How gangster became 'gangsta'

The gangster, one of Hollywood's favorite cinematic subjects, has steadily evolved over the years into the modern-day "gangsta," film expert Todd Boyd told an Annenberg School audience Tuesday night. Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, traced that evolution through film and music following a screening of the Hughes Brothers' film, Menace II Society. Since the 1912 filming of Musketeers of Pig Alley by D.W. Griffith and continuing through the 1930s with Scarface, Little Caesar and Public Enemy, Boyd said gangsters have been portrayed as whites who recently immigrated to the United States. With the production of Godfather I and II in the 1970s, this trend began to change, as Michael Corleone, the main character of those movies, becomes fully assimilated into American culture. Fundamental twists in the gangster trend began in 1988, with the production of Dennis Hopper's Colors, in which Hollywood introduced the African-American or Latino "gangsta," Boyd said. The increased attention given to inner-city gang life in Menace II Society – and in John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood – was accompanied by a parallel shift toward rap music by the mainstream, Boyd said. To illustrate this point, Boyd named artists such as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and NWA, who rose to prominence on the pop charts with hard-edged lyrics and forceful rhythms centered on the violence and hopelessness of ghetto life. The "gangsta" lifestyle, a reflection of contemporary culture "operating at multiple levels," also reveals the importance of the "reality discourse" in American society, Boyd said. The explosion of television talk shows, which encourage the telling of personal narratives, is indicative of both the desire for authenticity and the blurring of the line between reality and fiction apparent in America today, he said. The "gangsta" influence is also felt in literature, Boyd said with a reference to Monster, a Los Angeles Crips gang member's autobiographical account. This "popular text" is linked to the new direction of movies and music with "gangsta" themes, he said. However, Boyd said he thinks that recently there has been an overall decrease in African-American creativity in that arena. "These [movies] are probably the highlight of the genre," he stated. "The problem is they came two years too late ? Hollywood likes to recycle this idea." Boyd also cited the redundancy of copycat musical groups trying to replicate the success of artists such as En Vogue and Boyz II Men as evidence for this view of variations on a theme. Following the screening – which was sponsored by the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University – center director Houston Baker, Village Voice film critic Greg Tate and center staff member Ed Guerrero joined Boyd in a discussion of the issues the film raised.