Week of Nov. 17-21

This week was entitled, "Race and Hip Hop and Black Cinema," drawing sharp distinctions with who was in and out of the Hip Hop/Black Gang culture of the late 1980s and 1990s. Even today, these gangs still persist and the culture that surrounds them only serves to help keep up the support system of the gangs. Off the top of my head, there have been two great rappers who have died due to the gang culture that surrounds and inhabits Hip Hop, Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac. Both were taken before their time and I beleive that if they knew what would happen in advance of their deaths, they would have taken more steps to stop the gang-like war between the hip-hip coasts of West and East.

We saw clips from many films that glamorized the gang culture (basically, real depictions), and we saw how it is not only the black male who attaches himself to the cult of power that a gang offers but any male who has been born into underpriveleged conditions and doesn't want to have to work their way up through the society ladder. The gang culture offered an "out" in which those participants in it didn't have to work the daily grind job, or pretend as if they wanted to got to college. They could be in a gang, mafia or mob and just say that is what they wanted to do, no furhter aspirations, just be a gang man for the rest of their lives and that was an okay answer for society because it meant job security and good pay, as long as you stayed alive.

Today, the gang culture has become somewhat less mainstream with rappers emphasizing street roots, but not the gang culture that might have been prevalent in the area in which they grew up. Rappers today are more likely to rap about their money and women than the trials and tribulations they faced in order to get to where they are today. The culture is still perpetuated in their music, just in a less overt manner.