1. COMING OF AGE AND FREE WILL IN DRUG-CENTERED FILMS.
By Sarah Mercier
Advisor Julie Levinson
Awarded April 2015
Dr. Henry N. Deneault Prof. Virginia Soybel Prof. Julie Levinson

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ABSTRACT
This thesis analyzes a sample of movies in which drug use and trafficking are at the
center of the narrative. It focuses on narrative motifs as well as on the cinematic techniques
used to portray drug consumption. Drug-centered movies can serve as a lens to analyze and
discuss various social issues presented in these films including urbanism, modernity, ethnicity,
private and public social institutions as well as the cultural definitions of childhood and
adulthood. More particularly, there is an emphasis on analyzing how protagonists resort to
drugs as part of their coming of age and their way of dealing with the social issues previously
listed. This raises the question of the extent to which movies may be glorifying drugs as a rite
of passage for young adults and as a way of coping with or evading larger social issues while
also questioning the limitations of human agency and free will in the midst of a complex social
environment. The subjects discussed here reveal general cultural anxieties, not just about drug
use but about cultural ideologies, attitudes and social institutions: in other words, about society
itself.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter I. Introduction
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………4
Structure………………………………………………………………………………….5
Literature Review……………………………………………………………………......7
Sample & Methodology………………………………………………………………...12
Chapter II. The Role of Different Settings in The Portrayal of Drugs in Motion Pictures
1. The Urban Setting - Alienation and Loss of Identity………………………………..15
2. The Suburban Setting – A Teenage Wasteland……………………………………...25
3. The Rural Setting – Economic marginalization……………………………………...28
Chapter III. Differences in the Representation of Drug Users According to Ethnicity, Social
Class and Gender
1. Minorities, Ethnicities and Criminality…………….……….……………………….36
2.Whiteness and the Lesser Degree of Moral Responsibility..………………………....40
3. Women and Drugs……………………………………….…….………………….....43
Chapter IV. Social Institutions and Structure in Drug-Centered Films
1. Private Institutions: Drugs and the Nuclear Family……………………….……….48
2. Public Institutions: Institutionalized Immorality and the Legal System…………...53
Chapter V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………60
Appendix 1 - Filmography……………………………………………………………………63
Appendix 2 – Framework For Movie Analysis and Note Taking ……………………………65
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..100

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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
This thesis analyzes a sample of movies in which drug use and trafficking are at
the center of the narrative. It focuses on narrative motifs as well as on the cinematic techniques
used to portray drug consumption. Drug-centered movies can serve as a lens to analyze and
discuss various social issues presented in these films including urbanism, modernity, ethnicity,
private and public social institutions as well as the cultural definitions of childhood and
adulthood. More particularly, there is an emphasis on analyzing how protagonists resort to
drugs as part of their coming of age and their way of dealing with the social issues previously
listed. This raises the question of the extent to which movies may be glorifying drugs as a rite
of passage for young adults and as a way of coping with or evading larger social issues while
also questioning the limitations of human agency and free will in the midst of a complex social
environment. The subjects discussed here reveal general cultural anxieties, not just about drug
use but about cultural ideologies, attitudes and social institutions: in other words, about society
itself. Whether it is because of a lack of family structure, the institutionalized immorality of the
society characters live in, the alienation of the setting surrounding them or factors for which the
characters are not responsible such as their race or gender, all of the films studied here make us
question the extent to which individuals are free agents responsible for our choices as well as
the extent to which the environment they are exposed to reduces their choices and sometimes
condemns them to adopt a marginal behavior. These movies thus make us question the power
of our individual will and our control over our own fate and agency, while simultaneously
acknowledging the complexity of our cultural attitudes toward the transition to adulthood. By
portraying a range of different protagonists from different ages, races, genders, nationalities,
backgrounds and social classes facing the same struggles with their individualism, coming-of-
age process and the limits of their freewill, these movies expose social and cultural attitudes
toward adulthood. All of the protagonists of the movies selected belong to a specific age group

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ranging from children and teenagers to young adults. All the characters are negotiating and
defining their passage into adulthood by using drugs as a way of coping with that passage,
defining an identity or finding an alternative community.
STRUCTURE
In addition to the introductory and concluding chapter, this thesis will be divided into
three main chapters, each covering exogenous factors to the protagonist’ lives and affecting the
narrative, the settings of the movie, physical factors such as gender and race, and the social
institutions affecting the protagonists’ lives.
The films’ settings will be discussed in Chapter 1 through the analysis of the role of
urban and rural settings in the portrayal of drugs in motion pictures. It is divided in three
subparts, successively analyzing the role of urban, suburban and rural environments in
relationship to the drug narrative. There is a greater emphasis on the urban setting as most
movies in the sample are associated with such a setting. The alliance between drugs and urban
life is a recurrent theme in contemporary cinema because big cities often gather large amounts
of people and thus also inevitably attract crimes and drugs. The first subchapter argues that the
city creates alienation for the protagonist, an alienation that is reinforced through drug use,
which further marginalizes the protagonist. It also discusses how this alienation and the
protagonist’s association with drugs lead to the character’s loss of identity. Similarly, films set
in the suburbs focus on adolescent alienation and boredom with suburban life and the depiction
of the suburbs as a teenage wasteland. For the children entrapped in this suburban life, drugs
become an act of rebellion against traditional ideologies in addition to a liberating experience.
Finally, the chapter will close by discussing the significantly strong contrast between movies
set in a suburban or urban setting and in which drugs are essentially recreational, and movies

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set in rural areas, which have a greater focus on drug trafficking and manufacturing than
consumption. Drug-centered movies set in a rural area have the tendency to portray drug use
and users in a more negative light than urban or suburban movies. Far from being recreational,
those representations contribute to reinforce many stereotypes about the space’s inhabitants,
which are often associated with lower social and economic classes and the “behind the scenes”
of the drug world as well as a more marginalized part of society.
In Chapter 2, the differences in the representation of drug users according to ethnicity,
class and gender are explored along with the different degrees of responsibility for drug use
associated with such factors. This chapter is divided into three subchapters, which discuss the
different representations and representations associated with different ethnicities and argue that
illegal-drug films portray addicts and users with different degrees of moral responsibility and
criminality depending on their ethnicity as well as their race, with a greater criminality
associated with minority protagonists. This leads to a discussion of the association between
drugs and the idea of foreignness. This will be further developed in the second subchapter,
which explores the argument that white characters are portrayed as having a lesser degree of
moral responsibility for drug use, which is most often associated with naive rebellion and
recreational use, contrary to their Black, Arabic or Hispanic counterparts, whose drug use is
criminal and dangerous. Finally, this discussion will lead the way to explore how the
relationship between ethnicities in drug movies in terms of morality becomes more complex
when relationships between black and white characters become sexualized, especially between
white women and black men, thus leading to a analysis of the moral degradation of women and
its symbol. The depiction of women in relationship to drug use and trafficking will also be
discussed and it will be argued that women are represented as the least responsible protagonists
when involved with drugs and that the movies often blame men, especially non-white ones, for
the female characters’ moral degradation.

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Social institutions and their functions in drug centered films will be discussed in
Chapter 3 which is divided into two subchapters analyzing private and public social institutions
such as the nuclear family and the legal system. Regarding private institutions, the argument is
that more often than not, the family structure, or lack thereof, is responsible for the destruction
of the character through his or her involvement in drug use. The relationship between the
family and the drug narrative is thus far more complex and, beyond destructiveness, also
involves opposition, complicity and consolation where a lack of family structure, authority or
even presence is often responsible for the protagonists’ involvement with drugs. Rather than the
drug narrative destroying the family, it seems that more often than not the family is responsible
for the destruction of the protagonist, who turns toward drug use to compensate for familial
problems. The movies’ critique of public institutions such as the legal system is also discussed
through an analysis of the representation of the judiciary system, correctional facilities and law
enforcement. The second subchapter further explores how drug-centered movies generally
portray law enforcement representatives in a negative light and argues that by placing our
dramatic sympathies with those that break the laws rather than with those who enforce it, drug-
centered movies critique the efficacy and morality of our legal system by portraying aspects of
its institutionalized immorality.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature review aims to put diverse scholars in dialogue with one another around
the themes of drugs-centered movies and the different subtexts around which this thesis
revolves in order to offer a broad vision of the scholarly discussion that already exists around
the portrayal of drugs in contemporary cinema. The scope of this review is limited to published
scholarly work in English. The availability of sources varies depending on subject areas. While

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some subjects such as gender and ethnicity have voluminous scholarship, other subjects such as
the depiction of representatives of the law are more limited.
There exists a large body of scholarship that analyzes the role and importance of
urbanism in movies, not always in the context of drugs but in a broader cinematographic
context. A recurrent theme in the body of literature is the ambiguous and deeply rooted
relationship between the city and the theme of alienation. That relationship is most noticeable
in movies that tell a collective story of the city through the tales of individual lives and
experiences, according to Henry Jenkins in "Tales of Manhattan: Mapping the Urban
Imagination Through Hollywood Film." Scholars such as Jenkins and Nezar AlSayyad in
Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern From the Reel to Real, agree that in
contemporary cinema, the streets are more than ever an essential part of the mise-en-scène.
Most contemporary movies, especially those in an urban setting, have incorporated the street
culture in their narrative. In terms of drug movies specifically, scholars including Earle Barcus
and Susan Jankowski in “Drugs and the Mass Media” argue that movies dealing with illegal
drugs have a strong tendency to emphasize a sense of alienation created by the city and the
urban setting, reinforced through drug use, which creates both a physical and psychological
alienation within that setting. The urban setting thus becomes a space of alienation from which
characters cannot escape except through drug use, which provides a metaphorical escape as
well as rebellion toward an environment that has already marginalized them. The drug use in
that environment raises the question of the extent to which characters are responsible for their
actions and to what extent do those actions result from the character’s environment. Drug use
is, then, not just a weakness of spirit or character, but also the result of exterior factors, which
have affected and shaped the protagonists’ decisions, behaviors, and moral characters
symbolized by their involvement with drugs, thus questioning the limitations of human agency
and free will in the midst of complex social environments. In this view, society, for having

