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Set It Off Themes

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Set It Off (1996) is an action packed, star studded film focusing on the lives of four African American female friends in a tough inner city environment who are willing to go to any length, including bank robbery, to escape the limitations and struggles of their gender, race, and socioeconomic status. According to director Gary Gray, the film is “not so much about robbing banks as choices young sisters make when their backs are against the wall” (Gregory 1996, 56). While the film has similar urban youth struggles found in many of the other “ghettocentric” films of the 1990s, Set It Off distinguishes itself in the genre due to presenting a largely unique all star cast of “blacktresses” and also for portraying themes concentrated on the plight …show more content…

However, in contrast to the other exclusively male dominated and themed films also released in the decade, when Set It Off was coauthored by Kate Lanier and Takashi Bufford in the early 1990s, it was intentionally grounded in close observation of the harsh realities faced by four female friends living in Los Angeles, California. In an opening scene, Frankie is fired for having a personal connection to a man who robs the bank where she is a bank teller even though she clearly has no involvement in the robbery. Stoney’s younger brother is later that evening wrongfully gunned down by police at his own high school graduation ceremony when he is mistakenly identified as being the same neighborhood friend who had earlier robbed Frankie’s bank. Because she is a single mother earning low wages and has no means to pay for childcare, T.T.’s young son is taken away by child protective services when the child is injured at her janitorial job as soon as desperation forces her to bring him to work with her. Each of these closely chronological events, most notably T.T.’s necessity to obtain money for legal fees in order to regain custody of her son, lead the foursome to form a pact to rob banks together. Cleo is the only friend who appears to have no clear aspiration to leave their urban lifestyle.

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