I can’t wait to ‘Feel the Noise’
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Yesssssssssssssss!
I can’t wait to Netflix this. 
Long-time Racialicious readers will know how much I love movies with multiple dance-offs. But this movie looks extra-special because it stars that tiny little magical dancing machine, Omarion!
(My dream dance-off would be Omarion vs. Chris Brown. Omarion would crrrrrrush him.)
It must be so effortless to make these movies, since they all follow the exact same script.
A young man gets into trouble at home, so his parents send him away for a change of scenery. He sees a hot girl and is immediately infatuated. But even though she clearly wants him, she doesn’t want to leave her evil boyfriend because he’s powerful and handsome.
The troubled young man gets involved in the subculture (stepping, marching bands, breaking) of this new environment but fumbles, humiliating himself. He finds out about A Big Event (competition, tournament, talent show) that will allow him to redeem his honor.
After a montage of him training, interspersed with him flirting with the girl, the movie culminates with The Big Event. Just when you think he’s about to lose, he delivers a crushing blow to the Evil Handsome Guy, winning his dignity and the girl! Woohoo!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
merq wrote:
Great synopsis, Carmen. But you forgot the final prereq: the cheesy/cliched catchprhase title
Stomp the Yard
Feel the Noise
You Got Served
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 1:09 pm ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:
merq - good call! Although “Drumline” forgot that prereq, clearly.
I also forgot that the Troubled Young Man learns a valuable life lesson, like, becoming a team player.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 1:13 pm ¶
tasha wrote:
Oh, I’m praying that they come out with a spoof like they did with the teen films or “Scary Movie” with um, oh, oh, Vanessa Hudgens as “the girl.” Vanessa’s dancing talent gets discovered after one of her “private videos” of her dancing naked in her bedroom mistakenly gets uploaded on to the internet. “Not Another Dance Movie” Please God, please!
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 2:04 pm ¶
Vox wrote:
Tasha, I would actually go see such a movie in the theater.
I know what I want for my birthday now.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 2:16 pm ¶
deb wrote:
I love the dancing in Omarion’s “Touch” video! And I just adore the battle dance scene from “The Proud Family Movie”. :p
I recently watched “Stomp the Yard”. Sure, it’s predictable but, I liked it more than I thought I would. So much so, that I purchased the sdtk at iTunes. It put me in a dancing mood; so then I purchased Shaun T’s “Hip Hop Abs” exercise video.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 2:55 pm ¶
anonymous wrote:
Please kill me now, and wait…did it say produced by Jennipher Lopez?
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 4:12 pm ¶
nsekuye wrote:
“reggaeton music is about our struggle.”
wow. this is going to be classic. i will definitely be paying $10 to see this.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 5:33 pm ¶
Bianca Reagan wrote:
I loved the South Park episode when Stan “got served” and then “it” was “on.”
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 6:45 pm ¶
imdeep wrote:
Funny that when it was the “loners/outcasts against society”, they were calling it “Footloose” when they weren’t calling it “Grease”, “Saturday Night Fever”, “Breakin’”/”Beat Street”, “West Side Story”, or”Guys & Dolls”…
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 9:10 pm ¶
Mike wrote:
These movies are so predictable you only have to watch one to have seen them all, literally. In fact I’ll just watch stomp the yard on bootleg and save the $10.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 9:43 pm ¶
James wrote:
“But this movie looks extra-special because it stars that tiny little magical dancing machine, Omarion!” - Carmen
Tiny little magical dancing machine? ….
I know what’s worse. The undeniable fact that Black male entertainers like Omarion routinely appear in moralistic minstrel shows greenlit by Hollywood to consume African American entertainment dollars by devolving Black masculinity to complicated precision dancing and/or baby-oil drenched Mandingo warrior swagger clearly presents a more disgusting problem than an uncritical throwaway reference that dehumanizes a Black man by calling him a ‘tiny little magical dancing machine’.
