La Haine Observation

I have to say that I actually found the film, La Haine, to be quite interesting. One observation I made was that I found the story and setting of Hurbert, Saiid and Vinz to resemble that of New York City at one point. There might not have been riots from what I may know, but most of the boroughs had neighborhoods which had what could have been considered ghettos. Mainly places like the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens would have had similar graffiti works, diverse community, hip-hop/rap music and break-dancing, and of course crime and hate between local youth and law enforcement. A specific time of similarity would been of the late 80s and early 90s.

Coming from the Bronx myself, I know what it is like to be treated like a criminal or prejudged as possibly being one. A cop at times randomly stop my friends and I, and ask for ID and where we were going. Although we clearly did not do anything or have any intentions to do anything, a cop usually would let us go with a look as if they do not trust us. From an officer's perspective I can understand that even being armed they are in a dangerous position for themselves where they must be on guard all the time to act on any unpredictable criminal activity with their life on the line. However, a person of the community should not have to feel victimised or be considered a suspect just because we are young and walking about. It is also not only in the Bronx, but probably anywhere that a person may have a sense of fear from the very people we trust to protect us. For example, when we all are on the drive we have the tendency to look in the mirror after passing a cop until we can't see them any more even though we know we are not breaking any traffic laws. Its like we show a feeling of fear and resentment of cops at that every moment.

In the film, we see strong profanity and graffiti that some of the people use as a way of resenting the law. Its is a small crime to compared to murdering and stealing, which maybe why they probably choose to do it. In a sense, its like their way of passively fighting against cops who happened to be armed. Not only is it to stand up to the law, but simply to express themselves and make a odd environment more similar or recognizable to that of home by creating graffiti. When I saw Saiid graffiti the "The World is Yours" sign, I saw it as his way of leaving an extended mark of his neighborhood or home. So next time he or anyone else from the neighborhood saw it, it was give a sense of comfortably and awareness of location.