A shocking portrayal of urban youth tangled in the web of violence, Menace II Society details the life of anti-hero Caine, whose mother died of a heroin overdose and whose father was killed while selling drugs. Death, not life, is his companion.

The film opens with Caine and his friend O-Dog making a purchase in a Korean liquor store.  The situation explodes into violence as O-Dog argues with the frightened owners.  The scene vaults the observer into the world of angry and confused gang members who survive on small time drug dealing. 

The central message of the film is that Caine is the victim of a many layered societal structure of evil.  He has suffered, as one has said it, the abuse of not being noticed.  The abused and unnoticed gather into groups. Through this and a primal propensity toward imitation, Caine and his friends become the violent ones.  “The ultimate weakness of violence,” observed Martin Luther King, Jr., “is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.”  One is reminded that the Enemy’s creative powers lie not in creating life but deception and death.  Caine’s grandfather asks, “Do you care whether you live or die?”  Caine answers, “I don’t know.” 

We are drawn in empathy toward this drug dealer and murderer.  But it is this empathy toward the victim that confuses our sense of justice and truth, and keeps us spiraling toward a deeper violence (Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie).  There is only One Final Sacrifice, One Victim who can absorb all of the violence, who transcends structures of evil and in whom release may finally be found.

Film essay by Rev. Rebecca Ver Straaten-McSparran
A Discussion follows the screening, featuring panelists Frank Portee, Chante Griffin and Marion Skeete.