Week 32: Boyz N The Hood

Dear Avid Reader,

Sometimes work sucks.

Luckily, I have sick days left.

One Out Of Every Twenty-One Black American Males Will Be Murdered In Their Lifetime

People are weird. For some reason they want certainty and they do not like subtlety. Sometimes I think that what is referred to as the "Dumbing Down of America" is merely the desire for some kind of guarantee. See it's not that the country is dumb, it's that we prefer that you spell things out.

Maybe we are just dumb too.

Most Will Die At The Hands Of Another Black Male

But this spelling out of things is why Boyz N The Hood is so bad as a movie. While there is truth to the movie, especially when it was originally released, the brow beating that viewers take during the two hours of the flick is mind numbing. Ricky's story is fully disclosed when young Doughboy asks him why he carries a football everywhere. Within the first five minutes they set the kid up with so much potential for good that they may have given him a jersey with a target on it.


The Next Day Doughboy Saw His Brother Buried

But this movie was probably conceived of as a wake up call to White/Rich America. So the makers probably felt like they needed to be a little preachy in the name of "keeping it real". But that still doesn't explain the completely ridiculous hissy fit that Tre throws after being hassled by the cops.

And aren't the cops the most interesting characters in the show? You got that completely disinterested white cop and the insanely aggressive black cop. I wonder what their relationship is like off camera. Is the black cop really talkative and annoying during the patrol? Is the white cop a brown-noser back at the station? Do they get along with the other cops? Are they racist as individuals or are they merely trapped in a system that forces them to act in oppressive ways?

So many questions.

Two Weeks Later He Was Murdered

But if the movie was going to try and give a truly accurate presentation of life in 90's South Central L.A., it would last years. It would be HBO's The Wire (which you should totally watch). And they weren't making a series, they were making a movie, so it needed to be pretty explicit in terms of action. They wanted to present a world and do it quickly. Pausing for artfulness would have popped the sheltered viewer out of the message.

"Why don't they just get a job," Redneck McGee would say, "I have problems but you don't see me shooting folks."

No but you also don't have a helicopter flying overhead at all hours like you live in a prison colony either. This section of the essay is called using a "straw man". I don't feel bad for doing it either.

In The Fall Tre Went To Morehouse College In Atlanta, Georgia

I don't think it's only an America phenomenon, or a white people phenomenon, wanting answers is what all the world wants. The problem is that the world is too complex to provide easy answers. Who, What, When, and Where, a cinch, it's Why that's a bugaboo. Add emotion and confusion turns into rage.

This is why shouting shows are the way most people get the news. We don't want the nuanced reality of how our collective problems start with the little compromises we make in every second of each day. Give us someone to blame.

With Brandi Across the Way At Spelman College

This post sucks. You just read a sucky post. I hope the next one is better.

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Maybe the quality of this post is the product of a very sophisticated society and my words are only what was fated to occur. I had no control over whether this post was good or not. It simply is.

I should have called in sick.

Until Next I Blog,

James