Earlier this week, rapper Travis Scott released his own documentary entitled ‘Look Mom I Can Fly‘, exclusively on Netflix. The film is 84 minutes long and it follows Travis on the run up to the release of his 2018 album ‘ASTROWORLD‘ and documents the incredible reaction it received in the months that followed. I sadly would not recommend watching this unless you are a die-hard fan of Travis Scott. This documentary shouldn’t have been made at this point in his career and in this style as there’s no real narrative, structure or depth to this compilation of clips from Travis Scott’s life.
It’s worth saying that I consider myself a Travis Scott fan, albeit not as hardcore as some of those interviewed in the documentary, but I’ve seen him live and he easily put on one of the best shows I’ve witnessed.
Perhaps the only thing that this documentary truly does well is show off the energy and insanity of a Travis Scott live show. Through aerial drone shots and slow-mo stage dives we see the craziness and intensity of Travis’ live performances. But this isn’t a concert film, instead we just see these scenes and shots repeated again and again and again throughout the film whenever there’s a slight lull in content. As cool as these scenes are, I could’ve just watched YouTube videos of ‘fan stage dives’ and it would have been just as informative on Travis Scott’s career so far.
This might sound harsh, but there is no narrative structure in this documentary at all, to the extent that I feel it’s an injustice to really refer to this as a documentary at all. Travis Scott released his first mixtape, ‘Owl Pharaoh‘ in 2013 and in the six years since, Travis has become a household name, but this film doesn’t do justice to his incredible journey, apart from contrasting the occasional cute home video from Travis’ childhood, with present-day shots of Travis living the life we’re supposed to presume he’d always dreamt of.
Travis Scott’s career hasn’t been without its controversies, nothing too extreme, but still things I expected would have been discussed. I was disappointed there was no mention of the ‘ASTROWORLD‘ album cover controversy (in which a transexual model was edited out of the original photo taken for the album cover), however Travis’ 2018 Super Bowl halftime show appearance is discussed slightly.
It was well publicised that lots of rappers had refused to play at the Super Bowl out of solidarity with ousted footballer Colin Kapaernick, but Travis took the gig. The documentary shows news reports discussing Travis’ upcoming performance and we even see a clip of TMZ asking Akon what he thinks of Travis playing the Super Bowl, but we don’t hear anything from Travis Scott himself.
We see an adorable shot of his baby daughter watching and dancing to the performance on TV, and then we see Travis running to go and see his family and parents after the performance to ask their opinions. I feel that a moment like this would’ve been a great opportunity for Travis to actually vocalise how important he felt it was for him to take the opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl, as the footage of him with his family after clearly showed how much it did mean to him, but there’s no narrative.
As I watched this film, it seemed like there were a lot of missed opportunities. Travis is still young and likely has a long career ahead of him, so I feel that his team should have waited a few years and created an actual documentary on his full career, rather than put together this messy clip compilation. Clips like the above footage posted by Mike Dean on Instagram in October of last year are truly fascinating to see, but aren’t used effectively in the film. Travis is shown the clip on a phone in the documentary, but he doesn’t really react, apart from saying “damn n**** – that’s how many people?” The growth of Travis Scott is incredible and definitely motivating for all wannabe rappers and musicians, but it really would have been nice to see a more personal, reflective and emotional side of the international superstar, showing his gratitude and explaining his journey so far.
Of course I do understand that Travis Scott wasn’t trying to make a hard-hitting critically acclaimed documentary; he wanted to show off his growth, how wild his concerts are and then share a bit about his personal life and I can’t deny that this documentary does do that. But for me, I feel that there was so much potential for us to learn more about the life, journey and feelings of a rapper who rarely shows his emotional side in his music, or in his appearances in ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians‘ or Kylie Jenner‘s vlogs.
I can’t wait for the next project that Travis Scott releases and I have no doubts that his career will continue to grow exponentially. My only hope is that any other music documentaries don’t choose to mimic the style of this one.
The Gig Archive 