

Men constantly denigrate each other by calling each other words that negatively refer to women, including "bitch" and "ho." Sex is implied. Language includes hundreds of uses of "f-k" and the "N" word as well as "s-t," "p-y," and "d-k." A 5-year-old is handed a gun. Characters drink alcohol and smoke marijuana and cigarettes. Expect situations in which violence is an automatic over-reaction to even small annoyances, where friends pull guns on one another, and guys get shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The world depicted here is almost completely devoid of tenderness, warmth, and caring, with the exception of a few enduring loyalties. The message is that in many ways, the grim outcomes, the high murder rate, and the high incarceration rate for young black men are in some sense predetermined by a social system designed to keep them from succeeding, sadly still relevant today. Parents need to know that Menace II Society is a bleak, violent, expletive-infused 1993 portrait of the dim prospects for young black men trying to escape the ghetto and to rise above the racism that put them there.
