Boyz N The Hood Analysis

The film Boyz ‘n the Hood, directed by John Singleton is more than just a Hollywood blockbuster. The film incorporates numerous criminological theories and also demonstrates the concepts of conformity and deviance. This paper will analyze the characters of Tre, Ricky, Doughboy, Furious and other friends and family and show how criminological theories and the concepts of conformity and deviance play a part in their lives.

“Boyz n the hood” takes place in South Central Los Angeles in 1984. The main actors in the movie are Cuba Gooding Jr as Tre, Morris Chestnut as Ricky, and Ice Cube as Doughboy. In the beginning of the movie it says, “One out of twenty-one Black American males will be murdered in their lifetime” followed by “Most will die at the hands of another black male”. Later it shows the main characters in the movie Tre, Ricky and Doughboy as kids each of them having plans in life. Ricky’s dream is to become a football player and Tre going to college and doughboy still not deciding what he wants to do in life.

The book has as its principal thesis the consideration of race as “a folk classification, a product of popular beliefs about human differences that evolved from 16th to 19th centuries” (Smedley, 2007, pag.24). The book also specifies three characteristics that distinguish the racial ideology in America: the absence of a category for biracial people, the homogenization of the black or African American Americans, and the impossibility to change a person’s race. (Smedley, 2007, pag.7)

In the movie “Boyz in the Hood” director John Singleton, paints a clear image of the problems that happen very often in the African American communities. The movie deals with issues such as: the importance of a father in a young man’s life, the ongoing violence of black on black crime, and how black people are put in situations where they are put to fail and not succeed in life.

Throughout the 1992 film, “Boyz in the Hood,” John Singleton takes a closer look at urban black America in South Central Los Angeles. Doughboy, Ricky and Trey, along with their parents are chronicled from childhood to adulthood. Each person, though living in the same neighborhood chooses different paths in life. These characters were raised in a very deviant community, however there were many causes as to why they did not all become deviant. Deviance is defined as behavior that goes against what is socially acceptable. It is when a person disregards what is normal in a specific society and acts upon it. Throughout the movie these characters had many chances to engage in deviant behavior, as some did while

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

In the world of sociology, the theory of racialization is a widely known and occasionally frustrating topic. However, two sociologists have successfully been able to define and break down the essential information behind this theory. Within their own writing, Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1986) define racial formation as,” the process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories” (Omi and Winant 16). In essence, this theory frames the very meaning of “race” itself. The stereotypes of race are rooted deep within the contexts of history, allowing these concepts to be subject to gradual change over time. In addition to the original standards of racial formations, there have been other writings that parallel very closely to the ideas set forth by Omi and Winant. Richard Wright, Pem D. Buck, and Karen Brodkin are three notable authors that have excellently highlighted the concepts set forth by Omi and Winant.

In the 1991 drama “Boyz in the Hood”, Written and Directed by John Singleton. He successfully attempts to portray what life was like and in some areas in America still is for African Americans living in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. It displays a portrait of the harsh realities that plagues the black community and by displaying uninviting living conditions that is South Central L.A, Singleton aims to share to the world the self-destructive deviant behavior that is to this day, destroying the African American community. Some of the self-destructive deviant behaviors include gang life, selling drugs, and gun violence. Various issues are displayed in this movie involving the black community including deviance, poverty, gentrification, the importance of a father in a young man’s life and black on black crime. Singleton displays a tale of three friends growing up in the “hood”, plagued by drugs and violence and layers textures over rough and compelling visuals of black culture that shows us what it means to come to maturity, or die trying, as a black male. In this essay, I will be giving a thorough analysis of the film, as well as covering certain points from the movie from a sociological perspective to explain why singleton chose to write this film.

