Media Representation Of Women In The Movie Straight Outta Compton
Media plays a huge role in manipulating the viewers’ way of perceiving different aspects of our lives. People grow to believe what they see, and with time they believe that these aspects are a normal part of society. It is important that the media has an accurate representation of these aspects such as gender and race because with time, whatever is played in the media today, will start to play in our future everyday life. The movie Straight Outta Compton contains many negative representations regarding women and both the black and white race.
The protagonist group of the movie called N. W. A composed of Eazy-E, Ice cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, DJ Yella, showed us their lifestyles and struggles that they had to overcome due to their race. It was interesting how the movie portrayed the white race in the city of Compton, a city mostly composed of African Americans. The film also had an impact on gender showing that women had very little to no value. Although this film did a great job representing race, it felt short when it came to representing women. Straight Outta Compton did an exceptional job portraying the black race. The movie shows the struggles that the musical group had to deal with due to being African American. We see how the members of N. W. A, . Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, Ice Cube, MC Ren and Eazy-E dealt with racism and stereotyping. There is one part of the movie where all of the members of the group are hanging outside their studio, when all of the sudden police officers show up. They believed that they were some sort of gang members or drug dealers because they were black men and looked suspicious and dangerous. This was clearly a form of racial stereotyping. When the members of N. W. A told the officers that they were actually working at the recording studio, the police officers simply ignored the statement and proceeded to yell at them, telling them to put their hands up and to lay on the ground. The police officers had their hands ready on their weapons since they felt threatened that they were being questioned about why they were being searched. Having no choice, the group layed down but not without the officers pushing them roughly down. They were searched for possession of drugs or weapons. The officers were using their power to discriminate the group and categorize them as drug dealers and gang members without any clear indication that they were doing something wrong. They were literally doing nothing except talking outside and looking how they look. The group was stereotyped many other times throughout the movie making institutional racism one of their obstacles they had to deal with as black men.
The portrayal of the white race in this movie was very interesting. I noticed how throughout the whole movie there were little amount of white actors taking part of the background in any scene. This was because the movie took place in Compton, California a place mostly composed of African Americans. The only whites in the first third of the movie was the Compton Police! The idea behind this was to make the city less diverse and show that Compton was a black city being oppressed by white police officers. Later on we get introduced to Jerry Heller, N. W. A’s manager, who was the only white character that wasn’t a cop. It was very fascinating how this movie made the whites the villain of this movie. First we got the Compton police being ruthless to the African American race. They imposed their institutional power just because they felt like it. They even called themselves the “real gangsters of Compton” saying that no one could rival their power. Jerry heller was also portrayed as a villain to the N. W. A group. After Eazy-E inspected some paperwork he realized that Jerry was stealing from him for years. I personally liked how the movie portrayed the whites in this movie since it had a very large impact in the lives of the N. W. A members.
Representation of women in this film was not great at all. We see this in the opening scene of the movie. We see Eazy-E entering a crack house to make a drug deal, where the men in the house yell orders at their “ride-or-die” women. While that was all happening, a drug raid was being executed by the DEA, and these women are the only ones seriously injured during the event — one was injured by law enforcement, the other knocked down as Eazy-E makes his escape. This scene shows us how women of color where being taken into prison due to their roles of handling and hiding the drugs. The men in their lives subjugate them to commit such acts and women most of the time can't do nothing about it. We also see that most of the women's role was to be a sexual object. This is in countless scenes, such as Eazy-E’s parties, on tour parties, and most of the recording studio sessions. These Women did not mean anything and were only seen as a mere object. The only women who had some significance was the group members mothers, but most of the time they were just nagging them and saying to get a job. They did have emotional significance but did not impact the protagonist actions in any way. Most of these scenes just lowered the women’s value in this film.
Although Straight Outta Compton didn't do a good job of representing women, I still enjoyed the film and was fascinated with the portrayal of race and the N. W. A’s journey to fame. Compton is thought to have little to no talent since it’s a place primarily composed of the black community but seeing N. W. A, a local Compton group reach the pinnacle of success was very empowering. It shows that anything is possible no matter what race you are or where you come from. These are the types of message I enjoy and that we need more of. This film also shows that being an African American was not so easy 20 years ago and that racism is something that didn’t happened a long time ago. It is indeed very recent and its sadly still going on. Perhaps media could contribute in solving this issue by showing that all races could work together and throughout time society will see this as a normal way of living.
