CULTUREGRAM : Hip-Hop Homage Plays the ‘Hood : But MTV Documentary on L.A. Draws Less Than Raves

The Baldwin Theater movie triplex in Baldwin Hills--said to be one of only two black-owned and -operated film complexes in the country--doesn’t get to show films to which the surrounding community can directly relate every week.

As current marquee attractions go, there’s not exactly anyone for an African-American to root for in the white-guy-flips-out cautionary fable “Falling Down.” For those in search of heroic people of color, any color, the sole choice right now is “Aladdin.”

But young people from South-Central L.A. and other nearby climes did get to see heroes and villains--of a sort--at the Baldwin Monday night, when MTV made its earnest bid to hold up a mirror to the community by screening its latest documentary, the Los Angeles-set “Straight From the Hood,” for a few hundred local youths.

Said mirror was, of course, being held up at the music-video network’s usual hip-ly off-kilter angles. The documentary--which debuts on MTV at 10 tonight, the second anniversary of the Rodney G. King beating--is in only a nominally less-flashy style than MTV’s usual news work. George Holliday, whose original camcorder beating-footage is once more reprised, may be one of the few cameramen represented on the project who prefers to shoot at a straight angle.

This is a tough room. Still, the Baldwin quietly reverberated with the sounds of audiences instinctively responding to big-screen heroes and villains.

First, the perceived bad guys. A noticeable collective grumble comes when Sgt. Stacey C. Koon appears on screen, being interviewed by Larry King. Didn’t Koon expect people to be shocked by the beating footage? the host asks. “No,” Koon replies. “That’s the way that L.A. has been doing police work for 10 years.”

A screenwriter couldn’t have written a mustache-twirling character actor a line more guaranteed to get a disgusted laugh with this crowd.

Violent riot footage still has the power to shock, a year and all too many TV recaps later. One renegade somewhere in the back rows applauded at the sight of the Reginald O. Denny assault, but dozens of others in the crowd gasped audibly at the brutality.

From then on, though, “Straight From the Hood” focuses on the upbeat, offering a calculatedly representative group of good guys. Mike Concepcion, one of the founders of the Crips, is seen greeting kids from his wheelchair and is one of the token elder statesmen featured, along with John Singleton and Ice-T.

Mostly, however, the MTV cameras follow a half-dozen protagonists picked--of course--to represent the channel’s 18-to-24 core demographic: an ex-gangbanger who’s now a successful record producer; a Korean shopkeeper starting again after his business burned down; an African-American schoolteacher from affluent Baldwin Hills who tries to put across the idea that not all blacks are down and out; a white elementary schoolteacher in South-Central; a Latino girl attempting to escape the shackles of East L.A. gang life to attend college.

Afterward, there was an ebullience from some of the kids who are grateful to see locals getting to tell their own stories . . .

“It was very inspirational to me,” said Stanley Elam, a South-Central resident, “to actually hear people tell the truth for once and not somebody lying telling their own version of Watts. I think the movie told the absolute truth.”

. . . and skepticism from others cynical of typecasting.

“We’ve all seen it before,” said Roslyn Campbell, a Santa Monica College student. “Every special, they all bring out the same kind of people: You get Nina Contrina from East L.A., and Little Chacuanta Jackson from South-Central, and then Mr. White Man who’s in the ‘hood trying to do his job but thinking he might have to leave. And it kind of makes it look to the rest of the country like all African-Americans (in Los Angeles) live in South-Central and they’re all underprivileged and all in gangs.”

“It wasn’t enlightening to me,” said Nequan Banks of South-Central. “I’ve seen all this stuff around here before. It seemed like the same-ole. I think it’s more for the white people than the minorities.”

The MTV honchos who produced “Straight From the Hood” as part of an ongoing “tolerance campaign” don’t necessarily disagree.

“The screenings are nice,” said director-producer Rob Fox (who also takes the special to the Apollo Theater in Harlem this week), “but I think the more important thing is the kids at home in Iowa and Oklahoma who’ll turn on their TV set and maybe get an idea of what it’s like to grow up in a neighborhood like this.”

Between this positivity and the nightmare anxiety of “Falling Down,” though, the folks back in Iowa may be getting a mixed message: Los Angeles’ ‘hood is a nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there.