A think-piece on the themes of self-discovery and path-finding in the film Dope (2015)
By: Amir Benson
The Black voice has carried many different sentiments and styles as it has found its way through post-settlement America. What this presents is a cornucopia of lives cultivated from harvests of all different fields, pastures, plains, groves, thickets, etc. Whatever you want to call it, it’s always a nice feeling when we can sit at the same table and enjoy a full course with familiar faces. When starting my viewing of Dope I expected to be subjected to a special viewing of Menace 2 Society guest starring Urkle, but I was pleasantly surprised to have the film depict a part of Black culture I thought I would never see on the screen.
The movie centers around a group of friends in high school, Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib. Hailing from Inglewood, California they are alt-punk teens residing in a rough neighborhood. The three initially met at band camp, which is like cementing a “kick me” sign onto your personality in most colored neighborhoods, but they wear it as a tinfoil badge of honor to hallmark a genuine camaraderie. They solidified their shared interest by forming the band “Awreooh”, a play on the term “Oreo” which won’t need explaining if you are generation millennial or after and attended public school that had colored kids in the higher learning or advanced placements classes. What we get to witness is the counterargument to the stereotype that black musicians from rough areas can only use rap and street knowledge to maneuver through their surroundings; a double whammy when considering the other baseless notion that black instrumentalists worth any interest only come from wealthy homes. Being labeled as ‘geeks’, the trio of protagonists in Dope serve as diamonds-in-the-rough for anyone fatigued from the funnel that hood-set stories are forced through, which usually rid the films of any alternative outlooks/solutions in the process. Dope is a reminder that geeks, too, have grit and the need to be heard.
I think it would be fair to say that black/multicultural music holds major influence over the music industry, at least the live entertainment and personality aspects off of general speculation. With the world-spanning array of music Pan-Africans produce, somehow the mainstream mainly consists of Hip-Hop and Trap-Soul that highlights the troubled upbringings once-struggling artists quite commonly communally faced, some combative with another, which they escaped only by promoting the negatives of the lifestyle as a means of monetizing ones-self’s degenerative behaviors as youth-culture rebellion. The marginalized persons’ music culture is often systemically shoved into a spotlight and forced to read a teleprompter inscribed “All these drugs ruined my spirit and sanity, the paranoia and violence took my family and friends, the love around me faded the more I succeeded, isn’t this cool?”. The independent artist is given a freedom that radio trending artist forsakes with their contracts, that is the right to have every conversation be an out-of-the-studio conversation. Malcolm and his friends share a love of comic books, video games, and 90s fashion to juxtapose themselves from the rest of the ‘crowd’. They would seem to not have captivating subjects to keep listeners attention, but when we consider their everyday entertainment as sources of creative inspiration per IP, with their own respective history and sensory simulators, why would they not have a surplus of song inspiration? There are enough retro-era references and repressed emotional expression for a literal lifetime of material. However, that’s only to say if they aren’t made an example by their environment first.
The hood isn’t a great place to live, and it could be argued that being the only one like yourself in the hood is worse; Malcolm and his friends present this idea in its purest form as they must endure every treacherous boon that a bad neighborhood has to offer while living in its heart, all with no protection. Bullies, block boys, and bad seeds of all status/stature seek to instill the fear that only prey could feel before being made into a feast. The struggles of the impoverished community appear not to affect them from the looking point of the character cast, but the film takes careful note in making sure that none of their surroundings match what they truly aspire to be; Nothing which embodies the active strive to escape a low-income lifestyle if you were to ask me. Referring back to music, a real good artist’s out-of-the-studio advice of keeping safe within your surroundings and issuing people into finding their passions will always be warmly received by the public, however, that may not mean the price for originality is always unconditional acceptance. Singers who frequently produce similar sounds deliver to hungry ears just as people who have been deprived of safety their whole lives tend to be wanting. Most simply follow the likely chain of command, which depicts the nature of the first transitional conflict in the film where Dom, a gangster and drug dealer played by A$AP Rocky, asks Malcolm to run an errand for him while he bikes home from school. This sole request spirals Malcolm and his party into a perilous set of predicaments that places them in the perfect position to play patsy or scapegoats for a dope push gone wrong. There are a lot of “unspoken rules” of the hood broken in this part of the film like walking up to someone talking to you and answering an angry voice over the phone with your real name, which one could only learn if they sidelined education for street life long enough. One could argue that they could have avoided the entire ensuing conflict if they followed the golden rule of the hood being not to blindly obey anybody; however, that wouldn’t make for much of a story if the main characters operated from their comfort zones the whole time. Sheltered kids have to earn their stripes somehow.
