AUSTIN, TX — Two back-to-back premieres this week during Texas’ popular music and film festival SXSW shine the spotlight on popular Black culture in the 1990s in Atlanta.
The first installment of a three-part docuseries, Magic City: An American Fantasy, drew Atlanta royalty like T.I. and 2 Chainz to the screening. Recent Grammy Award winner Killer Mike, who professes to have partied with politicians and preachers alike at the popular Atlanta strip club Magic City, wonders aloud if this “saints and sinners” dynamic brings necessary balance to the city. Executive producers Drake and Jermaine Dupri are also among the celebrities featured in the series. Drake issues a challenge to boxer Floyd Mayweather, while Shaquille O’Neal recalls signing his groundbreaking 1996 NBA contract for $120 million at Magic City because the party was so live he could not be persuaded to leave the venue.
In a Q&A after the screening, filmmakers Cole Brown and director Charles Todd said they intend the series to be a celebration – of the athleticism of the dancers, of the entrepreneurial prowess of Magic City’s charismatic founder, Michael “Mr. Magic” Barney – rather than a stereotypical sex work documentary.
The result, at least in the first installment, is an almost unnervingly cheery look at the strip club underworld. While there is nudity, the framing is not overly sexual or explicit. Former dancer and Magic City legend Gigi Maguire said after the premiere that she had agreed to participate in a tasteful topless scene because she believed in the filmmakers’ artistic vision.
Still, absent is any real introspection or insight into the decisions that have led these women into this line of work, and the piece seems to gloss over any hint at a dark side of the sex trade. The tale of two strippers found dead in a vehicle, for example, is presented briefly with little context or explanation and doesn’t seem to phase their colleagues.
Magic City: An American Fantasy is still on the hunt for a distributor, and while it will surely find one – sex always sells, especially with Drake’s name attached – it could benefit from a bit more balance in subsequent installments.
The upcoming Freaknik documentary, which airs on Hulu on March 21, is a bit more honest in its documentation of both the highs and lows of the raucous street party.
Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told was organized in part by executive producer Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, who can credibly lay claim to bringing the “Freak” to Freaknik. The engaging documentary traces Freaknik’s journey from a cultural entry point for Black college students to the chaos and debauchery of the mid-90s, which led to a city planning commission recommending it be eliminated entirely. Killer Mike and author Marc Lamont Hill, among others, offer academic and sociopolitical insights throughout the film.
Luke’s selection of Atlanta-based rapper 21 Savage as a co-executive producer might seem puzzling since the rapper was an infant living in the United Kingdom during Freaknik’s heyday. But in recent years, 21 Savage has resurrected the “Freaknik” theme for his Atlanta birthday festivities. By opening the film to a 21 Savage voiceover while a grainy 1990s video plays on a camcorder, the filmmakers successfully draw a thread between Freaknik’s history and Atlanta’s present-day music and culture.
Since the initial announcement of a Freaknik documentary, jokes have circulated on social media about that scandalous footage of your mother dancing on top of a car. While the filmmakers do make liberal use of archival footage, the majority of it just features college students having clean fun. Some are genuinely historic, like a clip of the late Notorious B.I.G. performing at Freaknik.
The Freaknik documentary and the Magic City series utilize footage of Atlanta being awarded the 1996 Olympic Games as an important turning point. The Olympics were seen as a $2 billion dollar windfall for the city. In the case of Freaknik, for example, the economic power of business interests forced the city to address the increasingly lawless annual festival that Freaknik had become.
While Freaknik and Magic City both have earned their reputation for Atlanta Vice, these films dive beyond the simply salacious to achieve genuine insights about the cultural draw of the city as a Black mecca.
