To be bodied in a rap battle is to be completely, and utterly eviscerated by your opponent. I imagine most audiences will go into Bodied with preconceptions of where a YouTube original movie about a white kid succeeding in underground rap battles might go. However, Joseph Kahn and Alex Larsen’s screenplay will body the sh*t out of you, my n-words. Wait, is that cultural appropriation?
We open on Behn Grymm (Jackie Long) enjoying his time on the top of the California rap battle scene, destroying another opponent. In the audience you see sort of what you expect…and Adam (Calum Worthy) with his girlfriend Maya (Rory Uphold), both Caucasians attending Berkeley. Adam is hoping to do a thesis on these poets as he sees them, while his girlfriend Maya can’t overlook the excessive misogyny, homophobia, and terrible stereotypes on display. However, Adam’s education has prepped him to become a talented battle rapper, and he plunges head first into the art the minute he gets a chance.
At first, you think Bodied is just going to poke knowing fun at a white guy doing rap battles, and it does do that. However, the movie’s scope and aim is much larger, and more potent than you think. We spend a lot of time on the Berkeley campus, learning about the student body and their thoughts. One character says they love a specific drink on a vegan menu….only to change all the ingredients in the drink. There’s a selfie with a homeless white guy that would have been labeled by the vapid student #culturalappropriation. There’s an amazing exchange between Adam, Maya, a couple of gay guys and an Asian girl, where everything each person says is racist according to another member of the group, with dizzying exchanges where each accuser clarifies why the statement is racist. The movie puts you in Adam’s shoes, and you’re left in a tizzy, confused as to what racism actually means, and when you try to chime in, since you’re in the majority, everyone thinks you’re the most ignorant. And when you try to defend yourself, either by accusing another person of BS or by defending your side, you’re cornered into a no win situation being a white guy in a liberal bubble, who may or may not be used as the basis of a thesis argument. It’s scathing, but VERY potent stuff.
I could have watched a whole movie just on the send up of hypocritical college critiques. But Bodied has other, scarier fish to fry. Let’s start with the names of the rappers: Che Corleone, Hunnid Gramz, Megaton. The rap battles head long encourage the performers to tap into the worst, most personal stereotypes of their opponent, uttering racial epithets so numerous and appalling that you feel awful laughing even though it’s truly very clever. Why do they do it? Because the audience expects this type of behavior. However, for Adam, the line between performance and reality over the course of the film really starts to blur. While the other performers are really good at code switching depending on their audience (Behn Grymm has a family, one guy works at a Sushi restaurant), Adam has never had such an issue, so his real life starts to merge with his performance one. A great rap battle will aim for total, brutal honesty, and Bodied builds to a stellar 20-30 minute battle where we understand what the base truth are for some of our main characters. If you’re Adam, it’s only so long that you’re called a bigot and a racist that maybe you realize you might just be one in real life. For Behn Grymm, his talent can’t cover forever how much he loves his family and will put them first no matter what happens in or out of the ring. At times it’s horrifying and brutal to watch, but also thrilling as well, as each character learns what truly makes them tick.
As Bodied would say, judging a person by their presented persona is a fool’s errand. There’s so much going beneath this movie’s and everyone’s surface, that it’s unfair to put them into a box right at the outset. Especially my secret racist, avocado toast loving, triggered white liberal self.