Struggle, defined as efforts made to work to maintain the bare minimum, has no end to interpretations and applications. All may not be well, the pursuit of wellness shown in the labors of Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib to escape the threat of stepping half an inch off of the curb into the street affairs shows the lengths of what someone with no experience in organized crime may do to ensure that they escape it in its totality. The guiding forces in Malcolm’s journey, let alone his life, are not always working in his best interests; he lives in a neighborhood colloquially referred to as “The Bottoms” with his hard-working, single mother, interests considered unpopular leading him to be picked on, and to top it off he is cursed with grand aspirations amidst scarce resources. He has dreams of attending Harvard for a chance to earn a career title, which to some may be a stepping stone in their life plans, but regarding the fact that Malcolm comes from a neighborhood where a person’s future is up to chance due to rampant crime and impoverished living any progress towards being able to better the situation should be deemed considerable. Consider how the term ‘confidence is key’ is typically used, push your way forward and fully impart your own importance in all your matters; however, Malcolm and his friends take on a mindset that their own ventures will lead them to their own victories. Is aspiring for an education when the world you are brought into depicts you as incapable of purpose or higher functioning not a form of confidence in itself? If Malcolm caved to the pressure and fell in with the crowd that seemingly bleeds bravado he would have lost all the progress necessary to form his goals. Dom, during the birthday party at the nightclub, shares a profound comparison with his compatriots after viewing drone strike footage from the Middle East. Dom’s gang is delighted to witness the violence, while he is able to clarify that it is not only the terrorists who are targeted by drones, going further to say “Before you know it, they’ll start saying we’re the terrorists.” From the outsiders, view we might collectively be quick to say ‘no shit, you steal, sell drugs, and kill people’ in response but to people who commit crimes for work, there’s too much at stake to paint themselves as a negative force that should stop doing what they were brought up to do. Gangsters spend most of their lives trying to protect themselves and what little they were given to hold close, even if that just be the neighborhoods they were raised in or even just their sense of excitement/danger. Intellect and niche interests are not, and may never, be as captivating as the adrenaline rush associated with fast living but Malcolm is unbothered by what the public demands of him. From his perspective the ‘public’ wouldn’t be overly accepting in any scenario he’s been given, so he has no reason to follow the flow of expectation when he has a hold on his own set of priorities and personal trademarks. Dope casts stones at the idea that struggle is a uniform experience within the hood, as anyone who truly knows themselves has a different set of worries ahead of them.
Repressed desire is a heavy theme in the movie, the band is subjected to a multitude of decisions where they have to do unlikely or undesired actions just to maintain normalcy. Malcolm regularly runs from bullies in school to keep his shoes, bikes away from gangsters after school to keep his bike, gets coaxed around by the ‘big fish’ of his hood to keep on his good side, and gets led around to places where a drug-related mix-up would likely lead a person like a nightclub, a burger joint, a CEO/benefactors estate. Being made to appear small or cast off while the environment uses them as means to an end, the teens cannot seem to handle any situation how they would first think to. A lot of pent-up aggression towards the world goes into their music, mixing sounds from heavy rock, alternative-pop, techno-rave, melodic trap, and a couple of other genres that I would need to hear in the moment to recognize. Booming instrumental kicks and lines like “I’m not in the mood, dude!” and “adrenaline on overload” to build up the listeners’ aggression embodies the teen spirit of wishing to be unbothered, commanding rather than conforming. The anti-social personality could be considered the ultimate repellent of unwanted attention, and the recurring stigma behind the anti-social personality is that the person sporting one hasn’t figured out ‘how to people’ yet. Humanity creates human interests in magnitudes of mediums, so whatever someone produces artistically there is a considerably large chance that someone down the timeline will understand and enjoy it enough to identify with that subject more than their immediate surroundings. Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib have almost nothing in common with the rest of the cast besides location, so one may expect them to regularly struggle socially, and one would be correct with certain observations but only if they overlook how they still got all their styles and interests from once popular people and artist; albeit from a bygone era. Humans are nomadic by instinct and by that I mean to say we know to move on when harvest is no longer fruitful, so it’s only to be expected that things that were once dominant culture are routinely forgotten to make room for new waves and ways of commodity worship. The emphasis on 90’s culture in the circle of friends demonstrates two main ideas, that anything can attract an audience and anyone can find their crowd. They may not believe that popularity is what they desire but they found each other and together they found what they like, so ‘anti-social’ doesn’t really seem like the appropriate term given that they could be social if prompted, it seems more reluctance to be put into situations where something stupid will inevitably occur, and who can blame them for that? Or maybe they stay close to their list of “white people shit” including skateboards, manga comics, Donald Glover, trash talk, tv on the radio, getting good grades, and applying to colleges because if they did try to acclimate they would be marked by anybody attempting to climb up the pecking order. Disinterest for preservation’s sake, fair trade I’d say.
Without making this a synopsis, for the sake of not spoiling a now 9-year-old film, I want to say that the feeling I get seeing our protagonists struggle through their predicament felt kind of refreshing, I wasn’t watching more violent shootouts and carjackings that paint my people as the non-idealistic sort that must resort to crime when all else fails. They wanted no part in any dangerous activity and it’s a breath of fresh air to finally see kids of color that just want to further their lives. The theme of sheepishly trying to navigate over and around the ‘thug life’ rather than straight through highlights the crucial undertone of systemic racism that most “make it out of the hood” movies forget to add, that we didn’t want to be in the middle of all this shit in the first place and would likely have something else going on every day if it were up to us. Dope symbolizes a lot of underrepresented black culture that gets smothered by high-testosterone pop media, “A black man must be a strong, gun-toting, womanizing, take-no-shit desperado” in order to be recognized. Put a camera in front of a man destroying himself for views and he will garner more attention than a man filming the progress he’s making for his own or his loved one’s benefit. ‘The streets’ doesn’t describe a specific location but a life sentence for a lot of people in America, because it has nothing to do with the street you live on but who your associates were and what you saw around your house growing up. The neighborhoods were made to be dangerous, unsightly, and unprofitable, so some time along certain people followed suit; However, that doesn’t always mean everyone that comes along will take the bait, as long as they’re looking out for the right sorts of entertainment and education.
Malcolm finds out who he is and how he plans to hit his stride with one line presented to him by Austin Jacoby, played by Roger Guenveur Smith, “You always had a choice”, which I believe is an imperative lesson to teach to growing Afro-Americans. When odds are stacked against you it doesn’t come down to money, influence, looks, or any surface-level subjects, but it’s one’s own actions and attributes that define them. Malcolm delivers a magnificent monologue in the form of an admission essay that captures this idea further, it reads
For most of my life, I’ve been caught between who I really am and how I’m perceived, in between categories and definition. I don’t fit in. I used to think that was a curse, but now I’m slowly starting to see that maybe it’s a blessing. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. You gain knowledge, life lessons from disparate (differing) people and places. And those lessons for better or worse, have shaped me. — Malcolm Adekanbi
If I were to ever be at a loss for words when asked to describe myself I would pull this quote up. I am able to be passionate about my interests because they are all shared passions, I had to find out that I like the things that I like somehow. What people tend to forget is that geeks don’t give a shit about how something doesn’t fit the checklist of “will the whole world respect you if you do” and instead just do. There is no pleasing everyone, and even more true there, there is no way to get the time back you spent pretending to like something or someone for any duration. I do not fit in, or at least I didn’t for a long time, I like skateboards, video games, anime and cartoons, manga and comics (yes there is a difference if only slightly), I like writing, walking, studying, meditating, mind mapping, cooking, retwisting my own hair, and I was in a club of my own until I became proud to be interested in so many things. Being able to understand different parts of life is eye-opening, not to boast my holistic world view but I’ve been booed out of enough social groups to recognize when a group is only together because they like sharing a bubble. I don’t fit in, and I can dig it. I may not have been friends with Malcolm, Diggy, or Jib in high school but I could only have respect for them or anyone who won’t let the ever-so-incisive public pick a personality for them. I have a strong enough mentality to give myself a future and a plan to achieve, alongside the mettle to meet obstacles in whichever way the situation calls for. If you feel trapped then let your feelings out to someone who’s got some sense, if you feel lost then find the path you started on and apply what you’ve learned to push further, if you feel misunderstood then speak out to locate your people because they’re out there, and if all those are still hard for you to navigate for now then find yourself, and make sure be forgiving when you do; we all had to learn somehow.
