Made In America

Stacy Peralta, his crew and several former members of the Bloods and Crips discuss Made In America following the premier

PARK CITY

Few films will scare the shit out of you like this.

And I'll warn you in advance that without seeing the film itself it's even hard to start a discussion on the topic.

South Central Los Angeles. Bloods and Crips. Rampant gang violence. Turf wars, daily shootings. This war zone (and I'm using that term at the same level as it applies to Baghdad or any other war zone) really used to be a middle-class suburban community of nuclear black families? Yes. It absolutely did. So how the hell did we get to the shit we're in now?

Through brutally honest interviews with those who were there and who still live there, Stacy Peralta's Made In America traces the inception of gangs all the way back to the 1950s when black teenagers started forming their own "clubs" in response to being denied entry into the very white Boy Scouts of America. These "clubs" provided a place to belong, a place to learn a sense of community and a place to connect with others like yourself. Black "clubs" soon sprouted up in other neighborhoods and competition started to grow. While their inception was completely benign in today's standards, these "clubs" became the seeds that grew over several generations into the current day gangbanger mentality. Decades of white oppression and police brutality in the South Central communities finally came to a head in 1965 when the Watts "revolt" broke out (white history usually refers to the 1965 events as "riots," but in the words of one of the interviewees, they weren't riots because their communities "knew exactly what [they] were doing"). While the "revolts" were eventually contained, the oppression and systematic removal of black leadership (MLK, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, etc) pushed these communities further into hatred of themselves and "The Man," leading to the creation of a new element: the Crips (followed shortly by the Bloods). Following another "revolt" in 1992 in response to the Rodney King verdict, we find ourselves in a landscape vastly different from just 40 years earlier. It's dog eat dog, where the enemy is now your own people. You either kill or be killed - it's as simple as that. You can't go more than a block or two without having to "represent" by "busting a cap" in someone's ass to insure your continued survival. Simply put... the whole world (as South Central knows it) is fucked.

So that's a gross simplification of the film. In looser terms, you pretty much sit there for at least 50% of the film with your jaw hanging open - half because you had no idea this shit was going on and half because the lines that are being drawn between these various events seem to make a lot of sense. How the hell could "The Man" not see this shit coming? And how the hell can "The Man" not realize that they things He's trying to do to squash the gang "problem" are the very same things that catalyzed this shit in the first place? Can gang violence really be fixed simply by locking up anyone who's affiliated with a gang? Does being locked up really mean anything to you when you're already completely oppressed and don't give a shit? Does locking everyone up really help the communities build strong families (over 75% of black babies are born to single mothers, according to the film). Would not the lack of a strong family and crushing oppression lead you to try and find a sense of belonging with a group that provides all your family cannot? So now your kids are in a gang. And their kids. And their kids. It's a vicious cycle. How can the world break free from this?

And here we are with only a few minutes left in the film. Mothers with tear-streaked faces have shared their stories of sons and brothers lost to rival gunfire, gang members have laid out plain and simple why selling drugs is the only way they can make a living (damn near impossible to get a real job when you have a criminal record, but you gotta do something to make ends meet) and you're pretty much ready throw Molotov Cocktails at the capital building in Sacramento. The evolution of the issues are clearly complicated and not easily explained (most of those who were deeply involved are buried in the ground), but where do we go from here? Here... we'll throw you a potential tiny little glimmer of hope: some of these guys have quit the gang life and are trying to start up grassroots movements in their communities. They're starting programs to try and educate the new generations so they can make informed choices about their futures. Will this make a difference? Only time will tell.

Now.. The fun thing about all of this is that the audience in Park City is about as white as the snow that was gently falling outside the theater during the screening. Yeah... that means the majority of people seeing this are considered to be part of "The Man" that created this whole problem to begin with. "What can we do," asked one guy during the Q&A following the film that featured six of the former gang members who are trying to change the current course of history. Get involved, vote for change and realize that this shit is going on, came the responses. "Do you think there will be another riot on the scale of '65 and '92?" Yes... absolutely... it's just a matter of when, came the response. The scary thing now is that back in '65 and '92 "we still considered our fists to be our primary weapons." Now everyone has machine guns. Chew on that for a few minutes.

Even if you're not from Los Angeles you'll find this film to be exceedingly powerful and scary as hell.

Subject matter aside, I'll say that Peralta has created a pretty incredible piece of work in this documentary film. It's constantly engaging and leaves you asking the kinds of questions you should be asking after seeing something like this. There's no issue of "I didn't understand the material," just of "how the hell did we let this happen and how can we possibly hope to fix it?" It's a powerful, politically and racially-charged piece of film making.

Now... keep in mind this is all coming from a guy who's previous documentary films explore the rise of skateboarding (Dogtown and Z-Boys) and the world of surfing (Riding Giants). That's quite a leap to make and land with this level of success.