There’s a category of spoof film that attempts to skewer every cliché of a given genre within the span of about ninety minutes. I don’t feel like I’m going out on too much of a limb by making a blanket statement that they are all horrifically bad and unfunny. You’ve seen the unappealing adverts for these juvenile scatfests many times, and they all have wildly inventive names like Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, etc.
In my correct opinion, only one of these has been done well, and that was Airplane! in 1980 – a send-up of several disaster films from the previous decade.
The above clip makes a nice, racist segue to the real topic of this post, which is a genre spoof film that was made in 1996 called Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. The Wayans Brothers stitched this one together from the 90’s “hood” genre that included Boyz in da Hood, Menace II Society, Jungle Fever, Juice, Higher Learning, Poetic Justice, and South Central.
The movie is stuffed to the gills with cringeworthy stereotypes that can either be interpreted as a provocation of liberal white guilt, or raging self-hatred. It may be unfair of me to only offer two possible interpretations of the film’s humor, but this is my blog, and I can get all binary on y’all bitches if I want to, heard? Also, I’m trying to get to the images quickly so I don’t lose yo simple ass.
One way to maximize the amount of gags in Don’t Be a Menace was to create a ton of fictional brands which functioned as mini-jokes. For example, everyone in da Hood drinks St. Dies, a spoof on the St. Ides Malt Liquor brand which was heavily marketed to the black community in the 80’s and 90’s.
Then there are the fun breakfast cereal brands, Weedies and Tricks.
Also, we have some new additions to the fictional video games gallery: Gang Fighter (the Hood version of Street Fighter) and Rodney’s Ride – a cabinet game in the police station in which players score points by viciously beating a black man with their digital police clubs.
There are also a couple of fictional movies, like Black to the Hood and RoboPimp 3. Note the bonus Cult 45 poster in the background (a not-so-clever take on Colt 45). Wasn’t that one done before?
But the one that was actually a bit heartbreaking was da Hood’s convenience store – Forties and Nines. A bit close to home for those who grew up in low-income/high crime parts of town, and can clearly remember seeing liquor stores and gun shops within yards of each other.
