"Thankfully, hasn't completely gone the way of "pound cake"–era Bill Cosby instead, Lee's satire attempts to indict American society as a whole for its hand in helping to create a place as dangerous as the South Side of Chicago. After its release, Chicago Magazine's Chicagoan of the Year Chance the Rapper had this to say, also calling the film "exploitative" and "goofy": Some citizens of Chicago seem to have taken the film especially personally, and Englewood, the south side neighborhood where the film takes place, had a complicated relationship to the movie well before it hit theaters. And from lifelong set-claimers to the violence-interrupters who work with them, the most common criticism I hear when it comes to portrayals of black Chicago gangs is the way they are shoehorned into this outdated, color-coded, Crips versus Bloods narrative - exactly the misconception that Lee's film helps perpetuate. I've spent a lot of time in Englewood and Auburn Gresham, the neighborhoods in which "Chi-Raq" is set, talking to scores of gang-involved people on the ground, both socially and while doing researching for a book. But he also wants us to "wake up" - that's the message burned into the film's closing frame, just as in Lee films past - and seriously address the realities of gang-related violence in Chicago. comedy to the streets of Chicago is bound to involve some artifice, and Lee is entitled to a degree of creative leeway.
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