Fish and Cherries Productions

Straight Outta Compton was, like the NWA themselves, raw, rebellious, and brutally honest. I think it’s very important important that this came out now in the midst of so many African-American deaths and cases of police brutality. The film knows this too, as the parallels between the riots of Rodney King’s murder with that of Michael Brown’s are clearly evident. All of the actors are great, with some of them being near dead ringers for the people they portray. I don’t know if this film does any favors for women though, as most of them throughout the movie are portrayed as sexy partyers in varying degrees of nudity. Then again, it was shown at the end that the NWA partook in such debauchery, so this could very well be a history vs. political correctness can of worms that I’d rather not open.

What I would like to open is the case of whitewashed history in the film. See, the NWA members were at the center of quite a few domestic abuse controversies, as well as some lyrics that were demeaning to women. None of this is present in the movie, which is striking because it was a big part of the history. What bugs me even further about this is that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were producers on this film, meaning that they had personal oversight on it. In other words, in a film displaying their controversial and flawed history, they allowed the most damning part to be omitted. It’s the only part of the movie that’s truly dishonest and it’s really disappointing.

This movie brought out a lot of conflicting and often uncomfortable emotions in me, particularly because it didn’t shy away from the violence and unjust racial politics. Among them was a sense of alienation both because I had never experienced anything like their struggle in my life and because there were very few white people in the movie. That last part made me completely empathize with the portrayal of people of color in movies and showed me just how necessary Straight Outta Compton is in today’s market, over saturated with white heroes that it is. To paraphrase a line from the movie, I know nothing about gangsta rap culture, but I know what we got here is special.