History repeats itself until it doesn’t. And, right now, with the feverish launch of Straight Outta Compton and the cheers it’s earned, social entities that teetered on outright racism during the time of the film are once again circling the wagons. How else to describe the response to the film by the prone to controversy LAPD and news organizations like CNN? And what does that response say if not zoom in on the notion that the most controversial pieces of violence being doled out lately has been done by cable media and police departments all over the country.
On Monday, August 17, CNN ran a segment covering the fact that there wasn’t violence at the opening of the biopic. That’s when they ran this unfortunate headline: “Hip Hop Film Had Long Lines, No Violence.” Wow. It’s hard to justify such a headline in our current environment, right? We’re not even going to go into the tragic deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and more, or the systematic surveillance of #BlackLivesMatter protesters or anything. We’re not. I’m talking about 2015, in which Hip Hop is the most dominant musical genre on the planet. 2015, where Hip Hop is the most streamed art form on earth. Where it’s so ubiquitous that whether in Compton or Zimbabwe kids are probably listening to J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar. They then ran a tone-deaf segment where they brought on law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander where they spoke about changing the tone of things from “F The Police” to “Support The Police.” I’m not even sure what world that person is living in, and I don’t even care. What’s most hopelessly brain-dead about the commentary isn’t the focus on the fact that there wasn’t any violence, it’s the missing of the fact that F. Gary Gray’s masterstroke focused on police brutality as a function of the film. That brutality is more than death, it is a living statehood shifting to secure its borders with rhetoric.
The LAPD is also acting the fool around the film, as they “beefed up” their patrols around theaters just in case anything broke out. None did, because we’re not all crazed lunatics, but the antics of gun-toting police departments highlights that in this case, in a film where “Fu*k Tha Police” can be seen as a battle cry for personal healing, that the ones people are afraid of are the police, themselves. That speaks to the bridge between 1988 of a young N.W.A and 2015 of today. In a world where the most pervasive, violent elements of society are the ones allowed to choose which bodies matter more than others, Hip Hop continues to push back. Then, it pushed back more forcefully than it does today, to be sure. But as “Alright” slowly replaces “Fu*k Tha Police” as a mantra for social change a reaction as ridiculous as this one by so-called reputable News organizations like CNN and by police precincts all over the country shows it’s still needed. The rampant violence police officers have perpetrated on all people over the course of this decade so far shows that it’s still necessary. So, here we are, history repeating itself. In 1989 Robert Hilburn writing for the L.A Times had this to say about the album:
AD LOADING...
“Rap’s most incendiary activists make music as exploitative and repetitive, yet as boastfully radical, as the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks” and the Beastie Boys’ “Licensed to Ill.” The look at Los Angeles teen-age gang sensibilities is so outrageous that you sympathize with parents who fear that this debut album glorifies lawlessness, but the album–for all its overt theatrics–remains an anxious, unsettling documentary of an aspect of society in crisis.”
It looks like the film is currently doing the same thing. And, as usual, in part because of all the fervor the film that blew away its weekend expectations is preparing to do so again this weekend and hopefully for more weekends to come.
Andre Grant is an NYC native turned L.A. transplant that has contributed to a few different properties on the web and is now the Features Editor for HipHopDX. He’s also trying to live it to the limit and love it a lot. Follow him on Twitter @drejones.
