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?
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.
Great and thoughtful answer - thank you!