WHEN A MOVIE HITS HOME TURF : ‘Colors’: An End-of-the-’80s Bad Rap

‘Colors,’ the controversial cop/gang movie, has provoked protests from groups as divergent as the NAACP, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the Guardian Angels. Is it shallow? Does it raise public awareness to an out-of-control problem? Will it provoke more violence in Los Angeles streets? Does it offer any answers? Calendar invited the views of poet Wanda Coleman, lawyer John Huerta and staff writer Lawrence Christon.

Blood and Cuz (members) drop like flies but a whiteboy lingers when he dies--like in Colors Colors. The eruption of gang activity in L.A.’s black community as portrayed in this film is directly traceable to our local brand of racism/white flight as it has existed since the ‘50s and continues in the ‘80s. Like violence is red and the chill-out is blue, the clowns got off the Mayflower so it ain’t about who?

Whether Blood or Cuz it don’t make a diff, just kick back and watch ‘em steal your riff in Colors Colors.

It’s called white-on-black or black-on-white you can splice this flick any way you like. These jive talkin’ tall walkin’ kings of the hill just made a fortune and it’s makin’ me ill.

After the Harlem Riots of the ‘40s, heroin “mysteriously” appeared in black ghettos, displacing opium dens. A similar event occurred in Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts Riots when “sunshine” and other forms of LSD suddenly began to proliferate shortly after law enforcement had successfully dried up all “brain damage” from Dexedrine to Valium.

In 1969 another drug was brought to black Los Angeles by white hippies and known as “Peace,” later known as “Sherm” or A.D./Angel Dust or “the elephant,” a.k.a. P.C.P.

The movie/drugs/gangs is all free P.R.--we talkin’ exploitation. A gangbang sensation and race assassination. It’s the biggest scam evah rocked this nation. Remember “Superfly”? That “no-budget” multimillion-dollar movie made cocaine a West Coast concern. Wedded to returning vets from Southeast Asia, the stage was set for a “nose candy” rage that quickly evolved into a freebasing snowstorm. Add to this equation the nasty history of the U.S. government’s use of alcohol and disease as control mechanisms to suppress indigenous natives and the descendants of slaves. It’s all about “Colors.” It’s a gangblaster disaster (take the madness off the street and buy sometin’ to eat) they don’t care if it’s racist a two-fisted debasement of black and brown boys, got-’em-on-the-ground-boys, bustin’ their butts and coppin’ their struts for Colors Colors.

Our social institutions refuse to use ethnicity (instead of “race”) as a criterion in resolving America’s inner-city crises because Afro-Americans are the fourth largest ethnic group in the nation, and (according to a recent Washington Post article), if left “unchecked,” will be the largest segment of America by mid next century. It’s all about babies makin’ babies. “Colors” does not show young gangbangers writing best-selling autobiographies about how they made a killing in the rock cocaine biz then making the talk-show circuit coast-to-coast. This honor is reserved for repentant non-black celebrities.

Truth be sold, it’s solid gold, the game was cold (cuz somebody told) and hadda nobody shown “Colors” would’ve died on its own. We got Batman and Robin let alone Pac Man (Sean Penn born-again Edd Byrnes a la “77 Sunset Strip”--come on Kookie, Kookie lend me yo’ comb) with black moms and dads lookin’ totally blown.

The community’s confused, the cops are amused and a preacher’s sermonizing can’t nobody use--the whole affair is some simple sorry news. But that’s all “Colors” is about and I’m singing the blues.

“Colors” does not educate minds young or old and doesn’t pretend to do so. It’s been well established that “Hollywood” has no desire to be serious about domestic matters of race/ethnicity beyond the sappily tokenistic. Besides, it isn’t the film maker’s place to solve matters of social strife. If law enforcement and so-called community leaders were doing their jobs the controversy couldn’t exist. (Remember the post-Watts riot government-sponsored youth canteens, anyone?)

Young black and brown men require rites of passage, a place to channel all their youthful prowess; without guidance, they must create their own rituals (stylin’ & bombin’). And for too many of them there’s only one color that really counts--to use another movie title--and that’s “The Color of Money.”

There was Looney Toons and Hi-Top, two rude dudes in the movie who made the madness snap, crackle and pop, and a slickster in bed who wound up dead while doin’ the body rock. The young gang members who appeared in “Colors” were subhuman props against which the “real men” officers-of-the-law/cliches could be effectively played out by two popular dominant culture males (whose well-established careers certainly didn’t need this blot?). We don’t get to know a single gangster; who he is or his mama or what he does with his ill-gotten coin.

For example, we don’t learn about the white social/economic flight that has gutted the L.A. school system which cranks out “gangbangers” (F.Y.I. to gangbang is to commit group rape) by the hundreds. We don’t learn about the estimated 60% unemployment rate among local young men-of-color. Nor does this movie link that statistic with the corresponding statistic that 59.9 per 100,000 black males nationwide die by violent acts each year compared to only 8 out of 100,000 white males. Nor does it, storywise, tie that into the danger years for black and Amerindian males (18-25 with a push on to drop the age to 16) during which most of these violent deaths occur.

The brief scene of prison brutality glimpsed in “Colors” does not fully capture the impact of the black community of 80% of the U.S. prison population consisting of black males when we are only supposed to be a presumed 12% of the total melting pot.

There’s a war going on, but against who? Perhaps for young black males, joining a gang might be a matter of self-preservation?

I’m talkin’ gangbangers wall-hangers nursery rhyme street crime fantasizers lionizers, homes homey homeboy home-girl-driver crap-shootin’ sky-divers smokin’ dope in cigarettes gettin’ off with no regrets in “Colors” like the D.J. say, Run-D.M.C. meets Dirty Harry and they all come down with beriberi.

“Colors” owes a debt to its predecessor and cinematic ancestor, “Birth of a Nation”--both are films that exploit various superficial aspects for racism yet are hailed as mere entertainment. The number of literal and metaphorical lynchings that result from the social climate encouraged by these films remains unanalyzed/forgotten/ignored. In Hollywood the critical reviews and box-office receipts are the only statistics that matter.

There’s a grumble in the jungle but it ain’t about who? Blood and Cuz and the bogus fuzz--we talkin’ cowboys and injuns, macho and hired guns--we talkin’ back alley fast alley crackin’ much head, piece-of-the-rock busters, spade dusters spreadin’ plenty hot lead.

Grab your Uzi and don’t get woozy ‘cuz there’s honor to save as you go to your grave seein’ Colors Colors.