WHEN A MOVIE HITS HOME TURF : A Gritty Look, but No Insight

‘Colors,’ the controversial cop/gang movie, has provoked protests from groups as divergent as the NAACP, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the Guardian Angels. Is it shallow? Does it raise public awareness to an out-of-control problem? Will it provoke more violence in Los Angeles streets? Does it offer any answers? Calendar invited the views of poet Wanda Coleman, lawyer John Huerta and staff writer Lawrence Christon.

One will learn more about Hollywood than gangs from viewing Dennis Hopper’s “Colors.” The box-office smash has all the makings of a typical success: hot leading actors, a simple story line, breathtaking chase scenes and lots of violence, drugs and gratuitous sex, set in our own back yard.

To director Hopper’s credit, he provides a realistic look at the workings of the Los Angeles Police Department, innovatively uses actual gang members, prominently mentions real Los Angeles gangs--Crips, Bloods, and White Fence--and provides a snide commentary about President Reagan’s war on drugs: One of the gang members when questioned by a cop about his use of drugs proclaims that he “just says no.”

Except for Robert Duvall as an officer who is blasted away in the end by a Latino gang member and Penn who is a self-centered, obnoxious and offensive rookie cop eager to show gang members who is the toughest, most of the movie’s characters are despicable, uni-dimensional, and mostly negative role models. Maria Conchita Alonso has the only female role of any importance, a girl from the barrio who dates rookie Penn. The main Latino and black actors are members of gangs who ruthlessly kill one other in acts of calculated violence. Hopper tries to balance these negative roles by casting Latinos and blacks in rather insignificant leadership positions on the police force.

“Colors” does not glorify gangs, nor does it glorify the police. “Colors” reveals a gritty look at Los Angeles’ worst and finest, but it does not offer insight into the causes of gangs and gang violence. It offers no understanding of the individuals who comprise the gangs, the complexity of gangs or the difference between Latino and black gangs.

The danger in “Colors” is threefold: in fine Hollywood tradition, it stereotypes women as the purveyors of sexual gratification; it stereotypes Latino and black youths as gang members; and, it stereotypes minority communities in Los Angeles as being crime ridden.

1. “Colors” has nothing positive to contribute as role models for thousands of Latino and black youths who will flock to the movie. After three minutes of playing coy, Alonso goes to bed with Penn on the first date; he later see her half-dressed in the bedroom with a gang member after a drive-by shooting. Every police raid nets a nude woman making it with a gang member. Except for Duvall’s wife, all women are depicted in a prone position. Latin and black women will learn from “Colors” that their roles in society are to be subservient and provide sexual gratification.

2. “Colors” offers the minority male no positive image and no hope. The inevitability of gangs, drugs, violence, and premature death is the subtle message of the picture to Latino and black youth.

An Anglo society will view all Latino and black youth as gang members. Many residents of the Westside and the Valley are afraid to venture into the east or south sides of Los Angeles as it is. “Colors” will add to that fear and lack of understanding between our sister communities. The crime rate is actually lower in some minority communities in Los Angeles than it is on the Westside or the Valley, but one would never know of it by viewing this picture.

3. Perhaps its greatest fault is that “Colors” offers no insights or solutions to Los Angeles’ gang problems. In contrast to “Colors” is Ramon Menendez’s “Stand and Deliver,” also playing citywide. The two pictures should play as a double bill and “Stand and Deliver” should be required viewing for anyone who wants insight and understanding into the problems facing American youth.

“Stand and Deliver” is also about Latino youth, and it is the true story about a hero, Jaime Escalante, a computer engineer who dropped out of private industry to teach calculus at East L.A.’s Garfield High School. Escalante, portrayed by Edward James Olmos, believes in his students and teaches them to believe in themselves. Escalante’s students learn that con ganas (which roughly translates into “enthusiastic perseverance”) they can succeed. In the movie, Lou Diamond Phillips plays the role of a would-be gang member who overcomes his home-boy environment to succeed in calculus.

In real life, Escalante’s high school ranks second in the United States in the advanced college placement on the calculus exam. “Stand and Deliver” is good entertainment, carries an emotional wallop and is inspiring. Most importantly, in contrast to “Colors,” “Stand and Deliver” offers hope.

Hopper doesn’t pretend to be a sociologist, nor is he attempting to do anything more than to make a quick buck through the exploitation of a serious problem--L.A. gangs. “Colors” succeeds in doing that.

“Stand and Deliver” is not the complete answer to Los Angeles’ gang problem. Our undernourished educational system, our transformation to a service economy creating a dual economic system for the educated and uneducated, the break-down of the traditional family unit, and, particularly, the stranglehold of drugs on our youth, are the underlying causes of youth decay in American society. Until citizens demand that their political leaders address these issues in a serious long-range manner, the problem will compound, until a holocaust occurs which will make the Watts riots look like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

Perhaps in the end there will be a saving grace to the film. Maybe “Colors” will be the catalyst to cause us to ask “why” is this happening, and “how” can we prevent it.