ABSTRACT
The representation of young, Black urban males in ghettocentric street films has been the focus of widespread social concern and debate since the early 1990s. The genre has generated a great deal of interest because of its depiction of the economic and social disparity present in American society from the point of view of the disenfranchised voice seldom heard in mainstream Hollywood cinema. Adding to the controversy are several outbreaks of violence that occurred throughout the country at the time of the theatrical release of ghettocentric street films, which called attention to the impact of the genre on its audience. In an attempt to give meaning to the films and those incidents, many cultural critics, theater executives, and filmmakers have commented on the racialized responses of Black and White audiences to the genre and thus defined Black males as the producers, consumers, and perpetrators of violent activity. I, however, am interested in how viewers’ responses to a particular cinematic construction of “Blackness” are shaped by their immediate social context. In other words, I am suggesting the idea that meaning can also be constructed during its expression to others in dialogue, and that the dynamics of the dialogue and the relations among the participants play a major role in the meanings readers give to texts. Specifically, I am concerned with the notion of meaning making within the context of a multicultural setting, when the readers are young adults responding to a particular construction of “Blackness” as represented in the Hood film Menace II Society.