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marginalized the character in its urban space, is also responsible for the protagonists’ decision
to get involved with drugs. Furthermore, scholars such as Andrea Rinke in “Liminal Bodies in
Liminal Spaces: The Depiction of Drug Addicted Youth in the Films Christiane F and Drifter,”
explore how the depiction of the spaces in which the characters evolve can contribute to the
glamorization of drugs. Rinke focuses on the depiction of urban settings and, more precisely,
the liminal aspect of strategic locations in the movie such as the Berlin Zoo Station (Rinke, 2).
She explores how a stylish depiction of the spaces in which the characters progress can
contribute to the glamorization of drugs. In Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981). By explaining how
the “stylish depiction of the nocturnal West Berlin spaces as cool sites of adventure for young
people,” Rinke reveals the importance of how the depictions of urban life and drug use get knit
together so the cinematic city in which the protagonists lives becomes the locus of the
glamorization of the junkie existence.
In this thesis, drugs will serve as a gateway to the subtexts these authors discuss while
also exploring the idea of identity. The theme of identity loss is rarely mentioned in the
scholarly discussion and yet it is ever-present in the sample of movies. There will also be a
focus on analyzing the depiction of urban settings and more precisely the liminal aspect of
strategic locations to better understand how alienation is created. The word “liminal” comes
from the Latin word limens, which means, "threshold." A liminal space is a place of transition
and waiting -- of not knowing. Depicting and analyzing such a space is thus especially
significant as movies use them to reinforce a sensation of loss and alienation.
Among analyses of the role of the environment and settings in movies, there is a smaller
body of scholarly discussion around the representation of the suburbs and rural areas in
contemporary cinema. Regarding the suburban setting, many scholars such as Thomas Halper
and Douglas Muzzio in "Pleasantville? The Suburb and Its Representation in American
Movies" claim movies present the suburbs in a negative light, describing them as either dens of

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dysfunction, a teenage wasteland or the ultimate symbol of a shattered American dream, as
argued by Timotheus Vermeulen in Scenes from the Suburbs: Suburban Space in US Film and
Television. By exploring the experience of coming of age in the suburbs and the role drugs play
within that setting, this thesis will further add to the existing scholarly discussion and explore
how drugs are portrayed as both a coming-of-age rite of passage and a symbol of rebellion
against the quiet and traditional life symbolized by the suburbs.
Finally, there also exists a body of scholarly discussion around the role of rural settings
in films. As with the suburbs, scholars often seem to talk about this setting in a negative light.
The most interesting part of the discussion is that the scholars’ analysis of the suburbs and the
city focus on the setting and the space, while the scholarly discussion of the rural settings
focuses more on the inhabitants of the space than on the space itself. The discussion is thus
centered on the representation and stereotypes of the inhabitants of rural areas as “monstrous,
grotesque, diseased and polluted,” as argued by Bernice Murphy in The Rural Gothic in
American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness (Murphy, 134). In
order to further contribute to this discussion, this thesis will use drugs as a lens through which
the space of the rural setting will be analyzed, while also discussing social classes in both an
American rural setting and an international one (Colombia). It will be argued that, contrary to
urban- and suburban-set films, which often portray drugs as recreational or liberating, movies
depicting drugs in the rural setting focus on a more industrial, crude and non-glamorized
depiction of the behind-the-scenes aspects of that world.
The amount of scholarly literature around Chapter Three’s themes -- gender, race and
ethnicity-- is voluminous. Therefore, the review and analyses of scholarly discussion has been
limited to scholars discussing such subtexts in drug-centered movies specifically. Many
scholars consider how both ethnicity and race play an important role in defining the portrayal
of individuals’ relationships to illegal drug use in film. Some, such as Timothy A. Hickman in

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“Drugs and Race in American Culture: Orientalism in the Turn-of-the-Century Discourse of
Narcotic Addiction,” even go as far as stating that the “discourse surrounding the discovery of
the drug problem was (and is) racist,” an idea which will be prevalent in all of Chapter 2
(Hickman, 72). One of the most interesting ideas that influences a large part of the chapter is
the notion that films portray the addict population as divided into different groups by social
class, ethnicity and gender, all of which have “a different degree of moral responsibility” in
regards to drug use and addiction (Hickman, 81). A recurring claim by scholars is that illegal
drugs are also associated with an idea of foreignness and otherness. This thesis will argue that
illegal-drug movies perpetuate stereotypes of race and ethnicity by portraying white drug users
as either victims or morally free rebels while minority characters are portrayed as threats to
society through their relationship to drugs as well as through the endangerment of white
women. Only a small group of scholars, such as Susan Boyd in Hooked: Drug War Films in
Britain, Canada, and the U.S discuss the role of women in drug-centered films beyond their
symbol as the “moral barometer of Western nations” (Boyd, 113). This thesis will put an
emphasis on the representation of women in relation to drugs in order to further contribute to
the scholarly discussion by arguing that the moral degradation of white women symbolizes the
fall of a nation while demonizing those portrayed as responsible for that degradation, namely
characters from different ethnicities.
Chapter 4 deals with social institutions, particularly the family and law enforcement.
Regarding the former, a vast majority of scholars argue that contemporary movies depict drugs
as an external threat that contaminates the private sphere of the nuclear family, thus
representing the destruction of a national symbol of unity, tradition and stability due to counter-
culture lifestyles. However, a few scholars such as Paul Manning in Drugs and Popular
Culture: Drugs, Media and Identity in Contemporary Society argue the contrary by discussing
how the family often plays a determining role in the drug narrative by being the cause of the

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protagonists’ involvement with drugs. The latter idea is the inspiration for most of the chapter’s
claim that the relationship between drugs and the family involves feelings of “opposition,
sustenance, complicity and consolation.” rather than simple destructiveness (Manning, 117).
Rather than the drug narrative destroying the family, it seems like more often than not the
family is responsible for the destruction of the protagonist, who turns towards drug use as
compensation for familial problems.
Regarding the depiction of the legal system and more precisely law enforcement; the
scholarly discussion claims these social institutions are mainly portrayed in a very negative
light. Some scholars such as Stuart Poyntz in “Honey, I Shot the Kids: Hollywood And The
War On Drugs” mention a “cruel and bitter divisions between the police and the community”
as a common stereotype in drug-centered films (Poyntz, 1). In this discussion, what varies is the
degree of immorality associated with the representatives of the law. While some scholars such
as MaCherie Placide and Casey LaFrance in "The County Sheriff in Films: A Portrait of Law
Enforcement as a Symbol of Rural America" categorizes policemen according to their
intelligence and not their degree of immorality, others such as Anthony Chase in Movies on
Trial: The Legal System on The Silver Screen argue that there are “little differences between
the cold-as-ice criminals and their pursuers” (Chase, 86). Examples from a significant number
of the sample’s movies will be used to illustrate the scholar’s different views of the
representatives of the law while also exploring the greater critique and, sometimes, satire of the
legal system.
SAMPLE & METHODOLOGY
An important part of the methodology consists of content analysis of the sample of
films selected for this thesis. This also includes an analysis of the visual conventions used in
said films to depict the drug world in order to better understand how the films present the

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subtexts previously discussed. The sample focuses on drug-centered narratives that revolve
around the illegal trade or consumption of drugs and in which illegal drugs are a central part of
the characters’ existence and evolution. All the movies selected in the sample belong to the era
beginning in the early 80’s until now. The timeline starts in the early 80’s because it represents
the official beginning of the “war on drugs” as declared by Ronald Reagan on October 14,
1982, which arguably affected the way the film industry has portrayed illegal drug consumption
and trade. This time period is especially significant since the beginning of President Reagan’s
presidency marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration for
nonviolent drug law offenses (rom 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 19971
), the
implementation of zero tolerance policies, blocked syringe access programs, highly publicized
anti-drug campaigns such as “Just Say No,” launched by his wife Nancy Reagan, and the
DARE education program.
In order to explore the theme of coming of age, all the protagonists of the movies
selected belong to a consistent age group ranging from children and teenagers to young adults.
All the characters are negotiating and defining their passage into adulthood by using drugs as a
way of coping with that passage and defining an identity or finding an alternative community.
There is therefore a recurrent theme of “coming of age” in all the movies presented in this
sample. The focus of the sample is on hard drugs, mainly heroin, cocaine, acid (LSD) and
ecstasy since they are more criminalized in today’s society than soft drugs; however, soft drugs
are still discussed in this essay, as they are often presented as a gateway to more serious drug
use. The movies contained in the sample include Over The Edge (Jonathan, Kaplan, 1979),
Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981), Kids (Larry Clark, 1995), La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995),
Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), Gia (Michael Cristofer, 1998), Requiem For A Dream
(Darren Aronofsky, 2000), Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Martson, 2004) and Winter’s Bone
1
"A Brief History of the Drug War." Drug Policy Alliance. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war>.

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(Debra Granik, 2010). More information regarding the movie sample, including directors,
countries of production, settings, drugs, social classes and ethnicities, represented can be found
in Appendix 1 (Filmography) and Appendix 2 (Framework for movie analysis and note taking).
Other movies such as Traffic (2000), Less Than Zero (1987) or The Basketball Diaries (1995)
are also pertinent and relevant to the topic. They were, however, not included in this thesis’
sample due to the redundancies and similarities of the story lines and themes discussed
compared to other movies presented in the sample. This thesis’ sample of movies already gives
an adequate overview of the issues discussed and central subtexts and approaches the narrative
films take to drug use. I feel like this thesis’ sample is the best collective group to explore this
topic because it contains authenticity. Approximately half of the movies from the sample,
including as Christiane F., Over The Edge and Gia, are inspired by true stories, real
protagonists and tragic but authentic events. The other half of the sample’s movies, including as
Trainspotting, Winter’s Bone and Requiem For a Dream, are adapted from novels. This gives
the movie sample a dose of authenticity while also justifying why this thesis has focused on
analyzing dramatic movies rather than comedies such as “stoner flicks.”

