Perspective: John Singleton helped redefine American pop culture, and his impact is still being felt today
By Ann Hornaday Ann Hornaday Movie critic Email Bio Follow Movie critic April 29 at 6:11 PM Everyone remembers their first time seeing “Boyz n the Hood,” the electrifying 1991 writing and directing debut of John Singleton, who died Monday at the age of 51. It was easy to be jolted by its visceral, violent immediacy, moved by its emotional complexity and simply blown away by performances by such then-unknown actors as Morris Chestnut and Cuba Gooding Jr.
Watching “Boyz n the Hood” through the eyes of the Italian audience reframed the film, not as a “culturally specific” slice of urban life, but as a quintessentially American pop culture export. And yet, back then, Hollywood studios still held to the truism that “black doesn’t travel,” insisting that foreign audiences wouldn’t accept films by or about people of color. Singleton wrote the part of Doughboy specifically for Ice Cube, but when he tried to cast Cube’s bandmates from N.W.
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