Hooray for Thuggin' in Pittsburgh!
Nov. 12th, 2005 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaWell, well, well....Fitty Cent's new movie opens aat the Waterfront and what happens? Some fella gets shot.
/me puts out soapbox, climbs up onto it...a li'l Binaca spray for the ol' dry throat--
None of the material in the above article in any way comments on whether or not the shooting was in any way connected to the movie. Now, it COULD BE. But, it could just as likely be a random shooting that just so happened to take place at a movie theatre showing Get Rich or Die Tryin'. But, quite frankly...I'll bet you $10 the two are connected.
ButwaitasecondPegritz! What the fuck you sayin', fool?--that a movie would make someone flip out and shoot somebody? No. Whether you're black, white, Asian, Plutonian, above the age of seventeen or barely old enough to piss without daddy's assistance, just going to see a movie is not going to inspire anyone to start peelin' caps. I must've seen Natural Born Killers a million times, and it's never once made me feel like carving up a random prostitute or going on a tri-state killing spree. Young, impressionable children everywhere sneak into horror movies like Saw II and witness all manner of dismemberment and torture, yet how many of them walk forth from the theatre and immediately start raping their teenybopper girlfriends with barbwire-covered baseball bats? Maybe one--and that's because he's seriously, seriously fucked up, a condition which years of abuse at home may have contributed to, but which a single viewing of a film surely didn't aggravate. Why? Because films are films--even biopics and documentaries are, in essence, removed from everyday life by being projected on a big screen and thereby made into entertainments. Even the most realistic slasher flick or gangsta movie is still just that: a movie, starring actors, based on a script that someone wrote. It's not a window into reality.
But. Here's the problem with a film like, say, Get Rich or Die Tryin': the fans. The message behind a film like Mister Fifty M. Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' is that the ghetto gangsta lifestyle kills--the fact that HE isn't dead after getting nine caps busted all up in his ass is nothing short of a miracle, but he's one of the lucky ones. But long before there was a film about Fifty's life, there were his albums...on which he literally glorifies the wonderful money, the tension, the excitement and the bitches galore that come with being a straight G from the hood. Don't get me wrong, now: as an artist, he can write music about anything he wants--I mean, I write music about cutting up the bodies of women I'd long ago dated so I can make a frankenstein, for christ's sake! The problem lies not in what Mister Cent writes about. It lies in how his fans take it.
How many kids do you know that love the Insane Clown Posse? Count me in as one of them: I have almost every one of their albums, and I just love goofball rap songs about serial killers and murderous clowns and wicked carnie stranglers--but the violence and psychotic "lifestyle" of ICP are about as realistic as anything from Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Hell, the same goes for almost all black metal and other supposedly "violent" genres of music. But when you get down to something like gangsta rap, that stuff is as real as the headlines on your newspaper. Take a drive through the Hill District or hang out at the O in Oakland some late night and you get to see it right in front of you. You can't blame artists who come from that background for talking about it--it's what they know, it means something to them. But problems arise when their stupid-ass fans--both black AND white--decide to use those artists' work as a reference point to model their own lifestyles and behavior, generally by latching on to the glamorous aspects of the life and just choosing, willfully, to ignore the inherent dangers.
So what happens at a showing of Get Rich or Die Tryin'? A bunch of Fifty Cent's fans, many of whom want to be him or live the same life as him, get together in one place...and they've already listened to his stuff so much that their eyes are full of visions of Big Money and Big Butt Ho's, and the glories of the street warrior lifestyle. They're full of testosterone and the ridiculous male posturing bullshit that the gangsta lifestyle mandates. You have a whooooooooole bunch of guys (and women, for that matter) gathered together in one place. Many of whom may well respresent rival street gangs. What do you think is going to happen? It's not guaranteed TO happen, and it's not like the film itself goaded anyone into acting, but...put a bunch of trash-talking gangbangers into one place (a movie theatre, a hip-hop night at Laga, you name it) and Something Will Happen. Most likely just a fistfight or a lot of posing and shouting, but every now and then someone pulls a gun and bullets end up in someone.
It's truly pathetic. Doubly so because the point behind Fifty Cent's entire film is that the Gangsta Life Is Bad, and that he got out of it through his talents. Mind you, I haven't seen the film yet, but I've read many reviews and heard the Man Himself speak about it on TV a number of times--the plot is clear and simple.
