Sumith Prasad
Netflix’s sitcom ‘The Vince Staples Show’ ends with Vince Staples’ supposed former classmate White Boy chasing him with several guns. After addressing a group of students, the rapper learns from one of them that the latter’s father, who was known as White Boy back in the day, holds enmity towards him. Right after leaving the school, Vince encounters White Boy, only for the latter to shoot at the rapper with a gun. When Vince runs away, White Boy chases the former in his car with his son. The chase ends with Vince confronting the man who wants to kill him! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Vince Kills White Boy
As White Boy chases Vince, the rapper seeks refuge in a supermarket. The former follows his old classmate and starts looking for the latter. His search ends when Vince shows up behind him with a gun. A gunshot is heard and Vince returns to his girlfriend Deja. He then watches a news channel as a presenter states that a shootout happened in the city with a fatality, making it clear that White Boy is dead. Since the presenter adds that there are no known suspects, Vince learns that the cops haven’t identified him as the murderer.
The significance of the murder lies in the interaction between Vince and Deja as he is watching the news channel. She asks him whether anything remarkable had happened that day, only for him to reply that nothing did. Even after getting chased by someone, nearly losing his life, and committing a murder, Vince says that nothing noteworthy had happened in his life that particular day. Through his response, the co-creator Vince invites our attention to the nuances of “perception.” For the rapper, who grew up in a highly volatile environment, murder isn’t something remarkable or unique.
Vince’s perspective may not be shared by the viewers of the series, especially ones who haven’t had exposure to crimes like the former had. Through this difference of perspectives, Vince’s show makes it clear that normality and extraordinariness are two sides of the same coin. Depending on the subject, any event can be deemed ordinary or remarkable. “What is a good day? What is a bad day? How do we perceive things? The end of Episode 5 might not be the happiest, but sometimes that’s the way things end, and it becomes the norm for us. When you accept the norm, nothing sticks out,” Vince told Netflix’s Tudum.
The environment Vince grew up in is integral to understanding how he can deem a murder as unremarkable. As a teenager, he was a member of the Crips, an alliance of street gangs based in the coastal regions of Southern California. “I started gangbanging because I wanted to kill people. I wanted to hurt people. There’s no reason: it’s a bloodthirst. The same reason people join the army: because they want to kill. A lion doesn’t make an excuse to kill anybody, he does it because he wants to,” the rapper told The Guardian. For the teenage Vince, murder was not something extremely concerning, just like it is for the fictionalized version of the rapper in the sitcom.
The series uses White Boy’s murder to offer a commentary on this environment where murder is insignificant. “It’s really just more so commentary on the cycle of growth and what it’s like to grow up in this environment,” Vince told UPROXX about the clash between White Boy and his fictional version. The show doesn’t explain why White Boy wants to kill his former classmate. According to Vince, the reason doesn’t matter at all. “You never really know the reason, and I think that was important to frame it in that way. I think that’s why it was important to showcase that Vince did not remember, or know who this person was and nobody else did,” he added.
Regardless of the reason why White Boy wants to kill Vince, the two of them engage in a battle as equals with one emerging as the winner. “It was a commentary on how we all are the same and still don’t like each other,” Vince said in the same UPROXX interview.
Read More: Is James Vince Staples’ Real Uncle?
