Boyz 'n The Hood

Tonight I watched Boyz 'n The Hood for the first time. A few years ago I saw Juice and a few other 90s black community films, mostly because my brother owns Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood which parodies movies of this genre. Boyz 'n The Hood captures life in South Central L.A. following the life of a group of black boys coming of age in the mid '80s to the early 90s; focusing heavily on black on black violence, racism from the police, gentrification, but also the strength of friendships, family, and the community.

Before the opening scene of Boyz n the Hood, two messages flash across the screen: "1 in 21 American black males will be a victim of murder." and "Most will be killed by other black males." The reason why this movie is successful is because the characters are so fleshed out, every performance is executed impeccably well - there are times when the bond between Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character and his character's father played by Laurence Fishburne feel so real that it made me realize how much I wished my father and I could have become that close and open with each other. Fishburne is the perfect role model for his son, and though their characters are only 17 years apart he maintains a stern but positive reinforcement to help his son become a man with a promising future. At one point in the film Fishburne takes him to Compton to explain to him the horrors of gentrification, and the presence of drugs or guns in every black neighborhood.

"I'm talking about the message. What it stands for. It's called "gentrification." It's what happens when property value of a certain area is brought down....They bring the property value down. They can buy the land cheaper. Then they move the people out, raise the value and sell it at a profit. What we need to do is keep everything in our neighbourhood, everything, black. Black-owned with black money. Just like the Jews, the Italians, the Mexicans and the Koreans do.... How you think crack gets into the country? We don't own any planes. We don't own no ships. We are not the people who are flying and floating that shit in here. Every time you turn on a TV, that's what you see. Black people selling the rock, pushing the rock. It wasn't a problem when it was here. Wasn't a problem until it was in Iowa...and on Wall Street where there's hardly any black people. If you want to talk about guns ...why is it that there's a gun shop on every corner here? I'll tell you why. Just like there's a liquor store on every corner in the black community. Why? They want us to kill ourselves."

The monologue is one of the more heavy set of lines in the film, but the action throughout the plot is absolutely gut wrenching. Some of the scenes cause a similar physical reaction to the domestic violence scene in The Godfather. Hearing someone wail with their full body evokes a different response than a powerful set of words. The situations the boys get caught up in are devastating, and I noticed a trend in their responses to the murdering or presence of guns.

The characters never flinch, instead of ducking for cover when they saw guns their bodies instantly went into either the best defense is a good offense routine or quick, run into that alleyway. If someone was shot, everyone mobilized into assuming that another character was going to get revenge through more violence or attempting to protect someone from doing so. Seeing the way they dealt with the situation was shocking at times, but it just shed light on how these moments of brutality were part of their everyday life.