/me puts out soapbox, climbs up onto it...a li'l Binaca spray for the ol' dry throat--
None of the material in the above article in any way comments on whether or not the shooting was in any way connected to the movie. Now, it COULD BE. But, it could just as likely be a random shooting that just so happened to take place at a movie theatre showing Get Rich or Die Tryin'. But, quite frankly...I'll bet you $10 the two are connected.
ButwaitasecondPegritz! What the fuck you sayin', fool?--that a movie would make someone flip out and shoot somebody? No. Whether you're black, white, Asian, Plutonian, above the age of seventeen or barely old enough to piss without daddy's assistance, just going to see a movie is not going to inspire anyone to start peelin' caps. I must've seen Natural Born Killers a million times, and it's never once made me feel like carving up a random prostitute or going on a tri-state killing spree. Young, impressionable children everywhere sneak into horror movies like Saw II and witness all manner of dismemberment and torture, yet how many of them walk forth from the theatre and immediately start raping their teenybopper girlfriends with barbwire-covered baseball bats? Maybe one--and that's because he's seriously, seriously fucked up, a condition which years of abuse at home may have contributed to, but which a single viewing of a film surely didn't aggravate. Why? Because films are films--even biopics and documentaries are, in essence, removed from everyday life by being projected on a big screen and thereby made into entertainments. Even the most realistic slasher flick or gangsta movie is still just that: a movie, starring actors, based on a script that someone wrote. It's not a window into reality.
But. Here's the problem with a film like, say, Get Rich or Die Tryin': the fans. The message behind a film like Mister Fifty M. Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' is that the ghetto gangsta lifestyle kills--the fact that HE isn't dead after getting nine caps busted all up in his ass is nothing short of a miracle, but he's one of the lucky ones. But long before there was a film about Fifty's life, there were his albums...on which he literally glorifies the wonderful money, the tension, the excitement and the bitches galore that come with being a straight G from the hood. Don't get me wrong, now: as an artist, he can write music about anything he wants--I mean, I write music about cutting up the bodies of women I'd long ago dated so I can make a frankenstein, for christ's sake! The problem lies not in what Mister Cent writes about. It lies in how his fans take it.
How many kids do you know that love the Insane Clown Posse? Count me in as one of them: I have almost every one of their albums, and I just love goofball rap songs about serial killers and murderous clowns and wicked carnie stranglers--but the violence and psychotic "lifestyle" of ICP are about as realistic as anything from Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Hell, the same goes for almost all black metal and other supposedly "violent" genres of music. But when you get down to something like gangsta rap, that stuff is as real as the headlines on your newspaper. Take a drive through the Hill District or hang out at the O in Oakland some late night and you get to see it right in front of you. You can't blame artists who come from that background for talking about it--it's what they know, it means something to them. But problems arise when their stupid-ass fans--both black AND white--decide to use those artists' work as a reference point to model their own lifestyles and behavior, generally by latching on to the glamorous aspects of the life and just choosing, willfully, to ignore the inherent dangers.
So what happens at a showing of Get Rich or Die Tryin'? A bunch of Fifty Cent's fans, many of whom want to be him or live the same life as him, get together in one place...and they've already listened to his stuff so much that their eyes are full of visions of Big Money and Big Butt Ho's, and the glories of the street warrior lifestyle. They're full of testosterone and the ridiculous male posturing bullshit that the gangsta lifestyle mandates. You have a whooooooooole bunch of guys (and women, for that matter) gathered together in one place. Many of whom may well respresent rival street gangs. What do you think is going to happen? It's not guaranteed TO happen, and it's not like the film itself goaded anyone into acting, but...put a bunch of trash-talking gangbangers into one place (a movie theatre, a hip-hop night at Laga, you name it) and Something Will Happen. Most likely just a fistfight or a lot of posing and shouting, but every now and then someone pulls a gun and bullets end up in someone.
It's truly pathetic. Doubly so because the point behind Fifty Cent's entire film is that the Gangsta Life Is Bad, and that he got out of it through his talents. Mind you, I haven't seen the film yet, but I've read many reviews and heard the Man Himself speak about it on TV a number of times--the plot is clear and simple.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-12 08:54 am (UTC)