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- guardian.co.uk, Saturday February 9 2008 00.26 GMT
- The Guardian, Saturday February 9 2008
The many moods of Samuel L Jackson's hair have long been an abiding concern of mine. If you laid a headshot from every one of Jackson's movies end to end, you would have before you a magnificently eccentric history of postwar, and particularly hip-hop-era, African American hairdos at their most satirically overstated. What a vivid cornucopia would disclose itself to us: the "wet look" Jehri curl in Pulp Fiction; the absurd dangly beard-with-a-bell-in-it he sports in Jackie Brown; the ragged, tufty six-dollar crop in A Time To Kill and (a more grandfatherly version here) in Black Snake Moan; his many bald outings; deeply unflattering little man loser cuts in movies like Changing Lanes; some of the craziest afros imaginable, including in Menace II Society, and his bold experiments in hair weaves and extensions, which are a marvel to behold.
It might take less time to itemise the haircuts and beard designs he hasn't modelled at one time or another: the Mr T Mohawk, for instance, the MC Hammer cut, the Kid'n'Play Eraserhead-style square-do, or the Rick James Superfreak wet look dreadlock effect, though he has spiralled dangerously near to the latter on occasion.
But now, in Jumper, Jackson's hair has gone one step beyond: it is white, or rather an off-white yellow, and it lies as close to the skull as a coat of paint. It's like a yarmulke made of wax. It looks as if someone's cracked a giant bird's egg on his pate. What is going on here?
I picture a meeting between Jackson and his agent. There are three concerns, only one of which matters. One: script... "Piece of shit... who cares?" Two: money - "Who cares? Gotta work. Any crap will do." Three: the hair - "So... gentlemen, what is my hair-angle on this project? Once we have that, all the other elements will fall into place..."
All of which suggests to me that it is now the hair, and not Jackson himself, that is calling the shots in his career. And I think it's making all the wrong decisions. I never see Jackson any more; I only see the 'do.
So, having pondered a combination of boycotts, embargoes, sanctions programmes, Nato and/or UN involvement, alongside the withholding of access to all dyes, straighteners, curling tongs, rollers, tinfoil, razors, scissors, afro picks, rat-tail combs and hairdressers of surrealistic and/or terroristic disposition, I now have a simpler suggestion: intervention. We persuade a reluctant Mr Jackson that a rigorous probation period is now in effect, under whose terms he shall sport 10 sensible, non-distracting hairdos in 10 successive movies. Once he has proved that recidivism in matters tonsorial is no longer a likelihood, he may return unmolested to the hairdresser's chair for movie number 11.
In the meantime, perhaps, more attention will be diverted to matters of quality-control in his selection of movie projects, and we shall have back the Sam Jackson we know and love.
