Reading Room

Too often, artists are pressured into finding their ‘voice’ and sticking to it. The pressure generally comes from society’s generic and somewhat binary understanding of identity. For instance, females need to dress and behave in a certain way in order to be identified as feminine.

The uniformity and consistency of these expectations across all females is necessary in order to maintain society’s compartmentalized under-standing of who a female ought to be. Similarly, artist identities are also compartmentalised. For example, Pablo Picasso is known for cubism, Georgia O’Keeffe for her zoomed in paintings of flowers and Tim Burton for his lanky Gothic characters. They each have a signature style, which fuels and compartmentalizes their identities as artists.

What goes into making a ’90s thrill chasing, explosive and downright hilarious ‘cops and robbers’ flick? Well, you need a typically flashy Miami detective – courtesy of Will Smith – and a more sedate and platonic life partner, played by none other than Martin Lawrence. Even so, what interested an audience back in the ’90s won’t necessarily be entertaining in 2020.

This was the case with the latest instalment of the Bad Boys franchise. We could chalk it up to bad timing for Smith (what with Gemini Man hitting rock bottom and all) but if I am being honest, the entire film was glued together with a case of ‘bad’ everything and not merely a bunch of grown men referring to themselves as ‘boys.’