Abstract

Films

This article focuses on the films "Strange Days," "Dead Presidents," and "Black Is. . . Black Ain't." In the movie Strange Days Los Angeles and America are divided into two locales--streets patrolled by troops in uniform, and dance clubs patrolled by freelancers making extreme fashion statements. Some choice--between regimentation and pseudo-anarchy, the armored personnel carrier and the velvet rope. The movie "Dead Presidents," is a too-long, too-earnest, too-derivative movie that nevertheless works into people's memory a set of images that bite like acid. Dead Presidents is essentially the attempt of very young black people to imagine the lives of their parents' generation, and in so doing to figure out how black America went in large part from bad to worse after the sixties.