SPIKE LEE
PORTRAIT OF A
CONTROVERSIAL FILMMAKER
Inter/Intra-racism
4
6
Black female sexuality
Biography/Documentary
3
4
3
Family/Father & Son
Relationship
Miscellaneous
Inter/Intra-racism
Black Female Sexuality
Biography/Documentary
School Daze (1988)
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Jungle Fever (1991)
Get on the Bus (1996)
Summer of Sam (1999)
Bamboozled (2000)
She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
Girl 6 (1996)
She Hate Me (2004)
Malcolm X (1992)
Crooklyn (1994)
4 Little Girls (1997)
Jim Brown All American
(2002)
Family/Father &
Relationship
Miscellaneous
Crooklyn (1994)
Get on the Bus (1996)
He Got Game (1998)
Mo’ Better Blues (1990)
Clockers (1995)
The Original Kings of
Comedy (2000)
25th Hour (2002)
50,000,000
45,000,000
40,000,000
35,000,000
30,000,000
25,000,000
20,000,000
15,000,000
10,000,000
5,000,000
0
Budget
Gross
25th Hour
Bamboozled
Summer Of Sam
He Got Game
4 Little Girls
Get On The Bus
Girl 6
Crooklyn
Malcolm X
Jungle Fever
Mo' Better Blues
Do The Right Thing
School Daze
She's Gotta Have It
SUCCESS
Spike Lee misses at the Box Office
• Todd Boyd, Associate Professor at USC:
His movies are the same as they were in the beginning.
• Nelson George, Pop culture writer:
Reviews of Lee’s films are filled with recurring themes: Lee’s
endings don’t satisfy; his films are didactic.
• Jones, Vanessa E. “Spike Lee: Right on Time,” New York Times. 13
January, 2003:
Lee is a victim of an industry he helped transform.
• Steve Persall, Times Film Critic:
Some people don’t want to hear what Spike Lee has to
say, much like Bill Cosby’s recent rebukes.
Forty Acres and a Mule
• General William
Tecumseh Sherman’s
Special Field Order No.
15, January 16, 1865
• 1869 President Andrew
Jackson rescinds bill
• 40 Acres and a Mule today
MAKING WAVES
He further turned the industry on its head by making
movies with Black-centered themes and with African
American actors and staff. "40 Acres and a Mule" has
also come to represent resistance to racial injustice
perpetrated against Blacks. For example, just as
freedmen wanted forty acres and a mule, in Do The
Right Thing, Buggin' Out wants Black pictures on the
wall in Sal's Famous Pizzeria."40 Acres and a Mule" is
also a critical reflection on those Blacks who fail to
use the opportunities given to them or who misuse
them.
Spike’s Gotta Have It
• 1986 Cannes Film Festival
Award of the Youth,
Spike Lee; Foreign Film
• Los Angeles Film Critics
Association Awards, Spike
Lee; New Generation Award
• 1987 Independent Spirit
Awards, Spike Lee; Best
First Feature
Race Politics in Film
• Film has long been fascinated by the
history of race relations; why?
• Provides conflict, opportunity for underdog
following just cause to overcome adversity
• Favorable to either Whites of Blacks
• Often an venue for the perpetuation of
negative stereotypes
• D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Gone With
the Wind, etc.
Do the Right Thing
• Intended as a wake-up call to America (note Samuel
Jackson at beginning)
• Lee wanted to expose the racial tensions simmering
underneath the placid appearance of race relations in
the U.S.
• Why does this take place on the hottest day of summer?
• Do African-Americans have complete equality in politics
and society?
• What is necessary to bridge the gap between races?
• Lee argues that both sides need to overcome their
stereotypical preconceptions
• How does he try to facilitate that process in this film?
Dialectical Form
• Film is a constant play of opposite messages
clashing against one another
• In 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein, inspired by Marx,
created cinema involving a constant
juxtaposition of opposites (thesis and antithesis)
with the goal of creating a new synthesis or
higher consciousness
• Lee wanted to liberate audience from fixed
stereotypical images of the conflict between
black and white Americans and open their minds
to the more subtle awareness of racism in
American society and the danger that racism
poses to us all; does he do this?
Dialectical Cinematography
• Eisenstein wrote, “Absolute realism is by no
means the correct form of expression”
• What did he mean by this?
• The greater the disparity between expected
proportions and the artist’s deviations, the
greater the emotional power
• How is this done with extreme camera angles?
• Da Mayor and Mother Sister, Radio Raheem