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Menace II Society Essay

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Menace II Society, a film about a young Black man who has lived the “hustler” lifestyle and is struggling to leave it, is a perfect example of deviance as the main character, Caine Lawson, and the characters around him violate many of society’s norms. Throughout the film, the characters swear incessantly, carry around guns and drugs as most people would carry around cell phones, commit street crimes, especially burglary and mugging, on a regular basis, and beat and kill people unscrupulously. The following quote captures just how deviant Caine and the other characters in this film were, “[Caine] went into the store just to get a beer. Came out an accessory to murder and armed robbery. It's funny like that in the hood sometimes. You never …show more content…

However, he sees his only option of obtaining signs of wealth, like a nice car, are via street crime. Thus, Caine’s deviance can be attributed to Strain Theory as well. Caine takes the deviant path of an innovator in order to achieve cultural goals. For instance, he makes and sells drugs for money and he mugs a man in order to get nice rims for his new car. Caine rarely shows any intention of using institutionalized means of achieving cultural goals—he claims he was never fit for some boring job. However, it must also be considered that Caine was born into a family that belonged to an urban slum and whose way of life had crime woven into it. Caine grew up watching his father and his father’s friends deal drugs while rarely working normal jobs. He claimed that he even learned how to make drugs from his father. As a result, it becomes evident that Caine had all the opportunity in the world to be turned on to the life of a hustler since it was the same life his father led and that his friends would later live as well. In this way, Caine’s life is an ideal example of illegitimate opportunity theory since crime was fused into his way of life.
Growing up a young black man in an urban slum certainly did not deter Caine from deviating either. He grew up with the stigma of a young Black man. This master status led Caine to believe that other people, specifically non-Blacks, always thought that young black men were always in trouble. For example, when Caine

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