Menace II Society

Produced by Darin Scott, Allen and Albert Hughes and Tyger Williams, based on a story by the Hughes; directed by Allen and Albert Hughes; cinematography by Lisa Rinzler; edited by Christopher Koefoed; production design by Penny Barrett; music by QD III; starring Tyrin Turner, Jada Pinkett, Larenz Tate, Vonte Sweet, Samuel L. Jackson and Glenn Plummer. Color, 90 mins. A New Line Cinema release. It is impossible to discuss Menace II Society, the feature debut by the sibling duo, the Hughes brothers, without referring to other films within the 'hood' or 'gangsta' genre. As with all genres of filmmaking, the hood films can be identified by certain industrial and artistic similarities: they are made by young, film-literate African-American men working with shoestring budgets (by comparison to Hollywood standards); they deal with similar narrative themes (young African-American men trying to stay alive amidst the pressures--crimes, drugs, racism--of inner city life); and they illustrate mastery of cinematic techniques. Past examples of this genre include such films as Straight Out of Brooklyn, Juice, New Jack City, and Boyz N the Hood. Relying on these and other films which have preceded it, and borrowing many narrative conventions from John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood most specifically, Menace II Society concerns itself with similar topics, in a similar milieu, but attempts to take its story one step further.

Most simply, Menace II Society is a coming of age tale detailing the summer after its protagonist Caine (Tyrin Turner) graduates from high school. This is Caine's story, made literal through the film's use of voice-over narration to convey his point of view. Although this technique is most closely associated with traditional narrative styles, in which identification with the protagonist is unified and absolute, Menace II Society subverts this technique by simultaneously giving truth and primacy to Caine's version of events, while underscoring Caine's unreliability as a narrator (and the unreliability of all narrators). In voice-over, Caine repeatedly questions his actions and seemingly makes a decision, only to oppose that decision through his actions that follow, without offering any explanation. Through their self-conscious, unconventional use of this conventional narrative device, the Hughes move beyond other films of the hood genre, all of which explicitly aim to break down Hollywood images of African-American life. The Hughes brothers, however, further subvert Hollywood content by illustrating, questioning, and moving away from the shortcomings of the very techniques Hollywood uses to construct a 'reality,' while never questioning its own construction. Menace II Society also strives, with varying degrees of success, to break from traditional and generic depictions of violence. From the very first scene, detailing Caine's and O-Dog's (Larenz Tate) fatal armed robbery of a Korean market, violence is unsympathetically graphic. In this instance, the film succeeds in painting a disturbing picture of violence, one in which the characters' lack of remorse, rather than stylistic convention, shapes and colors the horror of the image. Although most of the violence is filmed realistically and unfolds in real time, the Hughes can't seem to resist stylizing some of the more important narrative events. Thus, while the robbery introduces violence, O-Dog's shooting of the Korean market owner is shown directly only further into the story, when black and white images of the store's stolen surveillance video are played and replayed for the entertainment of Caine, O-Dog, and their friends. While an innovative means of conveying action, the video becomes nothing more than a red herring. While it builds tension and a false sense of foreboding, nothing comes of it--the video never connects directly to the film's later events.

The film's climactic final scene also falls prey to the same stylistic conventions the Hughes claim to be working against. As Caine is riddled with bullets in this drive-by shooting scene, the cinematography resorts to a stylistics of violence standardized ever since its introduction in Bonnie and Clyde--brilliant colors, bright lighting, and slow motion photography, prolonging the event and heightening tension as well as pathos. While masterfully executed, such conventions nullify the effect of earlier straightforward, no-holds-barred depictions of violence. By virtue of its simplicity, an earlier carjacking scene, in which Caine's cousin is killed, seems far more powerful than those scenes in which violence is stylized. Repeatedly stating their desire that violence work as a deterrent to hood audiences watching the film, the Hughes might have achieved their end more successfully had they consistently resisted the masterful, pleasurable, and familiar cinematography of violence.

While sometimes departing from generic conventions through unconventional narrative and stylistic techniques, Menace II Society maintains certain conventions by reworking narratives explored in Boyz N the Hood and Straight Out of Brooklyn. Like Boyz, most of the film's impetus comes through its stressing the importance of a powerful father figure (at the expense of most women in the narrative). Whereas the former film locates one central father figure, however, Menace II Society problematizes the ease of this solution.

Introduced in flashback when he murders a man in front of his young son in their home, Caine's father initiates his son into a life of crime. After his death, Caine's father is followed by Pernell (Glenn Plummer), who serves as Caine's criminal mentor and surrogate father until a life prison term curtails his daily influence. While responsibility for Caine's welfare also falls into his grandparents' hands and home, their attempts (especially his grandfather's) to set him straight go unheeded. Caine can neither accept his grandfather's religious beliefs nor respond when his grandfather poses the pivotal question--"Don't you care whether you live or die?"

