SCFZ poll: Spike Lee

[flip]

Polling the films of director Spike Lee

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the Lee joints you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Tuesday, in seven days, whatever day that is

- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline three days, if someone requests an extension

- next poll: whoever posts the first ballot in this thread is free to nominate the director we poll next, unless you've nominated in this round already (everyone should get a chance). Already nominated this round: wba, greg x

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

one rule for nominees: at least 3 scfzers need to have seen 10+ of a nominee's films, or at least 4 scfzers need to have seen at least 8 of the nom's films, so if it isn't clear if that will be the case, we'll confirm that's true before moving forward

if 24 hours pass after a poll opens, and no one eligible to nominate has posted a ballot, then i'll nominate someone, and then we'll start over, and everyone will be able to nominate again

[flip]

Do The Right Thing
Malcolm X
Summer of Sam
Clockers
BlacKkKlansman

seen twelve

[flip]

whoever posts the first ballot, feel free to nominate our next director (except greg x or wba who nominated recently)

[ofrene]

seen 3

Do The Right Thing

and nominate Buster Keaton

[wba]

01. 25th Hour (2002)

Lee seen: 4

[brian d]

seen 4

blackkklansman
do the right thing

[flip]

i can't believe we haven't polled buster keaton yet, but we haven't - i'll start that poll on friday!

[greennui]

Do the Right Thing
She’s Gotta Have It

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Only seen 2.

1. Do the Right Thing

Guess I'll vote for Do the Right Thing ⁠— I have reservations about its canonical status as the black film white people watch to learn about black cinema, or for e.g., the film that tends to get shown in Intro to Film courses when the week on African-American cinema comes around. The representation of women and sex isn't so affirming (little surprise, given Lee's track record in public statements and storylines), the representation of mental illness also is troubling, if memory serves. Then there's the representation of racism as animosity between individuals while largely mocking mass action (e.g. economic boycott of the Pizza place, etc.), and the fact that Lee offers little by way of answers to the question "What is the right thing, and how do we do it?". All that said, it's *such* a good conversation starter, and it's been a tremendous success on that front. Which I guess means it is a good intro screening after all, even if it's starting to feel a bit old-hat at this point. But, of course, I don't always have to agree with a work of art's conclusions to appreciate it as art. And I think Do the Right Thing is maybe the best example of that for me: a text I really appreciate engaging with, a text that has lead to (and invites) a lot of inspired critical writing, even though I'm not necessarily fully on board with its project. ("Do the Right Thing was actually the first movie we saw together on our first official date" — Michele Obama.)

[kanafani]

I've seen 10

Do the Right Thing
She’s Gotta Have It
25th Hour
when the levees broke

[mesnalty]

Seen 8:

1. When the Levees Broke
2. Do the Right Thing
3. 25th Hour
4. Malcolm X

[nrh]

crooklyn
when the levees broke
bamboozled
red hook summer
do the right thing

seen 16 i think

[rischka]

do the right thing
crooklyn
she's gotta have it
summer of sam

9 total

[Silga]

Seen 5:

Inside Man
Do the Right Thing

[Curtis, baby]

seen 6

BlacKkKlansman
Bamboozled - this movie has canibus in it
Do the right thing

[wba]

Guess I'll vote for Do the Right Thing...

Personally, I can't stand that film.

But I also can't stand Michelle Obama, so I guess that fits.

[wba]

i can't believe we haven't polled buster keaton yet, but we haven't - i'll start that poll on friday!

Yeah, so many people we haven't polled yet!!
But that's what I love most about these polls: they area neverending story.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

But I also can't stand Michelle Obama, so I guess that fits.

To be clear, my quoting Michelle Obama wasn't intended to align Spike Lee and the Obamas on policy issues or worldview, quite the opposite in fact. Not sure the two fit, really, they're quite different. I find it interesting/exemplative that this is a movie that so many people had different reactions to, different diversions from, while it still might be significant to them. The Obamas were just the most influential of a great many viewers who appreciated the questions of Lee's film but formed their own, quite different answers.

[oscarwerner]

Seen 16.
1-Do the Right Thing (1989)
2- Summer of Sam (1999)
3-Jungle Fever (1991)
4-Bamboozled (2000)
5-Malcolm X (1992)

[DT.]

1. When the Levees Broke
2. Crooklyn
3. Mo' Better Blues
4. Do the Right Thing
5. Jungle Fever

[wba]

But I also can't stand Michelle Obama, so I guess that fits.

