April 28, 2014

Cultural impact of Boyz n the Hood

By akelley4825

When I watched this movie, I thought it was interesting that they included statistics as part of the opening scene. Obviously violence and homicide were major issues Los Angeles, otherwise this tactic wouldn’t have been effective in the movie. I looked up the significance of this movie, and found something surprising. When Boyz n the Hood first came out, it actually sparked an increase in gang violence at first. This made many of the theaters to pull the movie shortly after its release. I also found that this movie was released at the height of L.As gang wars, and only nine months before the police officers would be acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. This movie has a lot of historical significance in this time period, some of it unintentional.

This movie was a wake up call to the public, addressing an issue that had been going on for far too long. I believe that the release time of this film had some impact on the riots that followed the acquittal of the police officers. There was a great quote an article from the LA Times, stating “Instead of being represented, you have a case of people trying to represent themselves.”(Swanson).  This was spoken by Christine Acham, professor at UC Davis. This quote is especially true for this period in time, not only for the movie, but for the events that occurred after the movie. 

 

Swanson, Tim. “‘Hood,’ Revisited.” LA TImes [Los Angeles] 26 July 2011: n. pag. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. <http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/26/entertainment/la-et-boyz-anniv-20110726&gt;.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2014 at 5:09 pm and posted in Historical Context. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One response to “Cultural impact of Boyz n the Hood”

  • kevina1994
    April 29th, 2014 at 1:20 am

    I also thought that using statistics was an interesting way to start off the movie, and it seemed to fit the movie well. In addition, I thought it was interesting in your post how you noted that gang violence seemed to increase after the movie came out, and how the movie was considered somewhat responsible for this. I would not have thought this type of result would have occurred. You brought up some noteworthy real life impact of the movie that I would not have known otherwise.

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