Theory Paper Based on Boyz N' the Hood

The social structure perspective is based on the relationship between social status and criminal behavior. Social structure theories tie delinquency rates to socioeconomic conditions such as poverty and cultural values such as gang culture. Social structure theories focus on three predominate views; social disorganization, anomie/strain, and cultural deviance. Boys N the Hood directed by John Singlton is a great illustration of the social structure perspective in explaining criminal behavior. The movie is about three friends who struggle to survive in South Central Los Angeles where friendship, pain, danger, and love form a true picture of life in the "hood." The three main characters are Tre Styles, Doughboy, and Ricky Baker. Tre Styles is a teen who was pushed in a mature direction to overcome living in the hood by his parents Reva and Furious Styles. Ricky Baker is Tre's best friend who is a talented football player who gets a scholarship to move out of the hood. Doughboy is Ricky's brother who sells cocaine and succumbs to the pressures and lifestyle of living in the hood.

Seven years later all the boys are in high school. Ricky the one who wants to become a football player has a girlfriend and a baby boy. Ricky wants to become a football player because he does not want to become like his brother Doughboy, who doesn’t do anything with his life. Ricky and Doughboy are half-brothers, they have the same mother. Tre moved in with his father when he was younger so his dad can teach him to become a “man”. Tre learns life lessons from his father, there is one part in the movie where Furious, Tre’s father, says “a black man has no place in the military.” Doughboy who is Ricky’s half-brother doesn’t have any plans for his life. All he does in the movie is hang out with 3 other people on his mom’s porch drinking beer, selling drugs, carrying guns and driving around. Doughboy has been in and out of jail. Doughboy, his girlfriend

In this book, everyone was part of a gang and everyone looked at each other as either a Soc ,or a Greaser. Johnny, who has been abusively beaten while getting jumped and from his own father at home, and Pony save children from a burning house. No one would expect the hoodlums to risk their lives to save children. They have a reputation for doing illegal things and getting arrested. However, newspapers have stories on the two and labelled them as “heroes”. Dally, who was the toughest and baddest of all the Greasers, kills himself. The true reason behind this was because after going to the hospital to visit Johnny, he witnessed watching him die right in front of his eyes. Johnny’s death makes him rob a store and having the police intentionally kill him. The only thing that he loved was Johnny and his beloved thing was gone. This shows that Dally, even though he’s a Greaser and does all these horrible things, has feelings. Even people who genuinely knew him, labelled him as having no feelings. Also, Randy, who is a soc, talks to Pony about Bob and how he was just a regular guy who had his own problems. The only reason that Bob would act out and drink a lot was because his parents would never set boundaries. He just wanted for someone to tell him “No”. Cherry Valance, who was Bob’s girlfriend, even said that he was actually sweet. This shows that people are individuals and that labels don’t say who you

In the narrative: Boyz ‘r’ us by Scott Monk, we comprehend the author’s depiction of Mitch. That he is an incorrigible young adolescent with many obligations, upon his shoulders. We perceive that Mitch is confined within a gang, a gang that is pessimistically changing his life, it is also having disdainful influence on his deportments and it is carrying out that influence with him in his life. We are exposed to the theme of change in Mitch’s life when encountering some drastically different: characters, setting, situations and outcomes. The author certifies Mitch’s life one-step at a time, by exploring the depth of Mitch’s predicaments, in other accounts; inquiring into the theme of adolescent etiquettes and by positioning us in the centre of the contingencies.

Throughout the 1992 film, “Boyz in the Hood,” John Singleton takes a closer look at urban black America in South Central Los Angeles. Doughboy, Ricky and Trey, along with their parents are chronicled from childhood to adulthood. Each person, though living in the same neighborhood chooses different paths in life. These characters were raised in a very deviant community, however there were many causes as to why they did not all become deviant. Deviance is defined as behavior that goes against what is socially acceptable. It is when a person disregards what is normal in a specific society and acts upon it. Throughout the movie these characters had many chances to engage in deviant behavior, as some did while

And on the other hand how “Code of the Streets” shows links to the Differential Association and Social Learning theories of crime. The Differential Association (closely related to Social Disorganization theory), developed by Edwin Sutherland, and Social Learning theory, developed by Ronald Akers, both theories of crime are theories that try to explain, at a micro-level, why individuals rather than groups of individuals commit crime (Feldmeyer, Differential Association and Social Learning, 2015).

In the 1991 drama “Boyz in the Hood”, Written and Directed by John Singleton. He successfully attempts to portray what life was like and in some areas in America still is for African Americans living in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. It displays a portrait of the harsh realities that plagues the black community and by displaying uninviting living conditions that is South Central L.A, Singleton aims to share to the world the self-destructive deviant behavior that is to this day, destroying the African American community. Some of the self-destructive deviant behaviors include gang life, selling drugs, and gun violence. Various issues are displayed in this movie involving the black community including deviance, poverty, gentrification, the importance of a father in a young man’s life and black on black crime. Singleton displays a tale of three friends growing up in the “hood”, plagued by drugs and violence and layers textures over rough and compelling visuals of black culture that shows us what it means to come to maturity, or die trying, as a black male. In this essay, I will be giving a thorough analysis of the film, as well as covering certain points from the movie from a sociological perspective to explain why singleton chose to write this film.