To be clear, my quoting Michelle Obama wasn't intended to align Spike Lee and the Obamas on policy issues or worldview, quite the opposite in fact. Not sure the two fit, really, they're quite different. I find it interesting/exemplative that this is a movie that so many people had different reactions to, different diversions from, while it still might be significant to them. The Obamas were just the most influential of a great many viewers who appreciated the questions of Lee's film but formed their own, quite different answers.

Yes, it seems Do The Right Thing was (and is) something of a cultural milestone for people from the United States, which can be a bit hard to get for non-US citizens, I'd say (cause the film itself, in my opinion, is pretty mediocre).

[Roscoe]

Yes, it seems Do The Right Thing was (and is) something of a cultural milestone for people from the United States, which can be a bit hard to get for non-US citizens, I'd say (cause the film itself, in my opinion, is pretty mediocre).

As an American who living in NYC when the film was made and released and remembers the brutally ugly climate at that time, the film struck me as being 100% accurate -- I'm wondering how it holds up. It might be one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. But if we're talking mediocre, let's talk Lee's JUNGLE FEVER...

[grabmymask]

I quite like Jungle Fever. It’s Lee making a Douglas Sirk movie and I am all for that.

[Caracortada]

Seen 7.

1. Do the Right Thing
2. BlacKkKlansman
3. Malcolm X

[...]

Mo' Better Blues
Jungle Fever
Malcolm X
Crooklyn
Do the Right Thing

Among other things, the question of who exactly is being addressed by the exhortation to "Do the Right Thing" is one that deserves to be considered, as in who is the presumed audience or group one is associating oneself with in regards to how you frame an understanding of the question. In like fashion, the notion of seeing the events as being singular or representative of a larger social whole also can shift expectations or response to the actions in the movie. Lee suggests both a specific set of events and their representative function, which is where his so called didacticism comes into play. The specific is meant to evoke the larger social construct which can't be resolved by boycott alone as white dominant businesses are impossible to avoid. Even associating oneself with the black characters, if one isn't black, is called into question by that same method.

Doing the right thing, for a white audience member cannot the same for a black audience member since the power imbalance is structural. Assuming the movie could have one answer for what that right thing might be is to assume one audience to which the movie is speaking, which is inherently problematic as the movie demonstrates we don't hear the same things even when we are sharing the same interests or situations. We all don't get the luxury of identifying with whoever we choose, identity has a social construction that can't be avoided. At the same time, the movie does suggest that it is in the destruction of the institutions of racism, destroying the racist establishment, is where the MLK and Malcolm X quotes find their shared purpose without contradiction.

Lee's an instigator, he challenges audiences, both black and white, and has directed films aimed at both, sometimes together and sometimes separately. Even in his roles in his films Spike plays liminal characters, the ones who precipitate the conflict or force the other characters to confront clashing values or ideologies they wished to ignore or avoid. His in film roles are no different than his role as director in that sense, pushing the viewer like he does the characters to break the ease of watching for story and character identification alone.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

