City of God Response Paper

City of God

City of God is a story of young boys growing up in a lower class slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The characters don’t act in believable ways if you’re looking at it in a sense of how boys behave in our American world. You would never see a ten year old kid walking through your neighborhood with a gun. But when you look at the story and see that these young kids were trying to fit in and either becoming a worker or hood was the choice. I know that I’m only used to seeing what goes on in American culture and don’t know how people handle things in South America. This film is swarmed with violence and under the circumstances the way the characters act as they grow up is also believable. The drug lord world in the city is what is influencing the narrative world. Li’l Dice who in the beginning of the story starts out as one of the boys trying to fit in with older hoods becomes one of the most known dealers in the city known as Li’l Ze. The scene when Rocket goes over the history of the apartment really shows how people with anger in their hearts can take over and kill anyone who gets in their way. It shows how people went in and out of the apartment and how dealers started taking over and kicking people out of their business. That really showed us that it didn’t matter who you were or how much power you had but if you had a gun and wanted to get rich and respected, you could. Violence and the need for respect is what drove the dramatic energy in City of God. I would think that when Li’l Ze doesn’t kill Knockout Ned was one of the greatest shifts in the mood of the story. The scene shows Knockout Ned lying on the ground asking why Li’l Ze didn’t kill him and then it shows Li’l Ze walking away questioning why he didn’t kill him. It is one of the greatest shifts because everything goes downhill after that. Knockout Ned wants revenge and becomes a hood and the “runts” begin to choose which dealer they want to side with. Another shift in the film is when Benny gets killed because now that Li’l Ze doesn’t have Benny’s calming attitude and firm guidance he wants to take over the entire drug business in the city. I think that the police not being able to do anything about all the drug dealers and the fact that anyone could own a gun throughout the whole story was a political statement. It showed how authority wasn’t important to hoods in the City of God. Obviously there were stereotypes for these young boys; either they were workers or hoods. And there were stereotypes in the city like “Groovies” who were young hippies who smoked pot and were really chill about everything; Benny was a “groovie”. This movie really marginalizes the lower class living in the slum. They never showed the nice parts and high class living of Rio de Janeiro, only the City of God. My gap question is why did Li’l Ze feel like he had to change his name. I don’t know if it was explained during the movie but if it was I missed it.