The early 1990s was a prolific time for African-American film. Films like John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood ushered in a new type of “home-boy cinema”, as Donald Bogle calls it, that “focused on young African American males coming of age in tough urban settings… [and] were also eager to address harsh urban realities: drugs, crime, violence, death on the streets” (Bogle, 347). Two years after Singleton’s film was released to critical and commercial success, the twenty-one year old Hughes Brothers, Albert and Allen, introduced their first film at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. That film was Menace II Society. Some critics commented that the film “provided the kind of movie experience I’ve seldom had since childhood (“menace review”, par 2), while others found its violence too brutal and its message too pessimistic to be of any sort of constructive influence (Yearwood, 110). The film was extremely popular, and it effectively launched the careers of Albert and Allen Hughes. But as S. Craig Watkins states, “by the early 1990s, film narratives exploring black male youth culture and the postindustrial ghetto proved to be extremely competitive at the box office, generating enormous sums of money for major and independent film distributors” (Watkins 172). Watkins goes into great detail analyzing the film as a product of the cultural “ghettocentric imagination” (Watkins 198) in his book, Representing, so this essay will try stay away from his analyses. But the question remains: Was the popularity of Menace II Society a result of it being a positive step for African-American cinema? Or was the film nothing more than a stylish retread of previous films in the New Black Film movement that simply cashed in on tried-and-true conventions? Through a textual analysis of a scene from Menace II Society, that question is what this essay seeks to answer.
Menace II Society follows an African-American teen named Caine as he grows up from a young boy, introduced to crime by his drug-dealing father, to his life as an adolescent as he deals with his environment and the choices he must make which are slowly turning into a common criminal. The scene that will be discussed occurs early in the film, and involves Caine’s Grandfather as he tries to explain to Caine and his best friend, O-Dog, that their lives are being led incorrectly. What evolves is a scene that is not only indicative of the aesthetics of New Black Film, but also of the urban life of African-American youth in general, which New Black Films sought to replicate onscreen (“Be Black and Buy” par 3).
The depiction of African-American youth in Menace II Society is very representative of the black youth depictions seen not only in other New Black films of the early 1990s, but also in the Black cinema of the 1970s. Characters like Caine are rooted in the type of “fully drawn subjects” that audiences thirsted to see onscreen (“Be Black and Buy”, par. 6). But while most of the characters in these 1970s films were seen triumphing over white oppressors, the films of the New Black wave depict black youths fighting amongst themselves in their own neighbourhoods, and oftentimes, like in Menace II Society, coming out less than triumphant.
The scene with Caine’s Grandfather begins with Caine struggling to comprehend the appeal that a rerun of It’s a Wonderful Life has over his grandparents. His Grandfather silently insists that he pay attention, but when O-Dog comes to the door, Caine welcomes the distraction. Before they can get away, however, his Grandfather insists Caine and O-Dog come inside to have a little chat. Caine’s Grandfather begins to lecture them about the trouble they’ve been getting into, but the two teens are unmoved by his advice. Their apathy is a result of the utter inapplicability that the advice Caine’s Grandfather gives to their current environment. As Manthia Diawara writes, “a key difference between the new Black realism and the Blaxploitation series of the 1970s lies in character development through rites of passage in the new films. […T]he characters of the new realism films change with the enfolding of the story line”(Diawara 255). Under the influence of people like O-Dog, Caine believes he must prove himself through criminal acts since, in the world he knows, that is how a boy matures into a man. The words of the Grandfather are completely irrelevant to Caine and O-Dog, and the Hughes Brothers even highlight that irrelevance by the extreme low angle that they shoot the Grandfather from during his lecturing. As Prof. Naaman pointed out, the low angle shot seems to be mocking the Grandfather by putting him on a pedestal that is too high for his own good.
As is indicative in the above analysis, Menace II Society is also an aesthetically intriguing film. Albert and Allen Hughes deftly organize their mise-en-scene to convey the power relationships between characters instead of merely communicating these relationships through dialogue. This inventive means of telling their story is very indicative of New Black Film; as Diawara points out, independent filmmakers of the Black New Wave sought to break barriers artistically: “they want to explore new ways of telling stories; they want to experiment with the camera, […] and engage the infinite possibilities of storytelling.” (Diawara 238).
In the aforementioned scene specifically, thoughtful compositions are used to clarify the relationships between the characters, thus furthering the drama of the film’s action. For instance, the low angle shot of the living room as Caine and O-Dog sit down on the sofa positions an obstruction in the form of a coffee table in front of the two once they are seated, an obstruction that is not seen in front of the two grandparents. This immediately suggests an already existent barrier in the relationship between Caine and his grandparents before their conversation even begins. And the two-shot of O-Dog and Caine juxtaposed with the separation of the Grandfather through the film’s editing advances the notion of the teens’ unspoken bond and the Grandfather’s separation from their space, their world. Furthermore, the positioning of Caine under the painting of the Last Supper in the scene’s final shot depicts O-Dog over one shoulder and the shadow of the Grandfather’s hand over the other, a composition which reinforces the film’s theme of choice. Stylistic choices such as these all work to add to the complex drama and further the narrative tension in the film’s story.
[PB1] Many critics found Menace II Society to be violent and pessimistic. It “[offers] no new knowledge of our social condition and [sheds] very little light on the problems facing urban black youth,” as Gladstone Yearwood put it (Yearwood 110). While the film could be interpreted this way, it could also be interpreted as simply a case study in the sort of lifestyle that produces individuals like Caine. “He is presented more as a typical example” (“Menace II Society”, par 10), as Roger Ebert puts it, than as an eventuality of all black youths. This is conveyed through the reminders from Caine’s family, friends, and even at times his own voice-overs of the choices he is able to make, and this fleeting possibility that maybe not all African-American kids are doomed to the sort of life to which Caine succumbed is a source of hope that the film offers. The presence of choice in Caine’s life allows for the possibility that even though Caine decided to take one road, there is another road that one might choose that could lead away from the type of tragic end that befell Caine. In this way, Menace II Society is a cautionary tale of sorts. Surely, Caine is a typical example of street thug, and the characteristic nihilism both he and O-Dog share conveys the sense that he is more the rule for black urban youth than the exception. But that does not mean there are no exceptions to the rule. Menace II Society is more a film berthed out of the experiences of urban black youth than pulled out of the conventions of the Black New wave films that came before it, and therefore it is an inventive and thought-provoking addition to the New Black Film wave of the early 1990s that America presented to the world.
Bibliography
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Diawara, Manthia. “Black American Cinema: The New Realism”. Film and Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. 2000. 236-256.
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Phil Borg 