That's interesting, thanks . I agree that Lee wants us to see Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as complimentary rather than in opposition, and I agree that our identity matters to our reactions and to our right actions. (That said, I don't find social construction a useful phrase, but I'll save that for a philosophy forum). I definitely didn't want to imply that there was only one moral action that needed to happen, rather than several by different people of different positions (perhaps working collectively, perhaps not) - I was using the language of the title, but, yup I agree, multiple right things. To be clear, my criticism of Lee not articulating the right thing(s) to do isn't original to me, it comes from my reading of Ed Guerrero and especially bell hooks (among others) who are frustrated by Lee's unsympathetic treatment of collective action (and, in hooks' case, his sexism). The immense value of Lee's project is that he puts all these voices in dialogue and, with it, the viewers and their character identifications, but I guess a virtue that can also feel like a limitation of Lee's project is that he won't ultimately express what voice(s) he deems right. Sure, there's a catch-all call to destroy the institutions of racism, but how to do this or even what those institutions are is left as an exercise for the viewer. Which is, arguably, just where we were when we walked into the movie. But then, maybe I'm asking too much of the movies if I'm asking for policy recommendations from filmmakers. I still probably love the film, it is very impressively staged and Lee's project has immense value, I just want to second reservations about it being the go-to choice for Intro to Film weeks on African-American cinema. All that said, returning to thinking about the film now, I wonder if I've been too hard on it: that Lee's film does an excellent job at inspiring people to ask those moral and social questions, to read articles about the film, and maybe even to read anti-racism policy papers etc., is perhaps accomplishment enough. Should probably rewatch it, as it's been a few years.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Come to think of it, yeah, my most recent viewing is maybe relevant here: I last watched Do the Right Thing in a general intro film course where the white professor very much seemed to be addressing the students as white and as scared of Lee's film, in a way I found troubling (at least a third if not half of the audience was not white). Before the screening, he put up images of Black kids recently murdered by police officers and said their names rather sentimentally and dramatically, and it felt to me like a performance of white allyship, however sincere, rather than an actual act of aid; it was potentially rather insensitive to the Black audience members who might already be anticipating finding the film triggering and definitely are aware of the film's resonance with recent killings. And then his message was 'Listen to this film's brilliant messaging, it's more relevant today than ever!' which is important and good to say, but also in saying that and only that he wasn't really holding space for our feelings about the film's limitations or offensive passages or for our desire to ask different questions about its position in the historical context of African-American cinema. Above all, in that he is only really speaking to those audience members who (he is assuming) are white and/or who (he is assuming) don't agree that Black Lives Matter. And certainly in my tutorials the racialized woman I was paired up with in discussion was really frustrated by the film, especially with respect to its sexism, and frustrated by the way it was being presented/discussed by the white teachers. I mention all this to say that, that viewing context probably is why I'd come to have reservations about positioning Do the Right Thing as this perfect anti-oppressive text, but if I returned to it in a better viewing context those criticisms might not jump out at me as much as all there is to love about the film.

[...]

Social construction isn't by any means the sole basis of racism but it is what Lee seems to be giving special focus on in the film as a way cultural values are symbolically communicated and maintained. The emphasis on the pictures on the walls and the athletic apparel as holding meaning and saying something more than perhaps even fully intended in how they can be read and also how they can be purposeful in a similar fashion.

I hear what you're saying and I think it would be going too far to claim Lee's movies as having special status that somehow provides answers to such fraught topics in a way that wouldn't be contentious to some equally invested in the problems. I don't recall hooks take on Do the Right Thing specifically, but her arguments over She's Gotta Have It I'm sure probably informed her thinking on Lee's other films to some degree. Which is certainly fair as hook's points were valid, but at the same time there is a sense that there may be added expectations of Lee that other directors weren't facing since Lee's movies certainly aren't any more sexist than almost any of the others they were surrounded by at release.

That isn't a defense of Lee other than to suggest that he faces more demand for ideological agreement than other directors because he was one of the very few black directors working regularly and thus isn't so much seen as an individual artist as a representative one and is judged more thoroughly than others. Which is perhaps ironic or maybe appropriate given Lee's own methods of looking at situations, so it isn't unwarranted, but needs to be applied evenly. The difficulty here is in having it virtually just Lee able to make movies asking the questions they do about race and being talked about as if they stand for the whole, where that question would never be asked about most movies and disagreements between critics and artists wouldn't take on the level of speaking for the whole as when hooks challenges Lee. They both can be raising perfectly valid points without it being a question of absolutes as it is so often seems to be when there are so few black directors and had been so few black critics to have made significant bodies of work. Will we even be able to poll the films of another black director, for example? The lack of opportunity makes the discussion about Lees movies take on a weight that isn't fair to any artist to bear, though Lee certainly seems to often relish that position.

Lee's movies have their problems, and lord knows how he's reacted to by teachers, critics, fans, and haters does the conversation no favors in terms of providing an appraisal of his work in a more disinterested manner. Lee seeks controversy, finds controversy, and is responded to out of feelings about the controversy he rides, but there is more to it than that, for good or bad, and keeping some focus on the works as works like those of other directors instead of as just a way to talk about the subject matter. Many of the articles I've read on Lee, pro and con, seem to sort of mix Lee the instigator and the subject matter of his movies as being both bound together and the all there is to talk about without seeing Lee the director might encompass more than that in his films. For all the talk about how Lee feels about the subjects he films, his movies often manage to convey more complexity and nuanced understanding of different positions than suggested by much of the talk about the movies. Sal's position in Do the Right Thing, for example, is given ample reason and enough basis to not be a complete caricature. His view of the neighborhood and his place in it isn't just a straw man for Lee to tear down, but something that is given a context and shown as both understandable and still rooted in something more troubling that Sal didn't even seem to realize as it isn't Sal himself that is the issue but the deeper sets of connections involved.

