Dope (directed by Rick Famuyiwa) is one of the most informed and keenly contemporary pieces of art to hit cinemas in 2015. On the surface it’s easy to dismiss Dope as a hipster teen-goes-on-an-adventure flick, inserted into an L.A. Hood backdrop to give it a self-important sense of relevance. But to the practiced eye—to those who understand contemporary art it truly is one of the savviest and cleverest films to have come out in some time.
Because Famuyiwa has with acute knowledge of hybridity and the Post Modern condition redefined contemporary racism on the ground level as imposed identity.
Wait, that film was about racism? Yep.
Let’s break this down into two parts: Hybridity/Post Modernism and then Racism.
As I’ve written before in my analysis of Blade Runner, Post Modernism is amorphous, ambiguous and changing, and is largely a list of ingredients. Put simply, it is the rejection of universal truths. It is the rejection of binary ideas. This or that. Black or White.
Post Modernism hates grand narratives.
Truth is more so a mosaic of everybody’s personal truths.
Hybridity. Hybridity is simply the mixing of two things.
Now while Hybridity is a separate frame of reference entirely, it is largely born from Post Modernism. Its existence is entirely afforded by the idea of a fractal sense of truth.
In the context of art today, that is the mixing of two different cultures. The fancy word for that is transcultural.
Globalization, the internet, media and especially social media has resulted in mass dissemination of culture and information. As such, artists and creators alike have sampled from several different cultures to make new undefinable art.
This has effectively created two powerful forces. Cultural vs. Transcultural identity.
Cultural Identity seeks manifest itself.
Look at African-American culture. After slaves arrived in America they quickly established an identity strongly rooted in music and dance. Black culture evolved in America largely around music, moving from Rhythm and Blues like B.B. King and Ray Charles, James Brown and Marvin Gaye and moving into Hip-Hop and Rap. Culture brings some beautiful things like fashion, art, music, politics and so on. However, Culture can be a self fulfilling prophecy. Ultimately in it’s need to explain origin, and define and separate itself it can also impose an identity and labels upon people born within it. This is called imposed identity.
Transcultural identity is the post modern and hybrid mixing of cultures. These new sub-cultures become undefinable. This is the idea of Found Identity, that using the internet and media we can pick and choose music, clothes, slang etc. for ourselves. This creates endless permutations.
So now that we have all that, let’s begin.
Dope is a film about two paradigms: Imposed identity and Found Identity.
Inglewood and Malcolm.
More correctly, Inglewood VS. Malcolm.
The first shot of the film: an establishing shot of the landscape of Inglewood (more specifically the Bottoms, an even shittier neighborhood within Inglewood).
The second shot of the film: A montage of Malcolm’s room. A “YOU GOTS TO CHILL” LP. A cassette Walkman. Dr. Dre. Eazy-E. Super Nintendo and the infamous Malcolm Adakanbe flat-top. You would think it was the 1990’s until Famuyiwa snubs that notion right away with a conversation about Bitcoins between our protagonist and his mother.
Malcolm and Inglewood. And now we have our two main characters.
The following few shots coolly narrated by Forrest Whittaker profile who Malcolm is. He’s from the Bottoms, he has a single mom and an absentee father.
Whittaker also describes Malcolm as a geek obsessed with 90’s hip-hop culture.
His two best friends Jib and Diggy are introduced, and immediately following this Diggy is described as a lesbian and is shown at church with her family trying to ‘pray away the gay.’
Imposed Identity emerges as one of the main motifs here. Famuyiwa doesn’t include the anecdote about Diggy in church without reason.
Then we have some shots of the squad traversing Inglewood. “There should be an App to avoid these Hood traps,” says Diggy.
Whittaker chimes in that a bad day in the Bottoms could mean losing your life.
Enter our second motif: violence.
The narrator explains that Malcolm and his friends are bullied for being into white shit like skateboards, listening to TV on the Radio and getting good grades.
Following is my absolute favorite scene of the film where Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib form the punk band Awreeoh (Oreo) and perform ‘Go Head.’
These scenes back to back are meant to flesh out our two opposing paradigms. Inglewood represents the inescapable. The part of Malcolm’s life that he did not choose. It’s dangerous, and it seeks to punish the ‘geek,’ for not conforming to it’s traditional black culture.
Then we have Diggy, the unconventional lesbian in the trio, and the crew as a whole who, despite being from the bottoms, like skateboarding and punk and getting good grades. These are the things that Malcolm chooses for himself.
