1.The Jazz
Sebastian most tremulous number is not actually jazz, yet he is a jazz pianist who spends the film trying to achieve his dream of founding a jazz cafe full of jazz paraphernalia.
Beyond that, Sebastian obsession with a particular type of jazz, neo-bop, is problematic for many in the wider jazz community. As Seve Chambers explains for Vulture, jazz musicians, both contemporary and classic such as Miles Davis, have long pushed to widen jazz’s definition, something Sebastian resolutely doesn’t do in an attempt to “save” the genre.
It’s just unfortunate that, as parts of the jazz world have finally ditched rigid definitions of what the genre should be, the conservative vision is now being pushed to global audiences again. If Sebastian, and perhaps Chazelle, the director of La La land, really want to save jazz, the solution is to let people freely choose what they enjoy about the music rather than only focus on a particular type of jazz.
2. The implicit stereotype and bias
Sebastian positioning as a white man who trying to rescue jazz has been read as difficult by a lot of people. Rostam Batmanglij, who is a musician, songwriter and former Vampire Weekend member has been pointed out as much on Twitter that there was an implicit racial discrimination which the jazz was invented by black people but now there was a white man who come to save and preserve the jazz in the movie.
Batmanglij’s arguments have been followed a piece from Ira Madison III for MTV which discussed the problems of Gosling’s casting. He wrote that :
Move on, this is not the first time Damian Chazelle, the director of La La Land has created some on-screen musical mansplaining. He is particularly attached to scenes in which men teach women how to play musical instruments, explain music to them, or play music for them. It seems that Chazelle, himself as a former jazz drummer, wants us to love not just the jazz, but also to love the men who love talking about loving jazz.
And there was some unfair women biases in the movie. Sebastian who thinks it is acceptable to barge aggressively to a woman, has response to Mia by telling that she is totally wrong after Mia told him that she hates jazz. She has been brought by Sebastian to jazz club on every date thereafter to only listen to the jazz together with only talk over all the jazz.
3. Mia’s unrealistic career
Arguably, Sebastian’s good fortune of being casually handed an invitation to join a band that came with a $1,000 weekly paycheck is clearly the stuff of fiction.
However, it was the transformation in Mia’s career that really irritated some viewers. Mia goes from working in a cafe to being cast in a Paris-based film that will be written for her thanks to a poorly attended one-woman show.
This probably is the most unrealistic parts of La La Land.
Real life does not works so easily. And I was struggled to understand how Mia had landed what Davies called “a stupendously bland” husband. Just the five years later, Mia is a famous actress and already married to another man, with whom she even has a daughter. This happened so quick and looked impractical.
And I was really confused regarding Mia’s Prius. Mia’s and Sebastian’s first dance was happened due to she could not find her Prius in a sea of Priuses. I was wondering, how she could afford a Prius when she was just a poorly paid, struggling barista-cum-actress?
Criticism regarding Mia’s Prius on Twitter :
4. The fact that La La Land wasn’t really anything like Los Angeles
La La Land was failed to represent the full diversity of people who live in Los Angeles. And this idea has been supported by Rostam Batmanglij on his Twitter.
In fact, the nostalgia that fuels La La Land is one charged by privilege, specifically the privilege of being white.
As showed in the movie, whiteness is part of the point of La La Land. It is, after all, a privilege of whiteness to see ourselves so easily in the stars of the studio golden age, as Mia does, and to imagine ourselves among them or as carrying on in their tradition. It is a privilege of whiteness to feel such an unabashed sense of ownership over a genre of music as fundamentally grounded in the black experience as jazz the way Sebastian does.
The director Damien Chazelle has been created a world with frustrating whispers of blackness which a silent older black couple who turn up on the pier midway through one beautiful and melancholy number, for instance, or a jazz band strumming away on stage while Sebastian goes into a passionate spiel about the New Orleans origins of the genre.
This is a slight movie, and its awards haul so far is disproportionate to its allure.
💃 LA LA LAND 🕺 