Untangling the Roots of Texturism: Review of Bad Hair (2020)

Synopsis of Bad Hair (2020)

Bad Hair (2020) is a skittish cross between satire, comedy, and horror. The movie opens with an impactful scene of young Anna Bludso (Zaria Kelley) losing her hair after a relaxer application goes wrong. This scars her and makes her afraid of the creamy crack and making her hair. Few minutes into the movie, it transports us to 1989 and we watch as an older Anna (Elle Lorraine) tries to make her way in the competitive, colorist, and the sexist world of television. Anna works at Culture, a 1989, African-American version of MTV Base, as an assistant to Edna (Judith Scott), the current head of programming. Unfortunately, Culture’s homey, little snow globe is shaken up when the station owner, Grant Madison (James Van Der Beek) replaces Edna with Zora (Vanessa Williams), a former supermodel.

With Edna gone and “Zora with the good hair” coming in with her assistant, Anna no longer has a purpose at Culture. The situation becomes especially dicier with the way Zora is going through the employees faster than a hot knife through butter. When Anna finally gets an audience with Zora and pitches her idea on how to give Culture much-needed visibility by adding a live music video countdown, Zora is impressed by how innovative Anna is and keeps her on as an assistant. There is however a…