The movie Dope follows a high school student named Malcolm Adekambi in a low-income area near Inglewood, California. Malcolm and his two friends find themselves in possession of a large amount of Ecstasy after a drug dealer slips it into Malcolms backpack in an attempt to hide it. After a chase around the town, Malcolm realizes that a Harvard representative and alumnus set him up and that in order to get into the school of his dreams, he must sell all the contraband. Using a black market site, Malcolm and his friends manage to sell all the drugs and threaten to send the money directly to the Harvard representatives acco
unt, incriminating him of selling illegal substances. In order to keep Malcolm from doing so, the Harvard representative must get Malcolm admitted to Harvard. The movie ends with Malcolm writing a college essay about a straight A student that loves punk rock, and another student that struggles through poverty by selling drugs. He then asks “which student do you think I am?.”
The movie ultimately deals with the systematic injustice of growing up in impoverished areas. Because of where Malcolm was born, getting into Harvard requires a wild ride dependent on the sale of drugs. Crime is embedded into the area where Malcolm lives, so much so that even a straight A student with a love for punk rock can be dragged into the scene. Students from these areas are automatically disadvantaged simply because of the things that surround them. The movie Dope illustrates this perfectly. Not only does it depict the difficult situations in a town like Malcolms, but also shows how these situations lead to inequality in the education system on a country-wide scale. While the movie may be fictional, the narrative is certainly applicable to many areas where crime and violence are overwhelmingly present. Those who inhabit these areas are subject to extreme disadvantages based solely on the fact that they are exposed to a completely different lifestyle. Dope is the perfect movie to highlight the systemic injustices that stem from these low-income, high-crime areas.