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CHAPTER II.
THE ROLE OF URBAN, SUBURBAN AND RURAL SETTINGS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF
DRUGS IN MOTION PICTURES.
The Urban Setting: Alienation And Loss Of Identity
Many drug-centered movies take place in the city and seem to explore what modernity
and the city means in relationship to multiculturalism. This chapter will explore how drug
movies portray the urban setting as alienating for drug users, thus reinforcing their position as
outsiders of society. This outsider status is created by both a physical exclusion to poor parts of
the city in which the characters are trapped, as well as the psychological alienation of the urban
life leading to the loss of one’s identity and the turn to drugs are as an escape. The film sample
selected for this chapter speaks vividly about problems of urban life and modernity across
different cultures. This chapter explores to what extent those films suggest similar outlooks on
drugs and the city as well as the culture differences they expose between inhabitants and drug
users of different spaces. Overall, it will be argued that the movies analyzed here have a
panoramic perspective, which is described by Henry Jenkins in “Tales of Manhattan: Mapping
the Urban Imagination through Hollywood Film” as the idea that “Rather than telling a single
story about the fictional characters and their experiences, such works sought to tell the
collective story of the city” (Jenkins, 4).
Many scholars agree that there is an ambiguous and deeply rooted relationship between
the city and alienation as a theme in contemporary cinema. The street is an essential part of the
movies’ mise-en-scène, and most films located within an urban setting “revolve around its
culture,” according to Nezar AlSayyad in Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from
the Reel to Real (AlSayyad, 192). The streets are more than ever an essential part of the

16. 16
movies’ mise-en-scène. Most contemporary movies, especially those set in an urban setting,
have thus incorporated the street culture in their narrative. Other scholars, such as Henry
Jenkins in “Tales of Manhattan: Mapping the Urban Imagination through Hollywood Film,”
further elaborate on the ambiguous feelings associated with the city in cinema, which portrays
characters moving to the city as both seeking “social mobility and personal freedom” while also
fearing the “alienation and isolation of inhabiting a world of strangers and they felt buffeted by
the rapid pace and fragmented nature of modernity” (Jenkins, 4). In terms of drug movies
specifically, scholars such as Earle Barcus and Susan Jankowski in “Drugs and the Mass
Media” list the urban drug culture in a context of “helpless alienation” as one of the five major
themes of drug movies (Barcus, Jankowski, 95). Drug-centered movies thus seem to have a
strong tendency to emphasize a sense of alienation created by the city and the urban setting,
reinforced through drug use, which creates both a physical and psychological alienation within
that setting. The urban setting thus becomes a space of alienation from which characters cannot
escape except through drug use, which provides a metaphorical escape, such as seen in movies
such as Christiane F. (1981), Trainspotting (1996), Requiem For A Dream (2000), La Haine
(1995) and Gia (1998).
Christiane F. – Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo is a 1981 German movie directed by
Ulrich Edel based on a non-fiction book derived from tape recordings of teenager Christiane F/
about her downfall at the age of thirteen because of drugs and prostitution. The movie portrays
the drug scene in West Berlin in the 1970’s through the lives of heroin-addicted teenagers. As
Jack Stevenson claims in Addicted: The Myth and Menace of Drugs in Film, “Christiane F. is
essentially a social documentary on the dysfunctional lifestyle of children, families and the
community, created by the urban alienation of tower-block life” (Stevenson, 166).
Cinematographically, the movie depicts the urban alienation of the tower-block life through
“exterior shots that show monolithic and inhuman tower blocks against the grey and dreary

17. 17
Berlin skyline” (Stevenson, 166). One of the
children’s hiding places is the rooftop of the
Mercedes-Benz building, again “emphasizing the lack
of open street space and the ghetto-like quality of
tower blocks” (Stevenson, 168). Adrea Rinke in
“Liminal Bodies in Liminal Spaces: The Depiction of
Drug Addicted youth in the Films Christiane F and
Drifter” further explains how “the neo-noir-ish images of Berlin by night” contributes to
portraying drug addicts as the “exotic and alien “other”” (Rinke, 5). The movie’s message goes
beyond the dangers of illegal drug use and portrays the “context of the breakdown of the family
and community structures within the urban environment” (Stevenson, 173). The
cinematographic portrayal of the urban environment as being a context for alienation and
breakdown of structures is also present in all the other movies contained in this thesis’s sample
such as Trainspotting, Gia, Requiem for a Dream, Kids, and La Haine.
Trainspotting is a 1996 British crime comedy drama movie directed by Danny Boyle
and based on a novel of the same name. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in an
economically depressed area of Edinburgh in the late 1980’s. Drug addiction and the
exploration of urban poverty are essential to the narratives. The title of the movie comes from
one of the daily activities of the group of friends, which consists of writing down the serial
numbers of all trains entering and leaving the Edinburgh station. According to Anne-Marie
Brumm, this senseless action is a bigger symbol for “the utter uselessness and meaninglessness
of their drug-infested lives” (Brumm, 65). In relation to the urban setting, the most meaningful
scene is when the group of friends decides to take a walk in nature after having gone cold
turkey. The contrast between the group with their rock-and-roll looks and modern fashion, and
the natural setting shows how much the characters do not fit in and emphasizes a sense of loss
Christiane
F.
-­‐
The
children
observe
the
grey
and
endless
tower
blocks

18. 18
from the character who wish to be drug-free and yet do not feel comfortable in a drug-free
world. The characters are very uncomfortable outside of the city; one of them assumes a fetal
position and they leave quickly, deciding to go back on heroin “as soon as possible.” The
natural setting is portrayed with dull and pale colors. The long, low three-shot emphasizes the
emptiness of the great natural space while the urban setting is portrayed with vivid colors and
bright lights. The crude contrast the movie creates between boring, drug-free nature and the
dangerous and poor but exciting urban environment helps the audience understand why the
characters do not want to leave their urban environment, despite being alienated from society
through crime and drug use.
Requiem for a Dream also portrays a crude contrast between a natural and urban
environment. Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 American
psychological drama film based on a novel of the same name.
Through the lives of four addicts, Harry, Sarah, Marion and Tyron,
the film portrays different forms of addiction from illegal heroin
drug use to legal drugs such as diet pills. The film presents the
urban setting with low-key lighting and crude colors, thus giving
an overview image of dirtiness and poverty in which the
Trainspotting:
The
group
of
friends
in
a
natural
setting
In
contrast,
the
urban
setting
is
portrayed
in
a
much
more
exciting,
mysterious
way
Requiem
For
A
Dream:
Tyrone
meets
his
clients
in
a
closed
and
scary
amusement
park

19. 19
characters are trapped. When Harry (Jared Leto) is high, however, he achieves a metaphorical
escape from that urban setting through his dreams in which he is by the sea. The colors are
warm and the camera focuses on conveying the beauty of the natural, empty space.
Furthermore, the camera offers much wider and longer shots than in the rest of the movie,
emphasizing a feeling of freedom offered by the natural space
compared to the close-ups that imprison the audience during the
rest of the movie. However, Harry’s escape is only metaphorical as
he quickly wakes up. At the end of the movie, Harry is portrayed
as dreaming of that place again, only to fall into a black space,
never reaching the sea by the end of the bridge. Both Requiem for a Dream and
Trainspotting acknowledge nature and the non-urban setting as a drug-free place, but they also
portray those places as either inaccessible or impossible to live in when one is used to an urban
lifestyle. Nature, on the other hand, is portrayed differently. While Requiem for a Dream
portrays it as idyllic it is also not real or attainable because it is a dream, a vision that never
comes true. Trainspotting, on the other hand, portrays nature in a less glorified, more realistic
manner. Even though the urban settings in both movies are portrayed as poor and dangerous,
they are also portrayed as inescapable.
The idea of the urban setting as inescapable and its alienation as inevitable is central to
the narrative of La Haine. La Haine, which translates to “The Hate” depicts the life of three
young friends, Vinz, Saïd and Hubert, and their struggle living in the “banlieues” (projects) of
Paris. The title of the movie comes from a line spoken by one of the characters: "La haine
attire la haine!" ("Hatred breeds hatred.") In “Racial Reflection: La Haine and The Art of
Borrowing, ” Ruth Doughty and Kate Griffiths explain how the banlieue “is characterized by
its imposing concrete architecture” which conveys the sense that “the high-rise urban landscape
emits an air of entrapment as the boys are physically enclosed in all directions by cement
Harry’s
vision

20. 20
structures” (Doughty, Griffiths, 124). The fact that the movie is in black and white further gives
the images a dull and sad aspect, as life in the projects is portrayed as meaningless and boring.
The movie follows the three friends for only nineteen hours
but those hours seem endless. This is achieved by regular
interruption of the movie by a black screen indicating the
time with a ticking sound in the background. This is
significant because it conveys to the audience a sense of
how slowly time passes for the characters alienated and
trapped in the slow-moving life of the projects. After that image, a scene most always follows
where the characters are silent and doing nothing for a couple of minutes, or where a secondary
character goes on endlessly about a story that has no sense, thus creating an intense sense of
boredom from the young men’s daily lives in the banlieues. This also helps shift our dramatic
sympathy to the protagonists’ side in terms of drug use. We understand that beyond a weakness
of spirit, drug use also represents a metaphorical escape and liberation for the protagonists from
both their boring existence and the physical setting they are trapped in.
Furthermore, when the projects are filmed from above, they seem endless as the grey
and lifeless buildings seem to never end on the horizon, thus
perpetuating the idea of the impossible escape and imprisonment.
This is achieved by the camera craning up to a high angle long
shot, which offers an overview of the never-ending
banlieues. Doughty and Griffiths further elaborate on this
aspect by explaining that, “In direct contrast to the condition of enclosure and stasis
experienced by Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, the camera work throughout the film is not constrained
but instead has the ability to float in and around the action as an ethereal presence” (Doughty,
Griffiths, 124). Moreover, when Hubert expresses a very strong desire to leave the project-- “I
La
Haine:
The
movie
is
often
interrupted
by
black
screen
indicating
time
passing
by
slowly
The
“Banlieues”
of
Paris
reaching
beyond
the
horizon

21. 21
have to leave this place”-- his mother mocks him by responding, “And if you stumble upon a
grocery store on your way home bring us back lettuce,” thus illustrating the characters’
acknowledgement of the impossibility of ever truly leaving the banlieues. Furthermore, they
are trapped not only from exiting the banlieues, but also from entering the inner city of Paris,
which is portrayed the luxurious setting of the white bourgeois lifestyle. When the group of
friends visit another drug dealer who happens to be white, the man is portrayed as rich, living
in a beautiful and spacious apartment in the center of Paris, which thus creates an important
contrast with Saïd and Hubert who live in the projects, despite also being involved in drug
trade. The group of friends also tries to crash an art exhibition in which they first try to fit in
with the artistic and rich setting, thus illustrating their desire to be part of the bourgeois life of
the inner city. However, their manners and appearances quickly betray them and they are asked
to leave.
Alienation from the urban environment is often conveyed through a sense of loneliness
such as in the biographical film Gia. The movie tells the story of international model Gia
Marie Carangi, a Philadelphia native who moves to New York at age seventeen to pursue a
career in modeling. She quickly rises in the industry but falls into drug addiction, which
eventually leads her to contract HIV and die at a young age. The urban setting of the movie
plays a crucial role in Gia’s (Angelina Jolie) downfall and her alienation is reinforced through
the theme of loneliness. The city plays a crucial role in Gia’s debauchery and fall from the
suburban teenager she used to be. The first place she is portrayed as doing cocaine is a
nightclub. Right after, Gia is seen contemplating a beautiful sunrise over the New York
skyline while still being high. The warm and pale colors of the sunset contrasting with the
black architectural skyline make this first drug experience, and the beginning of her downfall,
look liberating and beautiful. Cinematographically, this is reinforced through the long shot

22. 22
which creates a sense of grandeur and beauty and which contrast with the close-ups used in
previous scenes such as in nightclub and gave a feeling of
entrapment.
However, Gia is also portrayed as extremely lonely
while living in the big city. She ends up alone at many
points throughout the movie, which accelerates her
downfall into drugs. She is left by both a boyfriend and a
girlfriend, her modeling career is lonely as most people in the
industry resent her, and she lacks a family structure, as her mother is never present during her
struggles and refuses to take her in when she learns Gia is HIV positive. That sense of
loneliness is cinematographically emphasized through visual metaphors such as when Gia
runs away from a shooting wearing a long expensive red gown as well as geisha makeup and
hair to go to the poorest area of New York looking for her dealer. The setting is dark and
Gia’s bright red costume catches both the bystanders’
attention as well as the audience’s. This scene shows how
she does not fit in this setting and yet cannot escape its
alienation. Again, her only escape is through drug use.
By alienating the characters, the urban setting also
contributes to creating a sense of lost identity, as Jenkins
explains with a theory he calls “Through the Rear-View Mirror” which states that
“Hollywood’s spatial stories repeatedly tell us that we are a product of the spaces we inhabit”
and, as a result, “As we move through the city, we do not remain separate from it; the city
becomes a part of us, alters our behavior, redefines our identity” (Jenkins, 16). In Gia, the
urban setting plays a crucial role in Gia’s downfall and loss of herself. When leaving the
suburbs of Philadelphia and moving into New York, she calls her mother after a few days, who
Gia
contemplates
a
sunrise
over
the
NY
skyline
while
high
on
cocaine.
Gia’s
appearance
contrast
with
the
setting
she
is
lost
in.

23. 23
tells her to just “Be yourself!” to which she responds, “Who’s that?” During the scene where
she escapes the photo-shoot to search for heroin, she is high and rides on a stranger’s
motorcycle with the New York skyline in the background. The scene is depicted in slow motion
to enhance her dizziness as well as her sense of losing her grip on who she is. Furthermore, the
contrast between the characterization of Gia as a teenager at the beginning of the movie and the
woman she becomes in New York also emphasizes the fact that she has lost her core identity in
the city, through her downfall into drugs. At the beginning of the movie, Gia is depicted as a
girl with short pink spikey hair and dresses and who behaves like a tomboy. When arriving in
New York, however, she is portrayed as radically different from all the other models and seems
rebellious and unique, as she is still a child. However, Gia’s portrayal in the movie quickly
alternates between her rebellious side as a lost teenager and her glamorous one as an
international supermodel and the woman she was forced to become. This is achieved through
alternating color scenes with black and white shots and close-ups where Gia is portrayed as
glamorous, sophisticated and chic, the complete opposite of who she truly is.
The idea of loss of identity in urban settings can also be related to ethnicity and race.
Doughty and Griffiths elaborate on that idea of a loss of identity by explaining how in La
Haine, characters frequently look into mirrors. However, “what becomes visible in the
reflective surface of the looking glass is not a sense of identity, but rather a sense of lack” for
the characters have lost relationships to their ancestry and ethnic and religious origins
Gia
before
starting
her
modeling
career
Gia
during
a
photo-­‐shoot

24. 24
(Doughty, Griffiths, 117). In the banlieues, all ethnicities are mixed together and the characters
lose connection to part of their identity such as religion and cultural connections: for Vinz it is
Judaism, for Saïd, Islam and for Hubert his relationships to his
West-African roots. In addition to being “estranged from their
ancestry” they are also “marginalized from the society of their
present” which is why, the film dramatizes a quest for a sense of
identity (Doughty, Griffiths, 117). David Moscowitz in “You
Talkin’ To Me?” Mediating Postmodern Blackface in La Haine”
further elaborates on the theme of identity in La Haine with a concept he calls “Postmodern
Blackface,” which he describes as “topological application of identity that explores the
liminality of Whiteness and the performance of post assimilatory difference” (Moscowitz, 1).
During one of the movie’s most famous scenes, a close-up shows Vinz (Vincent Cassel)
simulating a gunplay in front of his mirror while repeatedly saying “You talking to me?”
referring to Taxi Driver, another movie about urban debauchery and alienation. Moscowitz
suggests that this scene “closely resembles an iconic publicity still of 1900s Jewish vaudeville
performer Eddie Cantor ‘‘blacking up’’ as he applies burnt cork to his White face” (Moscowitz,
2). Beyond just “acting Black,” Vinz is in a sense cross-dressing by putting on “insignias of a
sex, class, or race that stands in binary opposition to one’s own’’(Moscowitz, 2).
Finally, the loss of identity because of urban alienation is also prevalent in regards to
childhood. By portraying characters in urban settings who enter the drug world young, movies
such as Kids and Christiane F. leave “the distinction between child and teenager (…)
ambiguous” (Stevenson, 168). Kids portrays one day in the life of a group of sexually active
teenagers in New York City and their unrestrained behavior towards sex and substance abuse
during the HIV era in the mid 1990’s. In the movie, the city is portrayed as a place where
children lose their innocence, and thus their identity as children, too early. The loss of
La
Haine:
Vinz’s
practicing
his
“you
talking
to
me?”
monologue
in
front
of
the
mirror

25. 25
innocence is symbolized for boys through drug consumption at a very young age and for girls
by the loss of their virginity while still being pre-pubescent. Similarly, the children in
Christiane F. lose their innocence and identity as children through sex and drug consumption
because of the dangerous urban setting they are imprisoned within. The loss of innocence is
further symbolized through the theme of prostitution in the urban setting. The Berlin zoo
station is the place that symbolizes that loss of identity since it represents the place where the
children come to sell themselves into prostitution as well as buy and consume heroin. The
movie depicts explicit sex scenes involving gay pedophilia and sadomasochism as well as
references to coprophilia to emphasize the crude contrast between the two fourteen- year- old
children protagonists and the dangers and vices they face in the world of drugs.
2. The Suburban Setting – A Teenage Wasteland
After discussing the power of the urban setting in relation to drug, this thesis will go on to
explore that representation in the suburbs and in rural areas which reveal interesting and
distinct perspectives on these three settings. Thomas Halper and Douglas Muzzio in
“Pleasantville?: The Suburb and Its Representation in American Movies” explain that “Fin de
siècle movies generally portrayed the American suburb as a den of dysfunction” as well as “a
teenage wasteland” (Halper, Muzzio, 457). Most of the movies from that time period “offer a
tour of the suburban heart of darkness, presenting clichéd and ironic images of the suburbs and
their denizens.” Page? Overall, the suburban life is “a twisted nightmare of repressed desires
and shattered hopes” from which drugs can often be an escape (Halper, Muzzio, 457). The
movie, Over the Edge for example, portrays the suburbs as a teenage wasteland and a den of
dysfunction from which the use of drugs is an escape. Over The Edge was directed by Jonathan
Kaplan and released in 1979. The movie follows a group of teenagers living in a fictionalized

