“But the transient alliances that hip-hoppers imagined across boundaries of class, race, and nation gave them the resources and the platform they needed to tell their stories and provided the grounds for their locally based political actions” (Kuttner, White-Hammond). This is the epitome of the overall theme The Get Down and the goal of these aspiring writers and artists from the Bronx back when hip hop and rap was still being born, and when graffiti was a form of expression.
At the beginning of episode 4, the mayoral candidate Ed Koch states, “The city we love has become a dangerous, dirty and lawless place. This is the city with a mayor who lets teenage graffiti vandals walk all over him. Stop giving these hoodlums slaps on the wrists. Arrest them. And let them do their art from behind bars.” He further states that “tough time causes for tough leadership” and to vote for him to take their city back. This quote took me aback and I really had to assess what was being said and what was being assumed at the time of young artists (both graffiti and rap) simply based off of their economic status, race, etc., and the fact that whites and certain political parties were closing in on associating graffiti with black lower class “hood folk”, hence, the added bad stigma and discriminatory association with graffiti writers and hip hop artists. According to Kuttner and White-Hammond, black and Latino/a hip hop artists use their art as a catalyzing force for social change in their communities; meaning with a purpose. Graffiti is not just vandalism on a wall, and that’s not it’s intended purpose. Similarly, in hip hop where rappers use hip hop as a platform for telling their stories (the same can be said about graffiti). As further reinforcement to this point, Fernandes states, “Hip Hop was shaping a language that allowed young people to negotiate a political voice for themselves in their societies” , for example, Zeke’s poetry that his teacher keeps trying to get him to share which essentially tells his life story about his mother dying by a bullet meant for his father, and even 6 months later, his father too, was taken by the streets. Through this poem, listeners understand Zeke’s purpose and his story pertaining to why he has high aspirations for being a solid Get Down Brother, and being so loyal to his crew because they’re his little family outside of the two main influences in his life that he’s lost; Zeke brings his work to life as he feels every word he spits and is passionate about these real-life struggles.
The reading states that, “attacking hip hop as a source of, rather than a response to, poverty and violence ignores the structural racism and classism that maintain the urban ghetto, and, even more absurdly, frames the perennial cultural issues of sexism, violence, and homophobia as if they emerged whole cloth in the 1970s”. As per such emphasis placed on this lifestyle within The Get Down, these graffiti writers were much more than hoodlums, but young artists from the hood trying to make it with a dollar and a dream and live in their otherwise poor and oppressed society. Hip-hop and graffiti were risky components of life and as stated, were stigmatized to be the doings of black, underclass hooligans because they had no sense other than to be destructive, burdens of the white society. This was the issue with society back then; rap and such was so criminalized, this is how people had to behave in order to pursue these forms of self-expression (like The Get Down Brothers being dead to the Funk Master for using his bootleg tapes for profit, etc., being a prime example of the severity in which these themes were taken during this time due to hip-hop being poorly portrayed by those outside of the minority group).
Simple, school-aged boys trying to get by and achieve their aspirations in a world that is not accepting of them and their talents because of their color and status.