Discusses how race is a conceptualized concept most often through stereotypes of different groups with the presence of a systematic structure of racism where the dominant group has placed themselves as superior and all other groups are deemed inferior. This structure often produces a negative impact on same race relations. Identity, according to this theory is created due to psychological enforcement of repeated racial oppression. The movie “Boyz N’ The Hood” demonstrates the effect of this enforced systematic structure and its negative impact on same race relations which lead to the ultimate death of some of the characters in this film (Singleton,1991). The movie takes place in impoverished South Central Los Angeles and depicts scenes of violence perpetrated by gangs against the main characters of the movie. Janet Helms points out that racial theory consists of four models White Identity, Black Identity, People of Color, and the Racial interaction model. She points out that the more an individual becomes aware of the social constructs of race and the racist system the closer

Even though Tre joins Doughboy, his inner containment prevails as he gains “self-control” (Williams & McShane, 2018: 139) and decides to get out of Doughboy’s car. Tre’s inner and outer containment demonstrate reckless containment theory. Evidently, Tre drifts from conformity to deviance, but through his self-control he is able to renegotiate that deviant behaviour back to conforming behaviour.

Boyz in the Hood starts off with the character Tre Styles as a young man who lives in South Central, Los Angeles with his mom Rita. The social work student viewed this beginning portion of the movie portraying his young life as a social worker. The social work student noticed that Tre lived with his mother in an apartment in a rough neighborhood. Tre went to school but had problems acting out and being the class clown. Tre and the friends he hung around here had foul language and used profanity as young kids. This is just one example of how Tre’s surroundings influenced his life. According to Newman & Newman (2014), the Social Role theory suggests that a person learns behaviors from observing in their environments. Young Tre Styles learned profanity from somewhere in his rough environment and this is a method of learning socially. Rita, his mother was working on her Master’s degree and wanted better for Tre, so it is unlikely she promoted the use of profanity in her household. A contract between the two was drafter and Tre agreed with his mother that if he did not behave he would move in with his father. Rita stayed true to the contract they drafted and took Tre to live with his father Furious, so Tre could learn how to be a man.

The characters: Tre Styles and Mookie are two young African-Americans in the films “Boyz N The Hood” and “Do The Right Thing” respectively. Both films were released around the same time period, with DO THE RIGHT THING being released in 1989, and BOYZ N THE HOOD in 1991. Both films are coming of age tales for Tre and Mookie, they both reside in a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood. Both films share a common theme: the idea of hopelessness and survival as a young black male in the “hood.” Both men are a product of what can only be described as “urban decay;” they are trying to find their place in a society that doesn’t care much for their well being or success. BOYZ N THE HOOD and DO THE RIGHT THING have a common

In this paper, I will analysis the film Boyz N the Hood based on and around the criminology concept of the General Strain Theory. The film Boyz N the Hood depicts a story about an African-American boy growing up in “the hood” of South Central LA. South Central is a place where on average 1 out of 21 African American men will be die as a result of “the streets”. African Americans within the African-American community are more susceptible to becoming a casualty to gang affiliation and violence. If a person makes the wrong choices in life or even if they are faced with the right circumstances that force this person to join a gang their likelihood of dying as a result dramatically increases.

The character that I had chosen to analyze was Ponyboy Curtis in the movie, The Outsiders (Coppola, 1983). I chose this character because the movie revealed how Ponyboy got to where he is mentally and everything that had occurred to get him to that point. I will analyze the adolescent phase of Ponyboy’s life. The theme of The Outsiders is how love can affect the relationships of close friends. The theories and theorists that support my analysis are Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial theory, Albert Bandura’s Observational Learning, Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Systems theory: Microsystem (Sigelman, 2015). From those theories and theorists the following points will be analyzed: identity, peer pressure, self-worth, and dependence.

All three individuals lived in the lower-class, and due to low income, some were faced with crime as an economic motive others took a different course. In the case of Ricky, he chose used football in order to aid him in getting into university. Meanwhile, Doughboy is shown to have little ambition, and a lack of parental support, this caused him to easily assimilate into the environment from the “hood”.

The Mexican gang Florencia, or F13, is the biggest and most violent Hispanic gang in the city of Los Angeles, California. By analyzing Frederick Thrashers idea of Spontaneous Play Groups, we will further understand the emergence of these adolescent members. This paper will also focus on using Walter Miller's Cultural Deviance Theory, and his six focal concerns (toughness, getting into trouble, smartness, fate, excitement, and autonomy), to help understand and explain the behavior of these adolescent members. Lastly, we will use Albert Cohen's Subcultural Theory, to describe how members of the Florencia gang gain respect through the Lower Class Value System, as opposed to following Middle Class Measuring Rods.