At the same time of course, Lee's movies are, at their best, incredibly vivid, he mixes a number of different stylistic inspirations to realize his worlds. He captures the importance of both place and community in establishing the characters, allowing them to have a representative function in addition to their individuality in how they relate to each other and fit a more archetypal pattern of behavior. He uses alienation techniques to shock the spectator out of becoming too comfortable with the film worlds to pay attention to the connection to the real world and at least has tried to vary the central characters of his films to capture more of the community than the lone man with a problem method long standard in Hollywood. If nothing else, Lee's singular, talented and determined to make movies that address real problems as much as they entertain or impress artistically, which is not a bad thing at all, even if it's sometimes annoying for the viewer in how it plays out.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

... at the same time there is a sense that there may be added expectations of Lee that other directors weren't facing since Lee's movies certainly aren't any more sexist than almost any of the others they were surrounded by at release... That isn't a defense of Lee other than to suggest that he faces more demand for ideological agreement than other directors because he was one of the very few black directors working regularly and thus isn't so much seen as an individual artist as a representative one and is judged more thoroughly than others.

Yeah, thanks for making that explicit, as that's basically the anxiety I was having, that I was risking holding Lee to a higher ideological standard than I might a Howard Hawks or, heck, a Peter Hyams. I certainly hope I haven't sounded an unfair note: my expressed reservations don't in anyway takeaway from the fact that I think Spike Lee is one of the most interesting American filmmakers of his generation and one I'm eager to study for years to come.

I do think context for the discourse matters a lot: hooks and others are entering a discourse where critics, esp. white critics, and arguably Lee himself are positioning Lee as the cinematic voice of Black America. In that context, he should be held to a higher standard: he's positioned as a moral authority, so let's make sure he is. If a filmmaker isn't positioned as a moral authority, then obviously that changes the urgency with which your moral criticisms need to be voiced, though to my mind moral evaluation remains essential no matter what. But with Hawks and Hyams I'm looking for entertainment, and Lee is explicitly positioning his work as political art, so maybe that changes the standards of evaluation? I'm not sure if it does, tbh, I haven't given it much thought until now but that would be my initial take. On the other hand, it's also essential to acknowledge, as you do and I maybe didn't explicitly in my previous posts, that a big reason Lee was positioned as a moral authority and cinematic voice of Black America was white racism. For that reason, perhaps, he should not be held to a higher standard. His status as moral authority is a function of a larger problem with the lack of coverage and opportunities for African-American filmmakers, especially at the time Lee started. That Lee was largely alone at the top wasn't his fault, and maybe that means one should spend less time criticizing Lee and more time criticizing producers, distributors, exhibitors, audiences, etc. for not helping produce and canonize other African-American filmmakers.

On that note, yeah, I certainly share the hope that other African-American directors will work for these polls. I'd expect Oscar Micheaux, Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, F. Gary Gray, and Cheryl Dunye would all have a shot at having enough views, perhaps following a 'drive' to up their view counts. And several new directors (DuVernay, Coogler, Peele, Jenkins, etc.) will get there eventually. In any case, this conversation has inspired me to put my money where my mouth is and watch more Black-authored cinema, which is good !

[...]

Yeah, no criticism of your perspective was meant since it is much the same problem many of us face with someone like Lee as he does embrace the role of moral authority and in doing so takes on the criticism that accompanies that to some degree. Even more difficult is in trying to balance one's own take against that of those like hooks who are coming at the movies from a perspective within the black community that I can't possibly speak to in any direct way, at best just offer alternative perspectives to some readings that seem too narrow perhaps.

With some of Lee's movies that isn't so much an issue, but when you get to movies like School Daze and Bamboozled there is the necessity of noting that much of the movies are directed towards the black experience and/or raising issues that do not have the same resonance to an outsider who can only relate secondhand. That's something that can come up with any movie from another cultural context, but it's often set aside or seen as close enough to universal to make strong sense of it via secondhand sources since that is how we approach movies generally. That's fine and necessary to an extent, but also has to be approached with the knowledge that lived experience or deep knowledge is something more than can be passed on via light reading and/or seeing it onscreen alone. It doesn't invalidate one's own response, but renders the appreciation distant. That's almost easier to accept when the distance is actually literal rather than of that of shared space but different cultural understanding.