PARIAH (GANG LAND)

Filled with non-stop foul language, graphic sex and lots of violence, PARIAH is an independent movie that shows what happens when a gang of fascist skinheads in Los Angeles rape the black girlfriend of a white liberal named Steve. Steve’s girlfriend, Sam, commits suicide after the rape, so Steve tries to join the skinhead gang to enact revenge. Eventually to gain acceptance, he takes an active role in beating up a homosexual transvestite in a park.

Meanwhile, the gang fights with some black racists and beats up some homosexuals. In one of the fights with the black men, a retarded member of the skinhead gang is killed. Things come to a head when a group of homosexuals locate the gang’s party house to take revenge, and the gang finds the apartment where the black racists live. Steve has to then choose whether he will exact his full revenge or put a stop to the mad satanic world that surrounds him.

Too many characters and lots of male skinheads who look and dress similar to one another make it hard to focus on the story and people in this movie. Many names are bandied about early in the movie, but not all the major characters are named right away. There is little insight into Steve and Sam’s relationship before the graphic gang rape scene and why neither of them makes no effort to contact the legal authorities about their attackers. All of this creates a less-than-involving movie filled with foul language, rampant acts of senseless violence and graphic sex scenes.

Although the filmmakers downplay their apparent left-wing leanings, PARIAH has a moderately humanist worldview with minor socialist connotations, which dilutes its anti-racist message. At one point, the hero of the movie, Steve, rejects the God of his Bible-toting sister. Another problem is that the movie offers no macro solutions to the issues of intolerance that it raises, although it clearly says revenge is not the answer. The filmmakers fail to realize that, without a strong local church to enforce biblical standards of morality, socialist-humanist pleas for peaceful integration in society will never work. Neither will government programs that try to force people to integrate against their will. That is a duty that the Bible reserves for the people of God in their disciplinary function as brothers and sisters of their fellow church members. It is interesting to note, however, that the black gang members seem to live in richer surroundings than the white skinheads and seem just as interested in raping white women as the skinheads are in raping Steve’s black girlfriend. Thus, gang rape by both white and black males may be a symptom of our socialist, humanist, integrationist, sex-crazed, and theophobic culture.

This movie seems to take a weird sort of pleasure in fully depicting the worst behavior of racist skinheads. Graphic depiction of sinful acts continues to be a regrettable method of many people in the independent filmmaking movement. Americans of all beliefs should reject this immoral, self-contradictory artistic method.