Case Studies : Boyz N the Hood

Below you will find a number of media and social sciences resources pertaining to John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood: film reviews, mainstream and ethnic media coverage, social and cultural studies of the inner-city life depicted in the film, and statistical information.

Film Reviews and Other Media Coverage

While reviews of Boyz N the Hood were almost universally positive, their perspective and tone varied widely between the mainstream and ethnic press.

• You can use our guide to finding film reviews of films released in the early 1990s to locate reviews of the film
• Compare mainstream press reviews with reviews from the sources in Ethnic NewsWatch.

In addition to reviews, the film garnered a great deal of media attention for its realistic portrayal of life in the ghetto, its importance within an emerging school of African-American filmmaking, and for outbursts of gang-related violence at theaters showing the film. You can search our news resources for articles and commentary on these and other topics.

Sociology

Because much of the interest and publicity surrounding the film concerned its realism, you can supplement a viewing of the film with more detailed social, economic and cultural studies of some of the film's themes.

• You can find articles on these and other topics using our African American Studies : Culture or Sociology databases. Search for subjects such as inner-city life, parenthood, drug abuse, racism, poverty, and crime.
• You can also locate books on these subjects in The CAT.
• A Library of Congress subject heading search for "African Americans in motion pictures" turns up more than 100 books on African American filmmaking and the portrayal of African Americans in film. Here are some examples:
  • George Alexander, Why We Make Movies : Black Filmmakers Talk about the Magic of Cinema
  • S. Craig Watkins, Representing : Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema
  • Valerie Smith (editor), Representing Blackness : Issues in Film and Video
  • Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks : an Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film

Statistical Data

You can use different types of statistics — demographics, economics, housing, crime, etc. — to understand better the social world depicted in the film. The Social Sciences Library's Statistics page provides links to a large number of statistical resources.

For instance, one of the film's central concerns is parenting, particularly in single-family houselholds. Below you will find demographic information on African-American households in Los Angeles County, California, from the 1990 Census and 2000 Census. "Related children" denotes one's own children, as well as related children under the age of 18. Note the large number of single-mother households. Using the census, you can look up related information such as family size and family income.

1990 Census Data

 

2000 Census Data

 

Page originally created by Brian Bialkowski under the direction of Debora Cheney, Foster Communications Librarian