At The Movies
arc Levin believes in activist filmmaking. With
documentaries like Portrait of an American Zealot
and Thug Life in D.C. and the acclaimed feature
Slam, the 48-year-old director has made movies
that explore the tensions inherent in our multicultural society.
With Whiteboys, opening in theaters today, Levin exam-
ines the influence of hip hop (a blanket term that encom-
passes rap as well as the vocabulary, visual style and attitude
of those who embrace this music) on the dominant
American culture. Danny Hoch plays a white kid in rural
Iowa who identifies so strongly with hip hop that he "fanta-
sizes that he's going to grow up and be a black gangster rapper."
Levin and the 28-year-old Hoch, who expanded this charac-
ter from his solo performance piece Jails, Hospitals th Hip Hop,
are both Jewish, from the ultimate melting pot, New York City,
and share a belief in creating art with a social agenda.
The seriocomic Whiteboys, explains Levin, is about "a world
where too many kids, both black and white, only get a vision
of reality from television and have lost a sense of what is real
— despite the "keep it real" logo of the hip-hop generation.
Levin discussed the Jewish perspective of the "hip hop
nation" with the Detroit Jewish News.
Whitebosrs
In his new film, director Marc Levin explores the
influence of hip hop on mainstream America.
SERENA DONADONI
Special to the Jewish News
JN: How influenced are your own
children, 16-year-old fraternal twins,
by hip hop?
ML: My son is tornlly what you would
call a "whiteboy," meaning a white kid
who's lost in graffiti, break-dancing, rap
music. That's his world. My daughter is
a little broader, in that she alsc listens
to other stuff But that is their culture.
Mark Webber, Danny Hoch and Dash Mihok star in "Whiteboys."
JN: Do they see hip hop as the distinc-
tive music/style of their generation?
ML: Absolutely, just as j a'77. was my
parents' generation and we went to
rock. Each generation — this seems to
me the story of our popular culture —
has got to find its own way to express
itself — its own music, its own style.
That is a generation defining itself as
something new: "This is ours, not
yours, only we understand it." I think
the challenge for our generation is to
say, "OK, it may be yours, but what are
you going to do with it? What are you
going to say with it?"
Serena Donadoni is a Detroit-based
freelance writer.
JN: What do you think the specific
appeal of hip hop is for Jewish kids?
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1,18- Detroit Jewish News
ML: I think it's the same as it is for all
kids. It's rebellious, it's a way of getting
in touch with one's not wanting to be
just part of the system.
Tragically — the black and Jewish
story which in my generation came
together in the civil rights movement
— we've lost that. My parents were
activists and brought me to the famous
March on Washington. That was part
of my household: Jewish activists, black
activists, working together.
Whether [hip hop] is offering an
opportunity for a new generation to
reconnect in its own ways, I think
that's an open question. But I think
the fact that Jewish kids would identi-
fy with it makes a lot of sense. They
are much more tuned to it, [not
unlike] where young Jewish kids were
at in the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s in
their relationship to black culture.
JN: Danny Hoch has said that "hip
hop formed my language and my
entire worldview. I could be doing a
piece about religion or war, but hip
hop would still inform the way I see
it." What does having a hip hop sensi-
bility mean to him?
ML: It's a culture of resistance, that's
how he has identified it. For Danny,
and for some other young Jewish kids,
the idea of fighting for justice, of iden-