Essay Database

Edward Norton portrays a menacing neo-Nazi skinhead--his chest emblazoned with a huge swastika--who rages for retribution over the murder of his father and despair over the America of his childhood that he sees slipping away. In the film there are unnerving scenes of racial violence: of black youths kicking a helpless white student in a high school restroom; of a Korean-owned grocery store terrorized by skinhead thugs; of an African American whose skull is split …

…working-class family. the story is set in Venice Beach, Calif., and it begins by establishing the grievances of the white working class against the black working class. Things used to be great, but then "they" began to move in and the neighborhood turned into a 'hood. Pretty soon "they" took over the playgrounds and the schoolyards and pretty soon after that, everything "we" believed in was wrong and "we" were strangers in our own land.