What a vivid cornucopia would disclose itself to us: the "wet look" Jehri curl in Pulp Fiction; the absurd dangly beard-with-a-bell-in-it he sports in Jackie Brown; the ragged, tufty six-dollar crop in A Time To Kill and (a more grandfatherly version here) in Black Snake Moan; his many bald outings; deeply unflattering little man loser cuts in movies like Changing Lanes; some of the craziest afros imaginable, including in Menace II Society, and his bold experiments in hair weaves and extensions, which are a marvel to behold.
She delineates the messages of such films by re-reading Menace II Society, Juice, Boyz n the Hood and similar films to locate ghetto-centric films within both African American and white American communities, gauging the impact of the aggression and violence depicted on high school students, policy makers, and ordinary citizens.
Appropriately titled "Out of the Ghetto, into the Hood: Changes in the Construction of Black City Cinema," Chapter 5 features Massood's use of the hood chronotope to examine spatiotemporal representations of the city in films such as Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City (1991), Matty Rich's Straight Out of Brooklyn (1991), John Singleton's Boyz 'n' the Hood (1991), Ernest Dickerson's Juice (1992), and Allen and Albert Hughes' Menace II Society (1993).
15pm LIKE their debut feature Menace II Society, this second offering from co-directors, twins Allen and Albert Hughes, follows several years in the life of a young disadvantaged black man, in this case Anthony (Larenz Tate, pictured, above).
Arthur Jafa on the Hughes Brothers' Menace II Society It is only with difficulty that I tolerate the mediocrity of most contemporary black cinema, a trick I manage by constantly reminding myself that mediocrity is a necessary stage in the development of a mature practice.
“It’s a mix of Boyz N The Hood and Menace II Society on the east coast,” he said of the film, which is apparently just one part of a 10-part series of Killa Season -themed projects.
