Step Up is a thorough and nuanced exploration of poverty and the traps that poverty brings.
Find that surprising? How about this - Step Up only has two extended dance sequences and the second one is the same dance that they'd been rehearsing throughout the entire film. The film goes an hour without having any real dance.
Instead Step Up is a very real film, trying and succeeding to talk about being poor in a complex manner.
The hero of the film is from a poor neighbourhood, none of their friends have money, their family didn't have money. For his whole life, no-one ever expected him to achieve anything or do anything worth talking about. And because people have been telling that to him for his whole life, he believes it too. He quits everything before he gets too deep because he's afraid of failing and nothing will ever come of it. He smashes up a school because he's alienated from it, he'll never go there, everyone tells him that he's not like the people from there, so what does he care if a few plants break?
No-one is being deliberately bad, but everyone has a predetermined idea of what he can be. The principal of the dance academy tries to hide her prejudices to a degree, but she doesn't believe he can dance. She sees his vandalism and lack of commitment and doesn't think it can change.
But it's more than that, his friends and family don't believe he can be different, and without realising it, they keep holding him down. To change his life means he has to spend less time with the people around him, he has to pursue a hobby which they don't share and that's hard. He feels like a traitor to his friends. Although his friends want the best for him, they find it hard to let him go, because he's a good friends and seeing him change is scary. There's a worry that they're going to be left behind.
The film recognises that when you're down it's hard to get up because everything is working against you. It's genuinely hard to have to fight and struggle for every scrap that comes easy to the rich white kids around you whose parents expected them to go to dance school and achieve. They've spent their lives growing up and learning the social language, and if you want to get out of poverty people force you to change and learn that language instead of being who you are.
Step Up isn't mindless fun, it's actually important.
Actually a Legit Film
Step Up is a thorough and nuanced exploration of poverty and the traps that poverty brings.
Find that surprising? How about this - Step Up only has two extended dance sequences and the second one is the same dance that they'd been rehearsing throughout the entire film. The film goes an hour without having any real dance.
Instead Step Up is a very real film, trying and succeeding to talk about being poor in a complex manner.
The hero of the film is from a poor neighbourhood, none of their friends have money, their family didn't have money. For his whole life, no-one ever expected him to achieve anything or do anything worth talking about. And because people have been telling that to him for his whole life, he believes it too. He quits everything before he gets too deep because he's afraid of failing and nothing will ever come of it. He smashes up a school because he's alienated from it, he'll never go there, everyone tells him that he's not like the people from there, so what does he care if a few plants break?
No-one is being deliberately bad, but everyone has a predetermined idea of what he can be. The principal of the dance academy tries to hide her prejudices to a degree, but she doesn't believe he can dance. She sees his vandalism and lack of commitment and doesn't think it can change.
But it's more than that, his friends and family don't believe he can be different, and without realising it, they keep holding him down. To change his life means he has to spend less time with the people around him, he has to pursue a hobby which they don't share and that's hard. He feels like a traitor to his friends. Although his friends want the best for him, they find it hard to let him go, because he's a good friends and seeing him change is scary. There's a worry that they're going to be left behind.
The film recognises that when you're down it's hard to get up because everything is working against you. It's genuinely hard to have to fight and struggle for every scrap that comes easy to the rich white kids around you whose parents expected them to go to dance school and achieve. They've spent their lives growing up and learning the social language, and if you want to get out of poverty people force you to change and learn that language instead of being who you are.
Step Up isn't mindless fun, it's actually important.