Watching "Boys in the Hood" in class brought up a lot of issues about race and gender. One of the first things that I noticed about the film was that equality of treatment was not the same for their community as other communities. The police officers assumed that because of where they lived that they were up-to-no-good and treated the people in that neighborhood differently than they would treat the people of a more expensive neighborhood. The police are supposed to be the eyes of the law, but they were not being just in any way, and they were abusing their power to discriminate. The police are supposed to be there to protect EVERYONE. Not just the rich people, or some people. The policemen showed up an hour after Trey's father had called the police about a burglar and they pulled over Ricky and Trey for no reason, and pointed a gun at Trey's face. I doubt that those police officers would do that to people who lived in a more expensive community.
Another point that I noticed in the movie that shows the lack of equality of treatment was the way that the men treated the women. They called them extremely demeaning names and said something like,"You'll never learn anything listening to a bitch." Portraying that women are stupid, so don't bother talking to them.
When Trey was younger and in school when he lived at his mom's house, I noticed that all of the students were black, and the teacher was white. This shows a little bit of the white messiah. That supposedly the white teacher has to save the black children by teaching them as if a black teacher could not?
I have seen movies where there is no white messiah. These include "Remember the Titans", where the main coach brings the team together as a family, "Waste Deep", where the father has to save his son from being held hostage, and "Notorious", the true story of how Notorious B.I.G. became a successful rapper.
However, overall, there is just too much race and gender discrimination in movies when there should be none. "Boyz in the Hood" did pass the bechdel test.
There is some really nice discussion here. I like your analysis of the White Messiah pattern in "Boyz 'N The Hood" (please check spelling of movie titles), and examples of African American movies without a White Messiah.
ReplyDeleteYour gender analysis was a bit perfunctory. I'd like to see some more analysis of gender in the film. You could have explored the Bechdel test a bit more and why it is important, and why it might be especially important for women of color (in film and in the audience).