«The only thing Americans love more than a comeback is a great downfall.» It’s a line we hear in director Debra Granik’s new limited series Conbody vs Everybody, and it’s an unfortunate truth that assures the compelling nature of the show, which screened in full for the first time at DOK Leipzig, no matter whether its protagonist’s high-stakes endeavour will take off or flounder. Over eight years, which became five instalments, she follows Coss Marte, a former drug kingpin in New York City who grew up poor on the Lower East Side in a newly arrived Dominican family and was making two million a year as a nineteen-year-old before he was incarcerated on felony charges. Having returned to his neighbourhood after release, he is trying to build a successful life on the straight and narrow by launching a fitness empire based on prison-cell workouts and employing former convicts to spearhead gym classes that bring together a cross-section of Big Apple citizenry. Granik thankfully does more than mould a conventional Hollywood-style tale of grit and second-chance ambition, as she patiently and with crisp clarity builds up a politically trenchant, damning portrait of the institutionalised prejudice that limits the open-to-all mythology of the American Dream, showing the way that the system works to disenfranchise minorities, and keep those who have ever been jailed down in a cycle of oppression and stigmatisation.
Changing cityscapes
An astute parallel is drawn in the series between corporate America and street crime, as it is observed over and over that there are no morals involved in either pursuit — it is just that the false respectability attached to white-collar greed comes up against little societal ostracisation, and rather, the wealth and status it accrues is envied and celebrated. Marte found a way, in the isolation of his cramped cell, to both lose weight and instigate a routine to manage the long stretches of empty time inside, and intends to use the roots in prison life of this regime of exercises to launch a gym business that’s differentiated from the rest of the saturated market, and attract customers through savvy promotion. The business know-how necessary to run a lucrative illegal operation is transferrable to other types of start-ups; after all, a skill set that is rarely acknowledged by employers and funders reluctant to take chances on ex-convicts.
The extreme difficulty in securing viable work on release for the 650,000 inmates released from US prisons every year means that their punishment continues through reputational damage and societal exclusion, and contributes to their turning back to familiar lifestyles and reoffending, with more than three-quarters ending up back behind bars within five years. Determined to beat this statistic and his own experience of the tough road to reintegration, Marte tries to make the gym flourish not only for himself, but as a space for opportunities and support for other formerly incarcerated citizens to have a reliable means of income, a route for personal development, and a community to share experience despite a justice and parole system designed to prevent those condemned as criminals from ever associating with one another. He finds ample interest in and support for his venture, but also weathers significant scepticism and pushback as he pitches the idea at forums in search of backers to invest. Problems trying to lease property to operate in are myriad, as many landlords consider him a high-risk tenant due to his record of felonies, in a rental market where prices are skyrocketing due to gentrification. /p>
Granik captures the swiftly changing cityscape of New York and the bustle of people living side by side among the Chinese restaurants, designer stores, bodegas, and tenements. As Coss experiences the highs and lows of launching a business, amid the added challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, he also helps his brother Chris to campaign for City Council elections — a move to access the decision-making power inside a system stacked against theirs and other families that have traditionally struggled the most to be heard.
An astute parallel is drawn in the series between corporate America and street crime
Management and control
«The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.» The quote is from the influential book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness by civil litigator Michelle Alexander, which argues that the US criminal justice system is used as a tool to continue the enforcement of racial oppression, in a nation that has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and disproportionately jails African Americans. It resonates strongly with Coss and his staff at Conbody as they select text for their promotional materials. «I want you runnin’ like the police are comin’» is the kind of workout instruction you frequently hear in their gym, with the light humour that is part of the Conbody experience, from trainers who wear the hardened years under their belts with warmth and charisma. Their impressively bold vision entails not only hooking clients with a novel, tongue-in-cheek approach to fitness, but also educating the wider population about the realities of life behind bars and beyond — and, against all odds and doubters, they are delivering it.
