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Analysis Of Dont Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood

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“Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” was directed and released by Paris Barclay in 1996. “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” is an American comedy that tells the story of how Ashtray moved in with his father in the inner city of Los Angeles. Once he is settled in, he is reunited with his pot smoking grandmother and his nuclear armed cousin, Loc Dog. Through this union Ashtray is introduced to different situations that are generally associated to black people. This includes “the man”, gang violence, and police brutality. Though “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” is meant to be a comedy it really satires stereotypes placed on …show more content…

The movie continues to bring awareness to the audience by incorporating Keenen Wayans as the mailman who appears throughout the film announcing “Message!” whenever a life lesson or other very important message is expressed. The first time the mailman appears and announces “Message!” is after a monologue given by Ashtray. Ashtray says, “I guess, even though we were free, we were still slaves… in the mind”. The mailman is delivering direct clues to trigger black people to think about how they live their lives every day. When you first hear him say “Message!” you are caught off guard and immediately wonder what is the message.
This spontaneous screen interaction provokes your brain to pay closer attention to the movie so you can anticipate what the next message will be. The next interaction with the mailman’s “Message!” is when Ashtray and Loc Dog are crying on the bed. Ashtray says, “growing up in the hood without a positive male role model to look up to”. There are countless of statistics that prove that a substantial amount of black youth is growing up in a single parent home. They generally result to the streets for knowledge and turn to crime as shown in “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood”. At the very end of the movie, Loc Dog is giving Ashtray the life lesson of what he should have learned while being in the hood.
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