GENRE RESEARCH:

URBAN DRAMA

What is an ‘Urban Drama’?

The sub-genre Urban Drama takes a more socially

realist stance on the traditional drama genre. Often in these

dramas the city/ environment itself is almost presented

as a character that influences the protagonists as much, or more so than any other element of the film. These films

study or depict the effects of race, multi-culturalism,

labour, over-population, filth, chaos, and corruption on their central characters.

‘HOOD FILM’?

A type of urban drama that originated from the United States in the early to mid ‘90s, which features aspects of primarily ‘Black’ culture, including music, street gangs, racial discrimination, poverty, and the problems of young black men coming of age or struggling in a predominantly white society.

History

• The broader ‘Drama’ film genre can be sourced to the early

‘40s in which it was used as a tool to educate/ teach the audience (as exhibited in films like ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1940) ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) which attempted to show the effects of depression). Dramatic films focused on complex character relationships and development.

• The popularity of Urban Drama itself is said to have stemmed from the fact that the advent of these films coincided with the first rush or people moving from the country to the city – so there’s always been a fascination with inner-city life.

• Urban Dramas set out to prove that city life is becoming

increasingly difficult and ‘raw’ (as seen in ‘Mean Streets’, 1973)

and defining it is equally as tough.

Early Urban Dramas

Wild Style (1983)

COLORS (1988) Straight Out of

Brooklyn (1991)

Do The Right Thing (1989) New Jack City

(1991)

Boyz N The Hood(1991) South Central

(1992)

Juice (1992)

Early Urban Dramas – A Closer Look

• Parallel to the idea that cinema’s fascination with ‘Urban Drama’ as a genre stemmed from the first wave of country people trying to adjust to the more modern culture of the inner-city, early urban dramas also tried to focus more on the complexities of an urban lifestyle

• Stories (such as Midnight Cowboy, 1969) usually centred around idea of a country person trying to ‘bring the country’ with them thus influencing the environment around them or ultimately being changed themselves by the influences of society. These stories had just enough to allow for both humorous representations and extremely dark social commentary.

• Early ‘hood films’ didn’t begin to show up until the early 80s, with the emergence of hip-hop and a rising interest in Afro-Caribbean culture.

Contemporary Urban Dramas

BELLY (1998)

Finding Forrester (2000) Training Day

(2001)

Save the Last Dance (2001) Hustle & Flow

(2005)

KiDULTHOOD (2006)

ATL (2006)

SHANK (2010)

• As urban society becomes more diversified (be it ethnically etc.), the term ‘urban’ becomes increasingly harder to define. This is probably the reasoning behind the scattered issues tackled in contemporary Urban Dramas.

• The Urban Drama definition at the birth of the genre is lost in today’s contemporary films, arguably for the better, as the emergence and popularity of ‘hood films’ (which has now become the standard Urban Drama just as ‘Black’ music is Pop music now) added the extra dynamic of realism with topics more focussed on social issues like racism and integration and thus appealed to a broader and ‘more grounded’ audience.

Contemporary Urban Dramas – A Closer Look

Highest Grossing Urban Dramas

Ranking Title Gross Domestic Box Office

1 American Gangster (2007) $266,465,037

2 Dangerous Minds (1995) $179,519,401

3 Training Day (2001) $104,876,233

4 Crash (2004) $98,410,016

5 Finding Forrester (2000) $80,049,764

6 Boyz N The Hood (1991) $57,504,069

7 Magnolia (1999) $48,451,803

8 New Jack City (1991) $47,624,353

9 COLORS (1988) $46,616,067

10 Midnight Cowboy (1969) $44,785,053

Figures taken from http://en.wikipedia.org and may not entirely reflect full box office earnings

Repertoire of

Elements

Ideological Themes

• The polemic idea of escaping ‘the ghetto’ and withstanding

the negative temptations of the concrete jungle serve as the most prominent/ traditional themes within the ‘Urban Drama’ genre.

