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Let Down By The Need For Self Justification
I see Bob Da Moo has beat me to punch in reviewing this short documentary about gang culture in da ghetto of Compton in Los Angeles . Da moo is the blackest white guy I've ever known so maximum respect he's done a little research in finding out BABY GANGSTER is made by a British film maker called Luke Monaghan . The documentary does have that Eurocentric outsider view of inner city life in America where everyone is a little bit overweight , they're obsessed with cars , they live in houses that have bars on the windows and they're stuck between a rock and a hard place . The rock being joining a gang where being shot dead is a possibility and being sent to jail for a very long time is a probability and the hard place being not joining a gang and living an life long existence of no status and soul crushing poverty . Sometimes you really are proud to be British
One wonders if it's down to life experience or simply if it's down to the ageing process but these type of homies like Staves constantly lament their own wasted lives of gang culture . I've got to be brutally honest and say there's a little bit too much in the way of self justification coming from Staves . He does correctly confess to his motives of " making thirty thousand dollars in an hour and all the p*ssy I could get " which shows the clear appeal of gangster culture but then shoots himself in the foot somewhat by claiming " I didn't know the damage crack cocaine was doing to my community " Hmmmm . If he claimed that he knew the damage he was causing but didn't really care then that might have struck me as being more instinctively honest . Like so many other erstwhile gangsters who claim " we didn't hurt women and kids , we stuck to our own it was business etc " Staves feels the need to mention that shooting people on street corners in drive bys is valid but shooting people in their homes in front of their family is a step too far . My life is so much enlightened in knowing that back in the good old days gangsters had morals unlike today
BABY GANGSTERS does work to the effect that it's short and to the point . It doesn't totally deglamourize and deconstruct gang culture because the camera does lovingly linger on cars and if there's such a thing as " car porn " this might be the definitive documentary . It does also play up to the stereotypical gangster speak from the ghetto but despite the somewhat self justification by a gangster for his former criminal lifestyle it does make the point that crime doesn't pay in the long run .
One wonders if it's down to life experience or simply if it's down to the ageing process but these type of homies like Staves constantly lament their own wasted lives of gang culture . I've got to be brutally honest and say there's a little bit too much in the way of self justification coming from Staves . He does correctly confess to his motives of " making thirty thousand dollars in an hour and all the p*ssy I could get " which shows the clear appeal of gangster culture but then shoots himself in the foot somewhat by claiming " I didn't know the damage crack cocaine was doing to my community " Hmmmm . If he claimed that he knew the damage he was causing but didn't really care then that might have struck me as being more instinctively honest . Like so many other erstwhile gangsters who claim " we didn't hurt women and kids , we stuck to our own it was business etc " Staves feels the need to mention that shooting people on street corners in drive bys is valid but shooting people in their homes in front of their family is a step too far . My life is so much enlightened in knowing that back in the good old days gangsters had morals unlike today
BABY GANGSTERS does work to the effect that it's short and to the point . It doesn't totally deglamourize and deconstruct gang culture because the camera does lovingly linger on cars and if there's such a thing as " car porn " this might be the definitive documentary . It does also play up to the stereotypical gangster speak from the ghetto but despite the somewhat self justification by a gangster for his former criminal lifestyle it does make the point that crime doesn't pay in the long run .
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- Theo Robertson
- Apr 28, 2014
Details
- Runtime8 minutes
- Color
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