Let’s look at the character of Inglewood in the film.
The film pacing has a nice iambic structure to it. We’ll have a character development scene, then a violent scene.
Character Development: Awreeoh performs ‘Go Head.;
Violence: Marquis steals Malcolm’s shoe
Character Development: Principle conversation
Violence: Blood’s try to steal their bike
Character Development: Malcolm meets Dom (A$AP Rocky) and Dig & Jib convince him to go to the party
Violence: The Bouncer gets beaten
Character Development: The party
Violence: Shootout at the party
Inglewood is constantly painted as a PHYSICALLY threatening place. It is even more than imposing, it threatens the lives of those who don’t accept its definitions and limitations.
*Fun Fact: at Dom’s birthday party he is wearing a black shirt with the Eye of Horus. Not only is this a nice hybrid mixture of culture, but the Eye of Horus actually is a symbol of protection. The color black is also a symbol of protection. Dom subsequently helps Malcolm escape the shootout and later helps him avoid getting killed by not handing over the drugs to the Bloods. The more you know.
There are also several key conversations that help outline the sort of limitations and expectations the location of Inglewood imposes on its inhabitants.
The first being the conversation with the principle. The principle calls Malcolm “arrogant” for believing somebody from the Bottoms could get into Harvard. He encourages Malcolm to write an essay about the, “typical, I’m from a poor crime filled neighborhood, raised by a single mother, don’t know my Dad bla bla.” The principle encourages Malcolm to embrace the Inglewood stereotype.
Another key scene outline Inglewood’s characteristics is the scene where Nakia and him are together in the car after they leave the shootout at Dom’s Party. Malcolm tells her, “I guess I’m used to hearing, uh, niggas don’t listen to this, niggas don’t do that, niggas don’t go to college unless they play ball or whatever.” She asks him, “what are you then?” and he cleverly, but sadly replies, “I don’t know—I’m black as fuck right?” She laughs.
What we see here is Malcolm is keenly aware of what his environment WANTS him to be.
The idea of Inglewood is modernist, not post modern. Inglewood seeks to impose binaries. It wants Malcolm to stay in the Hood and be the typical drug dealing, trouble making, gang member who doesn’t go to college unless he plays ball. It is imposed identity.
In stark contrast we have the character of Malcolm Adakanbe. I don’t have to go into crazy detail since we just covered Malcolm’s proclivity for retro items and ideas such as hip-hop and his nice hipster flat-top.
But delving further into his band “Awreeoh” for a second, you can see the nice use of post modernism and hybridity. The idea of him being “white in the middle” is on the nose here so does not bear much discussion. The important thing to note is that he CHOOSES to be white. He may consequently be black, and from a black neighborhood, but the identity he assumes is largely culturally white. Punk isn’t very historically black.
Beyond just hobby’s and fashion style, another interesting mix of culture is the use of the Dark Web later in the film when he needs to dispense of all the drugs left to him by Dom.
The Dark Web is an area of the internet that is completely anonymous. It consists of about 20,000-30,000 websites and is only reachable using a browser called TOR. TOR was originally a US naval intelligent project that was made open source, and is now used by hackers and the technologically savvy to surf the internet like a ghost. The Dark Net is the type of place where you can find illegal pornography, sell and buy drugs, be a whistle blower or find commercial hacking services.
*Cool Digression: The Dark Net is the future of the internet. Many legitimate companies such as Facebook are creating sites on there. Given the concerns about privacy these days, this part of the internet is quickly becoming more and more appealing to mass audiences. Bonus points to Famuyiwa for not only being aware of contemporary culture, but also looking into the future Very cool. You can see a video below of Jamie Bartlett discussing the Dark Web on TED talks.
Malcolm also goes to band camp, where he meets William Ian Sherwood III, who ultimately comes to into play later as a means to sell the drugs. Band camp’s “mission” was to give “kids of different backgrounds a chance to exchange music and unique cultural backgrounds.” (repetitive, I know).
Later, Awreeoh plays at one of Williams parties in the white neighborhoods where they perform more rock oriented punk which hits the internet and pushes their Molly even faster.
The point being, that Malcolm is all about finding his own scene. More often than not, that scene consists of things that are characteristically white. This is found identity.
Racism. You almost forgot that’s what this is about, right?
Dope, with acute knowledge of Hybridity and Post Modernism, redefines racism on the ground level as imposed identity.
Racism is the second component of Famuyiwa’s accomplishment in the film Dope.