• As touched upon earlier in ‘What is an Urban Drama’?’, other

contentious ideologies explored include the importance of

friendship (including betrayal or ‘snaking’), romance, racism and

the effects of living multi-culturally and the consequences of a material-centric modern society. These are usually explored through sub-plots rather than being the main foci of the actual film.

• The concept of the fairy tale happy ending is a notion that’s heavily played with in Urban Dramas. These films often kill off the main character or jail them at the end to reinforce that sense of

realism - life doesn’t always end happily and humans are fragile. This has been explored in films such as ‘Menace II Society’ and ‘KiDULTHOOD’.

Narrative Structure

Beginning: The main characters are established as well as the harsh environment they are living in. We as the audience are given a taste of the character’s lives from things like school to their family and friends.

As the environment is slowly introduced and fleshed out, so to is the obstacles and barriers pitted against the characters

The predicaments created by the environment or antagonist become much more real to the protagonist and begin to affect them directly.

This could be stimulated by something the characters do themselves for example, one of the protagonists’ friends is violently killed by a rival gang in revenge for the protagonists stealing money from them thus throwing them deep into a violent cycle

If a betrayal is within the story, this is usually where it occurs but is not necessarily revealed to the audience

The protagonist(s) have various life-threatening encounters with this obstacle be it being chased by the police for the crime the crime they committed or being chased by the same person that killed their friend like in the example above

It could also be life-threatening scenario in a different sense for example the character gets expelled from school permanently and is now tempted to fall into a life of crime

Other things that can occur within this point include minor things such as losing a love interest

Resolution: There is an endless amount of outcomes that can occur – here are a few examples regularly used: • The main character(s) escape their

predicament (i.e. they graduate from school and move away or they are forced to kill their chaser

• The main character dies • The traitor dies but realises the error of

his ways or the traitor was a friend all along

Iconography – Character Archetypes

Urban Drama

Archetypes

Protagonist(s)

Usually a group of three or four friends with diverse and very polar personalities

The crazy/ violent one

The joker/ carefree one

The voice of reason/ the one trying to stay on the straight and narrow – oftentimes the main protagonist

Antagonist (s)

Usually a member of a rival gang or a long-time sworn enemy

Environment?

As mentioned earlier, the negative environmental influences are metaphorically presented as an obstacle in which the characters have to overcome in order to survive or mature.

Other

Role Model figure - one of the few people that the young protagonist(s) respect and encourages them to keep on track (could be an older sibling or a grandparent etc.)

A person that the protagonist(s) frequently encounter through their day to day routine, but don’t interact with that much i.e. a neighbour, shopkeeper etc.

The source of most of the humour

• Various objects such as guns, knives, hoodies, cars (connoting drive-by shootings), drugs and alcohol, and an obsession with money represent and connote the various ills of the ‘ghetto hood’ such as murder and crime.

• Furthermore, the idea of broken families in poverty is symbolised by character indulgence in promiscuity

• Contrastingly, books, education and religion are presented as being vessels of escapism and a character’s ticket to break free of their urban shackles

• This parallels the idea of characters using their talents such as rapping/ art to escape the ghetto.

• Ironically, this is presented as having a double-standard as rap music is regularly criticised for stimulating violence among today’s youth and graffiti art as antisocial behaviour

Iconography - Symbolism

Technical Aspect

Mise en scene • Elements depicting a sense of being entrapped in a concrete jungle (high rise buildings such as estates, roads and traffic, vandalism, police etc.)

• Characters look oppressed the majority of the time and show expressions of pain and strife (further emphasising the idea that the characters can’t escape the cruel jungle)

• Characters are usually clothed in a dark palette of hoodies/ sweatshirts, overbearing jackets, hats, trainers and the like.

