MEL REEVES WITH TEDDY SHIBABAW AND 19 OTHERS
Hollywood, Calif. “Straight Outta Compton” is a great movie, entertainment at its best. And, while depicting the lives of poor Comptonites who come out of the so-called underside of American life, the movie is as American as you can get. It’s a rag to riches story, a story of going from ghetto to ghetto, fabulous to just fabulous, in some cases fabulously rich. It’s also a very realistic chronicle of life in the hood in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The movie puts viewers on the edge of their seats, one can feel the tension of what it might have been like during those times. Director F. Gary Gray put on a first rate show. The young actors were so good you sometimes thought you were looking at the actual characters they were portraying. As far as movies go, it was great—great beats, good storytelling, laughs and real drama.
Indeed, it is an American story of young black boys who made it out and get rich by simply telling the story of their lives and their environment. But in telling that story they unwittingly glorify it. They expose folks to a lifestyle and the way some black folks are living, without offering introspection. No outs are offered, no way of redemption is given. It is just raw, this is how it is and we gonna party to it.
And the story is American in its misogyny, its sexism, gangsterism, greed, it’s individualism, and its depiction of police violence. It portrays the violence of something called the hood, a ghetto in which black people are forced to live in a world that has dropped or lowered its values to eat, to survive, to have a piece of what’s on TV— Americana.
“Straight Outta Compton” shows the violence that at bottom is the real U.S., with its disdain for black people. It should make one ask, “How did this happen? How did Compton get that way?”
And it wouldn’t be American without disdain for women. Women (especially black women) are disposable, screw her and send her on her way. When the crew kicks half naked Felecia out of their hotel orgy because her boyfriend is looking for her, we laugh, but it ain’t funny.
The movie reveals the results of the violence that encourages a race to hate itself and see the oppressor in one another, and encourages us to take our frustrations out on one another; our enemies call it black on black crime.
This violence is all encompassing, even encouraging intra race bias, which explains the early ’80s music videos, the movie and Compton hip-hop group NWA’s infatuation with light-skinned women. Just check out the pool parties and the girlfriends. And that’s no knock on light-skinned black women, who historically have been some of the most steadfast, courageous and fiercely black members of the race.
We see an America whose police beat Rodney King to an inch of his life, for all the world to see. And an America that produced a group of mean spirited white folks from Simi Valley to cover it up.
However, NWA’s anti-police anthem “F—k Da Police” was right on time. It gave a lot of young folks a chance to say what they really wanted to say to the armed bodies of men whose job it is to reinforce the racism of America. And the U.S. demonstrated its hypocrisy when its FBI (which sits back and watches and sometimes encourages this brutal and racist behavior on the part of the police) had the nerve to try to call out the group for asserting its first amendment right to say f—k you, even to the cops.
And without missing the beat the movie opened with a racist taint. Universal stepped on its own toes by announcing it would provide security for theater companies across the U.S. who felt they needed it. But that proposal turned reality on its head—the movie theater killers have all been white from New Orleans to Denver.
When Ice Cube said that his rhymes were reality rap, that was true for the most part. In fact, the movie puts the viewer right in the middle of their world. When the tank-like battering ram smashed in the front door of a drug den and actually hit someone, somebody watching the movie with me asked if that happened. Yes, that happened.
On the other hand, the movie has us laughing at our pain. That’s right. On some level our pain has become amusement—entertainment.
The truth is: ghettoized, drug- and violence-infested Compton should not have existed and should not exist today. The fact that we analyze and look at it like an ESPN or afternoon special without talking about changing it, speaks volumes to what this society has so subtly done to our natural instincts of empathy.
And the fact that a group of young men, and hundreds since, have made money and entertained us with our wretchedness is amazing.
But let me be absolutely clear. NWA and gangsta rappers are not the reason we are in the condition we are in today. They are artists reflecting on their reality. It is this social/political economic system that has created the conditions too many black people live under: second class public education; job discrimination; over incarceration; aggressive, selective and over enforcement of the law; a biased justice system; discriminatory and exploitive banking practices; and second class treatment.
NWA and the resulting gangster rap can be summed up as the violence that violence produced. Hopefully those who benefited by turning this violence into profit-making entertainment (including the near billionaire Dr. Dre and kid movie-making Ice Cube) decide to help fight the power that created the conditions they so aptly chronicled.
justice then peace
