SOURCE: Wiegman, Robyn. “Feminism, ‘The Boyz,’ and Other Matters Regarding the Male.” In Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, edited by Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, pp. 173–193. London: Routledge, 1993.

In the following essay, Wiegman explores how Boyz N the Hood deals with issues of masculinity and feminism within the African-American community.

When Newsweek featured the street smart hero of blaxploitation films, John Shaft, on its cover in October, 1972, it was marking a new era for Hollywood cinema: ‘All over the country,’ the cover story exclaimed, ‘“bad-ass niggers” are collecting dues with a vengeance—and if you don't believe it, just head downtown for a movie’ (October 23, 1972: 74). By the end of the decade, however, African American male stars were increasingly finding themselves the twilight figures in interracial male bonding films, and the high hopes of black cinema in the 1970s seemed at an end.¹ But now...