Setting Off the Faces of the Post-Industrial City

Set It Off, F. Gary Gray’s 1996 gangsta film about four women that become entangled in a string of bank robberies. The reasons that eventually lead to why and how each woman decides to get involved in the crime are varied and distinct - from Frankie’s vengeance to Stoney’s needs for freedom to Cleo’s desire for simple excess and luxury - yet all are also deeply woven into the intricacies and nuances inherent to a “post-industrial city.”

To understand the existence of a post-industrial city as it relates to Set It Off, it must be acknowledged that the two are far from singularly dimensioned. The post-industrial city, as alluded to by Kara Keeling, can be conceptualized as a complex framework from which to understand how physical space - in particular, the space, geography, and localization of Los Angeles, California - directly interacts with the political, economic, and social ramifications of the individuals and communities that inhabit it. Specifically, the post-industrial city is one that has experienced the de-industrialization of a once thriving manufacturing base and is now forced to dwell upon the residual impact that de-industrialization has had on the people that once utilized those factories for income and livelihood. It is the whole industry of factory work and manufacturing that must also be put into dialogue with the components of neighborhood - the “hood” - that houses the actual lived experiences, personalities, and struggles of the folks whose day-to-day lives exist in the post-industrial city.

As a back drop for the film, the city of Los Angeles - as an exemplary example of a post-industrial city - plays a critical role not only in the plot development of the film but also particularly for the characterizations and developments of identity for the narrative’s players. In itself, Los Angeles becomes just as much a character of the film, dictating much of the other characters’ motivations and ultimately consequences.

One of the key examples in the film of the post-industrial city, particularly in its relationship to the film’s plot and the women’s choices, is the scene where Cleo, T.T., Frankie, and Stoney smoke cannabis on a roof overlooking a still-standing factory that started laying people off. It is there that they are talk about how much money they could be making if the factory was still open with evocations of fondness. They laugh, smile, and talk about their past good times smoking together. The conversation is light and familiar as the song “Days of Our Lives” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony plays in the background, further constructing a sense of nostalgia and goodwill. The song’s composition and instrumentation is soft and emotional. The scene directly addresses the systemic de-industrialization that has affected them as individuals and them as members of a low-income community that deeply depended on the industry. Suggesting their distance from opportunity and economic stability, the factory is set visually far away from them, yet is still vast in size. When the women are placed in the same frame as the factory, we see their backs diminished by the factory’s size.

The post-industrial city is also a backdrop for many of the gansta rap music videos that came out during the same era as Set It Off. The film’s director, F. Gary Gray, began his career as a music video director, who worked with Dr. Dre (who plays Black Sam in the film) and Ice Cube for their song “Natural Born Killaz.” The video’s emotional tone and narrative arc are very similar to the film, both using violence to communicate not only the existence of specific livelihoods in a post-industrial city but also how that violence is a vehicle to understand how the post-industrial city has further swollen the differentiations of race and class in those areas.

-Kenny Gong