Music and Racial Alignment : The character of Buck in Boogie Nights

To what degree do we racially align music ie associate particular musical genres with stereotyped representations of racial identity?

Don Cheadle’s character in 'Boogie Nights', Buck Swope, explores musical identity alignment as he struggles through an identity crisis. During the course of the movie he parades various images and ideas of identity through costume and music. The representation of his identity at the resolution of this crisis is problematic as it suggests that the only way to have your identity accepted is to conform to a stereotyped representation.

Buck’s taste in music is portrayed as a major aspect of his identity. He likes country music. This preference is physically manifested through his Texas-western costume and identification with cowboys. As he goes through his identity transformations, the music around him complies to the representations of identity he adorns. Early on we see him dressed in a red and white cowboy shirt with complementing white cowboy boots at his new place of work. Employed at a hi-fi dealership, he is trying to sell a very expensive model to a rather hesitant customer, under the watchful gaze of his supervisor. In an effort to convince the customer that the hi-fi is worth its high price tag, Buck uses a sample of country music to demonstrate its sound quality. He subsequently looses the customer along with his job. In this instance his identity is questioned by his supervisor who demands an explanation for his supposedly radical behaviour with the question, "What kind of brother are you anyway?". Buck is not seen as a ‘brother’ because he chooses to represent himself in an a-typical manner.

The closing montage sequence reveals the outcome of each character’s plight. Buck is shown to have finally acquired enough money (stolen from a botched doughnut store robbery) to open his own hi-fi dealership. We see him filming a television commercial promoting the opening of the new store. Ironically he is performing a cheesy hip hop/rap styled song and dance number, dressed in the red, white and blue of the American flag. He is clearly not comfortable with this representation of his identity, expressing doubts about the performance to Julianne Moore’s character, Amber/Maggie Waves.

This resolution to his identity crisis is problematic in its racial musical alignment. Buck’s previous attempts to manifest an identity for himself were rejected as a means of representation by those around him. He was encouraged to embrace the stereotyped representation of African American identity and it is only within the hip hop/rap genre that his identity is validated.