Menace II Society

Menace to society is a gangster/hood movie set in 1993 in the South Central Los Angeles. It follows the life of a boy who is trying to escape the hood life but gets sucked in. This movie is known for it’s use of extreme violence and drug related content. The main colour in this poster is blue which is quite similar to New Jack city. The colour blue seems to be a convention in gangster movie and could also suggest that this poster is aimed at the male gender because the blue is seen to be more of a masculine colour. This poster also suggest that this film is aimed at young males because the poster shows about 5 young males but you can mainly see the faces of two boys at the side of the poster. The two boys at the side of the poster are the main focus because they are bigger than the rest of the people in the poster and the also facing towards the audience. This suggest that these are going to be the main characters of the film and the two main characters are young males which also suggest that this is going to be based around young males lives so the young males can relate more to the film whereas films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, Miller’s Crossing and Pulp Fictions are more targeted at a older audience.

The title ‘Menace II Society’ is in red, which is a gangster genre convention. The colour red is seen in a lot of gangster movies like Donnie Brasco (the actors names are in red) and Mean streets (title is in red). This colour automatically tells gangster fans that this is going to be gangster movie. The connotation of the colour red means blood so this tells gangster fans that the movie is going to contain extreme violence. The poster seems to be set in an urban, quite poor area, which is quite common for a gangster poster because most gangster movies are based around the characters poorest and how they try to get out of poverty. The actors of this film names are not large in the poster so this means that the actors in this film haven’t got a big fan base. This poster shows that this movie is going to be based around racial minority, which is also a typical convention in a gangster movie. This movie seems to target more at black Americans because it is showing the life and culture of black Americans and it’s also aimed at black Americans in the 1900s because of the type of dressing the characters are wearing in the poster.

Even the title ‘Menace II Society’ suggest that this is going to be a gangster movie because gangster movies are about people that are going against the law and causing trouble in the area. Menace II Society suggests that they are going to be doing this and the title itself can target gangster movie fans.

The setting of this movie is in different parts of South Central Los Angeles, which is known for high crime rates around 1900s. The beginning of the trailers shows the teacher advising one of the main characters Caine about the hood life and shows different clips of a gang about to shoot a little boy in a drive by, someone holding a gun, a funeral and Caine’s family hugging. This shows the different topics that are going to be shown in this film. The movie is filmed in natural lighting to make the film seem more realists. The clothes in this trailer are casual clothing that would have been worn in the 1900s. The actors were not really famous at this time which I think was done of purpose because it makes the characters seems more realist. The dialogue in the beginning was a diegetic sound because the character in the film can hear the teachers speaking and evens replies back to the teacher but then the clip changes and we can still hear the dialogue but can't hear the source of the sound which is non diegetic because the characters in the sequence at that time couldn't hear what the teacher is saying at that time.