26. 26
planned community called New Granada, set in the desert. There is nothing for the kids to do in
this suburban life and nowhere to go except for a recreational center that closes at 6 p.m. In
their zeal to attract industry to their town, the parents have all but neglected their children and,
as a result, the children have turned towards vandalism, hooliganism, and drug use to create
their own entertainment.
The representation of the suburbs as a teenage wasteland is made explicit in the opening
scene of the movie, which starts with a close-up on a sign welcoming the audience to New
Granada. A blue text then appears across the screen stating:
“This story is based on true incidents occurring during the 70’s in
a planned suburban community of condominiums and town
homes, where city planners ignored the fact that a quarter of
the population was 15 years or younger.” This immediately
plunges the audience into the main subject of the film: the children’s alienation and boredom
with the suburban life and the depiction of the latter as a teenage wasteland. Diverse shots show
clichéd scenes of suburban life depicting identical houses, identical cars and perfectly
manicured lawns, over which the title of the movie appears in blue. This emphasizes the
characterization of the suburbs as “conformity factories” and as “deliberately constructed
artifacts” which have “the curse of inauthenticity” (Halper, Muzzio, 556). According to
Timotheus Vermeulen in Scenes From the Suburbs: The Suburb in Contemporary US Film and
Television, “the suburb encourages a two dimensional, dualist story that finds it fits somewhere
between Dante’s purgatory and Sigmund Freud’s thesis on civilization and its discontents”
(Vermeulen, 2). This dualist story is reinforced by a “correlation between flatness,
superficiality and simplicity.” In other words, the suburbs often “literally lack[s] dimensions”
by being represented as flatland, which symbolizes that they are “culturally bland, socially
conformist, emotionally shallow” by being “architecturally homogenous” (Vermeulen, 16).
Over
The
Edge:
Sign
welcoming
the
audience
to
the
suburban
city

27. 27
That quote applies particularly well to Over The Edge, which is set in a desert area. The
flatness of the land in which the children wander further symbolizes the flatness of their
existence. This is reinforced by a high angle camera placement which offers long shots
throughout the whole movie and which emphasizes the emptiness and flatness of the space and
land around the children.
Throughout the movie, the children constantly express their hatred of the suburban life and
their desire to leave, saying things like “Living here is a punishment” or “Someday I’d like to
live in a real city.” Furthermore, many scenes portray the group of children walking around the
countryside. The contrast is very strong between their trendy and modern clothes, hairstyle and
general fashion and the deserted suburban and agricultural area in which they wander and
where they so obviously do not fit. They represent younger generations seeking modernity
while wandering around in a literal desert. These scenes are very similar to the one in
Trainspotting where the group of friends visits a natural site
while being sober. The contrast between the characters’ similarly
modern clothes, hair and fashion and the rural space where they
do not fit is further reinforced by painful facial expressions. They
feel so awkward in the rural setting that they make the decision
to immediately go back on drugs. This shows how “Their
parents’ suburban dream of comfort and security has left them trapped” (Halper, Muzzio, 552).
As a result, the children turn towards crime and drugs such as acid, speed, hash and marijuana
as a way of entertaining themselves and escaping their situation. However, the children are not
portrayed as criminals. With movies like Kids, the audience is forced to acknowledge the vice
and criminality of the children. The protagonists lose the audience’s sympathy through explicit
scenes of rape and violence. Over the Edge, however, creates dramatic sympathy for the
audience to be on the children’s side as we understand that, “They are not stupid, but, bedeviled
Long
shot
depicting
the
group
of
rebellious
teenagers
wandering
around
the
empty
space

28. 28
by fantasies, ennui, and resentment” (Halper, Muzzio, 552). The children’s “criminality” is
mainly aimed at annoying policemen and getting their parents’ attention rather than doing evil,
contrary to the children in Kids. Both groups of children, however, use drugs as a gateway from
the life they are trapped in and the alienation they suffer from. Although the children in Kids
are alienated by being robbed of their childhood and losing their identity as children in the
urban setting, the children in Over The Edge are also alienated but, rather, by the boredom of
their life which is reflects in the setting that entraps them.
3. The Rural Setting – Economic Marginalization
In order to fully grasp the differences in the portrayal of drugs according to different
settings, this thesis will now explore how movies set in rural areas portray drug use and users
differently than the urban or suburban movies analyzed so far and will discuss what those
representations imply as well as the stereotypes they reinforce. Bernice M. Murphy in her book
The Rural Gothic in American Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness
explores the “long-standing tradition in which backwoods inhabitants are depicted in a negative
light” and how habitants of rural areas are often portrayed as monstrous “others” (Murphy, 8).
She further elaborates on how the American cinema “has a very long story of representing the
inhabitants of its own isolated rural places or backwoods communities as monstrous, grotesque,
diseased and polluted” (Murphy, 134). The wilderness of the rural parts of the country thus
reflects on its inhabitants, making them look like “others,” a depiction that is often reinforced
through drug use and trafficking in movies such as Winter’s Bone. Winter’s Bone tells the life
of a teenage girl in the rural Ozarks who searches for her missing father as her family is about
to be evicted and separated from one another. In her quest to find her father, she stumbles into
the dangerous underworld of illegal methamphetamine labs that rule the poor area and its
habitants. She risks her life in her search for answers to her father’s disappearance. Maria Full

29. 29
of Grace, also follows the life of a teenage girl stumbling into the world of drug trafficking
when poverty and lack of opportunity in the rural areas of Colombia push her to become a drug
mule.
These two movies are the only ones in this thesis’ sample, which have a greater
emphasis on drug trafficking than drug consumption and, therefore, the business perspective
rather than the consumer activity. Winter’s Bone shows the world of crystal meth
manufacturing and yet, although often mentioned, crystal meth use is not portrayed once. The
only drug that is portrayed as consumed (but it is never mentioned) is cocaine. This takes the
audience behind the scenes of the world of drugs. It transmits to the audience how hidden and
secret methamphetamine manufacture is. It is not a “cool” drug that people consume in
nightclubs in bright cities, but rather part of a dangerous world which devours and destroys
those who try to enter it. In Maria Full of Grace, cocaine is never portrayed as consumed,
despite its manufacture and traffic being the main subject of the movie. Contrarily to almost all
the other movies from the sample, the drugs are portrayed in a very
professional, almost industrial way, like medicine would be.
Although other movies from the sample all portray cocaine in a
recreational manner, Maria Full of Grace takes the audience behind
the scenes of the industry. The process of preparing the drugs looks
almost clinical and industrial. It involves complicated machines
and a strict procedure. The scenes are shot in close-ups with high-key lighting (as opposed to
the yellow or dirty lights used in many of the other movies). Everyone is wearing gloves and
everything is supervised by a doctor, which makes the process look clean and professional.
This is how the movie shapes the audience’s response by presenting drug-manufacture as a
legitimate-looking business. It further helps the audience understand Maria’s actions and
Maria
Full
Of
Grace:
The
cocaine
is
strictly
and
professionally
prepared
into
pellets
for
transportation

30. 30
legitimize why she becomes seduced, like many others in her situation, by the professional and
legitimate business aspect of the drug industry.
The characters from both Winter’s Bone and Maria Full of Grace belong to poor social
classes. Just as for ethnicities discussed in the next chapter, drug-users are portrayed in
different ways according to their social classes, and those portrayals are often reinforced by the
settings in which those movies take place. It seems as though middle and upper class as well
wealthy people’s association with drugs is often portrayed as recreational, light of
consequences and, at worst, an act of rebellion associated with teenage-hood and non-
conformity. However, poor people’s use of drugs is portrayed as scary, scarring and ruinous of
health. Unlike protagonists from upper middle classes who turn to drugs in search of a
recreational or liberating experience, the poor protagonists turn to drugs because of a lack of
other options. As Florencia Cortés-Conde explores in “Telling Identities: Crime Narratives for
Local and International Markets in Maria Full of Grace (Marston, 2004) and Rosario Tijeras
(Maillé, 2005),” the narrative “see(s) the systems as creating the conditions for criminal activity
and portray acts of desperation provoked by an unjust social order” (Cortès-Conde, 83). It is
Maria’s poverty and lack of opportunities associated with her higher aspirations push her to
become a mule, not a weakness of spirit looking for a rebellious experience. A central scene in
the movie defines that idea. At the beginning of the movie, Maria is pressed against the wall of
a ruined house by her boyfriend Juan who gropes and kisses her. Maria is looking up the whole
time and wants to climb up the wall to the roof. When she expressed her wish to climb up, her
boyfriend becomes annoyed and leaves. This scene represents how Maria aspires to more,
which contributes to making her “a sympathetic figure instead of just a criminal benefiting
from the drug trade.” (Cortès-Conde, 80). And thus, the audience understands early on in the
movie that the crime Maria is going to commit “is an act of desperation, not of greed” (Cortès-
Conde, 99).

31. 31
To reinforce the message, both of these movies, unlike the rest of the sample, do not
portray any positive consequence associated with drug use or trafficking. Whereas most of the
movies being analyzed here use mise-en-scène, soundtrack, costumes and other
cinematographic ways to present drugs as a gateway from an alienating existence or even as a
liberating experience, Winter’s Bone and Maria Full of Grace solely focus on portraying the
negative aspect associated with drug use in a rural context. Many negative consequences are
portrayed in regards to the world of methamphetamine and cocaine. In Winter’s Bone, Ree’s
family was destroyed because of her father’s involvement with the world of
methamphetamines, which eventually got him killed. Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) has to make big
sacrifices, such as joining the army, in order to repair her father’s mistake and keep her family
together. When she enters the methamphetamine world, her life is threatened more than once.
Finally, even though crystal meth is portrayed as a way to escape poverty for those involved
with it, the movie also portrays how it is not a viable economic alternative for anyone. Even the
Grandfather, who represents the rural equivalent of the Godfather, is portrayed as living in the
same dirt-poor conditions as everyone else. One scene in particular symbolizes the impact of
crystal meth in those people’s lives. A man comes to Ree’s house and forces her to come with
him because he has something to show her. When she asks,
“Where are we going?” he replies, “Down the road.” The
camera then adopts the point of the view of the car, driving
down a road until arriving at a burned crystal meth lab. The
camera placement enables the audience to feel like they are
in the car going down the road. The scene represents how the
world of drugs in rural areas is nothing more than one more
hopeless downfall for its inhabitants, only leading down a dangerous road both literally and
metaphorically. Furthermore, contrary to the characters from all the other movies located in the
Winter’s
Bone:
The
camera
adopts
the
angle
of
the
car
as
the
characters
go
“down
the
road”

