Sumith Prasad
In the fifth and final episode of Netflix’s sitcom ‘The Vince Staples Show,’ Vince goes to a school to deliver a talk, only to meet a student whose father was the rapper’s classmate. The boy lets him know that his father was known as White Boy and he is not on good terms with the rapper. When Vince finally meets White Boy, the latter sets out to kill him. The musician tries to run away from White Boy, only for the mysterious man to chase the former. Their encounter ends in a tragedy as well. Even though Vince co-created the series loosely based on his life, White Boy is not based on a real person!
The Intentions Behind White Boy
White Boy is a fictional character the show’s writers created for the sitcom. The real Vince Staples didn’t kill anyone as the show depicts. Vince conceived the series to explore the concept of “perception.” As far as this exploration is concerned, White Boy is an integral part of it. At the end of the chase, Vince confronts White Boy and kills him. He returns to his girlfriend Deja, who asks him whether anything noteworthy happened in his life that day, only for him to reply, “Not really.” Seeing death at a short distance, with bullets aimed at him as he runs across the city, doesn’t qualify as remarkable for Vince but it can be extraordinary for others.
“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 explained to Netflix’s Tudum. Through Vince’s encounter with White Boy, the show divides the perspectives of the protagonist, who doesn’t find the incident remarkable, and the viewers, who most likely find it exceptional. This difference of opinion makes it clear that individual perspective makes something appear normal or noteworthy.
In the show, Vince and his writers intentionally hide why White Boy hates his former classmate. “It’s really just more so commentary on the cycle of growth and what it’s like to grow up in this environment. So, if you kind of think about that, then it opens up a lot of questions. You never really know the reason [why White Boy wants to kill Vince], 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. It was a commentary on how we all are the same and still don’t like each other,” Vince told UPROXX.
Vince killing White Boy can be seen as a homage to Quentin Tarantino, one of the filmmakers who inspired the rapper the most. In Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill: Volume 1,’ Vernita Green tries to kill The Bride, only for the latter to put an end to the former’s life with Vernita’s daughter around. Similarly, White Boy’s son sees Vince after his father’s murder in an advertisement for the rapper’s new breakfast cereal Kapow! Pops.
Read More: The Vince Staples Show: All Filming Locations of the Netflix Series Explored
