A filmmaker’s exploitative documentation of American ghettos
There has always been an intrigue with how marginalized groups live in the subsectors of society, particularly with the lived experiences of Black folk in the ghetto. A paradoxical intrigue marked by the ironic curiosity of those who desire to learn more about the very people they fought so hard to be segregated from. In the early 2000s, an amateur filmmaker sought to exploit this fascination and was granted unprecedented access to the street corners, back blocks, and housing projects of some of the most underprivileged neighborhoods in America. Raw footage from his travels chronicled dilapidation, despair, and death in the ghettos of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore amongst other cities, leading to the creation of a docuseries aptly titled Hood 2 Hood.
Though Hood 2 Hood fashions itself a documentary, it is tantamount to a trap music video of feature film length as it glamorizes danger and decadence in the most resource deprived, marginalized, racially homogenized, predominately Black communities that struggle with elevated rates of poverty and crime (aka “the hood”). Taking his audience on a nationwide tour through America’s most imperiled neighborhoods, the film’s director and cameraman Aquis Bryant asks young men a series of provocative questions framed to elicit…
