Is Ryan Gosling’s ‘La La Land’ Character Really That Big Of A Horrible Mansplaining Jazz Monster?

Like many people, I saw Damien Chazelle’s La La Land over the holiday season. I was entranced by its technicolor glory and bewitched by its gorgeous choreography, but I was also a little let down. See, La La Land is a film dogged by hype. Before I saw the film, I couldn’t stop hearing about how great it is, how wonderful Emma Stone is in it, and how awful Ryan Gosling‘s character was. Why? Because his character is supposed to be a mansplaining monster of a jazz musician who wants to save jazz.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Gosling’s character Sebastian only has two – maybe three? — scenes in which he explains his love of jazz. The first one is a scene with Rosemarie DeWitt, wherein he establishes that jazz is his character’s passion and his raison d’etre. The second (sort of) one is his tete-a-tete with his boss, played almost with a wink by Whiplash‘s menacing jazz corporal J.K. Simmons. The third is the one that seems to rankle people the most. At the beginning of the film’s second act, Sebastian takes Mia (Stone) to his favorite jazz club in an effort to woo her to his side. He gives a brief impassioned lecture on the history of jazz and why it shouldn’t be discounted as boring background noise. Instead, it is collaboration and poetry in motion. It’s art made life. The scene doubles as a soft first date.

This last scene is supposed to be damning for the character which has left me scratching my head. Okay, sure, I’m fully prepared to admit that Gosling’s character may not be the best ambassador for jazz. The genre is a distinctly American — and by extension, black American — art form. However, when you look at the whole scope of the film, these scenes make sense. First, we see Sebastian as a man hoarding the symbols of his passion — he doesn’t want to compromise or share. When he starts to fall for Mia, he visits her on the Warner Bros. lot and asks her about why she got into acting. Then, he wants to use his love of music to build a bridge between them. He doesn’t count her out because she writes off jazz, but rather, he’s trying to invite her in. It’s not “mansplaining,” as much as it is forging a connection.

Also, if we want to parse it down, absolutely no “mansplaining” happened in that scene. “Mansplaining” is an idiomatic term that describes an awful habit wherein men lecture women on topics the women are certified experts in. For instance, this is mansplaining:

Typically, the men involved believe they are being helpful because there’s some sort of misogynistic cultural inference that the women aren’t as adept whatever topics are being covered. (In my own personal experience, I usually find myself “mansplained” to in comic book shops and at Marvel movie premieres. Have you ever had a man look you straight in the eye and explain Black Widow’s weaponization of femininity to you? Because, I, a woman who covers genre entertainment for a living, have.) So, no, Sebastian is not mansplaining jazz to Mia. Sebastian is legitimately the expert in this case and Mia is willfully going along with the experience. She even is getting in a few blows now and again.

After he meets Mia, Sebastian’s priorities shift. He compromises his so-called artistic integrity to take a gig with a band that is melding traditional jazz with pop and electronica. For him, it’s a sign that he’s willing to make concessions if it means getting him closer to his dreams. Working with The Messengers will give him the money he needs to invest in his dream jazz club and to help support Mia as she pursues her goals. I’d argue that we need to see him so truculent about jazz early on to drive home why these later choices are signs of major growth and internal turmoil.

Of course, the real problem people have is that Sebastian’s character is all about jazz. Jazz is a genre harangued by cliché. It is a dying, somewhat obnoxious, art form and its sycophants usually strike an anti-social chord. I know first hand that people irrationally hate jazz. How much so? My own mother refuses to see La La Land because it’s about jazz. But if you replaced Sebastian’s passion for jazz with fly-fishing or pottery or dog care or coding or, yes, comic books, you could produce the same character arc without provoking the same knee-jerk reaction from jazz-haters. However, it has to be jazz because this is a Damien Chazelle film and the up-and-coming auteur is already as tied to jazz as J.J. Abrams is to red balls and lens flare.

Chazelle has only made two feature-length films to date — Whiplash and La La Land — but both focus on protagonists consumed with their love for jazz. Whiplash is a far less whimsical tale. It’s the story of an abusive teacher/student relationship that culminates in its hero only reaching his goal after he sacrifices all other human parts of himself. Kindness, love, self-care…none of that is as important as being “great.” Ironically, La La Land comes to the same conclusion, but in a far more regretful way. Sebastian gets his night club, but he loses the girl. Chazelle is a young director, but he already has an interesting thesis about the tenuous relationship between artistic success and personal happiness that is at the forefront of his work.

Also at the forefront? His unabashed love of jazz. We need to think a little about how much the genre of jazz has influenced Chazelle’s own artistic voice here. Both Whiplash and La La Land are films built on the foundation of Hollywood cliché, but they are both infused with an kinetic energy that takes the lessons of the past — the images and relationships we know so well as an audience — and twists them in a new way. (Which is sort of how modern jazz musicians want to approach the genre.)

Chazelle’s biggest boon as a director is his relationship with the camera. In Whiplash, the shots were constructed as to raise your heart rate to the point of panic attack. In La La Land, the camera dances with the performers and lulls us into a world of whimsy and romance. He invites us to be active emotional participants in the creation of his films, in a manner that might just echo how a jazz performer feeds off the energy of a room. Everything in jazz is held together in connective, intuitive flux and Chazelle’s films try to replicate this sensation for the audience. It’s why I think his films feel so visceral. You are in that car crash in Whiplash and you are dancing on air in the Griffiths Observatory. He wants you to feel like you are a part of the art taking place.

So, no, I don’t think Ryan Gosling’s character in La La Land is a horrible mansplaining jazz monster. I think he’s just an artist in search of connection. He happens to like jazz because this is a Damien Chazelle film!

But if you’re looking for dudes who really are assholes when it comes to jazz, check out these guys from Whiplash:

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