Depiction of the South Bronx in the Media

Historically speaking, transnational media accounts have characterized the South Bronx as being a place of urban decay rampant with crime. Rebecca Solnit states that “the borough’s misrepresentation stems partly from the outbreak of fires that ravaged the South Bronx in the 1970s, leaving much of it in rubble and many homeless” [2]. In the essay, “New York City: Seeing Through the Ruins,” Marshall Berman indicates that “there were years of tabloid headlines, magazine covers, TV documentaries in many languages entitled something like “The Bronx is Burning”... [furthermore] blaming the victims became the cliché repeated endlessly on the news” [3]. Jefri mentions that “You’ll probably hear that expression... 'the Bronx is burning,' because people would light buildings on fire.”

The Get Down, a Netflix show that was released last year, takes place in the South Bronx during this particular era of the 1970s when hip-hop was born. The birth of this musical genre allowed the borough to become known as "The Boogie Down." Even though Jefri considers himself to be a fan of the show, he expresses his concerns regarding its depiction of the area, by stating, “Um... I would say that my one problem with it was that it felt too exaggerated. Sometimes. I dunno if this actually happened, but they would have meetings... They were in front of this construction site, where behind it, was like a wasteland and they were having like a – I don’t know – someone was running for President of the Bronx or something. I can’t remember now. Um... but, they were having it and the backdrop was this wasteland. And it was all these buildings that had been burnt down. And I think that’s a little overdramatic. But it’s a show and I accept that it’s a show.” Later on in the interview, he added, “people probably think the Bronx is still like that… I wouldn’t be surprised. Like, ‘oh, are buildings still burning?’ stuff like that, which is not true.”