Boyz n the Hood — An analysis

It’s certainly been a while. I should probably be doing eLearning right now, but the urge to write comes at strange times. Anyway, I watched Boyz n the Hood a couple of hours ago, and I have a lot to say and analyze about it as far as theme and plot go. This film certainly isn’t subtle, and it makes use of foreshadowing pretty early on- more on that later, though. I’d first like to talk about the tone the film sets and how we get introduced to the world that Ricky, Doughboy, and Tre come up in.

I see them all as variations of one person. They’re the same in that they’re all black youth trying to make their way in South-Central LA in the early ’90s. They differ in that they lie on different points on a spectrum and have different experiences and skills in their upbringing. Doughboy is lazy and lacking in discipline. We see this early on when Tre moves in with his father. Tre’s father is hard on him. He wants him to grow up to be responsible and wise. He’s well dressed and well mannered. Dough is the complete opposite. He’s fat, lazy, and poorly mannered. He gets shipped off to juvenile detention at the age of twelve. Later in life, Dough is slinging crack, mobbing, and drinking. He’s often seen in the film with a bottle, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. As I said, this film isn’t subtle. Tre’s father even uses Doughboy and his friends as an example of what he doesn’t want his son to become.

Ricky, Doughboy’s half brother, is in between. He’s well dressed and well mannered, but he isn’t smart enough to know what’s good for him. We aren’t explicitly told this, but it’s likely Ricky and Doughboy didn’t have a father figure to teach them things like Tre does. He lacks in school and street smarts, and he’s too innocent to survive in the streets. Ricky differs from Doughboy in that he doesn’t roll with mobs or drink or sling crack. He’s an incredible athlete with potential. He’s also the favorite son out of himself and Dough to his mother. He falls victim to his ignorance later in the film, not because he’s willingly submitting to gang life, but he’s victimized by it by merely existing within it like there is no escape. That itself is a common theme in the film.

Now that we have a grasp of our main characters, we can dive into the world they live in. From a young age, all three characters are exposed to violence. In the scene following Tre moving in with his father (and being robbed), the three boys witness a dead body. They don’t run away in disgust, though. They’re used to it, at the ages of ten to twelve. They later run into a group of hoodlums around the age of twenty. One of them tricks Ricky into giving him his football. Dough tries to get it back, but he gets kicked in the stomach and limps home. One of the other teenagers gives Ricky the ball back. This run-in may seem light on the surface, but it’s there to show us the different kinds of players in the game. We see different archetypes throughout the world building- fiends, gangsters, drug dealers, the elders, corrupt cops, and ordinary youth like Tre and Ricky. It shows us that given the right conditions, anybody can fit any archetype in this evil world.

As mentioned before, a burglar breaks in after Tre moves into the neighborhood with his father, Furious. Furious shoots and misses. He gets away. This is where we start to get a bigger picture of Furious and his values, and how they tie into the world around them. While sitting on the porch and waiting for the police, Tre remarks “should’ve blasted him in the head”. Furious tells Tre why it’s wrong to say that. Furious tells him that he was another brother trying to get by, and he had resorted to crime. But at the same time, Furious must protect his home. This tells us that Furious wishes to see more solidarity in the black community, but also believes in self defense. We get more on this later in the film. The police arrive an hour later, and two step out of the vehicle. One officer is black, and one is white. The black cop does most of the dialogue. He remarks to Furious “Too bad you didn’t get him. He’d be one less n***a in the streets we have to worry about”. The cop was like Furious one day. He fell victim to the system that’s destroying the black community and changed teams. Furious scowls in disgust. The cop asks him if something was wrong, and he replies “Yeah. It’s just too bad you don’t know what it is”. He sarcastically calls the cop “brother” before going back inside. The cop is a lost cause. This further paints the theme of the archetypes in the world and how the system works against blacks in their own communities. Furious wants to save Tre from all three: The gangbanger manifested in his friends, the burglar who barely made it out, and the corrupt black cop who switched sides.

The next day, we learn even more about Furious. He takes Tre to go fishing and gives him valuable knowledge that we see Tre use seven years later. He teaches him to look people in the eye, to never steal from his father, and to never respect anybody who doesn’t respect him. He also teaches him that a black man has no place in a white man's army and that anybody can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a dad. We get the impression that Furious could’ve used this advice, considering he went through Vietnam and had a child at 17.

