Just finished I'm A Virgo - which was awesome - and couldn't help but think of Spike Lee's seemingly incoherent ideology and how, while Boots continues to release bangers, Spike shills crypto.
Admittedly, I have only seen two of Spike Lee's "social" movies, Do The Right Thing (which I really didn't "get" - please chime in if you can clarify) and Bamboozled (which I thought was poignant but a bit heavy handed and nihilistic). It appears to me that Spike Lee grasps the racial inequities in American society, but doesn't grasp the greater dimensions - he's trapped in, or has fallen into the trap of, detached liberalism.
I could be way off base here, so I hope y'all can offer some illumination - it seems like the crucial difference between Spike and Lee is that Boots has read theory.
Thoughts?
When Spike Lee did his interview trail for Chiraq, he actually believed that a sex strike could create substantial change on a large scale.
On one hand
kingOn the other hand
That matches up with my perception of his work: he has no underlying theory. He grasps outlines of inequity, but appears unable to tie it together: he presents powerful scenes, but subsequently undermines the impact of those scenes with incoherent resolutions.
Just standard "we can fight white supremacist capitalism with black capitalism" stuff imo.
Yeah, RIP to Killer Mike for falling into that trap too. But as opposed to his crypto shilling, Lee's message in Do The Right Thing also confused me because it seemed to be ripe for a message of working class solidarity but then it was about, uhhh, the function of riots as expression? And I guess the pizza shop owner was petite bourgeoisie? It's been so long since I've seen it.
Yeah Spike totally lost it when he did the film (Black Klansman) about the black cop that infiltrated the Klan but he left out that the cop also worked against black radicals.
That movie ends with the main character explaining to his activist girlfriend that he can do more good by being a cop than an activist
Spike Lee used to have better politics he's just gotten too rich and it pickled his brain in liberalism
I'm no movie historian I'm just a movie buff and this all of the top of my dome
I really bothers me that Spike Lee is closer to Tyler Perry than Boots Riley politically. It's really worse that Perry and Lee are like the only "big ticket" filmmakers who are black (I don't like the phrase "black filmmakers" as "black film" in America cinema is kinda of genre and I don't want to confuse the genre with the filmmakers). Interestingly I think director Jordan Peele is much closer to Riley than we give him credit.
I think Lee's films are less "challenging" to the audience but more so a reflection of the audience's views. I do think Lee is an American artist through and through, the dude has stories to tell and uses cinema to do it. Lee is has been radical for his time and brought American blackness to the big screen, which is rad. However, I believe he may be on the far reaches of liberal space, but still very much within the confines of liberalism, which I think confines his artistic ambitions. Not say that only liberal art can come from liberalism, just saying I think Lee is an example of how the means of production can constrict the artist.
Keep in mind Lee came out in the 80s, a time where hustle cultural and "pull yourself by your bootstraps" was at an all-time high. I think the industry of film at the time made it difficult for an any up-and-coming director and exponentially more difficult for a black one. Securing equipment and funding was a totally different game back then I would imagine it has changed how he views the art he creates, both as a student as well as professional. Lee also came up at a time were blackness was truly "cool" in a way I don't think modern audiences fully understand. Lee didn't really package blackness as a product more so a means of perspective which to his credit is dope.
All of that said, I think Riley as a filmmaker doesn't quite enough film to really put him in the same realm. Don't get me wrong I like Riley, I really liked "Sorry to Bother You", and more importantly I like how he brings up real labor struggles both on and off the screen. However I don't think Riley has enough of a filmography to do make a substantive comparison as far as film goes. I want more Riley movies, I want more Riley movies to inspire more filmmakers to be unafraid to say "hey, I got something to say!" which is what I think makes all art worthwhile.
(I typed all this up rather than working on my work-from-home bullshit I had to do)
this is a lot better than the write-ups i mocked up & threw out about Lee, because there's so much context & change both in film generally & his own work throughout his career. it's fucking wild this same dude made clockers and black klansman, those have a fundamentally different view on policing.
I'll be real with you. I kept confusing Spike Lee with Stan Lee and I kept wondering 'since when were you nerds marvel fans'
That's funny, because I'm A Virgo really addresses US obsession with comic-book narratives. But similarly I think, Stan Lee made (or stole) characters that presented critiques of US culture, but always in a lib-brained restricted way.
Casting Professor X as the good guy and Magneto as the badguy is peak "This is your brain on Liberalism".
I used to mix up Spike Lee and Spike Jonez. I was like no way the guy who made Malcolm X made Yeah Right too
Well, they are both black directors who make racially conscious films offering some critique of US society, so I don't think it's so outlandish to compare them.
