articles of the Hood (Boyz in the Hood) (1)

The movie "Boys in the Hood" depicts the inner city of Los Angeles in a way that had never been seen before. It highlights the disconnect between the police and the community, showing disrespectful treatment and preconceived notions about gang members. The lack of community relations and conflict resolution leads to hostility and violence. The movie reflects Max Weber's theory of social status shaping society, as well as Marx's theory of socio-political problems perpetuating within the community. The articles discuss the impact of the movie on the community and how it relates to ongoing issues. Overall, the movie emphasizes the need for better communication and resolution to address the problems faced by the community. In the movie, Boys in the Hood, I believe there were a lot of common stereotypical aspects. I think that the main thing about the movie was it showed a view of the inner city of Los Angeles like it had never been seen before. I think that it was visually aesthetically pleasing to people who were from there and understood the culture, but I also believe that it was very damaging to the African American culture at that time by being able to see how close their public relations between the community and public service was. I think that the social phenomena of the movie for me would be how the community relations between the police and the people of the neighborhood and community were at a disconnect. It seems that most of the functioning officers on duty didn't have any respect for the people of the community. They treated them as basically animals in a cage in a zoo. It was more so very much disrespectful tones that they took with the residents. It was also preconceived notions about who was a gangbanger and who was not. I believe that it was a lot of stress and strain placed on the kids of the community to become what the police officers said that they were. I think that the biggest social phenomena for me would be community relations. I believe that the community relations were bad because the lack of training or the lack of respect that the police officers on duty had for the people of the community. They never had a full conversation with them. They never talked to them as if they were actually being served by the community. I think that that was one of the key factors that kind of took the movie overboard for me. The theoretical perspective that I would most likely say set the tone for this movie would be conflict theory, simply because throughout the whole movie there was something going on in the community that no one would actually speak on or try to fix. Due to the lack of conflict resolution, there was a lot of animosity built up and a lot of ongoing beefs and things of that nature that created basically a war zone in the Los Angeles area, where the southern part of Los Angeles. I think that by it being poor community relations and also poor conflict resolution, that created so much hostility that you couldn't find any other way out of it but violence. I think that was one of the key points of this movie. It showed us as a people, a culture of Americans, of how we could actually be living in a third world without it actually being a third world country. I think that Max Weber's theory was actually more closely related to this movie because of the fact that his theory was basically the social status of the people would shape the society and the society would be shaped by what is normal. Well, at this time in this movie, the norm would be the police not actually respecting the residents. The residents are trying to protect their community by becoming their own police, which actually beefs up the gangs and creates tension between the other guys who are trying to protect their community as well because they don't want to concede to those guys, so it creates an ongoing cycle of socio-political problems inside the community and there's no community relations with the actual police to kind of stop it. This is why I picked Marx's theory as the better theory for this film because it just makes the most sense. It talks about the revolving door of the community and how bad or how good the community is based on what is going on and being recycled throughout the community by the people of the community. I think that a sociological theory that would be best for this film would be more so a contemporary status like how did this come to be and how did this become better? For example, in the movie, it was a scene where the same cop who harassed one of the main stars was actually disrespectful to the main star's father as he was a younger kid watching the situation. I believe that that situation and more situations like that created problems for those kids of that time for their future because they didn't have any faith in the police or trust, so they started taking matters into their own hands, which basically created a rinse and repeat style of gang-banging and street wars and drug usage and basically just a downhill spiral for their community. One of the articles that I selected was written in Essence Magazine by Cameron Ashley and Cameron described Boyz n the Hood as basically a kill-or-be-killed philosophy type of movie. It explored the drama, the staging, the capitalism, and the poverty of the movie. It also talked about the trauma that was suffered through the movie in and out directly and indirectly for the people of the community and the people within the community. My second article was published in the New York Times by an author named Lawrence where he spoke on how this was John Singleton's first film and how John Singleton basically gave a story that related to some of the things he saw growing up in the South Central community. He talked about how the three friends, which was Trey, Ricky, and Doe, all led separate lives and went in separate directions, but still some kind of way ended up suffering through the same tragedies. It also spoke on how there were not as many strong male figures in the movie or as many strong motherly figures in the movie, which is something that John Singleton intentionally placed in the movie because of things that he saw from his friends in that time frame or that time period. It also relates to things that are still going on now. There's basically an article about how that movie was influential then and it also gave birth to new movies at this time that we're in now. I think that all sociological perspectives and points can be related to both of my articles because although they have differences in opinion, they still cooperate and say the same thing about how the community is actually reciprocating problems by not having the proper channels for the people in the community to communicate and resolve some of the violence.