Discusses how race is a conceptualized concept most often through stereotypes of different groups with the presence of a systematic structure of racism where the dominant group has placed themselves as superior and all other groups are deemed inferior. This structure often produces a negative impact on same race relations. Identity, according to this theory is created due to psychological enforcement of repeated racial oppression. The movie “Boyz N’ The Hood” demonstrates the effect of this enforced systematic structure and its negative impact on same race relations which lead to the ultimate death of some of the characters in this film (Singleton,1991). The movie takes place in impoverished South Central Los Angeles and depicts scenes of violence perpetrated by gangs against the main characters of the movie. Janet Helms points out that racial theory consists of four models White Identity, Black Identity, People of Color, and the Racial interaction model. She points out that the more an individual becomes aware of the social constructs of race and the racist system the closer

Overall, BOYZ N THE HOOD AND DO THE RIGHT THING showcase the dysfunction among inner-city blacks during the 1990’s. Both films have something to say about Amercian society, and have a message (or warning) to other black men. Society views young black inner-city men as a lost cause, their only hope for success is to strive for something better. To succeed these men must avoid the temptations of the ‘hood, and get an education and motivate

The movie Boyz N the Hood is an illustration of how a group of early adolescents’ lives was affected negatively due to the environment they lived in. These adolescents lived in an environment where drugs, gangs, and shootings were the center of their community. Living in a predominantly African American community these adolescents were faced with many misfortunes. Ricky one of the adolescent characters I have decided to evaluate for this particular paper was faced with adversity.

The film Boyz ‘N the Hood, deals with the life of two young African Americans named Tre and Ricky. They are trying to make it out of South Central Los Angeles but face many obstacles due to poverty, crime, and violence. There are many theories that present themselves throughout the film. For example, labeling/stigma theory is a very frequent theory because it happens not only with the law and authority stigmatizing the African Americans living in South Central Los Angeles, but also with own members of the community stigmatizing others in the same community as well. Other theories that are also very frequent, are strain theory and social disorganization.

Boyz in the Hood is a crime/ action-drama filled film directed by John Singleton that pursues life in the hood of three black youngsters. Singleton style of music and sound chosen in the film played a major role by implying a specific functions to the picture to intensify the scene. Musical genre establishes groups of music pieces by determining its form, rthym and style. When it comes to choosing a soundtrack for a film, it is very crucial to have sound that implements the picture in order to guide the viewers attention the right way.

As someone who came from Japan, an extremely homogeneous nation whose foreign population accounts for only 2.3 million as of June 2016, according to the data collected by the Ministry of Justice The current Japanese population, for the record is 126 million which means that every 100 people you encounter, you are lucky to see 1 who is not Japanese. Strikingly different from the United States, internationally regarded as a country of immigrants, where people of all races, colour, gender and religion is said to live in harmony. I however was surprised by the amount of hatred and racism I see. From the basis of real-life observation, the US is intensively diverse. It was blind of me to think that the fight for an egalitarian society ended at the end the civil rights movement. I was blindsided by my high school teacher who sang praises of America, ignoring the core problems it experienced and is still experiencing. Out of all the things we learned in class, the theme that I decided to write my final paper on is segregation of American communities, and narrowed it down to the possible reasons why affluent Black people, tend to live in poorer neighbourhoods when they can easily afford a better one. I read an article before about this, but not exactly the reasons why in addition, this trend was also observed in our previous readings. Specifically, in Leslie M. Harris’s “In the shadow of Slavery: African American in New York City 1626-1863” and in Sean Wilentz’s

The early days of twentieth-century America were characterised by race feuds, uproar and lynchings. The South, with its sizeable black population, inevitably became the epicentre of the country’s chaos and dissent. This is a South that bears little attractiveness to most these days; but it is the South that spurred Richard Wright onto confronting the social and political alienation from the Jim Crow South. Black Boy is accented by Wright’s troubled memories of his stifling past; it narrates Wright’s endeavour to establish his self-identity as a child, youth, and eventually a aspirant author who flees the South to “seek refuge” in the North for its seeming freedom and opportunity. While Black Boy adheres to the structure of a Bildungsroman, the novel goes beyond the genre’s stereotypical theme of a character’s quest towards his epiphany as Wright comprehends the mysteries of the world around him and sheds light to his difficult journey on confronting the hostility of the deep South as a black youth.