70. Gangbang

Tapehead no 70 

The small town of Little Rock, Arkansas, is of course the town that gave the world Bill Clinton. Now it seems, the world is getting it’s own back.

Home to more than 50 gangs, including premier league outfits like the Bloods and Crips, Little Rock now has a higher murder rate per capita than LA or New York.

In HBO’s Gang Warfare: Bangin’ In Little Rock, we follow the local coroner, Steve, as he grows (not unreasonably) fed up of unzipping bodybags and decides to go out and try on The Streets to help the kids see the error of their ways.

The first gang we meet are the Folk Nation, a bunch of fuckwit white kids decked out in baseball caps, shades and bandannas, strolling round country lanes pretending they’re in House Of Pain. 

Although they boast of raising funds for guns by “jacking” decent upright citizens like your correspondent, their most criminal act is the way they terrorise entire neighborhoods with their appalling graffiti art.

Meanwhile, the leader of the 23^rd St Crips, LA Moe, makes despairing noises about the escalation of the gang-war from his jail cell, which is a bit rich considering Mr Moe actually introduced gangs to Little Rock single-handedly when he started dealing drugs brought from LA.

The effect on Steve’s most impassioned speech is poignantly ruined when a caption reveals, midway, “Steve gets caught up in the crossfire of a drive-by.”

Some of the characters in Gang Warfare look sensitive and articulate compared to Brummie raga star Apache Indian (Apache Goes Indian). Starting with several minutes of “nuff respect to the Bombay posse” nonsense, Apache’s first attempt at coherence is, “Just as people say that life is like a journey that never ends… neither does Bombay,” when obviously (sadly) both life and Bombay, clearly DO end.

The press release describes the series as Apache Indian’s “quest to discover his roots” and says in this “swiftly paced episode” he “delves into Eastern mysticism.”

In fact, painfully slow mystic items on a palmist, a shadow-reader and a fortune-telling toy robot culminate with a foot reader predicting he won’t make much money. (He obviously heard Apache’s last album.)

Apache spends most of the film jabbering the words “street vibe”, “multi-cultural vibe” and “party vibe” like a mantra, and telling some of Bombay’s poorer inhabitants he comes from the ghetto and represents the streets.

He’s unbelievably patronising to the locals and mostly behaves like a brash, boorish buffoon. 

“Is this supposed to be some holy water or something?” he grins, ridiculously. (It is.)

Tragically he seems not to have realized an Indian travel programme should be about India, not Apache Indian.

The highlight comes when, looking like a white boy from Notting Hill trying to behave like one of the Little Rock Crips, he walks into a stylish modern apartment and shouts, “Check out this place, man,” to his (female) guide.

“Check out the furniture. Res-pect !” he says, with a clenched fist, seemingly to the furniture itself.

The presenters of The Big Trip – Roddy, Paul and Moira – are viewers who not only won a trip from Miami to New York via New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Chicago, but also got their own TV series.

In a kind of Rough Guide for teenagers, they look at the glamour and the ghetto sides of Miami, telling the nations youth you can stay in Miami (in a double room) for £13, but omitting to mention what sort of room it would be 

(i.e. a room in the ghetto they just showed you). 

There’s a nice item on an Elvis-themed wedding in Memphis (“Do you promise to have her Always On Your Mind ?”) that omits arguably more appropriate Elvis material such as Heartbreak Hotel, Suspicious Minds and Hound Dog.

Moira, in particular, proves impossibly irritating. 

“I never expected Chicago to be like this,” she coos in virtually indecipherable Glaswegian. “I expected it to be grimy and dirty.” (Moira, not everywhere can be like Glasgow.)

At the end of The Big Trip, she says she wants to stay in America. Tapehead wants her to stay there too. Preferably in Little Rock.

ends

Gang Warfare: Bangin’ In Little Rock: Weds, 10.55pm, C4

Apache Goes Indian: Sat, 7pm C4 

The Big Trip: Mon, 6.45pm, BBC2