Celebrated in a new documentary film, a recent controversial book, a Los Angeles Times investigative series by Pulitzer Prize-winner Chuck Philips and an ambitious, upcoming repackaging of his lesser-known music — to say nothing of several prospective Hollywood film bios — Shakur also has inspired an arts center and memorial garden named in his honor. That Georgia facility, supervised by Shakur's mother and scheduled to open its doors in 2003, is supposed to commemorate the murdered musician and actor together with “other victims of violence.”
Of course, it's a stretch to depict Shakur as an innocent or incidental casualty. The Los Angeles Times investigation suggested that the undeniably talented star precipitated his own murder when, a few hours before his death, he encouraged his bodyguards to attack a member of the rival Southside Crips gang in a bloody beating in the MGM Grand casino. Even before that series of climactic incidents, the hip-hop artist and occasional movie actor had accumulated a rap sheet nearly as impressive as his creative achievements. During filming of the acclaimed picture Menace II Society, Shakur viciously attacked director Allen Hughes. For this on-set explosion, he lost his part, but he won a 15-day jail sentence. Earlier, bitter disputes with another black director, John Singleton, brought about Shakur's firing from the film Higher Learning.
Shakur's artistic temperament also represented a threat to his fans. In 1993, police arrested him on charges of striking a woman who asked for his autograph, and, a few months later, he faced forced-sodomy charges in an incident involving another female fan. In 1992, he was arrested and charged with participating in a fight that resulted in the death of a 6-year-old boy. In 1993, he also faced charges (later dismissed) for his involvement in the shooting of two plainclothes police officers. Shakur also recorded parole violations for carrying a concealed weapon and assaulting a driver.
The day after his conviction on the sexual-assault charges, Shakur found himself shot and robbed in the lobby of Quad Studios in Times Square, N.Y. Sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison as his wounds healed, Shakur served only eight months before powerful executives in the music world arranged for his parole.
Had he remained in jail, he might have survived. The Los Angeles Times reported that rival rapper Notorious B.I.G. paid $50,000 (of a promised $1 million) to Shakur's assassin, only to perish himself in a similar (and similarly unsolved) shooting some six months later.
Shakur's long criminal record and the almost casual endorsement of violence in much of his music hardly make him a candidate for pop-culture canonization, let alone for a “peace garden” in his honor. His puzzling posthumous popularity, in fact, reflects the degrading and ultimately racist notion that criminal violence represents an essential and authentic element of African-American identity.
Consider this year's much-discussed Oscar breakthrough for Denzel Washington, a universally acclaimed actor who leads an admirable off-screen life as a devoted family man. He has most often played heroic idealists in his major films, but it took his part in Training Day — as a brutal, drug-addicted, crooked cop — to finally win him his Academy Award.
Unfortunately, the black community itself too often echoes the entertainment industry's efforts to emphasize African-American violence by embracing even the most brutal criminals in their confrontations with the police. In April, a man named Robert Thomas Sr. died in Seattle with a stolen gun in his hand and cocaine and alcohol in his body. He had racked up a dreary history of arrests and imprisonments. Nevertheless, his shooting by a sheriff's deputy made Thomas the subject of several memorial services, vigils and demonstrations as well as citywide agitation.
Sadly, the cult worship of Shakur demonstrates an ongoing condescension and double standard in attitudes toward African-American males. Since he was a black artist (never mind the fact that he sprang from an educated, intellectual and radical background) many patronizing public figures, white and black, not only accept violent behavior — they expect it.
The unquestioning acceptance of the pop-culture association between violence and African-Americans by those with “enlightened” opinions unwittingly recycles assumptions of yesteryear: writing off blacks as doomed and dangerous and, therefore, exempt from the standards society applies to others. The relatively harsh reaction to white celebrities accused of criminal behavior (think Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder or Robert Blake) offers a stark contrast to the outright veneration of Shakur as a “victim of violence” — despite his far more extensive criminal record.
The grisly circumstance of Shakur's killing (he lingered six days) produced an inevitably sympathetic response and helped to obscure the fact that he played the role of perpetrator even more frequently than he qualified as victim. As the feverish obsession with his memory continues to flourish, it becomes increasingly difficult to place his ugly example in proper perspective or to interfere with the handsome pop-culture profits yet to be made from his tormented legacy.
(Film critic and USA TODAY contributing board member Michael Medved hosts a daily, nationally syndicated radio show focusing on the intersection of politics and pop culture. You can visit his website by clicking here.)