The Elephant in the Recording Booth: Straight Outta Compton’s Ignorance of Misogyny
In an August 2015 edition of the NY Times, rapper and record producer Dr. Dre formally apologizes to women he’s hurt and physically abused:
“Twenty-five years ago I was a young man drinking too much and in over my head with no real structure in my life. However, none of this is an excuse for what I did. I’ve been married for 19 years and every day I’m working to be a better man for my family, seeking guidance along the way. I’m doing everything I can so I never resemble that man again. I apologize to the women I’ve hurt. I deeply regret what I did and know that it has forever impacted all of our lives.”
Dr. Dre’s carefully worded and seemingly earnest profession of guilt and regret could only have been written in the twenty-first century. In the tyrannical shadow of the Internet, virtually every public figure’s mistakes — no matter how old — inevitably resurface, ready to tear out the heart of his career.
Journalist Dee Barnes, who was assaulted by Dr. Dre in 1991, details her experience in a Gawker editorial, describing the attack as “surreal.” Where the music producer believes he can move beyond his mistakes, Barnes physically cannot: “I suffer from horrific migraines that started only after the attack. People have accused me of holding onto the past; I’m not holding onto the past. I have a souvenir that I never wanted. The past holds onto me.”
While it is brave for someone of Dre’s power and influence to speak from a position of vulnerability, it’s also painfully obvious his NY Times apology is intended more as a salve for the rapper’s heart than those of his victims.
Without a doubt, Dr. Dre is exercising a form of damage control in consideration of his new executive role at Apple — a business achievement that conflicts with the erasure of his darker past as presented onscreen in this summer’s successful N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. Wisely, Dr. Dre owns up to his abusive behavior instead of, say, pulling a Bill Cosby.
I was excited to see Straight Outta Compton. On opening night, I packed myself into the theater with a friend. Afterward, I beamed at the thrill and energy of the cast, the wit of the script, and the direction by F. Gary Gray. But the film’s moments of sexism and willful ignorance of misogyny lingered in my head for days — they were genuinely disturbing.
In Straight Outta Compton, women serve a strictly utilitarian purpose. For example, Dre’s mother “busts his balls” when he’s supposedly wasting his time DJing (as mothers are wont to do). Then, she builds him up when he grieves over the death of his brother. “Jerome looked up to you,” she says, her son’s weeping face between her palms. “I’m proud of you.”
Where Dre’s female support comes in the form of his mother, Eazy-E and Ice Cube have theirs in their respective wives. Each wife is schooled in law and has a sharp business sense, alerting her husband when he’s getting a raw deal. But neither woman acts for herself or shows any agency.
As well, between these arguably tender and archetypical moments of motherly care and spousal counseling, we’re witness to countless groupies in bikinis — many topless, blowing Eazy-E in a bathroom — with virtually no dialogue. Indeed, the females in Straight Outta Compton are merely struts to hold the plot together.
I was particularly uncomfortable during the film’s “Bye, Felicia!” scene, in which a presumed groupie is ejected from N.W.A.’s hotel afterparty when her boyfriend comes knocking. It’s played off as a sophomoric moment of frat house nostalgia, where the whole scene amounts to a set-up and punchline. The entire theater laughed, but I just frowned along with the topless actress who was as much the butt of a joke now as her anecdotal counterpart likely was twenty years ago.
Thematically, these scenes are meant to endear us to the characters. When a groupie is tossed out by Eazy-E, or Dre’s thick-skinned mother professes her pride for him, she does her dance and disappears. Few of the women in the film are even referenced by name; they’re as incidental and purpose-built as the set’s props.
Ironically, Straight Outta Compton’s treatment of women reflects the very real history of misogyny it omits. N.W.A.’s music, its most incendiary lines, did not solely revolve around “Fuck Tha Police.” The anti-establishment bent and “hood journalism” that Ice Cube purports to have popularized in the movie did have a profound impact on hip-hop in the 1990s. But its violent, homophobic, and misogynistic messages have perhaps been far more pernicious.
Like all biopics, Straight Outta Compton chooses which origin stories are suitable for retelling. For instance, the film ignores songs like “A Bitch Iz A Bitch” and Dre’s assaults on Dee Barnes, Michel’le, and Tairrie B in favor of dramatizing the group’s many run-ins with the law. N.W.A.’s inspiration for “Fuck Tha Police” is made abundantly clear in the film, so where are its well-documented offenses against women? Where are the inspirations for such lyrics as, “All women have a little bitch in ‘em / It’s like a disease that plagues their character”?
I don’t mean this piece to be an indictment of gangsta rap. On the contrary, sometimes extreme emotions can best be expressed through art, where fantasy and embellishment can serve a creative end. Moreover, I find criticisms of hardcore rap that accuse the genre of promoting or even causing gang violence to be purely racist paranoia.
That said, it’s inexcusable to ignore the reality and consequences of the misogyny rampant among the young artists who made this game-changing music. Couldn’t we say the abuse of women fueled N.W.A.’s attitude as much as their contempt for racist LAPD cops? It’s perhaps even more disconcerting that Dr. Dre produced Straight Outta Compton (along with Ice Cube). A paragraph in the NY Times is not as powerful as a two-and-a-half hour blockbuster.
In the end, the result — a film whose women are either one-dimensional or totally forgotten — is more disheartening than surprising. Straight Outta Compton’s mythic retelling of pop culture is not dissimilar from most Hollywood films about history: it grooms the past, removing any unresolved knots and tangles so that its narrative can have a rounded and satisfying plot.
Dee Barnes’s assault by Dr. Dre was traumatizing, and her court settlement was pitiful and drawn out, hardly as thrilling as watching Ice Cube onscreen smash up the Priority Records offices. Yes, Straight Outta Compton’s version of the truth makes for an entertaining movie, but it is as fictitious and fantastic as the most delirious cut on The Chronic.
If you enjoyed this, please hit the green “Recommend” button below so others might also enjoy it.
