Prologue
At first stance, there is no special reason for comparative analisys upon these directors’ work. Despite the fact that the author of this essay is a comparativist by proffession and doing a research-work upon the postmodernism as his M.A.he finds a frapant ideological vivacity in the world theoretical and poetical thought, as opposed to the ideological lethargy in his own national surrounding. And that in a period of several days, on two private televisions, he saw, probably pirated, copies of Stone’s “Salvador” and Lee’s “Girl six”. And he confronted himself with what he has just said: these two films (and the most of their film work to what we will come lately) even in their artistic structure can be placed in one socio-political context that illuminates them and gives them a special colour.These two contextes are different, but within the frames of the postmodern paradigma they are spectrally connected, i.e. we can see simmilarities in the differences.
Double focus
If we start from the effemerities we will see that both directors are from New York, that means they both carry the same intelectual background of the world metropolis number one after the World War Two, they both are unique in the aesthetical and formal aspect of their work and they both have a dispersed artistic habitus: they are directors, screenwriters, producers, they do motion films as well as documentaries and Spike Lee directs video clips and commercials. They are both great erudites and they have a detailed knowledge in the historical, socio-political and ideological context of their country. They are both part of the mainstream although their identity derives from their refusal to be part of the mainstream.
In fact, this essay on Oliver Stone and Spike Lee is an artificial connecting, as a subsequence, on what has already happened in the socio-political context from which they derive their artistic identity. It is, seen by many theoretician as the most succesful connection between the left, workers parties with the racial movements in the “rainbow coalition” within the frames of the resistance and fight against the dominant, Democratic-Republican, WASP, ideology of the USA, that gave results especially in the municipality of the big cities, as Chicago.
So, if we look for a special characteristic that connects these two directors, it is their individual fight, Stone’s liberal-leftist and Lee’s racial, against the “Master narative” (in Lyotard terms) of the dominant culture and tradition, against the power of order and the usurpation of the establishment forces.