Boyz N The Hood Essay

Words: 1452
Pages: 6

Recently, the genre of Hip-Hop has become popularly depicted in countless Hollywood films. Despite the music side of Hip-Hop/Rap not making an entrance in the film Boyz N the Hood, the film is noteworthy for contributing to the image of the “hood.” As the audience, we are offered a taste of the struggles of life that numerous African-Americans experience every day through two notable examples of three men who grow up with different social backgrounds: Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy. Although “Boyz N the Hood” is extremely graphic in the images and sounds showed to the audience, the director skillfully executes the job of giving the film a realistic touch of the “hood” by pushing it’s central message of increasing the peace. From the very first scene of the film, we hear multiple vulgarities being shouted and the sounds of a drive-by shooting taking place are heard before words come across the screen giving statistics of …show more content…
We can even consider Ricky to be the primary protagonist of the film because he clearly has the biggest obstacles to overcome. For example, the biggest discrepancy between Ricky and Trey is the fact that there is no father who is there for Ricky. That being said, however, Furious did have a rather large impact not just on Trey, but on most of the boys around the neighborhood, Ricky included. This can be seen in the scene after Ricky and Trey had just taken their SAT’s and Furious took them to Compton to talk about gentrification. Furious uses the billboard in the scene to prove to the boys that everything in the neighborhood should be kept black, similar to what Muhammad Ali preached. What makes this scene so powerful is that Furious addresses the issue of conforming to the stereotypical image of the African-American in the hood who drinks liquor and shoots up other “brothers.” In this light we see how Furious acted as the voice of reason for many African-American youth in the