Kara Keeling explains a post-industrial city in gangsta films as “ghettocentric,” a term used by Robert D.G. Kelley, which is described as something that immensely frames black youth in a negative light through “the criminalization, surveillance, incarceration, and immiseration” of them (Keeling 120). Many times in the society we are living, our image is constructed socially throughout the points of views of others. What Keeling means by this ghettocentricity in the city of LA (particularly), is that what the black youth in gangsta films are misrepresented as criminals and as this, as a popular medium gives the impression that all black youth are in fact criminals and everything they are represented as. She says she uses this term because of its specificity and because it is very different from many other forms of urbanization seen in the media. There is also a very literal meaning we get from the movie as post-industrial; we also see the immense amount of shut down factories that contribute to the mere fact that the women don’t have the good jobs they used too.
In terms of Set it Off, as we went over in class, one of the initial scenes in which the women are at a party, the way the camera is lowered to the house and the actual scene at which they are at is seen as very ghettocentric. The party scene, the quality of the house and the amount of the low-rider “gangsta” cars speaks a lot about where they are and about the rest of the film. I also thought that many simple things such as the jobs they work in, the race they are and the class they are in. They say that in the US there is no such thing as class; that we are all equal and that capitalism helps us to make us into better people than we are. However, this is untrue. And in this film, class is one of the many binaries shown that demonstrates this inequality.
The whole film is about these four women attempting to rid themselves of “the man” or the system that is always corrupting them and leaving them in a worse jam than they find themselves in the beginning. Some other factors from post industrial city that we see in the movie is the main beginning scene from the film: the back robbery that Frankie is involved in. The men involved are all black men. The fact that the men are black and virtually oppressed by the system that led them to commit the crime is one of the main things that truly caught my eye. As mentioned in class today by Ms. Hannabach, we also saw that on the television they played the men’s robbery further framing them by the color of their skin and by their class as well.
I also wanted to mention queerness as another way to oppress the brown bodies we already see oppressed in the film. Cleo is a queer clack woman of lower class. She is further oppressed in a system of heteronormative white males. The mere fact that she is a gay black woman makes it unnecessarily harder for her to even begin to relate to a system that has already oppressed her. However, I was very intrigued with the fact that they decided to keep her partner, Ursula, quiet and what Keeling had to say about this. Cleo is not as oppressed after all because of her masculinity and the fact that Ursula’s silence is further enunciating Cleo’s masculinity. So there is a factor here that actually doesn’t have Cleo as oppressed as we think. There are many controversial thoughts ad emotions that go behind the movie that are ultimately linked to this oppression in a post industrial society which has already oppressed the people depending on the jobs that were taken away.
I added the beginning of Set it Off because it reinstates everything I mentioned in my blog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whfFMYD25T0
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When I reviewed my notes to write this evening's post, I noticed, as you mention in your blog, how marginalized the characters were within a system that continued to perpetuate that marginalization, even as it claimed to be doing so for "their own good", such as when CPS takes Tisean's baby. It is interesting that in some of these scenes with representatives of "the man" (who we traditionally associate with white, heterosexual men), the state's representative is a woman of colour. One of the two main investigators for the robbery division is also a woman of colour, and one who is just as corrupt as the (white) men around her. When Cleo is put in the line up, it is this woman who tries to browbeat a false ID from the prostitute who witnessed Luther's death. It seemed, in this particular scene, that class trumped race in the "post-industrial city"; the (white) prostitute understood the codes of the "hood" that Cleo made use of in her threats, as they moved within similar circles and/or within a comparable class. The police officer, on the other hand, seemed to be more at home with the white, middle-class codes/value system of her co-workers, and thus could not bridge the gap and communicate to get a positive ID. I feel as if nothing in this film is "just there"; it is too carefully put together for such a simplistic take. The only other solution is that these characters' race is mediating or communicating something else when they stand in for "the man", and I was wondering if anybody had any opinions as to that? Thanks for getting me thinking...
ReplyDeleteYou make really good point Jess, what does it mean when female bodies of color stand in for "the man?" I noticed in the relationship between the black woman working in the police department and the police head white male that he often made remarks that could be viewed as racist, for example "you feel me?" However, she never responded or seemed upset. It's interesting that at the beginning of the movie too when the initial robbery takes place that Vivica Fox's character communicates with her by saying, "you didn't even ask me if i was thirsty sister." It would seem that because of her perceived race that others expect to be able to communicate with her in certain ways, however, she operates outside of this, not because of her color, but because of her perceived class. Perhaps then the movie becomes just as much about how class functions as it is about the impoverished African American against the white male system.
ReplyDeleteI like this discussion on class versus race a lot, it reminds me that even though the system/ police force, legal structure appears to oppress and marginalized the black and female in the society, they too have limitations. As Jess pointed out, without understanding the system of Hood the woman of color cannot get what she desires form her (perceively) lower class. similarly, the white detective head is condemned to guilt and he realized he must let Stony go, as self consolation and for her. The multiple killings do not just reflect how defenseless the outlaws are, but also the ignorance of the government—its failure to recognize their act not as crime but merely self defense.
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