In order to understand how Famuyiwa has advanced the definition of racism in America, you’ll need a little bit of historical context.
What is racism?
By definition it is:
“The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”
(Sorry for beating that word to death here).
These days, the term is used more colloquially to mean something pejorative, judgmental or profiling. I.E. Trump telling a room full of Jews, “I’m a negotiator, like you folks.”
Which by definition still isn’t racist, but would definitely be labeled, glibly, as such on Facebook comment sections.
These days, murders of black citizens by police officers have brought the dormant dialogue of racism raging to the surface. That is overt racism. And according to such people as actress Jurnee Smolette-Bell (star of the show “Underground” about the Underground Railroad), who was featured in an article and video by the Huffington Post on 3 March, 2016, the real problem is systemic racism. Systemic racism is the cause of problems like the “racial wealth gap,” and “mass incarceration.”
Racism today lives on in cultural identity. The perpetuation of identity sorts things into us or them. You and I. It’s ironic that the celebration of the identity, origin and uniqueness of a culture also puts boundaries and limitations on the identity of its members.
Racism today is quiet.
Let’s plug that into our two paradigm system. Inglewood is the racism. Malcolm is the victim.
Inglewood is ripe with violence. Bullies and gang members see him as a geek and will physically attack him for being different. Colleges like Harvard see a guy from this kind of place less desirable. Inglewood is racism.
It imposes an identity on Malcolm that he never asked for. Malcolm is not in control of his race. He is not in control of where he was born. He is not in control of whether his father left him with a single mother.
In many ways, Malcolm chooses to be white instead. For the millionth time, he likes white things. He is also very self aware in this fact, naming his own band Awreeoh. He knows he’s white on the inside. This is the identity he controls.
Conclusively, racism is the archaic and modernist agenda. It seeks binary definitions of identity and violently fights to keep Malcolm within those lines. Malcolm embraces the post modern agenda and finds his identity on his own terms.
But Famuyiwa takes it further.
BONUS THESIS:
Malcolm ultimately embodies hybridity itself.
Our flat topped protagonist struggles to reconcile these two forces. Which one is he? Is he the black kid from the hood or the white punk rocker? Ultimately, he transcends and becomes both. This level of transcendence to become the hybrid of inside and outside forces rides on the back of the genre that Famuyiwa so cleverly chose: the teen coming of age genre.
In the Novel “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder (a how-to on screenwriting), he details that Hollywood has a finite amount of genres. Not the typical “Action-Adventure” or “Comedy” that we know of but more based on writing structure. One of these, the one that Dope falls into is called the “Rite of Passage Genre.” This is characterized by growing pains. It is often about teenagers. These are tales of pain and torment from an outside source, and it usually ends in the protagonist surrendering to those outside forces.
But that doesn’t sound right, Malcolm doesn’t surrender to the racism, to the imposed identity?
Oh, but he does.
As the film picks up, Malcolm ultimately embodies all those Hood tropes he so defies initially. He begins to sell drugs. That is the beginning of his transformation. As he gets deeper into the drug trade, he has to hide his drugs from security. He has to leave the SAT’s to remove the drugs from his locker upon inspection.
When Nakia approaches him for help on her GED she is looking for the Malcolm that is a geek and a stand up guy. Instead she finds a Malcolm that accuses her of being Dom’s spy. He’s changed.
Then when he trades Bitcoins for the cash from Fidel X, he faces a test. He must punch X in the face as hard as he can, or he won’t get the money. His friends remain the geeks, they run away. But Malcolm instead transforms. He hits X and is rebranded as the man “that doesn’t give a fuck.”
And finally, Malcolm pulls the gun on Marquis when he tries to take his bag.
Malcolm becomes the very thing he fought against, he becomes another boy from the hood.
But ultimately he transcends even that, and finds peace in the fact he is both these things. He is the things he did not choose. He is Inglewood. He is black. He did have to sell drugs to survive. He’s also the geek who gets good grades. He’s in a punk band and his favorite TV show is Game of Thrones.
He cuts off his flat-top, and when he appears with his new haircut before Nakia, he is wearing an American flag sweatshirt.
Malcolm becomes the hybrid itself.
This point is ultimately driven home by his final speech: his college essay.
“Am I a geek or a menace? For most of my life I’ve been caught in between who I really am and how I’m perceived. I don’t fit in. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. So why do I want to go to Harvard? If I was white would you even have to ask that question?”