32. 32
city, there is nothing either rebellious or cool or glamorous about the characters of this movie.
Rather, there are many scenes that reinforce the hillbilly stereotype associated with poor people
living in the rural area. When Ree goes to school, she looks into two different rooms: one is a
class for teen parents and the other a training program to join the army. This scene illustrates
the limited opportunities for the teenagers and younger generations of poor people living in
rural areas, which help justify why methamphetamine manufacture is often an economic
solution before anything else. Another hillbilly stereotype
that is reinforced in the movie is the “close-knit rural
community” aspect of the area (Murphy, 149). All the
characters know each other; even the policemen know
everyone. It is also often implied that all the characters are
related, which again evokes clichés of inhabitants of rural areas
as “inbred and incestuous” (Murphy, 149). Other activities, such as young children skinning
animals and the common consumption of rodents, further reinforce the depiction of rural
inhabitants as dangerous not just because they resent their betters, but also “because on some
fundamental genetic level, they are truly inferior” (Murphy, 176). This reaffirms and reinforces
the characterization of poor people and their association with drugs as scary and dangerous
rather than glamorous or rebellious.
Maria Full of Grace, unlike Winter’s Bone does depict the idea that entering the world
of drug trafficking promises great economic opportunities for those involved in it. However,
the movie also criticizes it. The man who recruits Maria seems richer than the rest of the men
portrayed until now as he owns a modern motorcycle, which symbolizes wealth in a poor rural
Latin community. Lucy, another older and experienced mule who shows Maria the ropes, lives
in a more modern and luxurious house than Maria. However, the movie mainly focuses on
depicting the horrors, dangers and threats associated with the world of drug trafficking and
Ree’s
neighbors
skinning
a
squirrel

33. 33
quickly criticizes the economic promises made to those who enter it. Maria, just like Ree, has
put her family at risk by entering that world as she receives explicit threats toward each
member of her family if the drugs do not arrive at their destination. Furthermore, a very graphic
and morbid scene depicts the physical dangers of becoming a mule. Lucy, the more
experienced and wealthy mule, becomes sick during the trip as one of the pellets breaks in her
stomach. Maria wakes up in the middle of the night to see two men dragging Lucy’s body
away. She goes to the bathroom and finds a bloodbath depicted in a very graphic scene. The
scene is shot in POV, which represents Maria’s quick glance into the bathroom, as she
understands what happened to her friend. The scene depicts a bathtub full of blood while
bloody handprints marks are all over the walls as well. Low-key lighting reinforces the morbid
aspect of the scene. We understand along with Maria that the men opened Lucy’s stomach to
get the pellets out of her. Again, both movies put a strong emphasis on the physical,
psychological and emotional pains and dangers that their characters can be exposed when
entering the world of drugs.
It is essential to discuss the role nature and its depiction comes to play in both movies.
In Maria Full of Grace, the movie opens in the rural areas of Colombia, which sets the scene
for Maria’s poor and difficult life as a sweatshop worker lacking economic opportunities. Long
shots depicting the rural setting at the beginning of the movie serve to emphasize the aspect of
poverty and emptiness in her life that will ultimately drive her to drug trafficking. In Winter’s
Bone, nature and the rural setting are not portrayed in a conventionally bucolic way as bearing
life and offering harmony. Instead, the setting is a place ruled by death of both the trees and the
people living in the area. The “otherness” of the region is “dramatized in ways which
graphically reaffirm the sense that not only is (place) inherently problematic” but also that “the
rural poor are themselves monstrous and degenerate” (Murphy, 141). This is achieved by the
representation of nature and the rural setting in a very negative way. Nature is portrayed as dull,

34. 34
grey, dead and empty, sometimes even resembling a horror movie décor by depicting a dead
nature with dark colors, low lighting and dead trees, often making the scenic grotesque and
exaggerated. This is cinematographically reinforced by the use of low-key lighting and long,
empty shots, which convey the lifeless aspect of the natural space. Two sequences are solely
dedicated to portraying nature, both interrupting the narrative to do so. The first one offers dull
and grey shots of landscapes while the second one is a black-
and-white sequence, with the screen turning into a square,
depicting forests burning. Those very dramatic shots emphasize
the portrayal of nature as dead. The rural setting is also
represented as extremely boring as the movie opens with long
sequences of silent scenes where the characters are either
completely quiet, occupying themselves with little tasks such as cutting wood, or having
meaningless dialogues. The whole movie in general is very silent and quiet, like the nature in
which it takes place. As a consequence of that representation, “the stagnation and decrepitude
of their surroundings and the proximity of the wilderness has bred in (the rural poor) a
dangerous primitivism that can erupt into violence at any time” (Murphy, 176).
Comparing and contrasting the different settings in which drug users are portrayed has
shown how essential to the mise-en-scène those settings are. It also seems that whatever the
setting, drug-centered movies tell the collective tale of characters that are ultimately excluded,
alone and trapped in different ways. In the city, the characters become alienated, lost and
marginalized because of the big space surrounding them. In the suburbs, the teenagers are
trapped in the empty ideology of the American dream forced upon them by their parents, which
is represented by the emptiness and flatness of the space that extends endlessly on the horizon
and gives the impression of the impossibility of running away. In the rural areas, the
protagonists’ poverty and low social class make it impossible for them to leave, thus trapping
Winter’s
Bone:
Nature
resembles
a
horror
decor

35. 35
and marginalizing them economically. Despite the setting, all the characters are thus trapped in
different ways, which transmits to the audience the impossibility to run away from their
problems. There is no escape and nowhere to run, as each setting offers its own characteristic
form of alienation and marginalization. This reinforces dramatic sympathy for the protagonists
and helps justify their involvement with drugs as the only liberating experience they can
achieve as well as a way to cope with the loneliness and emptiness of their surrounding.

36. 36
CHAPTER III.
DIFFERENCES IN THE REPRESENTATION OF DRUG USERS ACCORDING TO
ETHNICITY, CLASS AND GENDER.
Both ethnicity and race play important roles in defining the portrayal of individuals in
motion pictures in relationship to illegal drug use. Some scholars, such as Timothy A. Hickman
in “Drugs and Race in American Culture: Orientalism in the Turn-of-the-Century Discourse of
Narcotic Addiction,” even go as far as stating that the “discourse surrounding the discovery of
the drug problem was (and is) racist” (Hickman, 72). The argument presented in the following
chapter is that motion pictures portray the addict population as divided into different groups by
social class, ethnicity and gender, each of which has “a different degree of moral
responsibility” in regards to drug use and addiction (Hickman, 81). This chapter will argue that
illegal-drug movies perpetuate stereotypes of race and ethnicity by portraying white characters
as either victims or morally free rebels while characters from minorities are portrayed as threats
to society through a morally dangerous relationship to drugs as well as the endangerment of
white women.
1. Minorities, Ethnicities And Criminality
In terms of race and ethnicity, it will be argued here that illegal-drug films portray
addicts and users with different degrees of moral responsibility and criminality depending on
their ethnicity as well as their race. Analysis of a variety of movies suggests that this
phenomenon is applicable to movies from a variety of countries with differing racial
demographics and histories. Bryan Denham in “Amplifications of Deviance Surrounding Illicit
Drug Use: Conceptualizing a Role for Film” explains that, “Whites tend to be over-represented

37. 37
as crime victims, with blacks and Latinos more likely to be portrayed as lawbreakers”
(Denham, 497). Historically, the relationship between ethnicity and drug use was incorporated
into larger themes such as urban violence through the phenomenon of the Blaxploitation genre
in American movies. The Blaxploitation cycle, which started in the 70’s, is defined by Jack
Stevenson in Addicted: The Myth and Menace of Drugs in Film as “a type of movie that fitted
the general established profile of an exploitation film: a low budget production that offered
more extreme sex and violence” with “black cast and black themed films aimed at black urban
audiences” (Stevenson, 66). Examples of such movies include Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971),
Superfly (Gordon Parks, 1972) and Gordon’s War (Ossie Davis, 1973). The settings of such
movies are often “closely related to ghetto people with familiar types likes pimps, dope dealers
prostitutes etc.” and their relationship to illegal drugs (Stevenson, 66). Blaxploitation
stereotypes quickly spread to other movie genres. Stuart Poyntz in Honey, I Shot the Kids:
Hollywood and the War on Drugs, explains that, “Some of the most common images” of drug-
centered films include “brutal black on black violence, where a group of people who obviously
stand on the margins of society -- i.e., an underclass -- seem to be the greatest threat to each
other” (Poyntz, 8).
Those ideas are especially relevant in the sample of movies analyzed here, in which
characters of different races are all present in the world of drug consumption and addiction as
well as criminality, but are portrayed with different degrees of moral responsibility for their
drug use. Both Requiem for a Dream and Kids shape the audience’s response through their
visuals as well as their references to ethnic and racial groups and their association with drug
use. In previously discussed Requiem for a Dream, Sarah, Harry and Marion (all white
characters), are respectively portrayed in relationship to drug use as a lonely and vulnerable old
lady, a clichéd non-threatening junkie and a victim of sexual abuse; Tyrone, who is from the
same social class and age but is black, is portrayed as a criminal. Tyrone is the one initially