As mentioned before, this film is full of foreshadowing. The world they live in hasn’t changed. Crack rules the streets. Cops still pull innocent kids over and torment them. In fact, Ricky and Tre have a run-in with the same cop from before later in the film. All the characters grow up with the same traits manifested in them as children.

7 years later, Doughboy is slinging crack, drinking, and is still ill-mannered. In fact, the first time we see him as an adult is during his coming home party when he gets out of prison. Even subtle things like language differ in the boys. Doughboy and his friends constantly cursing using the F and N-word. Doughboy also constantly refers to women with derogatory words despite his intelligence. We learn that he enjoyed reading in prison, and later watch him educate his friends on why he thinks there is no god. He’s clearly smart, but his mother loved Ricky more. Dough didn’t have a father to tell him to love his community, to stay out of prison, to stay away from drugs, and to respect women.

Ricky is still innocent and boyish. He grows up to become an incredible athlete. However, he has a child. They’re trying to tell us that Ricky didn’t have a father to teach him how to be wiser in the streets, or more specifically, to be cautious of the burden a child may bring. Ricky later turns out to be too friendly for his own good and even considers joining the army. He didn’t have a father to tell him to abstain from sex, to not trust strangers, and to not join the army fighting for a cause that never cared about him.

Tre grows up to become educated, well mannered, and disciplined, while still keeping his boyish charm. However, he isn’t perfect. He tends to run from his problems or act out upon emotion. He avoids his girlfriend for five days because he’s afraid of sex, or fatherhood, rather. He has taken his father’s guidance nonetheless. During the barbecue after Dough gets out, he is the one to call out the men's manners at the party for not letting the ladies go first when the food was served. His father raised him to be a leader. He also acts as a moral guide for his friends. He tries to convince Ricky not to join the army. He tells Doughboy to stop drinking and selling crack. We later find out that without enough influence, the ignorance of Ricky and Dough lead to their own downfall.

In the scene following Ricky and Tre taking the SAT, they pull up to Furious’s place of business, where he works as a mortgage lender. They came by just to check up on him. Unrelated to the visit, Furious says, “Wanna see something?”. Tre responds, “Do we have a choice?”. Furious tells them no. The shot cuts to Compton, an unfamiliar hood for the boys, as they’re from South Central LA. The boys look cautious and a bit frightened. Rick remarks about himself being unsure and Furious says, “Rick, it’s the ’90s. We can’t afford to be afraid of our own people anymore”. This gives us insight into what Furious is about to preach to the boys and the people surrounding them. He walks them up to a billboard yielding “cash for your home”, and tells them about the dangers of gentrification. Compton may be an unfamiliar hood, but both Compton and South Central experience gentrification. That’s another theme of the film. He tells them that killing each other and selling crack to one another is exactly what “they” want them to do. It’s all one effort to bring down the value of the property so it can be bought for cheap and sold to make money, ultimately resulting in the extermination of blacks in their own communities. Furious tells them, “We need to keep everything in our neighborhood black”. What’s most important in this scene isn’t who is in it, but who isn’t in it. Doughboy wasn’t there to hear it, and we see how it kills him later.

Ricky and Tre get back in the car after hearing Furious. Rick remarks, “My brother should’ve heard that, man. Would’ve done that n***a some good”. Tre says, “Where he at?”. Ricky responds, “Where else, man? Up on Crenshaw with the rest of them fools”. “Let’s go”, Tre says. “Cool”, Ricky resolves. Crenshaw is an LA car show with drinking, music, and unfortunately, violence. They now know of the destruction of the black community, but they’re too foolish to know not to partake in it themselves. We see Doughboy and his friends, and Rick and Tre pull up to greet them. Shortly after, a group of bloods come into play. They get into a verbal altercation with Ricky, then Doughboy gets involved. He lifts up his shirt, revealing a handgun in his waist. They swear each other out for a bit, and the situation deescalates. The mood goes back for about a minute. Then, out of the stillness, the rapid shots of an uzi, wielded by one of the bloods, can be heard. Everyone ducks and drives off. It was a warning shot towards Dough and his friends. This is the beginning of the end for Dough and Ricky.

