2, and for a new slogan to rival ‘greed is good’ just look at the bloody title. 50 Cent’s film neatly bundles all of our misplaced values into a tidy little package. We haven’t been seeking intrinsic value, only the monetary value we have created, and a generation of people aspire to nothing more than money. The archetypical hero du jour is, or at least should be, good old Fiddy, who in his biopic tells us how he got rich, while caring about very little else, and lacking any real discernible talent. Just don’t blame him, blame yourself for funding him.

The film tries to follow that all-too-familiar rags to riches storyline, popular since at least as far back as Dickens, coupled with all the usual clichés prevalent in all the weak hip hop biopics and those films that I will call ‘Nouvelle Vague Blaxploitation’ (in an effort to make myself sound intelligent; you know, young man struggling in the ghetto/it’s a hard knock life).

A young Curtis Jackson, who is fatherless, which is apparently the reason for his later misdemeanors, loses his mother, a part time prostitute/crack head/crack dealer/hoe bag. He attends the funeral. He does not cry. Curtis is then shipped off to live with his blue collar grandparents before falling into a life of gangs and street crime (although it just looks like petty drug deals to me). Understandably he pursues this life initially to fund the purchase of new trainers that he really really wants. He then embarks on a life of blow, money and gang rivalries. He gets shot lots of times. He does cry. He then fulfills his (apparently long standing) dream of becoming an MC and somewhere in the middle he gets a girl (by making a mix tape and rapping about ‘cuming in her hair’) and has a kid. There’s some internal gang politics in the mix as well.

It may be necessary to adjust your expectations before we get started. Firstly, this is not a hip hop film in the ‘Wild Style’ or even ‘Juice’ sense of the word, where hip hop is not only all over the soundtrack, but its all over the film, from beginning to end. This is not a hip hop film at all, it just a film where the protagonist happens to become an MC, that coincidentally has an uninspiring soundtrack made up almost entirely of the utterly pedestrian and largely undistinguished tunes that together make up the Fiddy oeuvre.

Don’t come into this film looking for sort of evocation of hip hop in relation to aspirations of a struggling community. Don’t come into it expecting ‘Menace II Society’ or ‘Boys in the Hood’, which attempt to examine their characters in sharp focus and contain some depth. Don’t come into this film looking for some sort of exploration of those on the fringes, the urban underclass, racism, multiculturalism or modern society. If you want all of that go and watch ‘La Haine’ (which, incidentally, has a lot more hip hop in it).

Then there is the film’s plethora of flaws that have led to it being largely forgotten already. It is taken almost as an unwritten given in all films that your protagonist should undergo some sort of change during the film; there should be a basic character arc. In this case, as a child 50 will do anything for money (to buy some trainers), as an adult he will do anything for money (to get laid?) – It just happens that the quickest way to make money might be rapping and not pushing.

Like all great B-movies characters pop in and out of the film without you really knowing who they are, or anything about them. Fiddy himself attempts to reveal the depth of his character and own emotion, not by shedding a tear at his mother’s funeral, but by crying when his girlfriend tells him he is not a real man because he is bed ridden following ‘that’ shooting. Unfortunately, the emotional depth you can show when feeling sorry for yourself is fairly limited, as is the empathy it inspires in the viewer.

Of course this is also the biopic of a hip hop superstar (in 2005 at least) that surprisingly includes almost no rapping from its central character. When he does eventually take to the mic, keeping in mind that in reality he has made his name and his millions by rapping in front of people, his performance is unbelievably wooden. He is genuinely outshone in the MC stakes by the 12 year old playing his younger self (probably equally as damning to the people who bought all his records). It is as if he is reading his own rap, that he has surely written himself, off a cue card being held up by one of his mates off screen. Privileged white boys from Hampstead could have given a more convincing rendition.

The films greatest comedic hiccup is the beautiful moment in which Fiddy goes into the studio for the first time since his shooting. Everyone present exclaims how much grittier and different his voice sounds now, that it actually sounds better with his ‘I’ve been shot in the face’ lisp. But Fiddy is playing himself, and Fiddy has a lisp, he even has an ‘I’ve been shot in the face lisp’. He has had it during the entire film, and so to you the viewer, he obviously sounds exactly the same. A beautiful moment indeed.

Occasionally the film hints at other issues. If you read any synopsis of this film it will mention fairly prominently the fact that Fiddy [fade in string section] is looking for his father who he has never known [strings fade out . . .]. Upon my recollection he mentions this once or twice at the start of the film (and therefore his life) and spends no time actually looking for his father, as in the act of actively searching him out, making it come across as something of an afterthought like much of the films themes. Of course there is also the misogyny. The few women who feature in the film are crack whores, groupies, and his childhood ‘sweetheart’. In this particular film though she is less of a sweetheart and more of his badly sketched, money and power hungry, child-bearing beeyatch. These non-roles for female characters, as purely objects for pleasure, again reveal a one-track mind, and his children are included almost because they had to be, but there is little sign of emotional connection.

So the film is (entertainingly) flawed, but through these flaws it actually does the job of representing the ‘virtues’ of greed in a surprisingly effective way, intentionally or not. 50 Cent is essentially hollow and emotionless, unable to feel empathy, or understand feelings at all unless they can be related directly back to him. He is a solipsist. That’s why he can only cry when he’s feeling sorry for himself, when his own image of his personal manhood has been shattered.

50 Cent’s shallowness reflects the lack of depth and contemplation in our society, the greed that is portrayed as a virtue, and accepted by viewers, reflecting our assumption that greed was something for the eighties and the Reagan/Thatcher era as we recklessly engaged in it.

As for the absence of a character arc, 50’s refusal to change, to learn lessons and analyse his life, to question anything. Well what was there to question? He was making money selling drugs, then he realised there was an easier way with less risk: hip-hop. Ostensibly this career move is made for the sake of his family, but it seems that he maintains the same motivation as always. He wants big fuck-off cars, jewellery and other possessions you can’t afford, and that seems to include women. He can’t think beyond himself, and that merely echoes our recent collective self-obsession and selfishness.

50 Cent is the apotheosis of a certain kind of hip-hop celebrity and personality. Talent and artistic value aren’t a part of it; this is very much an idea that has become not only acceptable, but hegemonically prevalent, in the ten or more years that led up to this recession. People who get money deserve it, and there is not much else worth fighting for, let alone dying for. I don’t want to bang on about the connections of this worldview to the political, economic and newsworthy events of the last decade. I am sure you are more than aware of them.

Even so, you realise that 50 cent is better than Gordon Gekko because he is real. He lived his life according to such absurd notions, and he made it. He has taught us that you don’t need talent, morality, or ethics. You just need money. Maybe he even played his small part in our guileless tumble into the current vacuum of morality and common sense, or at the very least, laughed at us while we got ourselves there. Then again, you realize that he would have to have some self awareness or insight into the human condition to laugh or even understand this, and he is after all a total fucking automaton; an inevitable product of our world and nothing more. More souless than the fictional Gekko because at the very least Gekko understood greed itself and the human desire for power.

As much as we may not want to accept it, it is pretty damning verdict on everyone who played their part in a world where 50 cent has been rewarded for his ‘contribution’ to it. Don’t forget, Curtis Jackson is at least consistent, he probably didn’t read the reviews, he just wanted to know how much it was grossing at the box office.

GE