Caged and Contained: Gangsta Life in the Post-Industrial City of Set It Off

In her chapter examining Set It Off’s black lesbian butch-femme, Kara Keeling names the urban space of the gangsta films of the 1980s and 1990s as specifically a “post-industrial city”, “produced at the juncture between globalizing capitalism and contemporary U.S. racism”. (Keeling 120) In more general terms, we can define “post-industrial” cities as what is left when cities that were once reliant on large manufacturing/industrial based economies lose said manufacturing/industrial base. In the United States, especially during the recession of the 1970s, cities that were heavily involved in manufacturing (Detroit, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, to name a few) were devastated when the manufacturing plants and factories closed down, and their jobs were shipped outside of the country. With thousands of people out of work, no new jobs, and limited capital circulating, many small businesses followed suit. What was left were cities where blue-collar jobs were all but extinct; no longer would a high school diploma feed or clothe a family…and there were no companies coming in to offer new work opportunities, either. As a result, most of the jobs that remained were menial labour (when there were any at all), which did not allow for supporting a family, much less moving away from the city or obtaining more education in order to facilitate a possible widening of job prospects. This situation is very similar to the one illustrated in the film Set It Off, which gives an interesting juxtaposition of an empty factory looming darkly behind the 1970s themed party being thrown by one of the film’s protagonists in its opening sequences. With this shot, we are given a historical reference to the de-industrialization of the 1970s, as well as a direct look at the resulting empty factory and the projects that now house a generation who, unlike their 1970s predecessors, find their reality less the “seat of black community” and more of what Keeling refers to when she discusses the “construction of the ghetto as a living nightmare” whose result is the gangstas referenced by gangsta rap. (Keeling 120-1)

The reality of the “post-industrial city”, then, is one equated with the containment of its bodies- especially those of people of colour. In this schema, black masculinity is especially circumscribed by these institutionalized limitations. This is referenced throughout Set It Off, and directly stated by Cleo when she discusses Stony’s chance of breaking free via her relationship with middle-class banker Keith. For Cleo, who- as a butch lesbian- is the film’s main representative of black masculinity, being a “hood rat” is both a self-identification and a proud mark of belonging. Cleo acknowledges her containment as a masculine subject of colour in the “post-industrial city”, but does not envision or express a desire for a future beyond or outside of it. For Stony, who is a heterosexual, feminine woman, this containment is a major point of discontent that she spends the film attempting to address. Due to the economic limitations of the “post-industrial city” (and her job cleaning office buildings), however, Stony is driven to prostitution when seeking a way in which to pay for her brother’s college tuition, which she sees as a way out of the city for both of them. When her brother is killed because of a haircut that literally maps the “projects” onto his body, thus leading the police to assume him a “gangsta”, Stony agrees to rob a bank with three of her female friends in order to obtain money with which to escape.

A similar logic leads Cleo, who works for the same cleaning company as Stony, to return to a life of crime. While Cleo does not want to leave the city, she is representative of the black masculinity in “post-industrial cities” discussed by Keeling in that she has a female partner (re: family) that she cannot financially provide for by engaging in legal employment. She is joined in this circumstance by Tisean, who cannot provide for her family- the infant son removed from her care by the same system that taxes her pay to the point she cannot afford his daycare. The women discuss this aspect of their lives in a scene that references the “post-industrial city” both visually (they are sitting on a roof, overlooking the defunct factory), as well as audibly (they discuss the opportunities for a living wage the factory once offered). This view of the “system” is also explored in dialogue involved in convincing one of the friends to agree to the robbery, framing it as, “…taking away from a system that’s fucking us all anyway.”.

It is these aspects of containment (especially the financial) that shape and move the plot of Set It Off, bringing the four women together via their shared histories within the “post-industrial city” of L.A., their shared profession of cleaning the office buildings of upper-class (re: white) citizens who move in a part of the city the women entertain no hope of obtaining access to, and their oppression at the hands of a legal system that contributes to the aforementioned containment and stagnation. Sadly, it is this same legal system that pursues and surveilles them, determined to bring them to justice- but, ultimately, only bringing them to catastrophe.

I was very interested by our discussion of this surveillance and the methods of framing we encounter (not only filmically, but in our “everyday” lives as well) when viewing certain bodies, so I have included two clips below that not only address these issues, but also raise even more interesting questions related to this topic. The first I watched while thinking about the ways images/bodies are constructed, and how we are encouraged to “see” those constructions. I found the second one relevant to film, as well as to our discussion, due to the presentation and multi-layered framing within it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYT4iYs8Ucw&feature=related (Richmond news report)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2PLjI3CI0&feature=related (Richmond surveillance)