Hood 2 Hood Part III: A Film Review
By: Emeka Ezeokoli
Tags: Ghetto, Hood Documentaries, Film Reviews, Film Criticism, Sociology

A filmmaker’s exploitative documentation of American ghettos

Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash

There has always been an intrigue with how marginalized groups live in the subsectors of society, particularly with the lived experiences of Black folk in the ghetto. A paradoxical intrigue marked by the ironic curiosity of those who desire to learn more about the very people they fought so hard to be segregated from. In the early 2000s, an amateur filmmaker sought to exploit this fascination and was granted unprecedented access to the street corners, back blocks, and housing projects of some of the most underprivileged neighborhoods in America. Raw footage from his travels chronicled dilapidation, despair, and death in the ghettos of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore amongst other cities, leading to the creation of a docuseries aptly titled Hood 2 Hood.

Though Hood 2 Hood fashions itself a documentary, it is tantamount to a trap music video of feature film length as it glamorizes danger and decadence in the most resource deprived, marginalized, racially homogenized, predominately Black communities that struggle with elevated rates of poverty and crime (aka “the hood”). Taking his audience on a nationwide tour through America’s most imperiled neighborhoods, the film’s director and cameraman Aquis Bryant asks young men a series of provocative questions framed to elicit responses that will delineate the most egregious acts of street level criminality. “What’s the grimiest shit you seen around here mayne?” “Would you say this a hood where niggas get money?” “How important is it to carry a strap ‘round here mayne?” he inquires hoping to extract detailed accounts of crime and violence to serve as appetizers for viewers yearning for both an authentic depiction of life in America’s most beleaguered communities and to experience the dangers that lie within from the comfort of their television sets. Instead, viewers are presented with a hyperbolic distortion of the lives and lived circumstances of people who inhabit communities too often characterized by violence in what is supposed to be the world’s most developed nation.

The responses to Bryant’s queries provide the sensationalist content necessary for entertainment but not without cost. Some neighborhood residents are wary of engaging Bryant (likely reluctant to divulgate indictable information on camera) while others are more receptive. In a show of bravado, the latter –mostly young Black men ranging in age from teens to mid thirties — flash money, guns and drugs on camera, appearing eager to narrate street tales of drug use and distribution, incarceration, robberies, shootouts, even murder. Survivors of gun violence proudly display wounds that simultaneously affirm the realism of their grisly narratives and bolster their street credibility by offering incontestable evidence as to how deeply entrenched they are in the warfare that plagues their neighborhoods. Those who have witnessed or partaken in violence themselves boast about the repercussions suffered by those who disrespected them or their neighborhoods. Violators are likely to get their “head knocked off!” or their “top blown!” Such imagery unwittingly provides a satisfying visual for audiences eager to imbibe caricatured portrayals of Black men bordering twentieth century minstrelsy. While these characters do exist in ghettos, they are grossly overrepresented in the film considering the majority of Black men from these environments are NOT engaged in felonious activity or criminal conduct of any kind. But that simple fact may be lost upon more impressionable viewers of Hood 2 Hood.

“Survivors of gun violence proudly display wounds that simultaneously affirm the realism of their grisly narratives and bolster their street credibility by offering incontestable evidence as to how deeply entrenched they are in the warfare that plagues their neighborhoods.”

Save for the occasional cautionary tale from a neighborhood elder (aka “OG”) warning against a life of crime, Hood 2 Hood’s sensationalist coverage relegates positive stories of hope or prosperity to the margins. It is to the film’s detriment that communities that are home to a variety of characters, in possession of myriad talents and abilities, are almost exclusively portrayed through the palatable but parochial lens of pathology. Bryant’s decision to focus his camera’s lens on crime and violence is at times intriguing and does provide insight into what shapes tragedy on street corners and back blocks before the involved characters are grossly distorted by uninitiated nightly news anchors whose pathological style of reporting tends to villainize Black men. However, the conspicuous testimonial absence of women, children, the elderly, and the non criminal Black male, leaves the multi-layered fabric of polychromatic communities obscured by a monochromatic vision so preoccupied with hyper-masculinity and street criminality, it essentially mutes the lived experiences of the neighborhood’s non male, non-criminal element.

“It is to the film’s detriment that communities that are home to a variety of characters, in possession of myriad talents and abilities, are almost exclusively portrayed through the palatable but parochial lens of pathology.”

Because the film is devoid of both historical and sociological context, it is hard to argue that it is little more than voyeuristic exploitation of the Black poor. No energy is allocated towards what produced the ills of these communities and no effort exhausted attempting to provide solutions for the documented men and women who will unequivocally encounter hardship after the camera’s tripods have collapsed. Proof that the interviewed are often ill fated is evident in the “Updates” portion in the beginning of the film. Here, viewers are updated on the lives of interview subjects from previous Hood 2 Hood installments. If any of them are doing well or have progressed, it remains to be seen as Bryant focuses only on those that have since expired by way of murder or incarceration. If his objective was to simply document, then to be tasked with community problem solving may seem unfair. He’s a “documentarian”, not a social worker. However, while it may not have been Bryant’s intent, his myopic, pathology focused documentation of the ghetto from the perspective of the streets undoubtedly contributes to the stigmatization of Black men from those environments. Hood 2 Hood is little more than voyeuristic entertainment at the expense of real Black lives that daily face tragedy; tragedy this “documentary” exploits for a few dollars.