The gangsta films reproduced the shifting role of blackness in relation to urban spaces when they engage in the visual rendering of a “post-industrial city”. As Keeling explains, the films reproduce “‘a fundamentally different reality’ of the black working class from the urban realities that existed prior to 1970” (121). The shifting reality looks upon a changing society that had moved from manufacturing to telecommunications. Gangsta films project the image of marginalized bodies that result from this working adjustment and the socioeconomic context they are inscribed into. This new society results in elevated unemployment for the working force, and the marginalization of groups that centered their works and lives on industrial spaces that disappear.
Set it Off revised the post-industrial city connecting personal experience as a result of the space that the main leading actresses are inscribed to. Los Angeles is a city where identity is negotiated when the “otherness” encounters the hegemonic discourse. The post-industrial city discourse shapes the plot by presenting actresses that justify their actions against the hegemonic discourse as a result of their space. For instance, Frankie is willing to rob a bank since she was discriminated by one just because she belongs to a marginal space. The murder of Stony’s brother shows how the police force (as a representation of the hegemonic discourse) neglects subjects they are supposed to protect. Cleo’s mention of the closure of the industries highlights the unemployment of many citizens that had their lives revolving around corporations. Also, T.T.’s child is taken by Child Services because she did not have the money to maintain him. The post-industrial city constructs the plot because it is the reason why they are practically forced to look for opportunities and take revenge against the discourse that has cornered them.
The dialectic between the 1990s film and the predecessor is represented visually and audibly. Beretta Smith, when referring to blaxplotation films, says that: “Most of these blaxplotation films characterized all African descendants as monolithic balls of anger, trapped within urban jungles and forever banished to the margins of society”(27). In Set it Off the representation is much different. The women in the film justify their criminal actions not as a result from anger, but as what seems to be a natural consequence of the marginal space they are confined in. They difference between the predecessor and Set it Off can also be seen in the visual citation the movie created. The scene of the women sitting around the table directly cites The Godfather. Cleo’s spectacular death is a common place in film history. The following link has 10 striking deaths scenes (two parts):
Set it Off incorporates hip-hop as part of the construction of the space. Music is diegetic as characters respond directly to it in the film. Cleo throws away the CDs she found in the car, and used her own music as a symbolic appropriation of the cars she robbed. Also, music is presented as nondiegetic, but as a representation of the post-industrial city. The film is discursively citing the hip-hop scene by presenting important performers in the movie (Queen Latifah and Dr. Dre).
Set if Off produces configurations regarding gender, class and sexuality. As Keeling points out: “While the three other primary characters in the film have some rationale of getting revenge or making money by robbing a bank, Cleo’s masculinity seems to be enough justification for her resort to crime” (125). Gender hegemonic stereotyping is revised by the presentation of a black female group of bank robbers. The blaxplotation film related crime with unjustified anger, but in Set if Off it is a response to the discrimination they have been subject. The characters are subjects that call upon a revision of the marginalized position they have in a particular class and a given space. Even though Cleo has appropriated the space and plays by the gangsta norms, her death reveals the sacrifice she was willing to make in order to save her friends.
I was interested in your discussion of gender stereotyping and anger, especially as relates to the scenes of the two different groups of bank robbers. The first robbery (perpetrated by the male group) seemed to be dominated by the type of "monolithic" anger discussed by Smith-Shomade; while we are never aware of their motivation for the robbery, their anger is so extreme as to be detrimental to their technique, and ends in their deaths. The women, however, are portrayed as going to great lengths to avoid bloodshed, and are motivated by their marginalization in a society that does not afford them other, more legal, options for survival. It is interesting to me that, from the get-go, we are given a picture of hyper-violent black masculinity and its supposedly "natural" conclusion. Even the bodies of the black men who are being covered (as well as that of Stony's brother, later)are displayed as much bloodier, perforated by multiple, visible gunshot wounds, than are those of the carefully covered, white police officers killed in the shoot-out. In light of this, it would almost seem as though we are being warned of the necessity for Cleo's bloody, sensationalistic death as the group's representative of black masculinity.
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