The trailer to
Straight Outta Compton has a difficult task: marketing a biopic about a band with an extreme and extremely controversial ideology. Songs like
Fuck Tha Police proved extremely controversial, and explicitly made reference to killing police officers in retaliation for institutionalised racism. Furthermore, songs like
A Bitch Is A Bitch ditched the social commentary, and focussed on misogyny and dismissal of female autonomy.
NWAs music is therefore unsubtle, aggressive, and a difficult sell for a mainstream, mass market Hollywood film. With the first album released 30 years ago, the band are also potentially unknown to a younger audience. However the trailer markets the film using a variety of sophisticated techniques
- A relatable narrative, a zero to hero, rags to riches story. Creates a sympathetic atmosphere for the members of NWA, their unfair treatment, and their arrest by the LAPD. Relatable characters, going through difficult circumstances. Downtrodden by the police.
- A varied cast of different characters. Ice Cube, Dr Dre etc... Each character is identified through the name of the character rather than the name of the actor. No reference is made to actors or a director. The film is being sold purely on star appeal.
- Themes of unity, teamwork and friendship. This potentially allows the film to target less typical audiences, to use a stereotypical example, older women.
- Comedic elements, the guns in the bag. A ridiculous situation, and here played for laughs rather than as a sign of aggression. Comedic elements allow the film to be marketed in a softer, less confrontational manner.
- Taps in to current events: police brutality, protest movements. Several scenes are evocative of and iconographic of modern scenes of police brutality against young black people. These themes have been depicted in other recent mainstream films, such as The Hate U Give (2018).
- The sex and violence is substantially toned down in the trailer. The word 'motherfucker' is censored through a dip in volume, and only the less swear-word filled verses of Fuck The Police are played.
- Additionally, the two songs played in the trailer (Straight Outta Compton and Fuck The Police) are both 'jazzed up' with additional instruments, such as strings and piano chords. The result is that the drum heavy and intentionally ugly gangster rap now sounds more positive, optimistic and modern.
Thanks to first year media for the suggestions, and thanks to Jazmine for suggesting The Hate U Give
as a film that depicts similar themes of police brutality.
 |
| Highly unusually for a trailer, the actors names are not features, but the names of the people they are depicting are. This demonstrates the incredible star potential of NWA, and the fact that their names are a major selling point for the film |
 |
| A range of settings highly conventional for the music biopic are included, including several studio scenes. This allows multiple secondary audiences who have no specific interest in hip hop or NWA to invest in the film's often cliched narrative |
 |
| As part of the establishing montage, a birds-eye mid shot of Andre establishes to the audience a relatable main character for the target young male audience to sympathise with and to project on. |
 |
| The flurried montage of scenes of social unrest towards the end of the trailer provides the audiences with intertextual references to real world events such as the LA race riots, the Brixton riots and the Black Lives Matter movement. This allows the producers to smooth over NWA's blunt, apolitical and often violent ideology against a more agreeable backdrop of social change. |