38. 38
suggesting that Harry and him should get into drug dealing by saying that, “getting a piece of
this brody shit, cut it up and off it” would be “righteous.” He also is the one with all the
contacts; he meets with the suppliers, gets the supplies and is involved in gang shootings in
“the war between the Italian and the blacks.” While Harry’s
addiction leads him to a hospital, Tyrone’s identical addiction
leads him to jail as he is arrested twice. Throughout the whole
movie, Tyrone is often depicted behind bars. The shots often
have low-key lighting and give an expressionist perspective to
the scene. Expressionism involves the externalization of inner,
subjective states. To achieve this effect, the visuals often involve distortions of facial features
in order to reflect the character’s extreme psychological state.
In Kids, ethnicities and race play essential parts in the narrative. The only drug dealer
portrayed in the movie is an older black male who deals in a children’s park. While Casper and
Telly (two white teenage males) are the ones purchasing the drugs, they are not the ones
preparing and consuming them. Again, an older teenager (who
is black) is involved with the preparation and initial
consumption of the drugs during a close-up in slow motion,
which depicts the young man preparing and smoking the
marijuana.
In movies such as the French film La Haine,
ethnicities and races also play essential parts in the narrative, especially in regard to drugs as
the three main characters are portrayed in a very stereotypical manner. This “multiethnic
representative trio” (Moscovitz, 2) is composed of “of three aimless and angry young men:
‘‘blanc’’ (White) Vinz, ‘‘black’’ Hubert and ‘‘beur’’ (Arabic) Saïd” (Moscovitz, 2). Vinz, the
white character, is portrayed as extremely angry, aggressive and violent and talks the entire
Requiem
For
A
Dream:
Close-­‐up
on
Tyrone
behind
bars
Kids:
An
unnamed
teenagers
is
portrayed
preparing
and
consuming
the
drug

39. 39
movie about killing a police officer. Deep down, however, he is a coward and never acts on his
words. His involvement with drugs is very limited as he is only portrayed smoking hash once.
His Arabic friend Said, on the other hand, is portrayed as a more intense drug consumer while
also being involved with dealing. Moreover, Saïd is also a thief as he is seen stealing from a
grocery store. He is the only one portrayed as committing acts of vandalism, such as graffiti, in
addition to theft. Both theft and vandalism in France are stereotypes heavily associated with the
Arabic population. Finally, Hubert, the black character of the group, is portrayed as a both a
hero and anti-hero, which is a characteristic of Blaxploitation according to Jack Stevenson.
Hubert is represented in a criminal manner since, like the black character Tyrone in Requiem
for a Dream, he is the character most associated with drugs in the movie. He is the one meeting
the suppliers/dealers as well as cutting the hash and consuming it. On the other hand, he is also
portrayed as wise. He is the only one in the movie expressing a desire to leave the banlieues for
good. What makes him a hero is his capacity to constantly stop Vince from being violent and
from acting on his desire to kill a policeman. However, at the end of the movie, when a cop has
killed Vince, he is the one who ends up with the gun and potentially kills the policeman (this
stays unrevealed). At the end of the movie, Vince is thus portrayed as an innocent victim and
Hubert as a killer. The conflict with law enforcement and the importance of that scene is further
developed in Chapter 4.
The relationship between drugs and ethnicities goes beyond the races to which the movie’s
characters belong. In a more metaphorical manner, illegal drugs are also associated with an idea of
foreignness. As Paul Manning argues in Drugs and Popular Culture: Drugs, Media and Identity,
“The implications of residual demonizing of otherness is underscored by an emphasis across the
films on the sources of narcotics being foreign” (Manning, 128). Hickman proposes the same
theory in regard to opium as an Asian threat, stating, “Because of its association with the Orient,
and especially with China, narcotic addiction was often envisioned as a foreign threat, imported

40. 40
from distant shores to menace the hard-working but dangerously susceptible American public”
(Hickman, 78). The sample films show how this idea of drugs as a foreign threat applies as well to
“even purely American-set Requiem for a Dream” as Harry tells his mother Sarah that he is
working in distribution for a “big importer” and that he needs to go to Florida to get the inventory.
This implies that the drugs probably come from Latin America, which gives a sense of foreignness
to drug use and trafficking (Manning, 128). The whole movie Maria Full Of Grace also speaks
vividly to that idea. The movie never depicts an American citizen involved in the traffic of
cocaine. The drug manufacturers, mules, and traffickers in the US are all Columbian. The only
American citizens portrayed in the movie are the border guards at the airport who manage to arrest
one of the mules. Therefore, this gives the impression that cocaine is a Latin danger, which enters
the United States against the will of its people and thus represents a foreign threat.
2. Whiteness And The Lesser Degree Of Moral Responsibility
While there seems to be a tendency in drug related movies to create a greater degree of
moral responsibility for black characters, they also accentuate their Caucasian characters’ status
as victims or rebels. In Kids, the two main characters, both white male teenagers, are portrayed
as rebels rather than criminals, despite the horrible crimes they commit. They are seen as
committing petty crimes such as stealing alcohol, hurting an animal or assaulting a homosexual
couple walking by, but they are also portrayed as very dangerous and violent such as when they
beat, almost to death, an innocent black boy in the skate park or when Casper rapes Jenny in a
very explicit sex scene while she is passed out on the couch in a room where dozens of children
are sleeping next to them. The scene is notably long and completely silent to emphasize the
gravity and horror of the act. Telly also has sexual intercourse with two twelve-year-old girls,
and he already has infected another with the HIV virus. Despite their crimes, the movie focuses

41. 41
on portraying these young white boys as rebellious rather than criminal. Besides the rape scene
which transforms the tone of the movie, the youthful rebellion phase those teenagers are going
through is romanticized through young romance and soft
sex scenes, as well as a rebellion against public and
private social institutions such as familial authority and
law enforcement (which will further be developed in
Chapter 4). This is explicitly emphasized at the end of
the movie when Casper wakes up sober, after having
raped an unconscious girl, and simply says “Jesus Christ what happened,” thus implying that he
was not conscious of what he was doing and thereby making him appear less responsible for his
acts in the eyes of the audience.
This refusal to portray white drug users as criminal but, rather, as either rebels or
victims is also explicit in movies such as Trainspotting (1996) and Christiane F. (1981), which
only depict white protagonists. In Christiane F. the main protagonists are characterized as
victims of prostitution in which Axel, Detlev, Babsie, Christiane and many other young
characters are all involved. The victimization of the teenagers is emphasized when Detlev tells
Christiane that he will “do the next punter for (her)” as an act of love in order to buy her drugs.
Explicit scenes involving gay pedophilia and sadomasochism as well as references to
coprophilia emphasize the crude contrast between the two fourteen-year-old protagonists and
what they are confronted with in the world of drugs. Even though many of the protagonists’
actions are condemnable, such as when Christiane and Detlev abandon Axel’s dead body or
when they initiate each other into drugs, they are always portrayed as trapped victims of a
system they have lost control of through their downfall into drug use.
Kids:
Teenage
romance
contributes
to
making
the
children
seem
rebellious
and
“cool”

42. 42
At the same time, the group of teenagers is also portrayed as rebellious and cool. The
teenagers in Christiane F., just like in Kids, display a very rock-and-roll and rebel image,
which is emphasized through the use of music and specific soundtracks, such as David Bowie’s
music in Christiane F. As Jack Stevenson further elaborates in Addicted: The Myth and
Menace of Drugs in Film, the movie has “a cult youth market appeal because of its Bowie
soundtrack and non-adult perspective” which constitutes some of the “cool elements of youth
culture” which the movie associates with the use of drugs (Stevenson, 166). Bowie’s rebellious
rock-and-roll image is associated with drug use throughout the movie’s soundtrack, which he
wrote and sang himself. His music can be heard in many scenes where drug consumption is
portrayed. He also makes an appearance in the movie in a scene where Christiane is seen taking
LSD in front of him while he sings his famous “Station
to Station.” Her first time with heroin is also associated
with the singer as she does it in the parking lot of his
concert venue. Bowie’s image acts like a sort of
celebrity endorsement for drug use in Christiane F.
since his image is closely related to drug consumption
in the movie and thus contributes to the sense of the teenagers’ involvement with drugs as
recreational and rebel rather than criminal.
In Trainspotting, Mark Renton and his friends, all Caucasian, are also portrayed as
rebellious in a morally free kind of way, just like the children in Christiane F and Kids, which
are represented as innocent because of their age and their ethnicity. The brilliance of
Trainspotting is that it succeeds in achieving the same childish and innocent portrayal for its
characters, despite the fact that they are all adults. Despite committing numerous crimes in the
movie, from small theft to letting a baby starve to death, the characters rarely get in trouble
with the law and if they do, they manage to get freed easily. Taking heroin is portrayed as a
Christiane
F.:
David
Bowie’s
image
acts
as
a
brand
ever-­‐present
in
the
movie

43. 43
comic role-play rather than a criminal act, such as when Mark and his dealer, “Mother
Superior,” make a comic role-play about taking heroin where Mark plays a restaurant customer
and Mother Superior acts like a waiter who offers “some garlic bread perhaps?” along with the
needle. This scene is also a metaphor that relates back to the idea of losing one’s identity
through drug addiction. Mark endorses another identity when consuming drugs in order to
distance himself from his act. Furthermore, the idea of protagonists’ losing their core identity is
further reinforced when the dealer stays in character as Mark overdoses and suggests that,
“Perhaps Sir would like a taxi?” as Mark becomes unconscious and then, instead of calling an
ambulance, really calls a taxi. This scene shows a disconnection with reality and the character’s
core identity.
3. Women And Drugs
The portrayal of women in relation to drug use and trafficking often suggest they are the
least responsible protagonists when involved with drugs. They are never criminals or guilty. It
is argued here that the sample of films analyzed often blame men, especially non-white ones,
for the women’s moral degradation. The association between ethnicity and morality in drug
movies becomes more complex when relationships between black and white characters become
sexualized, especially between white women and black men. Many scholars, including Susan
Boyd in Hooked: Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S and Bryan Denham in
Amplifications of Deviance Surrounding Illicit Drug Use: Conceptualizing a Role for Film,
elaborate on the subject. According to Boyd, “White moral women are represented as the moral
barometer of Western nations;” therefore, “women’s drug use is often represented as a failure
of nation building” because both moral institutions and society have failed to protect them from
the dangers of vices such as sex and drug use (Boyd, 113). The moral degradation of women in

