Spike are you listening? you get a lot of flack from the white community, sometimes self imposed, most often not. This is my attempt to examine the parallels and double standards of race in this business as they relate to your work. Roll tape.
The man is a polarizing figure to most, yet he remains one of our premier filmmakers. The man has an impeccable resume: Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, among many others.
He never told the same story twice, and branched out onto documentary just as successfully. Spike Lee opened the doors for black film, and in the process revolutionized film culture through his convex of racial politics, ideology, and cinematic language. The fact that the progress he has made for African American arts has been devalued by the acceptance of commercialism as a means to an end makes the current state all the more saddening. There was one time where progressive social politics MEANT something to film culture, and Spike was at the forefront of this examination through his work.
I can mention Spike in the same sentence as Woody Allen, Scorsese and Spielberg and not miss a beat. This may sound like a love letter to Spike, no it's an affirmation of his contribution to film culture. A culture that is sadly in decline. Mediocrity is the new cancer, playing it safe at the hands of nothing to offer. How many times have you been to the movies in the last ten years and truly came away inspired and changed?
I remember my first summer in America, the summer of 89'. I lived in the Bronx at the time, and recalled the poster for Do The Right Thing at the local bus stop. I remember looking at that poster, and the characters looking up at me. I didn't understand it at the time, what that image meant to convey. Years later I saw the movie, and that summer vividly replayed among my young eyes. This was my introduction to Spike Lee.
Later in eight grade I bought the screenplay to Do The Right Thing and was more interested in reading that in class than any bullshit they wanted to teach me. I would get lost in the colorful language and the scenes, it was something within me. I saw it as "this is it", this is my calling. Sweet Dick Willie couldn't put it better.
Film is the defining art form of the times, and now more than ever it's in trouble. It's power to move people and inspire their emotions remains the best vehicle of self expression. The language of telling stories has evolved, but storytelling has been impacted, taken a step back to mere technique.
Wanna know what pisses me off? critics. Critics think they know everything when they fucking don't know from A to B. Audiences have changed, and it's harder than ever to engage them when 90% of what they want is just want escapism. That and the driven cost of films has made it harder than ever for a filmmaker like Spike Lee to tell his brand of stories. Lesser filmmakers are handed out bigger budgets (Wes Anderson comes to mind) to craft their idiosyncratic visions, even if his films only play to art school sophisticated hipsters. Everyone has an opinion. Bloggers get down on their knees and suck up to the system in exchange for a free pass. Seems like no one wants to critique work with a balanced view anymore, since intellectual exercise has been replaced by juvenile "youtube" comments. It can be argued that film criticism is dead, packaged, morphed into a popularity game of admiration and bottom floor condescension. No film by any contemporary American filmmaker faces more derision and deviance than a Spike Lee film. Oh folks are equally pissed and entranced at a Spike Lee joint. That's part of what's great and part of what's...sad about our movie going culture. His detractors are usually film critics who take personal issue at his reputation while overlooking his craft at telling a story. When you're as vocal as he is and pigeonholed as the angry black man, no one cares how good your films are. Film criticism has no place anymore, because personal dogma has replaced what used to be known as artistic merit.
The posturing of the "angry black man" is like a curse that haunts every production he makes. Somehow critics, and the audience by large, can't separate the man from his films. I'm afraid this is a reason his films don't do as well commercially as they should because of that. Then again, few filmmakers have cemented a reputation in the public and artistic side like Spike has. There's a sociopolitical identification with his work that engages the audience and makes them asks the same questions his characters live through. His media visibility overshadows that of his films, although in recent times he's learned to be smarter and take a back seat. I argue that because he is black and makes movies about blacks, he gets attacked on those grounds. Well, if 90% of all stories are told from white people's point of view, where's the balance to illicit such strong reaction? people focus on the bullshit and overlook the craft and passion even his less successful movies contain. Sure, his record is hit or miss, but he never plays down the integrity of the story the rules for the sake of dishonesty, something 90% of American films are guilty of doing. Every film he's made could not have been made by anyone else.
Look at an film like The 25th Hour. Very underrated film. It's a story of predominately white people. Any white director could have made that film. What distinguishes it is the insight which informs his best work. The language of new york, the beauty of the characters interactions. In a Spike lee film, people say what often you and I feel about people but don't often express. It could only come from having that unique sensibility. He's had bad films before, but even the bad ones contain elements as good as any.
In a broader spectrum, it can be argued that black film's aim is no longer to shed a light on the African American experience. Capitalism is the new god, so times have changed. I believe art still has a place in this world, even if the bar has been set so low that it has no place to go. Social discourse is solely missing in our cinema. Black cinema embraced the backwards buffoons and racial stereotypes that people take as the construct of our reality. This is what the media wants colored people to represent, evidenced by all the garbage that plays on our screens. The politics of change don't wheel forward unless its from within, and that plays to our fundamental understanding of how we feel about ourselves. The screen is the truth that represents how we are viewed.
Things are changing, with the world becoming more ethnically integrated than ever before. A black man is running for office, and America has come a long way from the days of OJ and Rodney King. Racism still exists, and it always will. The relationship of race and it's discontents are at the heart of his work. However didactic and heavy handed a Spike Lee film can get, the messages they carry are urgent and full of plight. He does not glamorize the trappings of black people, instead offering social commentary on how these trappings bind the black experience in social and cultural struggle. That's anthropology to you and me.
Spike makes what he wants, and he's done more to articulate the race issues that divide this country than anyone with a voice that needs to be heard would. Other black filmmakers chose to glamorize capitalism and materialism as the means to an end for them, that's a cultural shift and a gradual change of the times. Spike's integrity permits him to focus on the black experience instead of the stereotype.
What Spike has accomplished for black film, and for film in general, should not be understated. This is a town that paints in the same color, and excludes everyone else.
Anyone remember driving miss daisy? that film won an Oscar the same year Do The Right Thing was released. Do The Right Thing remains a benchmark film, and didn't even get a best picture nomination. Same could be said for Malcolm X, both remain his best movies to date.
This is where the praise ends, and the subject begins.
I've read the definitive book on Spike (That's my story and I'm sticking to it). It's a remarkable read, and one of the most honest studies of an artist I've read. To understand his work one must understand the man who made them, and the book paints the nuances in a satisfying light. As the book notes, Spike is a man whose complexity far justifies the intentions behind his artistry. He is a bit of an asshole, and self serving, specially to his collaborators. Then again which filmmaker isn't self serving? it's in their DNA. I would not have written this article without gathering an understand of his work. I revisit his films with inspiration and a point of view.
To make the long story conclude, I respect Spike Lee as a filmmaker and think he's great. Call him a racist or a bad filmmaker if you must, but don't deny he's a fucking great storyteller. Even I sometimes disagree with his methodology, but always enjoy the film.
Keep doing what you're doing, Spike. Fuck the establishment, it will never change.
Do the right thing.
1 comment:
well said
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