I generally try to avoid reading movie reviews before I see the movie in question, but anticipation of the release of Block Party, a documentary involving two of my favorite artist/entertainers, comedian Dave Chappelle and director Michel Gondry, became overwhelming, and so I indulged in a little bit of pregnostication.

I first read Stephanie Zacharek’s piece in Salon, and it seemed to me a little overcooked. A sample quote:

While the rest of us are busy carving up the country — red state, blue state; urban, suburban; sophisticated, rustic; them, us — in ‘Dave Chappelle’s Block Party,’ there’s room for only one America, but it’s one big enough to include everybody.

While I love Salon, and have nothing but disdain and contempt for the state of our politics in 2006, I have been somewhat saddened by the heavily politicized air the webzine has taken on since its more genteel, arts and literary editorial origins in the late 90s. Salon is fighting the good fight, but I miss the frivolous decadence of, say, its ’Masterpiece’ series, one of which elaborated on Seinfeld as ’one of the most complex and troubling art works of our time.’ Sigh …

The mention of the insidious and tired red state / blue state trope in Zacharek’s review seemed unwelcome, jarring, limp-wristed, a little too simplistically and cloyingly topical. But it’s a sign of how the malady of the times has infected and desensitized us all that I only became simpatico with Zacharek while watching the film, thinking: Jesus, what a lovely, beautiful, joyous, exuberant movie … With belated clarity came the realization that it wasn’t that Zacharek was placing the film within a ‘red/blue’ framework (the mention of which must have triggered some kind of involuntary gag response in me), but that she was arguing precisely the opposite; that historicized frames simply cannot contain the bursting spirit and abundant soulfulness of this film.