6The Tar Heel Thursday, May 19, 1988
Arts -
Gangs show their 'Colors' in film about ghetto life
"Colors" begins as another buddy
buddy crime drama that Hollywood
serves up as standard summer fare.
On the other side of town from
Beverly Hills, veteran cop Hodges
(Robert Duvall) breaks in a hot
headed rookie (Sean Penn) to the
ways of the street. But director
Dennis Hopper and screenwriter
Michael Schiffer use the story of
initiation as a means to another end:
a portrait of gangs dominating
contemporary urban ghettos.
The film provides an unusually rich
and detailed vision of the material
features of the ghetto world. A
monotonous sea of dilapidated hous
ing projects sprawls before the
Christopher Sellerd
Cinema
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camera, threaded by mazes of alley
ways covered with graffiti. Flimsy
walls provide plenty of objects for
flashy destruction in the chase scenes.
Each gang, particularly the Blood
gang, carouses across the screen as
an agglomeration of dialect, rap
music, clothing with the bright color
of its allegiance and myriad illicit acts.
Such a portrayal may be vulnerable
to charges of stereotyping, but much
of its power adheres in its abstracting
emphasis on the gang as a whole
rather than on any individuals. The
Bloods become a principle of chaos;
representatives of the irrational id
like forces that the movie suggests
surge through this world. The Bloods'
violence, exemplified by the inciden
tal murder of a woman next door to
one of their targets, often springs
from no motive other than the naked
display of power. In the midst of such
serious purposes and effects, the
comedic forays of Damon Williams
(of "Saturday Night Live" fame)
appear strangely out of context.
By the second half of the film, the
police appear clearly ineffectual
against the gangs and their reign of
terror. Sean Penn's character's
attacks on gang members come from
his own nervousness and fear as much
as from a desire to right wrongs. Not
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only does Penn adopt gang tactics,
but the police even pick up the dialect
of the gangs and use it among
themselves.
Toward the end of the movie,
camera shots from a police helicopter
during nighttime chase scenes sym
bolize the scope of police hegemony
in the ghetto, as the helicopter
spotlight illuminates only a tiny circle
of the vast expanse of the city below.
Eventually, even the perspective of
the narrative shifts from the point of
view of the policemen to that of the
Crips gang, whose members receive
a more sympathetic and individual
ized depiction than the Bloods.
The Crips, rather than the two
policemen, mete out justice to the
Bloods in the end, yet they also ally
themselves with the nihilistic energies
of the ghetto by a final act of violence.
To anyone concerned with the
problem of poverty in American
society, the message of resignation
implicit in "Colors" offers a severe
challenge. Though the brunt of its
attack centers on the conservative
solution of direct and forceful social
control, liberal solutions don't remain
immune to the movie's veiled criti
cism. The social worker in the film,
though himself a former gang
member, appears isolated and impo
tent, so seductive and pervasive are
gang practices of drugs and violence
within the ghetto community.
If the viewer can take away any
thing more from this movie than an
evening of riveting entertainment, it
is that radically new ideas and
interventions will be necessary if this
culture of poverty is ever to be rid
of the entrapment and physical
destruction it wreaks upon its own.
Woof em down.
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