Family Violence: Straight Out of Brooklyn - Essay Example

Family Violence: Paper on the Movie “Straight out of Brooklyn” The movie straight out of Brooklyn is a story which shows the struggle of a family living in the projects at a time when violence and drugs were widespread in Redhook, Brooklyn. The main character in the story is Dennis brown, a teenager who desperately wants to deal with the poverty situation in his family. Instead of concentrating on his studies, he decides to rob a drug lord. According to Erickson’s development stage, Dennis is in his teenage years.

At this stage, one is faced by identity issues and may end up doing the wrong thing as in the case of Dennis. The crisis the teenager is in can be solved by counseling. If he does not change then he can be taken to a juvenile rehabilitation facility where he will be rehabilitated. Ray Brown is the father of Denis, he is an excessive drinker and he takes out his frustration on his wife, Frankie Brown, by assaulting her both physically and verbally. Frankie Brown is a loving mother and wife, despite the abusive stay with her husband.

According to Erickson, both Frankie and Ray are in their middle adulthood. At this stage, one has responsibilities of taking care of the family. Ray having been suppressed by the white system, he has turned to alcoholism and needs rehabilitation services to come out of his drinking behavior. Frankie Brown needs a psychiatrist, since this type of behavior is portrayed by people who have had issues in their childhood. Dennis’ sister, Carolyn Brown, is in her latency stage, whereby she has to learn skills and face inferiority complex.

Seeing her mother being abused and she can’t do anything will have a negative impact on her. Feelings of inadequacy and helplessness will cloud her personality. Desperation has hit the family, life in the projects is not easy and the father feeling oppressed for working for the whites with nothing to show for it has decided to turn to alcohol for consolation. The financial hardships are to blame for the violence in this family. Lack of a proper way to deal with these financial hardships and drug abuse has made Ray the abusive husband he is.

Battered women syndrome affects women who have had a history of physical or verbal violence form an important figure such as a husband or a father. The woman will show signs of fear and have a perceived inability to escape from the situation. As in the case of Frankie, she is being physically abused and yet she cannot leave her husband due to her kids as she says it. The first stage is denial and these incidences of violence will be termed as accidents by the victim (Frankie). The second stage she will often blame herself and she thinks she deserves it.

The third is enlightenment, and in this stage, she will decide to get help. Frankie sought the help of her employment agency but they did not offer her any solution and she continued to stay. All this stages were depicted in this family’s history of violence. The extent of damage to the child will depend on the gender of the child. For example, Carolyn will have school problems; suffer trauma and low self esteem. She may even harm herself and accept being bullied as she sees it as an acceptable behavior.

Dennis on the other hand, being a teenager, will suffer from the feeling of anxiety or depression. He will feel over-responsible, which is the case. He robs the drug lord to help his family overcome poverty. When children grow up watching violence, they will assume it is a normal part of being in a relationship. They will see it as one of the ways to solve conflicts between people. In future, the children can be abusive or accept being abused and thus the cycle of abuse will continue. The Minneapolis experiment was conducted to find the best solution to deal with domestic violence.

The experiment suggested the best way to deter this kind of behavior is to arrest the perpetrator involved immediately. This solution has been criticized for providing short term solutions of minor domestic violence and ignoring long term effects such as homicide, which have been registered among lovers. The situation in this family can be solved by arresting Ray and offering rehabilitation services. This could be the start of stopping the violence. A restraining order will not be useful since it solves only one part of the solution; and that is the violence.

Ray needs to stop drinking, which is the root cause of the problem. When we hear the projects, there is a certain picture that we paint in our minds, this movie has clearly brought this picture into light. It is a description of life in the projects, their mindsets and the struggles a black man faces. Any person who has had an experience of living in a low income neighborhood will relate to the movie. The film being a low budget film has some flaws, an example being some of the scenes look like they were staged in a play.

The actors and actresses in the film have brought out the strong emotion needed in the film. It is a film worth watching. Work Cited Straight Out of Brooklyn. Dir. Matty Rich. Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1991. Film.