From Z-Boys to O.G.'s
Documentarian Stacy Peralta opens eyes to the world of South LA gang members IN ‘Crips and Bloods: Made in America’
By Carl Kozlowski 03/19/2009
“Can you imagine a society in which mothers are burying their children, instead of children burying their mothers?”
That comment — heard amid a heartbreaking montage of African-American families who have lost loved ones to gang violence — is perhaps the most haunting statement heard in “Crips and Bloods: Made in America,” an intense new documentary by Stacy Peralta (“Dogtown & Z-Boys”). In it, the director makes a bold leap from covering his own youth as one of America’s first pro skateboarders to depicting the lives of youths caught up in the criminal life of gangs in South Los Angeles.
Yet it isn’t as big a leap as it might first appear, as Peralta noted in an interview with the Pasadena Weekly to discuss the film, which opens Friday at the Laemmle Playhouse 7. The filmmaker found that his own experiences growing up amid the skating subculture provided him with the sense of respect and insights he needed to be welcomed by the current and former gang members who speak powerfully in the film about the history of LA’s two most notorious gangs and why they hold such allure for the hopeless.
“Because of the parallels, I was able to gain access to the various individuals easier than if I had not gone through my own ritual,” says Peralta. “When you look at male subcultures, you have to approach them with respect and on their terms — I learned that by being in a male subcultural set of my own, and learning how one grows through the ranks and earns respect and what they want.”
While “Crips and Bloods” is narrated by Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, much of its information and narrative force comes through three former gang members who were among the literal Original Gangsters in Los Angeles: three friends who go by the onscreen names of Ron, Bird and Komasi. These men, speaking with the sad wisdom of watching the gangs evolve over the last five decades, bring to vivid life the reasons that African-Americans first created gangs and the reasons that they’ve managed to maintain their appeal for young men who often lack fathers and positive role models — by providing family, respect and strength in numbers
to young males desperate for a sense of identity.
A fast-paced array of photos and video footage from the 1940s onward showcase startling facts that remind us of just how close the Third World conditions of South LA’s ghettoes are to some of LA’s finest areas: 10 miles from the Pacific Coast Highway, 25 miles from Disneyland and a mere five miles from Rodeo Drive. One could hope that hearing the sad tales of many young men caught up in “the life” might stir society into action to address their needs and situation. But, as these problems have festered for 50 years already, that seems sadly unlikely.
“It’s never going to change until we as a society look at these kids and excuse them as human beings who can’t extricate themselves from this horrible situation without good educations or jobs with prospects,” says Peralta. “Most of them are living in an America that we are not familiar with. I think what people tend to forget is they look at these young men as black men, but they don’t look at them as Americans, and that’s a really big part of the problem.”
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