When Life Imitates Art

By Priscilla Painton.

Across the country over the past two weeks, young moviegoers have rioted, fought and shot one another in or near theaters showing a film called New Jack City. The new Warner Bros. release, studded with street clashes and gang culture, recounts the rise and fall of a black cracklord. To some alarmed observers, the upheavals suggested that life was imitating art at a time when more and more urban youths are armed and prone to just the sort of violence that such films so graphically portray.

The immediate causes of the outbursts varied from place to place. In the Westwood district of Los Angeles two weeks ago, the trouble started when the Mann theater oversold tickets to the movie's premiere and turned away hundreds of frustrated patrons. About 800 youths went on a rampage, breaking windows and looting stores in the trendy neighborhood near the UCLA campus. It took 100 riot police 3 1/2 hours to quell the disturbance. When it was over, nine people had been arrested and 21 shops damaged.

In Brooklyn, N.Y., a 19-year-old moviegoer was killed in an exchange of more than 100 shots, some from an automatic weapon, after he and another youth left a showing of New Jack City to finish an argument. In Las Vegas a brawl involving about 60 people, including members of the Crips and Bloods gangs, broke out at the 9:40 p.m. showing; another flared when the movie was repeated at 11:30; 18 people were arrested. Such eruptions have prompted theaters to post extra guards. At least 10 houses have pulled the movie.

The disturbances recall the 1970s controversy surrounding so-called black- exploitation movies, a tradition of gangster tales that goes back to Shaft. Civic leaders complain that such movies glamourize crime to an audience that can ill afford the extra temptation. "It plays on the minds of young blacks who are already in trouble," declared the Rev. James Dixon of the Northwest Community Baptist Church in Houston.

New Jack City director Mario Van Peebles, who also plays a detective in the movie, argued that his film has an edifying message: "You see what drugs do to the people and how the drug king is put down. It's a piece of edu- tainment." To fend off the charge that movies with black casts and largely black audiences are particularly likely to incite violence, he reminded reporters that films like Francis Coppola's Godfather Part III had sparked similar outbursts.

Some movie experts maintain that cinematic violence has reached such a pitch that spontaneous imitations are inevitable. Others say that disputes arise because young audiences have long had a habit of talking back to the characters and commenting on the movie as it runs. The difference today is that gangs come to the theaters armed and prepared to settle their altercations with shoot-outs. But for all the hand wringing over the latest outcropping of violence, Hollywood has little incentive to stop making gang movies: New Jack City was No. 2 at the box office last week, grossing an impressive $7 million on just 900 screens.

With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles