Documentary Ponders Hip-Hop Culture

A new documentary aired Tuesday on PBS and is opening up hip-hop culture for debate. Football athlete, turned sexual violence counselor, turned filmmaker Byron Hurt, has put together a film that explores the questions of how the current hip-hop culture portrays and influences African Americans, with a special emphasis on male masculinity.

Hurt became aware of the negative impact of hip-hop as a counselor. The issues he saw on a daily basis motivated him to make Beyond Beats and Rhymes.

Critics of hip-hop have been getting louder in recent days. The top artists in the industry are accused of being horrible role models for the kids who grow-up listening to hip-hop and watching its music videos. "People have been talking about these issues, but not from this perspective," says Hurt.

The music and music videos of today's hip-hop kings is overflowing with violence and sexual objectification of women. One particular scene is garnering a great deal of attention. In it, women from Spelman College in Atlanta protested a bone-marrow drive sponsored by rapper Nelly, because his music video for the song "Tip Drill" depicted him running a credit card along the back of a sparsely dressed woman.

In an interview, the film's co-producer Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon said, "We are hoping to...challenge that narrow, destructive vision of masculine identity particularly for young men and boys that are the faces of hip-hop."

"They are the ones who are dying young from gun violence and women are victim of domestic violence. Our communities have most to lose by buying into violence and sexism," she said.

A theme of over the top masculinity permeates the culture. Top artists are noted in the film say that it is all show; that no one really lives their life the way the depict hip-hop in their music. But although that may be true in a few cases, it's obvious that not all folowers know where to draw the line.

Hurt wants to separate himself from other critics, however. "I don't scapegoat hip-hop. The same things you see in hip-hop, you can see all over," he said. He believes the same issues found in hip-hop are found in American culture on a whole, admittedly in a less prevalent form. "Hip-hop is Americana," he explaines. He cites former mayor Clint Eastwood's role as Dirty Harry, President George W. Bush taking a photo in a flight suit although he tried to dodge the draft, and Governor Schwarzenegger who uses terms like "economic girly-men" as evidence of this.

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