44. 44
movies is often represented as committed by black men that are
also most often involved with drugs, thus perpetuating the
characterization of black characters with a higher degree of
responsibility for the use of drugs than white characters. Many
films, such as Requiem for a Dream, which is often cited by
scholars as a vivid example of that tendency, “have frequently
characterized black men as violent sexual predators” (Denham, 490). In this movie, Marion’s
drug addiction drives her to perform degrading sexual acts for a rich black drug dealer called
Big Tim, who only accepts sexual favors in exchange for drugs. “Marion’s degradation and
humiliation at the hands of a Black drug dealer” is particularly explicit as she is portrayed as
humiliated in explicit orgy scenes because of him (Denham, 496). Big Tim is depicted as a man
who shows no shame in abusing white women, as he says, “You know what I like about patty
chicks? (…) They give good head.” Cinematographically low-key lighting and close-ups on
distorted features of his face, such as his smile when he sees Marianne for the first time, create
a sense of fear and evil around the character. Furthermore, the character often appears as
emerging from the dark, such as when he opens the door of his apartment to Marianne and he is
completely in the dark. His “monstrosity” is also further reinforced by a contrast in camera
angles between Marianne and him. Close-ups of their faces alternate when they meet each other
for the first time. Marianne is filmed in a well-lit high angle, looking small and terrorized,
while he is filmed from a low-angle with dark lighting, which further distorts the features of his
face and makes him appear much bigger than the fragile Marianne, and thus more threatening.
Requiem
For
A
Dream:
Big
Tim’s
“evil”
smile
emphasized
through
a
close-­‐up
shot
Marianne
represented
through
high
camera
angles
Big
Tim
is
represented
through
low
camera
angles

45. 45
Similarly in La Haine, only seven women are seen in the whole movie and only five of
them have a line; those five mostly only talk in response to Saïd who is preying upon them. As
in La Haine, which has an underrepresentation of women, females in Kids are rarely associated
with drugs, except for Jenny whose male friend practically forces them down her throat. Girls
in Kids, no matter their race, are mainly depicted as prey that the boys try to “deflower” at all
cost. The movie portrays many different interracial
relations between white girls and non-white males. Those
interracial relationships between white females and non-
white males contribute to the portrayal of non-white
males as traffickers and users as ‘‘evil, sadistic,
immoral, greedy corrupt outsiders, who lure innocent youth, and draw moral women into drug
addiction and crime’’ (Denham, 398).
Maria Full of Grace is another movie in which “ [f]emale roles subordinated to the
male gaze reproduce patriarchal hegemonies” (Cortés-Conde, 82). The movie opens by
presenting Maria’s life to the audience. Maria is seventeen years old and pregnant but at the
same time she provides for her whole family including her sister’s baby. She is also represented
as very lonely. Her baby’s father does not love her and her family is not supportive of her and
pressurizes her to bring money home for everyone. When she announces that she quit her job
her mother says, that “There is only flowers here,” thus reinforcing her lack of support as well
as the idea that there are very limited economic opportunities offered to the Columbian people
living in a rural area. The first third of the movie focuses on presenting Maria’s life, struggles
and difficulties, which creates dramatic sympathy from the audience and thus helps us
understand how easily women like her can fall into the traps set by the world of drug
trafficking and traffickers. Furthermore, Maria’s environment is mainly feminine. The factory
workers are all women and Maria lives in a house with her sister, mother and grandmother
Kids
explicitly
portrays
random
interracial
relationships
between
unnamed
characters

46. 46
where no male are present. All of her friends and other mules are also all female and the few
males depicted in the movie are all evil. The young man who convinces Maria to become a
drug mule uses seduction to do so. He tells her that she is “way too pretty to be a maid” and
offers to “hook her up” with a job that involves “travelling.” From then on, all the men Maria is
going to meet are evil. The man preparing and supplying the drug is a pharmacist, thus showing
the corruption of the country she lives in. The old man who seems charming at first openly
threatens Maria’s family and the two men who meet Maria, Lucy and Blanca at the airport are
portrayed as cruel as they throw them in the back of a truck, ignore Lucy’s pain and end up
killing her and opening her stomach to get the drugs out before dumping her body on the side
of a road. While all the women in the movie are depicted are victims, either of a poor economic
situation, which gives them no other choice, or of men’s cruelly, the whole movie shows how
Maria’s world is a woman’s world dominated by men.
Another important theme related to womanhood is Maria’s status
as a mother-to-be and the religious symbolism associated with it. There is
a clear religious connection between the biblical Virgin Mary and the
protagonist Maria. The title of the movie itself, Maria Full of Grace, has a
religious connotation. Furthermore, the poster of the movie further
reinforces that idea by depicting Maria as receiving a cocaine pellet like
the Holy Host. As Cortés-Conde explains it, “her swallowing of, not the
Host but pellets, which carry drugs, not salvation, destroys the virginal
image, but not the innocent intent” as the movie has associated Maria to the Virgin Mary to the
eyes of the audience (Cortés-Conde, 89). Her status as a future mother further reinforces her
image as an innocent. This is symbolized by a scene in which the airport security is about to
expose Maria to x-rays to prove her guilt and arrest her, only to be forced to free her, as a
pregnant woman cannot be exposed to x-rays. Thus, maternity is presented as the saving grace
Maria
is
portrayed
as
receiving
a
cocaine
pellet
as
the
Host

47. 47
like the title indicates it. Maria is full of grace because she is a pregnant woman not because
she is full of the pellet representing the Host and thus “Maria, as a mother to be, is forgiven her
transgressions in the defense of the future of her child” (Cortés-Conde, 89).
Overall, the analyses of the role and portrayal of races, ethnicities and genders in drug-
centered movies has shown that there are exogenous factors to the character’s lives that will
affect the perception of their relationship with drugs. In terms of drug use, there seems to be a
hierarchy of criminality and responsibility in drug-centered movies, which is decided by factors
out of the characters’ control such as race or gender. The first hierarchical difference is between
males and females. Women, no matter their ethnicity, are characterized in drug-centered
movies as either innocents or victims of their addictions and involvement with drugs. That
victimization is often reinforced by casting blame on males for the moral degradation of
women, rather than the women themselves. In the hierarchy of criminality and responsibility,
women are the least to blame for drug use. The second difference is between white characters
and non-white characters/minorities. While black or Hispanic protagonists (or from other
minorities) are characterized by a criminal association with drugs, white characters are
represented as rebellious countercultural with a lesser degree of moral responsibility. Overall, it
seems that the discourse surrounding drug use and portrayal has been equally racist over the
thirty years period that this thesis’s movie sample covers. Just like with the preceding chapter,
this suggests that there are factors out of the character’s control, which will affect their
attitudes, decisions and the way those are perceived by the audience.

48. 48
CHAPTER IV.
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND STRUCTURE IN DRUG CENTERED FILMS.
Because of their relationship with individual lives, social institutions, whether public or
private, play a crucial role in all of the movies in this thesis’ sample. The movies under analysis
follow the different journeys of various individuals and yet the same social institutions recur.
Social institutions play a decisive role in these movies because they play a crucial role in the
individual lives these movies portray, in the social order, and in our conception of civil society.
This chapter will analyze how drug-centered films represent social institutions as well as their
influence on the characters’ development and their involvement with drugs. It will cover public
institutions, such as the legal system and its representatives, while also analyzing the role of
private social institutions such as the nuclear family. It will open by discussing the role of
family in the drug narrative and argue that most films “position drugs and the family in a
relation of opposition” while also suggesting “complicity and mutual culpability” between the
family and the drug narrative (Manning, 117).
1. Private Institutions: Drugs And The Nuclear Family
An exploration of how drug narratives intersect with the institution of family –
specifically, the contamination of the private sphere by the public -- is followed by an analysis
of this complex relationship, which also involves “opposition, sustenance, complicity and
consolation,” ultimately situating the family in a “socially and discursively as a compromised
space” (Manning, 131). Ultimately, this chapter will argue that family is often portrayed as the
reason for the protagonists’ involvement with drugs and for the character’s destruction rather
than the other way around.

49. 49
Legal scholar Susan Boyd in Hooked: Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S,
argues that the drug epidemic is represented in films as “affecting middle and upper class moral
youth and destroying the fabric of the family.” She further explains that the portrayal of the
nuclear family affected by drugs is ultimately a symbol of a threatened nation (Boyd, 113). The
white middle class nuclear family has always been a strong national norm and bearer of a
western ideology. The traditional nuclear family has been a symbol of the American dream and
its capitalist ideologies and values. The nuclear family is a symbol of happiness, unity, stability
and tradition for the country. Such ideologically normative families have been exemplified
from the early years of television in sitcoms like The Adventure of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-
1966) or Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963). The fact that, in many drug-centered narratives, the
family becomes threatened or destroyed or by drugs is ultimately the symbol of a nation
threatened from within. The representation of drugs in movies as threatening thus represents
anxiety vis-à-vis the family as a social structure and as an ideological construct. In most of the
movies from the sample revolve; the relations of drugs and family play an essential part in the
narrative. The first, most obvious observation one can make is that most movies portray the
drug culture as a threat to the solidarity of the nuclear family since “counter-culture lifestyles
are opposed to familial mores” (Manning, 119). The traditional nuclear family is generally
represented and imagined as a symbol of stability and integration into society while drugs
ultimately represent a counter-culture lifestyle due to their illegal nature and the dangers they
are known to represent physically, emotionally and psychologically. This gives rise to the
contamination of the private sphere by the public as argued by Manning in a model he calls
“normality threatened by The Monster” where normality is symbolized by the nuclear family
while drugs are a metaphorical monster wishing to destroy it (Manning, 120).
In Over The Edge for example, Carl’s family symbolizes the typical white middle class
suburban family. They are portrayed as living an ideal life in the suburbs where the father has a