• Cloudy/ rainy weather is also often depicted to reinforce a bleak atmosphere

Sound • Diegetic sounds include: the sound of traffic; domestic arguments in public; weather sounds; gun fire; and colloquial dialect/ slang

• Non-diegetic sounds mainly concern the oftentimes menacing and jarring soundtrack of the film. The music usually employed is Afro-Caribbean origin thus ranges from anything like Hip-Hop to Grime to Contemporary R&B and Reggae

Iconography – Technical Aspects

Iconography – Technical Aspects Contd.

Technical Aspect

Cinematography • Cinematography follows many conventions but attempt to add an extra dynamic by employing an array of camera angles and movement that attempts to keep the action and emotion on screen at all times.

• An example of this would be the use of a low angle shot when filming a high rise urban building to connote the dominance of an urban environment or better yet, an over-the shoulder shot of someone chasing or being chased to make the audience feel like they’re physically involved in the scene.

Editing • Editing also follows conforms to most of the conventions and doesn’t stray too far from the established norms.

• The intensity of action scenes are amplified by the use of quick cuts, whilst fading and dissolves are utilised to establish transitions from one scene to another (usually used at the end of a character monologue to slowly release what was previously a very emotionally concentrated scene and move on to a less focussed scene)

Juice (1992) M A R K E T I N G C A M P A I G N

Poster Analysis The promotional poster for the film ‘Juice’ does well in establishing an atmosphere and mood, depicting elements that subtly reveal the nature of the film and ultimately enticing the potential audience. The first impressions we get from a quick glance of the poster are influenced by the morose blue tone that crawls across the poster. The depressing filter connotes that sense of being cold/ emotionless (a feeling which is magnified by the glares of the four main characters), melancholy and the like. Interestingly enough, we can almost parallel this analysis of colour/ tone to the idea that these are some of the things that the harsh urban lifestyle is associated with. We can interpret it literally in the sense that the city is essentially a gigantic complex of cold concrete and metal, or the cold from the metal of city objects like guns (as depicted by the poster) or we as the audience can even take it further to say that the temptations of inner-city life (drugs, promiscuity, crime, money) will take you to a cold, dark place. The poster’s notion of a concrete jungle is solidified by the unwelcoming characters portrayed. Dressed in dark hoodies, deep denim and jewellery. Not only this, but the characters are of Afro-Caribbean descent (stereotypically likened to the ghetto; criminal activity, violence and eccentric behaviour). Three of the four characters depicted grimace directly at the audience, the fourth character however, is ominously looking to his side/ back (which could denote a lack of trust – maybe he gets betrayed in the film?). The positioning of his character more so in the foreground also indicates some sort of marginalisation between these young characters.

Poster Analysis Contd.

Another conventions utilised in this poster to try and attract the target audience include a label stating who the film music is by. The logo (omitted from some of the posters but edited in this case for the sake of analysis) states ‘Music By’ and then goes on to list well known hip-hop artists like Eric B and Rakim and Naughty By Nature. This really reaches out to the target niche because it essentially implies that if you’ve enjoyed your favourite hip-hop artist’s music, then your going to enjoy this film. The poster also implicates bold and succinct taglines such as ‘power.’ and ‘respect.’ Even though these words are in small lettering, the fact that they heavily contrast the brooding background is enough to make them explode. This is also used for the title ‘Juice’ (a word we now subconsciously associate with ‘power.’ and respect.’). The choice of blood red not only catches our attention in a brazen manner, it also bears the many negative connotations of murder, evil and lust (perhaps the lust for ‘Juice’ in this urban society). All in all this is an effective poster because the minimalist approach used here understands the limitations and boundaries of a poster; commuters, drivers and others that encounter the poster won’t be able to stand there and fully dissect the poster, therefore a picture must literally tell a thousand words and get the audience thinking – this is what the poster does best.

Trailer Analysis Contd. Before any form of narrative is introduced, the trailer for ‘Juice’ attempts to establish a living, breathing urban environment. From the sharp, DJ-cutting music to the clothes that the characters are wearing (huge coats, bucket hats and boots), the feeling of the hectic day-to-day ‘grind’ that occurs within this environment is conveyed.

Thirty seconds into the two-minute promo, the characters are introduced through quick cuts between their own dialogue (“People call me ‘Q’…”) and their names momentarily as bold titles on a black background. This segment of the trailer not only introduces the characters to the audience, but it also gives the audience a taste of each characters’ personality respectively. We see the protagonist Q DJing with enthusiasm on his face (indicating that this must be some sort of hobby for him which he enjoys); his friend ‘Raheem’ introduced as a teenage father unable to deal with responsibility; his other friend ‘Steel’ as an overweight yet loveable and humorous guy; and last but not least ‘Bishop’ – a guy who’s tired of their current lifestyle (“We run from the cops, we run from the security guards!”) and feels they should be “ready to die” for power and “Juice”.

Trailer Analysis Contd. Significantly, at the introduction of the character of Bishop, the trailer begins to polarise the initial light-heartedness of the trailer (with humorous lines like “What did names like Mustapha and Akbar become too hard to spell?”) and contrastingly proceeds to delve into the much darker side of urban life – this is where the story begins, everything before was merely exposition! A gun is fired, and the face paced music that has been pumping up until this point is killed. This is followed by four quick shots zooming in at each sneering character – indicating that something has got out of control.

Raheem shouts “You didn’t have to shoot him!” with Bishop against the wall (this connotes to the audience a difference in views and may stimulate the idea that these characters aren’t going to stay “brothers” for long). Sirens then crash into the trailer (a long with a police car – both of which are symbols of the Urban Drama genre) confirming a crime has just taken place. The trailer then starts to portray Bishop as antagonistic and multi-faceted. We see him shooting at Q with a predatory intent to and then moments later, the trailer cuts

to him innocently yet menacingly saying “I’ll do him in if I have to.”

Trailer Analysis Contd. Then the trailer explodes into titles on top of a subway train (another element of the harsh, inner-city, concrete jungle) saying “How far” “will you go” “to get it?” (which is also the tagline present on the film poster). These titles play ‘back to back’ with scenes of Q and Bishop jumping on high rise rooftops – whether Bishop is chasing Q or whether they are running away from the same person is left ambiguous. A final gunshot is heard and then the trailer flashes to a scene where all four friends are joking amongst themselves leaving the audience questioning whether Bishop really does change. The title ‘Juice’ is then shown as the hip-hop continues to blare in the background.

The fast pace in which this all occurs leaves the audience feeling extremely overwhelmed effectively giving the audience a taste of not only the film to come, but a taste of the lifestyle of some now very real characters.

Juice (1992) 2 Minute Trailer - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/juice/trailers/10904447

Juice: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack • The original motion picture soundtrack to ‘Juice’ was released on

December 31st, 1991 (almost a full month before the actual film) through MCA Records in order to wet the audience’s appetite.

• It consisted of music that appeared in the film as well as a few

bonus songs. The blend of Gangsta and West Coast Hip Hop, New Jack Swing and the like (from various famous artists at that time), acoustically paralleled the atmosphere in

the movie and greatly appealed to fans of ‘Black’ culture.

• The success of the soundtrack and the film was made evident by

the fact that the soundtrack peaked at #17 on the Billboard 200

and #3 on Top R&B/ Hip-Hop Albums chart, even attaining

three charting singles. It was also certified Gold by the RIAA

indicating sales of over 500,000 in America alone, indicating

an effective advertisement strategy.

Shared Marketing Conventions

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Other films that have used the release of an official soundtrack as a means of marketing.

Posters promoting Urban Dramas oftentimes share a similar layout. There’s a use a washed out/ pastel colours (almost like a blue lens filter) conveying a cold urban environment, the three or four main characters (usually friends) are depicted grimacing whereas the colour of the film title is bold and contrasts the backdrop (red against blue in these cases).

E N D

“I am crazy. But you know what else? – I don’t give a f**k! I don’t give a f**k about you, I don’t give a f**k about Steel and I don’t give a f**k about Raheem eithaa…”

Bishop, Juice (1992)