Barbershop Spaces and Countering Hegemony: An Analysis of the Film "Barbershop" as a Social Critique

Indianapolis, IN

As centers for gathering and conciliation, barbershops serve an important role in African American communities across the country. These centers are often used in literature and cinemas as spaces for the manifestation of black culture and the formation and expression of individual identities. In the movie Barbershop, a local barbershop in a black, south-side Chicago neighborhood becomes the central setting and a host for the formation and development of characters and ideas that challenge simplistic understandings of African American culture. In my presentation, I use the film and various other racial texts to argue that the barbershop, as a black vernacular structure, is presented to the mainstream public in film as a space that reverses the role of the "other" onto white audience members. In doing so, it challenges mainstream culture's understanding of black communities and complicates the often-simplistic view of African American culture that is created by this hegemonic system of race relations. I propose that the movie stands as a counter-narrative to the theory of hegemony and becomes a counter-hegemonic text that challenges dominant ideas of race.