I can’t say that I care very much right now, though. I like this site because it focuses on racist symbolism in popular culture, the very phenomenon with which so many supposedly liberal, supposedly anti-oppression people have trouble.
In their defense of the mainstream, these faux liberals offer the point that obvious fiction can’t possibly tell us much about ourselves, so if John Q. American sometimes enjoys watching hip hop movies with hypersexualized thugs who sport shiny nickel-plated Glocks and scantily clad women of color bouncing their rounder portions, then maybe market forces dictate the only useful morality.
This site opposes such cynical logic, and I’ve always respected that. So, after reading this post, I felt confused. Carmen, you rightly discuss the obvious formula in these Stomp the Last Dance or Die Tryin’ flicks, but your attempt to characterize Omarion as a skilled dancer immediately conjured images of immense physical skill masked in blackface like an old Shirley Temple movie.
Omarion is not a machine. When we see acrobatic dancing from Black men, its all too easy to dissect the skill from the humanity, and focus on the skill alone. I find that dangerous, and believe that it only increases the gulf of racial difference that posits African Americans as the Other.
Maybe the real problem here remains the fact that entertainers like Omarion, Chris Brown, and Usher appear so happy to dance for mainstream audiences that cooning becomes an inevitable result for the American viewer. Every time people see Chris Brown’s genial smile during a performance, I wonder if they mentally shade burnt cork and firetruck red Max Factor on Brown’s broad smile.
Perhaps people view Black male physical skill as something otherworldly and superhuman, so that Black male physical skill in general becomes something designed to entertain only, like a plastic toy from Mattel.
I don’t think it matters though. It doesn’t take much to remember the humanity of the Negro entertainer, and frankly, we have to.
To lose that focus devolves athletic Black entertainers from shining examples of human focus and training to mechanical animals bred for mainstream merriment, and that’s just a little too Dixie for my tastes.
Posted 23 Sep 2007 at 12:22 pm ¶
inciquay wrote:
Don’t forget, there’s always the dance off…and then there’s the sudden-death-tiebreaker-one-on-one dance off between the 2 sides which is usually reduced to the 2 individual leaders!
Posted 23 Sep 2007 at 3:32 pm ¶
Tish Jackson wrote:
Well, I liked Stomp and Drumline because they focused on a rarely seen venue: HBCU’s. But wow, you really think Omarion would win against Chris Brown? LOL Now this I gotta see!
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 1:44 pm ¶
s wrote:
hmm, i’m wondering if any of these such movies will ever cast a fat chick with short hair as “the babe”??? Or, maybe the “babe” isn’t even a chick, but another guy? (wait, they did Brokeback Mountain already) No, no. Maaaaybe, the black kid learns a lesson from…(drum roll please)…his mom!
Anyway, one day we will be shocked at the non-predictability of these movies. I’m telling you, the next “black-kid-in-trouble-needs-a-danceoff/stepoff/drumoff-and-a-stereotypically good looking-love interest-to-learn-a-life-lesson-and-avoid-getting-shot-in-da-hood” movie will have a new twist:)
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 6:30 pm ¶
bdsista wrote:
No this is the movie I want, the love interest is the full figured black girl with short hair (not a fro or dreads), who is not acting like Monique, but confident like the stereotyped girl, and he learns the lesson from his mom, does the dance off, (I’m a dancer, I Loove dance movies), while studying at crazy hours and gets straight A’s and becomes the valedictorian and becomes an engineer! Or, is the dancing computer geek, who is Clark Kent like, with the glasses and is real computer savvy, who beats the evil hacker and saves the world while beating him in a dance off and then gets the girl who though she liked the athlete/thug/smug guy. Or, the computer guy/dance hero while competing in the dance off with the athlete/thug, finds out in the computer lab that the athlete/thug actually is pretty computer savvy too and they put aside their animosity to defy all odds and and save the world and then the full figured girl interest, turns out to have a really cute cousin and everyone ends up happy and learns lessons about cooperation.
Posted 01 Oct 2007 at 11:21 am ¶