Caine's former teacher, Mr. Butler (Charles S. Dutton), also attempts to intervene, suggesting that Caine get out of the hood before he gets into any more trouble. Mr. Butler, himself a father--of Shatill, an ex- "knucklehead" and now a Muslim convert--falls snugly into the mold of Furious, the strong father in the Singleton film. In Menace, however, this figure is only a minor character. Set in Mr. Butler's classroom, his intervention motivates Caine to reflect upon his life, but the effect of Mr. Butler's words, like that of Caine's grandfather, is merely momentary--Caine listens, but as his actions illustrate, he doesn't really hear. In a film in which relationships among men are predicated on violence, it is no coincidence that Caine's father and Pernell influence Caine in the most sustaining ways. Rather than standing for the son's salvation, as Furious does in Boyz N the Hood, these fathers signal Caine's downfall.

With all influential father figures either dead or behind bars, the ill-equipped Caine, himself, must adopt the role of father when Pernell legitimizes Caine's relationship with Ronnie (Jada Pinkett), Pernell's former lover and the mother of his young son Tony. Pernell gives his blessing, as Ronnie and Caine attempt to move out of the hood, and Caine comes of age, accepting responsibility for Ronnie, Tony, and himself. Mediated through the prison's plexiglass and telephones, the scene suggests the possibility that Caine has learned from Pernell's mistakes and now can halt the history of self-destruction into which he was born and raised. But this possibility is quickly negated at the going-away party for Ronnie, where Caine attacks a man in front of Tony, a not-so- subtle echo of the violent scene from Caine's childhood. Is the film really suggesting that the only legacy Caine (or Tony) can inherit is one of violence and self-destruction?

Like many narratives dealing with relationships among men (a primary structuring theme of the hood films), women are almost totally excluded from the story. The only exception in Menace II Society is Ronnie, who is included precisely because she stands above or outside of the environment around her, as suggested by her characterization and the spaces she occupies. Shot in soft focus and with soft lighting, in contrast to the harsher realities of Caine's world, Ronnie and her house become Caine's only refuge. Within this space, Ronnie's subdued dress and practical manner sustain Caine in a way his own mother never could. Ronnie's role as nurturer and protector emerges through her strong desire to shield her son and Caine from the very same things--guns, drugs, prison, and death. In this respect, Ronnie represents Caine's only hope for survival. Implicit within this survival is the promise of escape: Caine will escape his life of crime through his literal escape to Atlanta with Ronnie. In addition to Ronnie (who ultimately becomes more symbolic than real), the generic homegirls, and a few almost silent appearances by Caine's grandmother, the only other woman who figures in the film is Ilena (Erin Leshawn Wiley), the mother of Caine's unborn child. Diametrically opposed to Ronnie, by virtue of her overt sexuality, Ilena causes Caine's downfall and foils his and Ronnie's attempt to begin anew. As Caine and Ronnie pack up her car for their move to Atlanta, Caine is gunned down by Ilena's cousin in revenge for dumping Ilena and abandoning his unborn child. Just as Ronnie inhabits the space off-screen when the imprisoned Pernell gives Caine his blessing, Ilena is physically absent from the action, even at this moment when she functions so centrally. Instead, the relationship is mediated through a violent exchange between men--Caine and her cousin. As this instance illustrates, the absence of women only unveils the threat they represent: a life in the hood, unwanted pregnancy, enforced responsibility, death.

During the film's final scene, Caine's shooting death, the film's central paradox emerges--it is not enough for Caine to accept responsibility for those things he desires, he must also take responsibility for his own actions. Ultimately, even the film's purposeful construction of Caine as antihero, at once sympathetic and antipathetic, fails to move the film away from its culmination as a morality play (with more than a few Biblical echoes). Despite their attempt to break with the conventions of storytelling when examining their character's ambivalence toward living and his inability to accept responsibility, the Hughes brothers cannot allow Caine to go unpunished. At the moment of his death, Caine becomes a tragic figure, his fatal flaws defined as the violence into which he was schooled, the lack of value he places on human life, and his inability to escape forces much larger than himself. And his tragic recognition comes too late. Only in posthumous voice-over can he answer his grandfather's question--in this moment, heavy with irony, he finally acknowledges that he, indeed, wants to live.

One wonders if martyring Caine is what the Hughes brothers really set out to do, or if, in their attempt to make the darkest, most violent hood film, they used 'any means necessary' to arrive unintentionally at a conventional and confused conclusion. Caine's 'punishment' is wholly in keeping with Classical Hollywood narratives, thus attaching contradictory meanings to his death. On the one hand, the film, through its reworking of both traditional and generic narrative conventions, says something different about Caine's situation and about the real situation of many African-American men in the inner city. But, on the other hand, the film doesn't say anything different, for it sometimes reuses already overused images of violence to make its main points--images which Hollywood has mined for decades.

By not taking into account the post-Watts history of the hood--the LAPD's militaristic methods of fighting inner city crime (read South Central, Watts, East L.A.), the Reagan and Bush Administrations' war on drugs, and the right's negation of self-rehabilitation as a possibility for those convicted of selling and/or using drugs--the film's conclusion falls prey to the very forces it appears to be fighting, rendering earlier footage of the 1965 Watts Rebellion as nothing more than stylized, historical lip service.

Maybe Caine's mistake, like that of the Hughes brothers, was that he got caught in the crossfire of his own making. Unlike the Hughes brothers, however, Caine, and characters like him, won't be walking away with attractive Hollywood deals.