Ricky and Tre rush for the car and drive home. Tre rambles about how he can’t have one night without shots. On the way, however, they have a run in with the police. They mumble swearing, even though they’ve done nothing wrong. This is a nod to the black experience with police in America. They pull over, but it’s the same black cop from 7 years earlier. He’s just as menacing and ill-hearted as before. He hasn’t changed, just like Rick and Dough. He threatens Tre with a gun to his head. We’ve never seen Tre this scared for his life. The cop remarks “Scared, aren’t you? Yeah, I like that. That’s why I took this job”. Despite being black, the cop calls Tre the N-word in a derogatory way. Ricky only sits in awe of the brutality and fear on display. A single tear rolls down Tre’s face. At this point, even the white cop sits in disbelief. The black cop lets him go.

After the run-in, Tre comes home to his girlfriend, Brandy. At first, he’s angry, punching the air saying he’s “sick of this shit”. He slowly falls into her arms and sobs. I could only watch and think “I wish I could cry like this right now”. This is the most intimate they’ve been so far. This leads to Tre finally having sex with Brandi, as well as a serious discussion on marriage, as Brandi is Catholic. He needed a push of his own vulnerability to finally make it happen.

We’ve been building to what happens next with Doughboy and Ricky. The next day, Dough and his friends as well as Rick and Tre are hanging out at Dough and Ricky’s house. The bloods from Crenshaw roll up to intimidate them for a bit, and drive by. This is some heavy foreshadowing. Ricky later walks out to buy cornmeal for his family, and the bloods go out to hunt him down. But before he leaves, he sees an ad on TV for the army, and he considers joining. He doubts his potential as a football player. On his way to the store, Tre tries to sway him away from it. He quotes his father and tells him that a black man has no place in a white man’s army. Ricky tells him that he has a boy to look after and that the army seems like the only escape from the gangs. This is the exact same position that Furious was in when he had Tre. Furious had a friend who wanted him to rob with him, but instead, he went out to Vietnam because he wanted to set an example for his son. He regrets joining the army, and we heard it from Furious himself at the start of the film. This is definitely intentional. The message isn’t that crime is preferable to serving, but that both are marketed as ways of dealing with problems that come with hood life. Kids like Ricky are trapped.

They leave the store, and Ricky scratches a lottery ticket. He fantasizes about the things he could do with the money. This tells us that money is also seen as an escape from gang violence and drugs that come with hood life. Then, the bloods from Crenshaw roll up. Tre and Rick decide to cut through the houses, and the chase begins. They reach an alley and decide to split up. Dough sees the bloods fly by, and he and his friends hop in the car. They’ve already assumed the worst. Intense music cues. As Ricky is scratching his lottery ticket from the alley, Tre looks back. A car rolls up and the window comes down. A shotgun comes out, and it’s aimed right at Ricky. Two blasts go off, and Ricky bleeds out. Dough arrives, but it’s too late.

Feeding into the theme, Doughboy devises a plan to get them back. I’ll spare the details, but Dough ultimately kills all three of the Crenshaw Mafia Bloods. Tre planned on helping but backed out at the last moment. The three bloods were just like Dough and Ricky. They laughed, talked about cars, and fantasized about women. They were all young black men trying to find their way in the world. It was the same evil that killed them both. Doughboy dies to gang violence as well. The film doesn’t show us this, but it tells us at the end of the movie. It was presumably at the hands of the bloods.

This film is relatable enough to understand as a middle-class white kid from rural Indiana. I can relate to Tre’s father being hard on him, or to feeling like my friend's lives are consumed by cars and sex. However, I can’t relate to waking up to shots in the middle of the night or a police officer pulling me over because of my race. That is enough to pull the viewer in to learn about life as a black teen in South Central or Compton. The scariest part of this film is that it’s real. This happens every day in our own black neighborhoods.

What kind of world is it where brothers can’t trust each other? They’ve been turned against each other. They kill each other in the streets and kill each other with drugs and kill each other by joining the police. The gang that killed Ricky was just like them. They’ve been turned against each other. The difference between Tre and Doughboy is that Tre had a father to end the cycle. He taught him to stay away from drugs and to love his brothers. Doughboy slung crack and murdered three of his own community members. He submitted to what the system wanted. Ricky died because he was caught in the crossfire.