We
ain't meant to survive, cause it's a set-up.
And even though you're fed up,
Huh, ya got to keep your head up.
--Tupac, "Keep Ya Head Up"
I
am real. The lyrics might be a story or they might
be real. But I stay real, I am never a story, never
a
script, never a character.
--Tupac,
Tupac: Resurrection
At
first, hearing Tupac Amaru Shakur talk about himself in the past
tense is unnerving. Not only was he profound and perceptive in his
early 20s, he was prescient too. "I got shot. I always felt
like I'd be shot," he says at the start of Lauren Lazin's
documentary, Tupac: Resurrection. "I'm surprised, but
I'm happy, because I believe it's all in God's hands." With a
voiceover culled from the artist's many interviews, thoughtful and
provocative, the film pieces together a too-short life, a patchwork
that's sometimes sad, sometimes predictable, and often inspired and
impassioned.
The
basic trajectory of that life is familiar to anyone with even a
passing knowledge of Tupac's art, as he talked about his life
throughout his career, using his experiences as foundation, source,
and challenge. The film recounts all those steps, from his birth in
Brooklyn in 1971 to Baltimore to Digital Underground to Clinton
Correctional Facility to Death Row and at last to Vegas on 7
September 1996. From jump, the film insists on the importance of
Tupac's mother Afeni (who executive produced the film, ensuring, if
nothing else, its excellent soundtrack, with add-ons by Tupac
acolyte Eminem, including the single "Running [Dying to
Live]"). Black Panther, community activist, drug addict, and
strong black woman, she shaped her vibrant son as he absorbed her
politics, rage, and poetry, challenging and admiring her at
different points in his life.
This
relationship is good to remember, for and at one level, this film is
all about continuity across generations. At another, of course, it's
about resisting history, or better, understanding in order to
overcome it. "Everybody's past," he says, "is what
made their future." The film reflects that his own relationship
to his past changed during his life, but even more to the point, as
his past became mythic and seminal, a means to a legend that now has
everything and precious little to do with the person he may have
been. Certainly, there were pressures on Tupac to be a star, a
leader, a prophet, and yet he also felt (or said he felt) that these
were his callings, that he would make a difference in the broadest
sense: "Throughout my life, I just wanted to be an angel of
God."
As
volatile as Tupac may have been, those who tell (and retell) his
story tend to make it unambiguous, whether in hagiographies or in
critiques of his outraged lyrics. (This process of
"stabilizing" his legend continues with the film's
release, as it is accompanied not only by the requisite cd of tracks
"inspired" by Tupac, but also a coffee table-type book, Tupac:
Resurrection, featuring photos and quotations from the movie,
edited by Jacob Hoye and Karolyn Ali.) While the movie
"allows" Tupac to represent himself, the counterpoint is
unavoidable: the film by definition seeks to organize and make sense
of chaos. On the surface, this is a matter of correspondence: when
he speaks of his friend Jada Pinkett, and you see images of them
together; he describes his experiences on a particular movie set or
at high school in Baltimore, and you see matching photos and
footage.
But
beneath the surface, this sense-making also has to do with
extrapolation and education -- granting Tupac yet another chance to
speak his mind, indict injustice, and urge action. The film extols
Pac's skills and virtues, certainly, and to that end, it includes
brief clips of easy targets Dan Quayle, C. Delores Tucker, and
Calvin Butts, almost as comic relief (with a shot of the bulldozer
crushing cds, as if that's been forgotten), as they look so silly
now. Tupac himself was painfully aware of political and material
oppressions, and those afflicting many millions more. The film
retells some of his most famous run-ins with his "number one
enemy," the police (his beating in Oakland, his arrest for
assaulting the Hughes brothers, his shooting in New York, his
conviction on sexual abuse charges and 11-month stint in a New York
State prison), revealing his take on each episode in a series of
interview snippets, with Tabitha Soren, Arsenio, and a youthful but
still somber Ed Gordon. "My fans go to jail," he observes,
"just like me."
The
movie alternates between news footage and home movies, still photos
and his own carefully maintained notebooks, music videos
("Brenda Got a Baby," "California Love") and
film scenes: Tupac as Bishop in Juice, Lucky in Poetic
Justice, Birdie in Above the Rim (he and Marlon Wayans
have a good laugh over Wayans' name in the film -- Boogaloo -- as
this must have been some screenwriter's idea of what a black baller
would be called), and Spoon in Gridlock'd. Even in this brief
career, he demonstrates remarkable range and changes across roles.
Lazin uses still shots that lift and shift, animated as if to
emulate the vivacity and instability of history -- you can't hold it
down.
Just
so, Tupac's self-descriptions reveal his understanding of cultural
and political shifts, as well as his evolving efforts to express
ideas and make appeals. He describes, for example, his decisions to
attend "dirty parties" even after he became a celebrity,
as these were where he might maintain his sanity, apart from the
noise of privilege. As well, he explains repeatedly, as he did
during his lifetime, his understanding of thug life, as concept,
practice, and ethos. "I don't understand why America doesn't
understand thug life," he says, "America is thug
life. What makes me saying, 'I don't give a f*ck' different than
Patrick Henry saying, 'Give me liberty or give me death'? What makes
my freedom less worth fighting for than Bosnians or whoever they
want to fight for this year?"
Review by Jacob Hoye · Nitrate Online
