by B.J. on 6/17/2004 12:00:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

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On 2Pac Resurrection

2Pac has the same b'day as my dad. Wow, yesterday. And so for it, I watched 2Pac Resurrection !

So after watching the mindless and predictable Along Came Polly with a smoking hot but overly-done (and I mean done, especially by Pitt) Jennifer Anniston, my mom, dad, sister up and left to their bedroooms leaving me to watch what I knew would be the more useful movie, 2Pac Resurrection. After lobbying hard for them to watch, my parents decided not to watch because "he's what's wrong with society." (And my parents aren't even close-minded conservatives relative to other Filipino families. Hell, they're probably some of the most liberal Filipinos you'll ever meet, but my dad for some reason likes to follow American Republican politics.)

This movie is exactly what every American naturally (as in their beliefs tend to be Republican, Conservative, etc but they're not active) and poltically Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, 2Pac hater should see. I imagine they probably see 2Pac as having something permanently wrong with him and unchanging attaching such traits to him such as "evil" and "trouble-making" rather than looking at him as being a product of a bunch of events. This movie makes it so that they see a person going through even more shit than those yuppies could ever imagine. Maybe a few more of these kinds of movies will help those people those beliefs and even moderates see and understand impoverished people some day and how really hard it is to "make it." (I wish they would've shed more light on how and these people stayed in poverty rather than simply saying it existed)

2Pac was not romanticized as some kind of angel, but rather as an extremely conscious person who spoke about social injustice and change and his life. It tells us how he took so much shit even when he "made it" and how all his opposition made it hard on him. The movie tells us how his words on those subjects were all sparked by the pain of rising from moving around, poverty, and drugs.

Basically the movie tells us how he rode with whatever he felt. So when he was low, he was low, and he'd write about that. When he was high, he was high as in drunk and high and took that to extremes like a 70s rock star (think of Aerosmith's first downfall). So high and drunk that he took it too far with some chick and went to jail for it. When he got bailed out of jail by Suge Knight after having been there for a year, he spoke even more arrogantly and flashed even more prominently all the money and women he had as a way to show the world that they could not hold him down.

For this short period between his bailout and his death, he seemed to see himself as an underdog always getting attacked by everyone. All his public interactions seemed to be more about him than any greater social good. I think he was still recovering from being in that maximum state prison. I got the feeling that he would've eventually snapped this phase of indulgence based on his history of constantly labelling his past self as "immature" showing an ability to change, engaging in such random activities such as acting and reading Shakespeare and the Art of War, and being socially conscious and not having a record until he made a record. So, the movie ended with him being an unfinished product and someone who died prematurely.

In all I just came away seeing Tupac as someone who knew a lot but spoke way too much. The way too much is what the mainstream media captured to make compelling television and articles without showing what triggered Tupac to speak way too much. In the end, "no one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble, not knowin' its hard to carry on when no one loves you" - the anthem of yet another misunderstood genius

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