Police Brutality In The Film Straight Outta Compton, Directed By F.

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FILM 1F94: Introduction to Film Studies
Term Two Essay
The film Straight Outta Compton directed by (F. Gary Gray 2015) clearly illustrates that racism was the root of police brutality with the stem being Hip Hop in the late 1980s. F. Gary Gray conveys this theme in several of the scenes throughout the movie Straight Outta Compton. The three parts, which specifically highlight the subject of police brutality caused by racism leading to the rise of Hip Hop, are when Ice Cube is on the bus going home from school, when he leaves Dr Dre’s aunt’s house to go home, and when NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) leaves the studio to check up on Dr Dre. Starting in chronological order these scenes will be analyzed in order to grasp a better understanding of …show more content…

As he exits the home the time has changed in the same Compton neighbor hood setting. It is later in the night and as he closes the door to start walking he hears sirens and vulgar language used by police officers towards the African- American neighborhood boys. At this moment the only light is the reflections of the blue and red police beams on the door. Here telephoto are used lenses produce a number of side effects that are applied to by F. Gary Gray to symbolize the confusion of the random search. The scene is seen as that it is very dark and after he examines the scene of police officers handling these boys so disrespectfully and roughly. He then begins to walk towards his home attempting to cross the street but gets stopped by a Caucasian police officer. At this point Ice Cube forcefully gets pulled into the neighborhood search with the rest of the local boys. The Caucasian officer dealing with Ice Cube has treats him so disorderly and continues to use profanity towards him for no reason. The explanation to this officer practice derives from racism as evident to the shadowing of stereotyping. ‘Stereotypes of black people have been more consistent in that they are thought to be more prone to violent crime and drug abuse, to be incomprehensible, suspicious, hard to handle, naturally excitable, aggressive, lacking brainpower, troublesome and ‘tooled up’ (Graef 1989; Reiner 1991) (Ben Bowling, Alpa Parmar & Coretta Phillips, 2006,530). The camera then turns to another Caucasian police officer forcefully slamming another man onto the hood of a police cruiser while he screams about their rights. Instantly turns and focuses to Ice Cubes dad and mom walking towards the officers. His father starts justifying to the Caucasian police officers that these boys are good boys and grew up on this block. Immediately the camera shifts

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