While the hood films took over the film industry in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, there is a lot of controversy in the topic of if these films helped catapult young juveniles into more trouble. While Hollywood saw financial gains through this genera, it just added to the already existing discomfort of the people viewing these movies. That discomfort was that kids would see this movie and want the lifestyle. There is no doubt these movies are made to be entertaining but there is also meant to be a serious aspect to them making it feel real to all watching. This is the case because these films were made by young African American directors who are conscious of putting their own spin on the genre.
There are two sides to this argument that makes it so controversial. One being the lasting effects it can have on its young viewers. This concern was raised because of how some films portrayed young gangster’s lives. They had the nice cars, beautiful women who were seductive, extravagant jewelry, and unlimited access to the best places in town. You were treated like royalty and you lived like it too in the million dollar mansions. And the other portrayal is more similar to films like Boyz in The Hood where you have real life ghettos and the struggle that young black men have to try and stay on the right path when ultimately the ending is always death or jail.
New City Jack showed a more glamorized version of the hood films. Like all films we have watched this semester, the common denominator is crime and violence. New Jack City was so great because of the location of which it was shot. “From the outcrop of black films of the early nineties emerged a large number of action films, from major studios but directed by African Americans, set in black communities.” (K. Chan) This gave the film a sense of realism letting viewers connect with the film. Director Mario Van Peebles would often film the hood films in bad parts of New York or Los Angeles. He didn’t want to paint the hood world as something that it wasn’t. He studied the way that drugs would sling through the streets and interactions between drug dealer and buyer of the product. During the filming time of New City Jack, there was a cocaine epidemic and there were plenty of areas that would be great destination to shoot. He often gave his actors free leashes to get into character and even change words from the script to make it sound more real. Van Peebles never wanted to make his films sound like the TV series Bad Boys or sugar coat the way drug dealers would interact with people. He wanted to film to be as life like as possible and this helped show realism in a lot of his films not just New City Jack.
“When you make a film that is based in reality, reality will come up all around it.” -Mario Van Peebles.
A very different idea of these films ,and also is the purpose, is that young black directors, like Mario Van Peebles, wanted to take back the idea of African Americans. “These gritty tales of urban dysfunction, while undoubtedly playing on stereotypes of how black people lived (and more often than not, died) in the projects, offered black filmmakers the opportunity to take control of their own narratives, adding depth to the often lop-sided representation of people of colour in film.” What helped pave the way of this idea of ‘place-based identity films was the entrance of hip hop into the main stream. (T. Taylor) During this time marketers were using black hip hop artists to ‘safely’ target a different market. Notice the word safely? This is a legitimate quote from the piece: “While hip hop started out primarily as ‘a black thing’, marketers are realizing they can use the culture to mo’ better target youth of any color.” (A.Fisher) The excitement of discovering this brand-new demographic translated into the birth of the hood films. Many black film makers didn’t want to start a wave but the genera had to break free of these formulated flicks about urban shoot-ups and drug-trafficking despair with very little success. A young black producer explains, ““It homes in on the mentality of someone who’s from there but not of there. And it doesn’t exclude the hood — it includes the hood. It’s encouraging.” (T. Taylor)
Express yourself from the heart, cause if you wanna start to move up the chart, then expression is a big part. –Dr. Dre (of N.W.A.), “Express Yourself”
Now what does this have to do with the movie New City Jack? Well, it is the background of why this movie came to be what it is today. Most hood films touch on inner city social and political issues such as poverty, crime, racism, drugs and violence. (British Columbia Film Journal). In the film we watched in class, Boyz in the Hood, the film opens with ten-year-old kids looking at a crime scene right above posters for President Regan’s reelection. This similar scene happened in New Jack City where the ‘Cash Money Boys’ (the gang that is selling drugs) is talking about while Regan is president, the rich will keep getting richer and the poor with get poor-er. These scenes are an example of how the directors are trying shed light on how these political issues are effecting those people in poor communities.
In New Jack City we see many scenes of directors showing the audience poverty. For example, drug addict Pookie is cutting in line for food during thanksgiving. Once he gets a whole turkey, he brings it back to a woman who talks about how she was the prom queen at her high school. Pookie and that woman get into a heated argument and Scotty, the cop helping bust the drug operation, steps in to help him. Pookies words are that the drugs are taking control of his whole life and he doesn’t know how to stop it. This was a very intimate scene that was shot in hopes to enlighten those watching of just how much of a struggle addiction can be. (British Columbia Film Journal). This is seen in many hood films because the ever so consistent variable to all hood films is the scene of realism and trying to convey to the audience how life really is.
To conclude, i’m glad I chose this genera because not only are these films entertaining but if you have people in your family that struggle with drug use, it hits you differently. It also is very informational because these films always open with statistics being said in the background of neighborhoods being shot up or written statistics on the screen much like the film we watched Goodfellas. Hood films are very different in the way that they are constructed because I feel it has more meaning than other traditional Italian gangster movies do. In Italian gangster films, we rarely see the homelessness and poor communities. We don’t see those effected byt the drug use and how it ruins families and individuals. We just see the behind the scenes of the drug operation. New City Jack did the behind the scenes of the drug dealers but also showed the struggle of drug users and the impact the cocaine epidemic had on that specific period of time and that is why I think the hood genera was so powerful and successful.
The 'Hood' Era 