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1977 in New York, more precisely: in the Bronx. Young black people with bell-bottoms, colourful, tight-fitting T-shirts and large afros are standing in front of a barber shop, while Latin American girls are sitting on the hoods of old Chevrolets. The time from back then is to be captured very precisely and perfectly, and it seems too hard to do so, too much like a backdrop.
In between there are always original pictures from the Bronx of the 70s. Shots of destroyed houses, subways driving through mountains of rubble. Roofless churches, buildings burning out and collapsing. Quite impressive, these pictures. Then a teacher’s explanation to Hezekiel, a talented student interested in literature, that the Bronx is a war zone and the community is dying.
You really don’t need this explanation. The pictures speak a clear language. But the pedagogical tone comes through again and again, especially at the beginning of the series, and prevents any narrative lightness. With a bit of pathos, a youngster explains to his buddies the fascination of graffiti on a subway car.
You could only say you were there for a moment. Grandmaster Flash, who also worked on the series, shows up as a character – and deejays at underground parties. Young Hezekiel stands by and is fascinated. He’s never seen mixing and scratching. Here again the explanation of a friend.
The pilot has something from the hip-hop documentary
“The Get Down” wants to show the roots of hip-hop culture and sometimes looks like an instructional video from the Federal Agency for Civic Education. To do this, Baz Luhrman mixes genres – as he did in Moulin Rouge – but with the staying power that a series needs, it seems to be a bit overwhelming at first. The pilot has something from the hip-hop documentary “Wild Style”, from the “West Side Story” and “Boyz n the Hood”, from opera, musical, gangster drama.
But then, as the third episode progresses, the series slowly finds its tone and story. “The Get Down” really begins to tell of the creative atmosphere of the time. About the spirit of optimism that the new technology brought with it, creating something completely new out of disco and soul with two turntables.
Seeing an era through the eyes of teenagers
And also from the desolate situation in New York. The city went bankrupt in 1977 and faced one of the worst power outages in its history. The city is in darkness for 25 hours, there is looting everywhere.
In its strongest moments, “The Get Down” manages to see the era through teenage eyes and recreate the magic of the music. The show tells the story of hip-hop from the bottom up, a counterpoint to “Vinyl,” the HBO series from a few months ago that chronicles the music industry of the ’70s through the eyes of an important white man, a fictional record executive .
The protagonists in “The Get Down” are all black and Latino. There are no white figures explaining the world as is so often the case in series. Netflix is thus even more consistently following the path that the streaming platform has already taken with the prison series “Orange is the New Black”. It will be interesting to see how this affects series from classic TV channels as well. Even as one of the most expensive series ever produced, “The Get Down” sets new standards. Unfortunately, it is not radical enough in terms of narrative.
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